[HN Gopher] Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
___________________________________________________________________
Disney Lost Roger Rabbit
Author : leephillips
Score : 488 points
Date : 2025-11-18 16:54 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pluralistic.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (pluralistic.net)
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| A great article on how awfully twisted copyright has become away
| from its intended goal, or at least the publicly stated intended
| goal.
|
| Much reform is needed, seems to apply to everything...
| mathgeek wrote:
| Lots of fun ranting (the good kind) about the ills of the
| industries built to take advantage of creators, but for those who
| just want to know more about the state of Roger Rabbit:
| https://www.imnotbad.com/2025/11/roger-rabbit-copyright-reve...
| Exoristos wrote:
| Direct link to the article:
| https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/18/im-not-bad/#im-just-drawn...
|
| It's a long-winded article, even for a lawyer, but the payload
| seems to be a crack at the head of the RIAA, which is suing
| Midjouney.
|
| "In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid
| of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI
| - he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to
| make the products that his clients will use to destroy creators'
| livelihoods."
| jonplackett wrote:
| I don't find it long winded. It just gives background and makes
| a bunch of valid points.
|
| Mainly that creatives are being screwed because every time they
| get given extra rights they're bullied into selling them for
| nothing.
|
| So this right that they get the copyright back after 35y is
| different - because you can't be forced to sell it for nothing.
|
| We need more laws like this to help creative people make the
| money they deserve. Most creative people make a pitiful amount
| of money while studios / publishers / labels do better and
| better. It's not sustainable.
| troupo wrote:
| It's a readable and enjoyable text about a complex issue. You
| can't really distill anything about copyright without actually
| talking about history, relevant examples, and how it affects
| other industries, or other creative works, or...
| october8140 wrote:
| This should work for video game developers right? Can they
| reclaim ownership of the games they created in the 80s/90s that
| have been abandoned?
| monkeywork wrote:
| If the developer was a work for hire and never owned the
| copyright then no.
|
| If the developer licensed the game to a publisher then maybe.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Video game copyrights were rarely ever held by a single person,
| even in the early days of the industry.
| 0110101001 wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but in Japan (where obviously many of the
| great games of the 80s and 90s were authored) there's a
| mechanism to acquire a license from the government to publish
| abandonware. The government collects a royalty from the new
| distributor that it holds in case a valid copyright holder
| comes forward.
|
| Little Samson, a late-era NES game that because of its rarity
| can sell for thousands, was developed by a now-defunct company
| and is getting a re-release next year using this process.
|
| https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/10/daunting-limited-...
| joecool1029 wrote:
| Sorta related since Disney held a share in it previously but Dick
| Tracy exclusive rights are still held by Warren Beatty who
| produced and starred in the role back in 1990. He had to fight
| off a challenge from Tribune Media in court decades ago but
| stipulation was he had to produce new Dick Tracy stuff every few
| years. It's lead to a series of increasingly surreal late night
| specials on TCM where he appears in character and talks about
| random stuff and the 1990 movie, last time was in 2023:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MwKncYwtec4
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Wow, TIL. I had assumed that Warren Beatty was suffering from
| dementia due to his great age and his retirement from cinema. I
| had no idea he was still making media appearances.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| You assume he has dementia because he's old and retired?
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| Sad as it is, when stars from classic Hollywood stop being
| visible but are still known to be alive at a highly
| advanced age, dementia is often the case. Gene Hackman,
| Gene Wilder, and Jack Nicholson are notable cases, and I
| just assumed Beatty was similar.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Do you think perhaps there is a sample bias because old
| actors who retire and don't have dementia don't get
| written about?
