Accomplishment As Artwork

The legal quagmire, which has been created by over zealous politicians catering to the legal lobbyists, has increased bureaucracy, stifled competition and tripled lawsuit filings. A small businessperson, who invests their life savings, does so to the benefit of himself and his family, while providing jobs, customer service and a tax base which pays for our many desired public services. Yet now at each turn of a businessman’s day he is faced with asking himself; not will this help my customer, my company, my family or my employees; but rather if I do this will I get sued?

Most often a business decision for a small businessperson does not make choices in his business to expand based on created or generating more profits or revenue, but based on risk of potential lawsuits, from the professional parasites. Does this mean all lawyers are bad? Of course, they are, but it goes beyond that. These parasites are causing friction in the market place, decreases in customer service, lost productivity and thus lost tax revenues for our communities. What can we do; should we shoot all the lawyers? Should we follow Caesar’s advice and; “first, kill all the lawyers?” Well that is one solution although we live in such a civil society that is not going to happen. It is for that very reason we allow these parasites to exist.

Frivolous lawsuits and the treat of losing your entire investment has prompted many a businessperson to hold off on investing in expansion, hiring employees and buying additional equipment, which would employee additional Americans. But it goes beyond that, such fear of loss is causing the lawyers to up the ante on their extortion tactics, even advertising on TV for those who feel they might possibly believe they have been somehow perhaps wronged in some minute way, to come in for a free consultation. It is sickening to think that someone can file a piece of paper in a court of law in the United States of America, which stands for justice and fairness, with some bogus and fictitious complaint, forcing the small businessperson to answer the complaint, which is based on complete and utter hokum. It is obvious that our court system is a miss and that the Lawyers have hijacked the law. The small businessperson has little choice but to deal with this constant threat of these domestic terrorists and their virus to our nation. It makes one wonder if Caesar was not a man of absolute knowledge and brilliance. Think on this.

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Labor law is also known as employment law in some parts of the
world. These terms can be used interchangeably as they are used
to refer to the same thing. Labor law is a broad category that
encompasses all area of employer/employee relations. Labor law
also includes the negotiation processes and collective
bargaining. The purpose of labor law is to protect the employer
and the employee in the case of a wrongdoing.

The present day labor law dates back to the 1930’s. The 1930’s
have been called the New Deal era. It was during this time that
Congress acted to raise minimum wage there was reconsideration
of the labor laws that were affecting both private and public
sector employees. There have been no major new laws that have
been passed over the last few decades.

Early Labor Laws

Some of the early labor laws included the following:

The Clayton Act:

The Act stated, “The labor of a human being is not commodity or
article of commerce,” and provided further that nothing
contained in The Federal antitrust laws: shall be construed to
forbid the existence and operation of labor… organizations…
nor shall such organizations, or the Members thereof, be held or
construed to be illegal combinations or Conspiracies in
restraint of trade under the anti-trust laws.

The Railway Act:

This Act was passed in 1926. It required those employers to
bargain collectively and prohibiting discrimination against
unions. It applied originally to interstate railroads and their
related undertakings. It was amended in 1936 to include
airlines.

Acts forbidden under the labor law

1) Dominating or otherwise interfering with formation of a labor
union, including the provision of any financial or other support.

2) Interfering with or restraining employees engaged in the
exercise of their rights to organize and bargain collectively.
3) Imposing any special conditions of employment, which tended
either to encourage or discourage union membership. The law
stated, however, that this provision should be construed to
prohibit union contracts requiring union membership as a
condition of employment in a company — a provision that, in
effect, permitted the closed and union shops. (In the former,
only pre-existing members of the union could be hired, in the
latter. new employees were required to join the union.)

4) Discharging or discriminating against an employee because he
had given testimony or filed charges under the Act.

5) Refusing to bargain collectively with unions representing a
Company’s employees

Photographers often submit photos to publishers for inclusion in a book
or magazine. But what happens to the copyright for that photo? Does it
transfer to the publisher? What is the publisher allowed to do with the
copyright?

Unless the copyright to a photo is specifically transferred in total to a
publisher, the publisher’s use of that photo is limited by the usage
agreement. The publisher, however, creates a new copyright, called a
“collective work,” when your photo is combined with other photos, text,
illustrations, etc. Your photo then is covered by two copyrights - one for
the photo itself, and the other as part of a collective work.

