copyright contract-law liability
How to relinquish copyright for hired help
<p>I have a small video game that I will be selling.</p>
<p>Some people volunteered to translate it into different languages.</p>
<p>I also paid for assistance creating some music for it.</p>
<p>Everything is done already but I didn’t have any contracts made before they did work.</p>
<p>What is the best way for me to make sure the other parties involved agree to the terms and cannot reclaim copyright for the work they did?</p>
<p>The arrangement was that I can do whatever I want with their work as long as they are credited.</p>
<p>Is it any good to get them to sign a contract after the fact? Is there a place I can find info about what this contract should contain or how I make it?</p>
<p>Or would it work to get them to upload their work to a site which would make their work fall under Creative Commons attribution license? Like internet archive? (I don’t mind other people using the music for their own stuff—-as long as they credit the original source which is all of us, including me)</p>
<p>They are all great people and I don’t foresee problems but I want to cross my t’s and dot my i’s.</p>

<p>You have two types of problems here, how to modify a contract once it's too late and you have no leverage, and how to turn an act of kindness into a binding contractual relationship. Before you pay for a lawyer, it might help for you to know roughly what you're up against.</p>
<p>The contract case is where you pay a person to render some type of assistance in creating music. What you apparently didn't know at the time as that might have given the other party some right to the music. That of course depends on what they did. That right comes from the possibility that they have copyright in the music because they created the music (&quot;help&quot; is vague, we don't know what they actually did). If they only supplied technical non-creative assistance, they gain no rights to your music. If the two of you created the music, then you are the authors and you share rights to the music equally, so you can do what they want and so can you. If they entirely created the music entirely for you, then they hold the copyright. In <em>that</em> case, there's a theoretical possibility that they could say &quot;You can't use that work&quot;. Even without an explicit &quot;work for hire&quot; clause in the contract, you can exploit the work under the theory (established in the US, wonder where in the world you are talking about) that  they have granted an impicit license to use. That is, the courts will not say &quot;We assume you paid this person a bunch of money so that they could create music for their sole use&quot;. If the goal is for you to have copyright, they you need to enter into a new contract, where they give you something you want (they transfer copyright to you), and you give them what they want (money? help painting the house?). This <em>quid pro quo</em> is known as &quot;consideration&quot; in contract law: without it, you don't have a contract and the putative transfer of copyright is revocable. The &quot;something&quot; that constitutes their obligation under the contract has to be a <em>new</em> obligation.</p>
<p>In the case of the translation volunteers, the matter is simple: the translators hold copyright to their translations. Your use of their work is with permission, but it's not irrevocable – you don't have a contract (lack of consideration). Again, if you pay them something in exchange for transfering their work to you, you have an enforceable contract. A licensing scheme that lack consideration runs a risk of revocation. The goodish news is that you may have the required consideration: you gain the right to use, in exchange for attribution.</p>
<p>Another legal detail is that under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/203" rel="nofollow noreferrer">17 USC 203</a>, transfers and licenses <em>can</em> be terminated, except in the case of a work for hire. Had you made these works for hire in the first place, that would not been an issue. You should read this section to see how it would apply to your case.</p>
<p>Of course, you do have to hire a lawyer to analyze the facts of your problem and make a specific recommendation.</p>