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| By the time the actors I mentioned were written about as
| having dementia, many film fans had already assumed they
| were dealing with dementia precisely because they were no
| longer being written about or seen in the media much.
| Such speculation about Jack Nicholson, for example, was
| rife on film forums well before those paparazzi images
| appeared.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Right, but that's probably because they read stories that
| go back to people who knew the actors. There's a well-
| oiled gossip machine.
|
| Lots of old actors who don't have dementia retire, there
| just aren't stories about how they don't have dementia.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| Or possibly, actors who still have their faculties tend
| to keep acting, even into advanced age. Not sure if
| that's true, but even the perception of that being true
| could lead to these kinds of assumptions.
| jrmg wrote:
| There seems to be a popular view nowadays that most old
| people grow to be senile (just look at any online
| discussion of old politicians for example). This is not the
| case!
| Retric wrote:
| Old people do lose mental capacity just as they lose
| strength etc, dementia is a more extreme thing.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| There's also a legendary Star wars merch rights agreement that
| only expired because the rights holder forgot to send Lucas a
| check while the franchise was inactive.
|
| Billions of dollars gone because of an oversight.
|
| Arguably they didn't know Lucas was going to bring it back.
|
| https://equinoxbusinesslaw.com/blog/how-hasbro-almost-blew-a...
| Talanes wrote:
| There's an argument to be made that Lucas wouldn't have
| brought it back if they didn't miss the check. A little over
| half a mil of it's budget came from the initial payout of the
| new Hasbro deal.
| kwanbix wrote:
| So is Warren being an asshole here? I mean, we haven't seen a
| Dick Tracy movie since the 90s. I am out of the loop so trying
| to understand.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Perhaps, but he's also highlighting how fundamentally broken
| the copyright system is. I don't think that's his goal (he's
| mostly being petty; there's a reason there's a pop song about
| his vanity), but it is an interesting side-effect of his odd
| project.
| Reubachi wrote:
| I think it's simpler than that. IE; not a vanity thing for
| his ego or pettyness for the sake of being petty,
|
| Entity owns an IP, Entity doesn't want another entity to
| own it for risk to the IP. (the other entity being a
| globally publicly owned historic aggregator of IPs for sake
| of short term profits)
|
| DIsney is doing the same in reverse with the Muppets/Henson
| Properties. Don't do anything with it beyond semi-annual
| short projects to retain the IP.
| kwanbix wrote:
| So he is being an ass.
|
| I mean, let the IP free or try to sell it if you are not
| doing anything with it.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > So he is being an ass.
|
| No, let me correct you: He's being a Dick.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > So is Warren being an asshole here? I mean, we haven't seen
| a Dick Tracy movie since the 90s. I am out of the loop so
| trying to understand.
|
| Well the rights were held by Disney from 1988 until 2005, and
| then they were tied up in court (between Beatty and Tribune)
| until 2011, when Beatty won the rights. The movie you're
| referring to was released in 1990.
|
| So Beatty has held the rights for only 14 of those 35 years.
| Although the first special he made was released in 2010,
| during that legal battle.
| ramses0 wrote:
| Similarly Wheel of Time had one... I had to dig deep and
| converse with an LLM to figure it out. I proposed to it
| "copyslop" as the term of art, it came back with "placeholder
| productions", "copyright keepers", and eventually there seems
| to be a "real" term-of-art called "ashcan" -
| https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/9jxvtb/til_a...
|
| In any case: """Yes, you're likely thinking of the "Wheel of
| Time" pilot episode titled Winter Dragon, which aired in 2015.
| It was a low-budget production that was released with almost no
| promotion and aired in the middle of the night on FXX. The
| purpose of this release was widely believed to be an attempt by
| Red Eagle Entertainment to retain the rights to Robert Jordan's
| Wheel of Time series, as their licensing agreement required
| them to produce something before a specific deadline."""
|
| https://wheeloftime.fandom.com/wiki/Winter_Dragon
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| The 1994 Fantastic 4 movie was the same deal. Produced for
| $1M, never released. I guess it's hard to make a legal
| standard for "actually trying" with a license, but it is
| really weird to see that you can keep these licenses alive
| with these zombie products.
|
| Another less token one I'm aware of is the Marvel themed land
| of Universal Orlando. Universal has an indefinite license to
| the IP as long as they don't 'mishandle' it. An easy way to
| make it very clear that you haven't done that is to just
| never change anything. So all the rides, signage, etc is
| carefully maintained but identical to how it was 20 years
| ago.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > copyright only gives us something to bargain _with_ , without
| giving us any bargaining _power_ , which means that copyright
| becomes something we bargain _away_.
|
| This quote sums up a lot of the issues with current copyright
| laws in a very elegant way.
