An Open Letter to the Burlington Free Press
Dear Editor,
I've just learned that your paper has dropped the James Kochalka comic strip because Kochalka would not sign a work-for-hire contract.
Since discovering Kochalka's unique, delightful work, I have always been impressed that a newspaper would have the vision to bring his cartoons to the public, and I am disgusted to learn that you have tried to wrench control of his creations by demanding that he sign a work-for-hire contract.
Aside from the nauseating irony of a newspaper seeking to squelch someone's creative freedom, I am outraged by the duplicitious nature of this attack on creative freedom. By telling Kochalka that the newspaper would not gain ownership of his work if he signed this contract, you've proven yourself to be the most disingenuous of liars.
The entire reason work-for-hire exists as a legal concept is to allow creatively bankrupt but financially bloated corporations to take credit for the work of those more talented. By exerting financial pressure on creators, corporations have managed to pervert work-for-hire into an exploitive device allowing them to make in some cases billions of dollars for each one dollar spent buying out a creator's rights with the venal "work-for-hire" contract.
It goes far beyond a simple free market capitalism, into a swinish gluttony coupled with an arrogance that can only come from the certain knowledge that in a world where cartooning is a marginalized artform, the corporation seeking to enfore a work-for-hire contract is oftentimes "the only game in town."
Copyright laws have changed in the past few years, allowing creators of works six decades ago to attempt to reclaim their legal rights to the characters and concepts that have made literally millions (in some cases hundreds of millions) of dollars for the companies that have dominated the comics industry for the length and breadth of its existence.
And yet, you try to turn back the clock, in a pathetic attempt at grabbing a brass ring that rightfully belongs to someone else by any halfwit's standard of fairness and decency.
The entire concept of work-for-hire is generally regarded as an oppressive, unfair system that has always exploited artists and suppressed creativity. I have no doubt you'll find some 17-year old to fill Kochalka's spot in the paper, and you'll get him to sign a work-for-hire contract. But I also have no doubt that such petty-minded gamesmanship coupled with your display of utter contempt for a talented artist like Kochalka ensures you only the warmest, most painful spot in hell. Here on earth, it paints you as creatively bankrupt, morally corrupt, and financially desperate. Congratulations, you might want to make a note of it in your masthead from now on.
I won't have any clue if you do or not, though, because until you stop trying to force your talent pool to sign away their legal rights, I will be actively boycotting your newspaper, and actively encouraging everyone else who believes in creative freedom and journalistic integrity to do the same.
It's not too late for you to step up to the plate and show yourselves as the visionary publishers I once believed you to be.
Alan David Doane
Contact:
The Burlington Free Press
Geoff Gevalt, managing editor
Bill Anderson, weekend editor