IPA - Work-For-Hire Contracts are Abhorrent


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Work-For-Hire Contracts are Abhorrent

by C.F. Payne

June, 2000

Strong words with reason. Work-for-Hire contracts are punitive and take the position that whatever the creativity or inventiveness you bring to a project does not belong to you. As a matter of fact you were never part of the process. You have no more claim to the ownership of your own work than a pencil, pen or brush can claim to that same work. In the eyes of the Work-for-Hire contract you are an employee of the company for the duration of that specific assignment and any future assignment you may contract for. Technically you should receive insurance and retirement benefits but the clients know you won't fight them for the pennies of benefits you earn on the job you contracted to produce in those four or five days of work. This part of the Work-for-Hire practice is up front and clear. Does this alone make Work-for-Hire contracts abhorrent? Maybe not. After all in a short-term relationship with a client, how can this hurt anyone? So the issue of whether to sign these contracts is an individual decision each of us has to make. I offer you some thoughts on the matter of Work-for-Hire contracts for you, the illustrator, to consider.

Anyone who has read a business publication understands that business people are about creating new business. Business people are about growth and new opportunity. Of course, this growth and new opportunity is usually reserved for themselves. In the efforts to create this new growth and new opportunity, business people must have a plan. Often times they have short-term plans and they have long-term plans. I think it is safe to say that the folks at Disney have a few ideas about what their next animated film will be. I also feel it is safe to say they have a number of scripts they may consider producing over the next fifteen to twenty years. Disney is not alone. The Air Force jets we see flying overhead, use technology that was developed at least twenty years ago. None of this is unusual or in itself bad. But let's look and see what could take place in our illustration world with these Work-for-Hire contracts in place.

Let's take a company, XYZ Publishing Company, with some twenty publications under its umbrella and have them acquire a few associated business entities, just for fun. Now the XYZ Publishing Company has a new Work-For-Hire contract. Now maybe some big shot illustrator won't sign that contract. So what, "we'll waive that stuff " for him or her, but any young illustrator with little leverage may be compelled to sign. The idea of being shut out of
all twenty publications is overwhelming. Besides, who can this hurt, it is only one illustrator. All you have to do is multiply this scene by fifty, remember the contract is for that specific work and all other future works, and this could be a problem.

With a little forward-thinking the XYZ Publishing Company can, with relative ease, create a whole new visual library of images to which they own all rights. With the technology of today and tomorrow, the XYZ Publishing Company can hire its own staff to create at will whole new works of art without the need for illustrators to "gum up the works" In doing this, there could be a decrease in the availability of commissioned work, thus keeping downward pressure on prices for illustration. In addition, because ownership of the artwork belongs to the
XYZ Publishing Company, they could sell the work, like any other asset they own to anyone else, i.e. a stock illustration company for resale to your customers.

In presenting this scenario, I do not wish to be looked upon as some Orwellian conspiracy freak. I do not have inside knowledge for any of this "rant." But I do have a brain and all I ask is, is this out of the range of possibility? People in business are not stupid. In a capitalistic economic environment, profits and profit margins are important. If one can find success with the model I propose, who is to say it won't become reality. And in the end, who will be hurt by this hypothesis? The very strong of us may be OK, while the very vulnerable will be exploited, leaving behind the vast majority of us to take the brunt. It is for this reason that I find the Work-for-Hire contracts before us abhorrent. It is why I will no longer sign them. (I think I did sign one a long time ago, it was before I decided to pay attention.) The decision to sign or not sign is a personal decision, not to be taken lightly. The decision you make today may have great consequences many years from now. You choose.

Editor's note: By the time this article was printed, that which CF Payne envisioned is happening. Artwork now in the public domain, previously created by illustrators whose copyrights have expired, have been claimed by other illustrators, cleaned up in software programs and resold to stock houses under new copyrights. It is not to far-fetched to predict that companies with Work-for-Hire collections will become sources from which stock houses replenish their inventory after illustrators stop renewing their contracts, and in the end, profiteers of images long since thought collecting dust in the Work-for-Hire basement.

Stock houses will be able to sell those images for as little as they choose without having illustrators "gum up the works" anymore.