All that is to say that if my interpretation is correct then Julian is legally entitled to do what he wants with the work including selling it to someone else or in this case release it under a creative commons license.
> However, in some circumstances, for example when copyright is not dealt with in the contract to commission the work, courts may be willing to find that there is an implied licence allowing the commissioner to use the work for the purpose for which it was commissioned. This does not necessarily result in a transfer of ownership. Instead, the commissioner of the work may only get a limited non-exclusive licence. This situation demonstrates the importance of establishing who owns copyright through a contract.
[1]: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ownership-of-copyright-works
That is the move by Mojang that I didn't understand. They were about to be paid 2.5 billion. Why not offer 1 million for the signed contract? They could easily afford that, and with his financial troubles at the time, Julian would probably have signed it.
And he'd have missed out on his subsequent personal growth, and we wouldn't have gotten this beautiful story, and the universe wouldn't have gotten the End Poem, but Microsoft would, and the world would have been more normal, predictable, corporate. But he would have been able to eat and pay rent.
Because they believed (erroneously or not) that they already had paid for the thing the contract was about, and were offering a "peppercorn" payment for the signature itself to make the exchange complete.
Maybe. Maybe not. People say these kind of things, but it is often a retcon aimed to help them deal with some emotion.
Maybe he would have asked his agent to agree on a deal. The agent would have got him a tiny percentage and he would have spent the money to bring something wonderfull to the world. During which process he would have attained even more personal growth.
Totally made up story, but so is the hint that if he would have had a contract he would have missed out on personal growth.
As Marcus Aurelius wrote sometime around 170CE:
>It’s unfortunate that this has happened. No. It’s fortunate that this has happened and I’ve remained unharmed by it—not shattered by the present or frightened of the future. ...
>So remember this principle when something threatens to cause you pain: the thing itself was no misfortune at all; to endure it and prevail is great good fortune.
Julian's story is more a story of a misunderstood artist caring more about the art than the money, mistaking contract work for friendship, struggling with the consequences, hating himself for it, and finally coming to terms with it.
Given the blatantly deliberate blocking to get the OST done and getting a moron to ghostwrite it makes me think id deliberately decided to ruin Mick's reputation so the fans would eat him alive and then they went for straight up libel to complete it. Marty Stratton, what a complete piece of shit.
Blowing it off with a token amount just says "this is a tiny formality, a dotting of an 'i'".
If I were offered that out of the blue, I'd be wondering what true value I'm holding to make that signature so important.
(Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft on nothing related, and love Minecraft the game.)
IANAL but I think Microsoft is in the clear here because they bought out Mojang but they couldn't for example use the ending (or derivative works of it) in a spin-off game because Mojang couldn't have done that either and they have no standing to go after anyone reproducing the poem as a whole or in part.
In fact, the poem now being CC0 grants Microsoft more rights than they had, except it's still non-exclusive, meaning the same rights are granted to everyone else too.
Though to be perfectly honest, if I were them, and they needed something like that, I'd hire Julian to write it. Or maybe ask him to write it for free after giving him a massive donation.
Torry ended up suing and they settled out of court, so I guess that's a win.
Julian didn't read the contract when he first got it, because he apparently didn't care.
