SICK!!! Annoyingly sick! My first bad cold in maybe 3 years. I am lucky that I don't actually get sick that often because boy oh boy do I HATE IT.
Actually, I did get some cool stuff, lots of well wishes and so on. More on that later. I'm woefully behind thanks to being SICK.
One thing I will post today: Neil Gaiman has done the entire creative community a great service by doing this. Noting the lack of thought most creators have given to the disposition of their intellectual property, he's had a template will drawn up for writers (easily modified for artists and so on I'm sure) that you can freely download and use to cover yourself.
This is actually a subject close to my heart. I've heard several stories of people who died leaving their creations in the hands of family who absolutely should not have had control over their work (and either over-exploited it or supressed it). And while there was no intellectual property involved, I learned a valuable lesson when my uncle died leaving no will, a wife he'd never bother to divorce even though they'd split up a decade earlier, and a live-in partner who was absolutely screwed over by the wife. Very nasty all around. I've since had discussions on many occasions with creators who honestly never even thought about what would happen to their work if they died leaving no will. Think about it for a minute -- if you're very lucky, the law passes your work into the hands of a family member who loves and respects what you do. If you're like most people, it does not.
Anyway, enough of that! If you have intellectual property of any sort to protect (no matter how big or small), go download the will template and get that on your to-do list today!
We think a lot of people don't take care of this because thinking about dying and all that kinda creeps 'em out.
ReplyDeleteOf course, having ungrateful relatives boost all of our stuff kinda pisses us off, so it's a fine line to tread... get creeped out or have a reason to come back and haunt folks?