> What other profession expects to be paid for producing work and expects to keep the result of the work?
The definition of “keep” in that sentence is the principal question of copyright, isn’t?
That is to say, if I produce a physical object at someone’s behest, I have to completely give up on the result in order for them to have unrestricted use of it, for reasons of physics. There are no such reasons for texts, computer programs, and so on, unless imposed artificially by law.
(I’m not going to call something good just because it’s the natural state of things, but neither am I going to automatically consider something reasonable just because it’s the law.)
For example, if I’m employed as a teacher, a good portion of my work is producing notes to give lectures from or to hand out to students, so that’s partly what I’m being paid for. Yet it’d be pretty normal for me to then publish them in some form, for money or not, without my employer trying to lay claim to them.
Even a developer who is employed by virtue of his experience in databases is generally not precluded from publishing a book summarizing that same experience for others to use.
> The guy got £20,000 for some pages of [babble]. He should be elated.
I don’t know anything about his situation, but a freelancer’s budgeting always has to account for the time spent waiting or searching for the next gig; being paid fabulously for a job that occupies your every waking hour for a month, then spending the next two sucking on your thumb (and recovering from the overtaxing sprint you’ve just had) is pretty normal, and on average the money ends up much less abundant than you’d guess just looking at the numbers. (Unless you’re Brandon Sanderson and can finish a novel a year, I guess.)
I think a lot of people here are probably used to consulting/contracting being somewhat extended work towards completing a work order.
But there is definitely a lot of consulting where you're working more or less full-time to stay current, market yourself, etc. and when you do get work the day rate may be eye-watering--but those jobs may be short and/or infrequent.
When I was an industry analyst, in addition to our regular subscription clients, we did present at company events, did a la carte consulting days, and things like that for which we got about $10K per day. But we didn't have a lot of those.
The definition of “keep” in that sentence is the principal question of copyright, isn’t?
That is to say, if I produce a physical object at someone’s behest, I have to completely give up on the result in order for them to have unrestricted use of it, for reasons of physics. There are no such reasons for texts, computer programs, and so on, unless imposed artificially by law.
(I’m not going to call something good just because it’s the natural state of things, but neither am I going to automatically consider something reasonable just because it’s the law.)
For example, if I’m employed as a teacher, a good portion of my work is producing notes to give lectures from or to hand out to students, so that’s partly what I’m being paid for. Yet it’d be pretty normal for me to then publish them in some form, for money or not, without my employer trying to lay claim to them.
Even a developer who is employed by virtue of his experience in databases is generally not precluded from publishing a book summarizing that same experience for others to use.
> The guy got £20,000 for some pages of [babble]. He should be elated.
I don’t know anything about his situation, but a freelancer’s budgeting always has to account for the time spent waiting or searching for the next gig; being paid fabulously for a job that occupies your every waking hour for a month, then spending the next two sucking on your thumb (and recovering from the overtaxing sprint you’ve just had) is pretty normal, and on average the money ends up much less abundant than you’d guess just looking at the numbers. (Unless you’re Brandon Sanderson and can finish a novel a year, I guess.)