Establish Control

Someone needs to:

• Manage rights
• Determine distribution
• Ensure goals are met

Projects seldom come together by themselves.

Someone has to come up with the idea for the project, secure the support for its creation, develop the framework for the project, gather the participants, and decide how the work will be used. This person will also have to manage complex copyright issues that arise when creating works with many contributors and elements.

It is important to identify who will take on this role in any complex project such as televised courses, web sites, multimedia, software or other large projects where many copyright works may be created.

Decisions Needed
Some important questions or decisions to make at the beginning of any project are the following:

• What is being created and for what purpose?
• How will people join the project?
• Will the work be made available for a limited audience?
• Will the work be published (via the web or otherwise)?
• Who will decide how and when the work is disseminated?
• Can anyone use the work for any purpose?
• Who will be responsible for managing the rights in the work?
• Who will be responsible for maintaining and updating the work?

Answering these questions will help form the framework for clarifying rights and responsibilities of project participants and securing rights to use works owned by others in the project.