Authors Alliance and Creative Commons are pleased to announce the official launch of our jointly-stewarded Termination of Transfer tool, now available at rightsback.org. The tool is designed to help authors navigate the “termination of transfer” provisions of U.S. copyright law.

Authors who enter into publishing, recording, or other types of agreements involving their creative works are routinely asked to sign away their rights for the life of copyright—which generally lasts 70 years after the author dies in the United States. Fortunately, authors do have options if they come to regret these decisions and want to share (or renegotiate the terms of sharing) at a later date. The termination of transfer provisions, when exercised properly, let authors walk away from or renegotiate their copyright transfers. The key feature that makes these rights so powerful is that termination rights can’t be signed away. They apply “notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary.”

Termination of transfer allows creators (or, in some cases, their family members) to regain copyrights to creative works they may have signed away decades ago. Our tool helps them understand if those termination rights exist, and if not, when they may exist in the future. With rights back in hand, authors have many options for getting their works in front of new audiences, from sharing their works with the public using a Creative Commons license to negotiating new agreements with publishers.

Though these termination rights are an extremely powerful boon for authors, exercising them can be daunting. The law is complex and difficult to navigate, requiring attention to detail and careful timing. The termination process is only available within a five-year window, and can only be exercised if notice is provided significantly in advance of the actual termination.

Rightsback.org is the result of a partnership between Authors Alliance and Creative Commons, and draws on the expertise of both organizations to demystify this little-known area of U.S. law. The tool provides basic information about the eligibility and timing of termination rights based on user input, along with suggestions on next steps that authors may wish to take in securing rights. While this tool is currently U.S.-based only, Creative Commons plans to develop a database of other country laws that enable authors and creators to similarly terminate or reclaim their rights when their agreements are governed by those other laws.

We encourage users to try out the tool and to contact us with any questions or suggestions. We are excited to share this resource with our creative communities, and look forward to your comments!

Authors Alliance and Creative Commons are grateful to the Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for their generous support of the creation of the Termination of Transfer tool. See our full list of personnel and thank-yous at rightsback.org/about.