Amid all the news articles about Dolly Parton (1946-2026), one refrain was that she earned most of her money because she kept control of her song and recording rights. Yes, she was very talented, a hard worker, willing to learn and try new things, had a great sense of humor, and did an amazing amount of quiet (or even unseen) philanthropy. She could do the latter because her work earned her money.
This was very, very unusual in the music business when she got going, and although more common today, there are still very talented people who hear their songs recorded but earn very little. Likewise authors who wrote really neat books, or started intriguing series, but without control over their creations, had those series terminated and lost the ability to work in that world ever again. Or the infamous contracts where other work by that author has to be given first to Publishing Company INC, and only if they don’t want it can the author try elsewhere. And they have the option to buy the story, then sit on that and on the world it is set in, and the author is stuck once again.
Elvis Presley wanted to record “I Will Always Love You.” His manager insisted that Elvis get 1/2 the royalties from any song he performed, in perpetuity. Mrs. Parton demurred, even as much as she wanted Elvis to record the song. She kept her IP. Fast forward some years, when Kevin Costner asked if she’d mind Whitney Houston recording the song. Parton said “Sure, see my rights people,” and didn’t think anything of it, until she heard the song on the radio. In one interview, she said that was her favorite recording of that song, because it made her the most money!
Who controls your IP, your intellectual property? Ideally, you do, OR you are in a good contract with guaranteed rights reversion after a certain time (like two groups I’ve worked with, where one year after publication, the rights to my short fiction reverted to me.) I also have foreign language rights to my non-fiction, but do not have rights to any of the English-language text, audio, or other derivative materials. That’s not a great contract (some parts were worse, and my lawyer sent along a note strongly suggesting that the press update their terms and legal references to match current standards). However, I was under a different contract when I wrote it, and part of that was to get the thing published with an academic press. So I did.
Guard your IP. Make regular forays into the file sharing sites. If you find your work, file a DMCA takedown notice, and make note of when and where you do that. You are protecting your copyright and property. If you have filed for copyright with your home government, also very good, if occasionally expensive. John Van Stry successfully sued a pirate site and won, but it took a lot of time, dedication, funds, and focus. Also, by having record of having filed a DMCA with the sites, if you exclusive to someone else, and they say, “This has been published elsewhere,” you can show proof that you are trying to get your material taken down.
Nota Bene – If you use G–gleDocs, check the contract. Your work might belong to them if you are not careful.
Mad Genius Club 
8 responses to “Dolly Parton and I.P. Control”
In a Continuing Legal Education seminar a few years ago, I learned that if a lawyer uploads client documents to Google Docs, the lawyer has committed a violation of client confidentiality because the terms of use give Google a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to everything you upload.
Google’s corporate motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” A few years ago, in a cost-cutting measure, they dropped the first word.
Indeed. At least one writer who wanted to be in Kindle Unlimited (rent-a-book) exclusive got a nasty surprise when the ‘Zon informed her that her book was already published elsewhere. G00gle was selling it through G-Books, without her permissions. Which they did not need, because she’d stored the manuscript in G-Docs, and thus gave them permission.
B&N had something similar in their Nook contract three years ago, and people screamed bloody murder. B&N assured those who fussed that “that’s just boiler plate and will never be invoked.”Riiiiiight. The clause has since gone away.
Was it ONLY three years ago that B&N did that? It seems like forever ago that happened. I haven’t been following B&N lately, but I’m honestly surprised that they haven’t gone out of business yet.
The version I’m most familiar with was three years. There were probably earlier ones, but I have not kept up with their contracts in detail since I left them in 2016.
I don’t require companies to declare up front that they’re not evil. But when a company had the motto, “Don’t be evil,” and then decided to drop it…well, it’s pretty obvious they knew they were doing some crap that they couldn’t justify, even to themselves.
The teenaged boys of my generation had a mock profound saying pertaining to farts: “he who denies it supplies it and he who smelt it dealt it” I think it applies to Google as well.
The really “fun” thing with Google is that the original version was actually justifiable– “you can’t accuse me of stealing your stuff when you put it in your online storage box and then pulled it out of your online storage box from somewhere else.”
It just… kinda… mutated.
And I’m all kinds of suspicious on why that got conflated with the “no we can’t sell your stuff but you asked us to store it for you so we’re allowed to store it for yo” version.
When we speak with new authors, I ALWAYS tell them to read any contract carefully, starting with the rights clauses, and if they don’t like or understand what they see, to NOT SIGN.
Sadly, I hear over and over how newbie authors (like musicians) are so eager for that contract that they trust the nice person in the nice suit who’s working for the company that wrote the contract in their favor.