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Add Work for Hire Agreement countersign

freelance comic book creators are the lifeblood of the industry while publishers are celebrated for the intellectual property they own it's the workforce creators developing many of the characters stories and milestone moments in comics stories about the problems with the work for hire system are common but the underlying work for higher agreements that form these relationships don't get the attention that matches their impact my name is kamal hennessy i'm going to fix that right now by talking about the legal rationale economic reality and the basic concepts underlying this type of contract one of the basic concepts in copyright law is the relationship between the creation and ownership in most situations whoever creates an original work owns that work the work for higher doctrine is an exception to that rule if a work is made for hire an employer is considered the author even if an employee actually created the work the employer can be a firm an organization or an individual which covers most comic book publishers now under copyright law a work for hire is created if it's prepared by an employee within the scope of their employment or a work is specially ordered or commissioned for use in a variety of situations one of those situations is as a contribution to a collective work since comics are arguably a collective work publishers regularly commissioned freelance artists using work for higher agreements now while there's plenty of hostility against the work for higher concepts there are benefits to both the publisher and the freelance artist in the context of comics for the work for higher artists it's a situation of low risk and low reward many comics do not generate profit so artists relying on comic book sales to make a living might not be able to sustain themselves even if comic sales across the board were healthy enough for artists to survive the profits for comics don't materialize for months and sometimes years after the work is done and the book is published under a standard work for hire agreement the artist is paid up front regardless of the sales or profits of the published book for publishers the situation is high risk high reward published books are a source of revenue but in the modern entertainment landscape the intellectual property based on comics drives film merchandise television and video games as an extreme example the revenue from direct market print comics as a whole was about two billion dollars in 2017 in 2018 a single film avengers invite infinity war generated a worldwide box office of more than two billion dollars on its own not counting merchandise or associated advertising check out my video on the wider comic book industry landscape in the show notes to get a better perspective on this issue of course even in the current age of comic book entertainment only a select few properties cross over into mainstream media and almost none of the books that do find...