| parineum wrote:
| > This is a nightmare scenario for a creator: you make a piece of
| work that turns out to be incredibly popular, but you've licensed
| it to a kind of absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses
| to exercise them.
|
| This nightmare scenario involves selling the rights to your
| character to a company that has the ability to produce, advertise
| and cast a movie with talented actors.
|
| I'm certain I never would have heard of Roger rabbit had it not
| been sold.
| eastbound wrote:
| > that has the ability to produce, advertise and cast a movie
| with talented actors.
|
| Isn't that most of the work?
|
| You get: A lumpsum for your initial research that ended up as a
| character that people like,
|
| They get: The idea of a character, but then they have to invest
| billions, build projects that work, tie relationships with
| cinemas and actors, advertise worldwide and maybe they make
| billions if they worked properly, but sometimes they make
| losses. Sounds like they worked for it, and building the
| initial character is like 0.0...1% of the talent involved.
|
| Unionist gets: A nice story about how it's always multibillion
| dollars companies that have all the money.
|
| Maybe ideas are free and implementation is everything?
| elondaits wrote:
| For over one decade now, maybe two, seemingly every big (or
| mid?) budget movie Hollywood has produced is based on
| existing IP: a comic book, novel, previous movie, TV show, or
| even non fiction article. I've been surprised many times by
| movies which seem original but are actually based on a French
| comic, or some other semi-obscure (internationally) source.
|
| That tells me that ideas aren't free. There's a value to a
| fully cooked, ready to wear, tried and tested ideas.
|
| As a second point, many good Hollywood pitches remain in
| development hell, unable to get a satisfying script, or a
| "second act that works".
| expedition32 wrote:
| Ofcourse ideas are not free. Are we arguing Disney did not
| write a check?
|
| Plenty of people earn lots of money licensing their art to
| Hollywood. Some people just have more business acumen than
| others.
|
| And yes if you are selling art for money you are a
| businessman. Get an agent if you cannot hack it for crying
| out loud.
| noelwelsh wrote:
| You quoted one of the key sentences from the piece, and yet
| missed the point. It's the "you've licensed it to a kind of
| absentee landlord who owns the rights but refuses to exercise
| them." part that is important. In the case of Roger Rabbit, the
| problem is the Disney has not made any new Roger Rabbit movies
| or other media in 35 years, despite the first movie being very
| successful. No doubt other concept, that could be successful,
| never even get to that point. See stories of "stuck in
| develompent hell".
| dmurray wrote:
| This seems like one of those scenarios where you find out
| Disney _did_ make a _Roger Rabbit_ sequel, but they never
| marketed it, or it had a limited release in 12 California
| cinemas, and it only existed as a pro forma device to show
| they still controlled the character and would have the option
| to make sequels for another 35 years.
|
| Bonus if it randomly starred or was directed by someone who
| later became famous, or if there are blog posts calling it an
| unknown masterpiece.
|
| Nice to hear that didn't happen in this case and the author
| gets a second chance!
| parineum wrote:
| No, I got that point. I just find it funny that the article
| completely glosses over the reason why artists license their
| work in the first place. Because the company they license it
| to is far more capable of making money off of their work and,
| in most cases, the artist will make far more money by
| licensing their work than they would by trying to make an
| indie film on a shoe string budget with their own resources.
| That was an option for Wolf, yet he thought licensing his
| work was his best option, why did he do that?
| noelwelsh wrote:
| The article does touch on that (monopsony) but it is
| largely irrelevant to the main point of the article.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| This is so freakin awesome!
|
| Roger Rabbit was actually played in 35mm just last Thursday in
| Central NJ. What a treat it would have been to known that the
| original author got his characters back. I was lamenting on all
| the time that had passed since release. This cheered me right up!
| Will we see a whole Roger Rabbit universe now?
| bitwize wrote:
| He's got a book out with a Jessica Rabbit origin story, that
| he's trying to shop a film adaptation of. The RRCU may be go.
