> Labor is entitled to all that it produces I sympathize but must disagree. The guy you paid to paint a wall—does he own the paint (that you presumably had to

> Labor is entitled to all that it produces I sympathize but must disagree. The guy you paid to paint a wall—does he own the paint (that you presumably had to pay for, too)? Is he entitled to, what?, the paint on the wall or the fact that this particular paint is sticking to this particular wall in a particular way? Or the fact that's now pink? and when you want to change it to blue later, you have to ask them or negotiate a fee with them? What could that person claim, materially or idealistically? There's some precedence in that at least over here in Germany, architects have come to maintain a copyright of sorts (actually, Urheberrecht I believe, "creator's right") over the physical architecture they designed. Whether it's opt-in, opt-out or mandated by law I do not know, what I do know is that it made some people very angry when they experienced constant leakage in a building by a famous architect whose name I shall not bring forward here, but who is a complete moron and famous for his leaking designs. All the owners (owners!) of the house wanted was to install a frigging rain gutter, but the architect long declined (he finally did cave in and installed the ugliest stainless-steel 'sculpture' that ever hurt your vision). I'm much more of a preserver than I am a friend of the modern BS that too often replaces sound old structures, but I do not understand owners who agree not to own the building they paid for, including the lawful modification or destruction of it, as the case may be. There have actually been cases where existing structures of a public building had to be torn down when an architect fell out with the stakeholders, just because the guy claimed his rights to the already built—wait for it—four elevator shafts for crying out loud. Judging from that perspective, I can understand anyone who pays for work to be done to play the safe game and make sure all rights are waived by the creator. In the case of a typical programming job—that's often done collectively. Using a version control system like Git you could probably figure out exactly which character sequences a give programmer put into the—finished? intermediate version of?—product, but don't get me started about the bugs that needed several revisions, or the rights of the project manager whose chose to interfere—erm, help out—during development. Does the PM get rights to character sequences?