As the owner of the copyright to a collective work, the publisher may
reproduce and distribute your contribution as part of that particular
collective work, but not as a separate item. The publisher also may
distribute any “revision” of that collective work and any later collective
work in the same series. “Revision” also is thought to be a new
“version,” which still is considered to be one work.

Revision became an issue with some photographers who had
contributed work for National Geographic magazine. There, National
Geographic distributed via CDs previously published magazine issues
almost exactly as they appeared in print, except that National
Geographic added a search engine and index. The photographers
argued it was a new use of their images and wanted to be paid for it.
National Geographic argued that the CDs were a revision of the
collective work (the magazines) so that the usage was included in the
initial grant. Because the photographers were located in different parts
of the United States, they filed their lawsuits in separate courts and both
cases were appealed. While the reasons why aren’t covered here, in
sum, the 2nd and 11th Circuit Court of Appeals came to different
conclusions about whether the CDs were a revision or a new product.
This inconsistency in the law will have to be resolved later.

While hindsight is 20-20, we can learn from this experience that the best
way to protect your copyrights is to be as specific as possible when
granting usage rights. If you don’t want your photos used for certain
purposes, say so. But if your agreement doesn’t address a usage, a
court that might not agree with your position just may be the one that
determines your rights.

Take my advice; get professional help.

PhotoAttorney

Copyright 2005 Carolyn E. Wright All Rights Reserved

— ABOUT THE AUTHOR —

Carolyn E. Wright, Esq., has a unique legal practice aimed squarely at
the needs of photographers. A pro photographer herself, Carolyn has
the credentials and the experience to protect photographers. She’s
represented clients in multimillion dollar litigations, but also has the
desire to help new photographers just starting their careers. Carolyn
graduated from Emory University School of Law with a Juris Doctor, and
from Tennessee Tech Univ. with a Masters of Business Administration
degree and a Bachelor of Science degree in music.

She wrote the book on photography law. “88 Secrets to the Law for
Photographers,” by Carolyn and well-known professional photographer,
Scott Bourne, is scheduled for fall 2005 release by Olympic Mountain
School Press. Carolyn also is a columnist for PhotoFocus Magazine.

Carolyn specializes in wildlife photography and her legal website is
http://www.photoattorney.com

Probate research is, in a sense, a study about family trees. Genealogists and historians are particularly apt to undergo probate research. Probate records give immensely invaluable information to them.

Researchers locate the places where the individuals in the family tree died. Sometimes the names of places are changed over time, or places themselves are located in a different state or country than where it used to be. For example, Eritrea, which is an independent country today, used to be part of Ethiopia. Within the US, some parts of Lincoln County which were in Maine in the 18th century are now parts of Kennebec, Waldo, Washington, Hancock, Androscoggin, Sagadahoc and Knox counties.

Researchers also seek out the exact location of the probate court governing the concern in which they are interested. The Internet and telephones are very useful in this.

Then they find the index of the probate records which are needed. Research libraries and archives can be useful in this work. Usually, indexes are stored at the archive sections of probate courts or web sites hosted by archives. These give a lot of information such as phone numbers and road maps. These indexes also come in printed format and as abstracts on microfilm.

Once the index is found, the researchers look for the decedent’s name [usually surname] from an alphabetically documented list and note down the docket number and the date of probate. Usually the dates of death and that of probate are close to each other.

Similarly they look for the names of the decedent’s relatives. In this part of the work, they will come across an array of files in the process. Then they prepare a list of possibly useful files and submit the list to the court clerk for retrieval. If the files are very old or off-line, retrieval takes several days. This is where online search is immensely useful. If the expected files are missing, the researchers turn to probate record books though the latter may not contain as much information.

Then they study the files in depth and take down all relevant notes. This is the most important part of the research. Today, a PC scanner or photocopier is very handy for this work. Then they return the original file to the court clerk.

Finally, they file their findings by labeling the name of the archive, address, telephone number, web site address and the date of research.

Data from such documentation can be relied upon, as they are based on clear evidence, whether the research topic is “Who was John’s great grandfather?” or “How old is that 19th century building?”

Probate provides detailed information about probate, how to avoid probate, probate court, probate law and more. Probate is the sister site of Free Last Will And Testament Packages.