ICC’s high handedness at not involving its most important stakeholders (the players) while imposing the prohibitive sponsorship mandates for the Champions Trophy was evident in the uproar raised by players (primarily Indian icons). BCCI tried to mediate the deadlock, by convincing players to sign the agreement for the tournament alone (as part of its commitment to Participatory Nations Agreement 2002 according to which each board was to send its best players for the tournament). The case poses a conflict of interest between the regulating body (ICC), which assumed it had unilateral control over the players and their brand affiliations. Reason behind imposing such an agreement could be ICC’s perception of being a ‘pseudo employer’ to the players (a possible anomaly considering its autonomy over cricket affairs round the globe). The issues related to the details and subsequent negotiations have been elaborately detailed in previous posts.
The context poses another perspective regarding the stature, criticality of role in the team and overall iconic status of the players who voiced their concern with the ICC’s clause. Clearly none of the novices or the lesser players of the cricketing arena did have the ‘bargaining power’ to make their concerns heard. Cricket boards succumbing to players’ bargaining power is evident in West Indies’ top cricketers collectively signing out of bilateral series commitments (recently against Bangladesh) over the issue of contract amount signing. “Stakeholder’s concerns should be accounted for while penning down any contract” – this can be inferred from the context. Here the case relates to scope of work, compensation and brand affiliation of the stakeholders involved. Thus our cricketing heroes can be ‘accused’ of instigating the activist within each one of us – who doesn’t hesitate to make his voice heard, in the face of high handedness (of regulatory body in this context).
Regarding freedom with nature of work or ownership of efforts, I had no knowledge whatsoever regarding the distinction between efforts spared (for personal cause or employer’s) when I signed the joining letter. I would never have given a second look at the contract, had it not been for this course – thus happily signing all documents ignoring all such potentially restrictive clauses. Maybe this beginner’s approach to signing job contracts would be concurred by most of graduates where getting your name registered on employment rolls is of paramount importance than the words coined in the contract. Job activities although doesn’t require creative skills; however project related activities required developing of automated tools and scheduling scripts (created from scratch). I would never have given any thought towards ownership of my efforts (had it not been for the ER course). Now I wonder what would happen to IT industry if each employee tries to copyright his code/tool (or any unique effort) or at least try to modify the relevant clauses of employment contract to accommodate his freedom – perhaps this would spell doom for the booming sector and make everyone’s life/business worse.
If we look at issues of proprietorship, instances from the highly creative movie industry can throw a few insights. Certain production houses mandate non-disclosure of script, cast details. The actors (through whom the creativity of the script writer/ director is being presented) though are ‘speech bound’, yet their appearance in public with the script specific physical appearance, creates Page 3 headlines. Public speculations regarding the script or media spoofs regarding the plot could possibly lead to IPR violations, with the public and media being collectively responsible for violating the same. While the same actor and his display of the movie's character might be for promotional and branding purposes.
Perhaps the inference of ownership/proprietorship being industry and sector subjective holds true. The same norms of IPR and TRPR violations are not universally applicable.
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