Who holds the rights?

Today, I was in class and as the class came to an end, this was something that I reflected upon.

Not too long ago, I was asked this question during a blogger meet-up.

"Since I contribute articles to this particular editorial, do I reserve the right to use back what I wrote elsewhere?"

The question here arises, as the company that I had contributed to had not made me sign any kind of contract stating that they hold the rights to it. So, what is what now?

The advice given was by my classmates was, I should contact that editor of that particular editorial and get it down in black and white.

This happens as, one of my classmates had made a powerpoint presentation, (she presented it in class), and we wanted to make a copy of it. However, she told us that it was not possible, with the reason that she had already "sold the rights" away to this company who used it on their websites. She told us that if we wanted to see her work, she would give us the link to it when it was up, and we could make references to it (or something like that).

So, technically, by letting us make photocopies of the presentation, it would be violating the company's rights to it. (or something like that).

Plagiarism, or copying of work is a very serious issue in academic work. What more in the blogosphere....

However, Malaysians, and a lot of Asians, have yet to catch the drift of that yet...... Intellectual property is still something that most of us are not too familiar with yet...

Related links:
Minishorts: What we hate most
Kamigoroshi: Stop retards from stealing your images.