While the pleading in the original complaint is bogus legally and i have little to worry about, unless the clients decide that they want to hush it up, is that the pro se pleading is truly the most fascinating text i've ever read.
think about it. The claim is that a legal fiction was robbed. (This is not true: we thought we had permission; there are many issues regarding the ability to display portfolio work that make it not so straightforward as the complaint claims (even my status as employee is up for grabs because I worked so entirely at home and on my own hardward and mostly my own software); and that the real owners of much of this stuff weren't this particular legal fiction, but still others to whom the work was actually sold -- at least that's what these pleadings were claiming. The pleadings did not claim that the company owned thew work, but that others did.
Confused yet? :) We don't know who did. When we did work, no one told us who actually owned the intellectual property. When we negotiated freelancing work arrangements, there was no contract, and no discussion of the nature of the contractual relations with the entities to whom the work was sold.
And when you think about all of this, you can truly understand why sales and marketing are paid better than the people who actually produce products and services. It is NOT because there is a giant psychological swindle going on, that companies rely so much on sales and marketing to sell products. That's part of it, but it's not the crucial part.
Sales and Marketing, put simply, are considered more valuable because what they make is not _sold_ to customers or clients. But, more on that later.
OK. so back to property. Let's call all legal fictions (AKA corporations) Jack Ass Inc. (I am being snarky. We are legally, a Jack ASS Inc., too. ReL those self-employment figures Doug. do they accoutn for the ease with which people in states like Florida can incoporate as individuals? It doesn't look like self-employment, but it is. Oh, and Carrol: these problems are not the result of the perils of small business ownership. This would have happened had I put up a resume/portfolio site for myself. I thought about that later. Doesn't mean that I'm rejecting the idea of working for another company soon or someday.... Just realized that this would have happened regardless)
So, JACK ASS Inc. claims that the stuff it made was stolen.
Jack Ass Inc., though, can only express outrage and feelings of shock and dismay through the real live humans that currently comprise Jack Ass Inc. A legal fiction doesn't feel slighted. Humans feel slighted, outraged. A legal fiction feels nothing. Only human beings, working as tools of JACk ASS INC. can feel for it. And I don't mean tools only in the slang way. I mean tools in the traditional sense: They do the work of feeling for the corporation.
So, the original complaint and supporting documents are saying that we were portraying ourselves as capable of doing work that Jack Ass, Inc. did.
But, wait a minute. Didn't we do the work? This document is saying that we can't write? We can't edit? (Shaddup already!) That we can't proofread (really, I said Shaddup!. That we can't build web site? We are incapable of creating graphics, logos, banner ads. This document is saying we are misrepresenting our abilities. We never created the work. Jack Ass Inc. did.
Well, of course we "created" the work. Indeed, since I largely worked on my own, most of the material I created from beginning to end. I wrote, edited, proofed, typeset, designed, researched, fact checked it all. No one else in the company saw the finishged product even. I delivered it to clients and was back cracking the next day producing their next "deliveragle". (And, I'm not saying no one else was involved here, since surely, it was a social product. But that's a topic for another post)
But, if you analyze the text of this complaint, what it's saying is that Jack Ass Inc. created it. The person did not. The person is nothing, at least according to this document, without JACK ASS INC.
The employee does not exist. It has no mind. It has no creativity. It does not exist. Jack Ass Inc. does. If the employee displays the work it did in a portfolio, the entity Jack Ass Inc and its employees and principles say, "We made that, you didn't."
OK. So, what's more fascinating is this: Jack Ass Inc. doesn't actually own the product it created anymore. It sold it to clients. They own it.
So, who does it belong to, this intellectual product?
So, in this pleading, while they are claiming that copyright was infringed. IT's not Jack Ass Inc's copyright. It's not their property. They sold it.
So how is it that the humans that constitute this legal fiction, Jack Ass Inc., feel outraged, as if something was stolen?
Do you see?
Even more fascinating, humans that work at the companies that actually own the work have seen the portfolio. They did not express outrage on behalf of their employer. There is their employer's property in a portfolio display. They don't feel much of anything. They don't feel as if they, acting on behalf of their employer, should be outraged about this, not in the same way the current employees of Jack Ass Inc. do.
Now, imagine yourself a current employee of Jack Ass Inc. What do you do with this. You watch and you see your current employer make claims about how the work the person is displaying is not their's, it belongs to Jack Ass Inc.
Do you stop and think about that? Do you stop and think, Hmmmm. This means that, as a sales rep., I can't leave this company and take my knowledge about Jack Ass Inc's current client list with me and, say, set up my own business, brining with me all "my" clients. All the hard work you did to cultivate the rapport, to win contracts, to make sales. It does not belong to you. It belongs to Jack Ass Inc. If you take it with you and try to compete, you are dead meat.
You will be told that you stole that hard work you did.
But, do you think that a current employee watching this happen to a former employee can deal with it in any conscious way whatsoever. It would be terrifying to have to hold that thought in your mind. You have no rights to the creative product you make. You have no rights to the relationships you built.
It means you do not exist. The things you create are not yours.
Of course, all of this must also be addressed in a marxist sense. After all, nothing we create is really ours is it? No matere how much it felt as if I was sitting here at my desk working away, researching, writing, editing, proofing, designing, and creating the entire deliverable on my own, I wasn't was I?
Quite obviously, there need to be people who cultivate the company reputation, who land the sale, who write the contract, who negotiate the price, who do the accounting and billing. Etc.
The product was much more than my particular part in its production.
And yet, here on this list, we typically recognize that the social character of this product goes way beyond the collectivity of people who constitute Jack Ass Inc. None of it would have happened without the wider social system within which people are educated to read and write, follow rules, honor norms, be polite and courteous, work hard, operate computers and software, do math, sweep floors, organize files, soothe and cajole frantic or distraught clients, come up with marketing strategies, create advertisements, hire and train employees, etc. And then there are all the people who taught them math, to read, to draw, analyze. And all the people who feed them, nurtured them, played with them, stimulated their creativity, swept up after them, entertained them, relieved stress, cured them of illness or cared for them when they were sick.