| mayoff wrote:
| I don't know if Cory Doctorow has read the "fantastic 1981
| novel", but I have (decades ago) and as I recall the plot of the
| book and the plot of the movie are _very_ different from each
| other. The author of the book didn't write the screenplay and I
| doubt he had much (if anything) to do the character designs in
| the movie. So even if he has the rights to his novel back, it's
| not at all clear to me that he could just make (or sell a license
| to make) a straight, recognizable sequel to Disney's movie
| without getting back into bed with Disney, and clearly Disney
| isn't interested or they'd have done something by now.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >clearly Disney isn't interested
|
| often big media companies aren't interested in exploiting
| specific properties if there is ongoing litigation regarding
| them.
| philistine wrote:
| In this case it's not that there is litigation. It's that
| Steven Spielberg must approve any and all content featuring
| Roger Rabbit. The delinquent partner who sits on their hands
| and does nothing is Spielberg.
| pavlov wrote:
| Disney definitely owns the character designs, so Roger and
| Jessica Rabbit will have to look different if a new movie is
| made using the IP owned by the book's author.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Yeah the Roger Rabbit is a miracle where multiple major studios
| came together and allowed their IP to be in the same work.
| Disney, Warner Bros, Fleischer Studios, Harvey Comics, King
| Features Syndicate, Felix the Cat Productions, Turner
| Entertainment, and Universal Pictures/Walter Lantz Productions
| all agreed to share their characters. One of Steven Spielbergs
| great accomplishments was negotiating this. With how protective
| these studios are about their IP anymore I doubt we'd see
| anything close to the Roger Rabbit movie sadly.
|
| Not to mention some of the actors have passed like Paul Reuben
| who really sold the cartoon aspect of Roger Rabbit.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Roger Rabbit was voiced by Charles Fleischer. (Paul Reubens
| was under consideration in an earlier version, and you can
| find his voice tests out on YouTube, which might be what
| you're remembering.)
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Roger Rabbit was voiced by Charles Fleischer (no relation to
| Max and Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios), who is
| currently still working (and also voiced Roger's cameo in the
| Chip and Dale movie that was a spiritual sequel).
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| I read the "fantastic 1981 novel", too, and you know what? It
| wasn't very good. It had a lot of really interesting world-
| building and some cool ideas, but the characters were flat and
| the central mystery was _terrible._ Despite common wisdom, the
| book is not always better than the movie.
|
| I mean, given that Disney _wasn 't_ doing anything new with
| Roger Rabbit, I'm glad he got the rights back. But I think part
| of the reason that very little new material got produced is
| that the first movie was kind of lightning in a bottle. It's
| possible other production companies would have had to be
| involved to get something new done, depending on how the rights
| were parceled out. (We're all talking about Disney here because
| that's who Doctorow focused on, but it was a co-production with
| Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.) And I think you're right
| that he's unlikely to have the rights to do a sequel that's too
| close to the original.
| toast0 wrote:
| > the characters were flat
|
| Yeah, isn't that the central gag of the movie though?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sometimes (often) the original is the best. Sequels are just
| milking more money from the concept and rarely match the
| original let alone exceed it. It's the laziest sort of movie-
| making.
| devsda wrote:
| > Creative workers bargain with one of five publishers, one of
| four studios, one of three music labels, one of two app
| marketplaces, or just one company that controls all the ebooks
| and audio books.
|
| > when Congress gives creators new copyrights to bargain with,
| the Big Five (or Four, or Three, or Two, or One) just amend their
| standard, non-negotiable contract to require creators to sign
| those new rights over as a condition of doing business.
|
| Beautifully explained the complex situation and its kind of scary
| how it applies to tech as well in some areas.
|
| The second point is also true w.r.t big tech & privacy
| regulations.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| How can Congress make it any easier to access an audience? The
| Internet made it so there is zero friction between a media
| consumer and a media creator.
|
| Having to compete with a billion other content creators
| (including hits from the past) is inherently hard. The most
| valuable service the big media sellers provide these days is
| curation.
|
| Reducing copyright length would be the best thing to reduce the
| big companies' power though. That way, they can't sway buyers
| to their silos using content from the past, and therefore have
| to invest in the future.
| brainwad wrote:
| Shortening copyright terms would reduce the power of any
| given media company; but I think it might disadvantage
| creators of new works overall. Right now each company has a
| smaller back-catalogue than they would under a shorter term
| regime, and so the relative value to them of new content is
| higher.
|
| Also, shorter terms would presumably lead to more
| consolidation between media companies (as there would be less
| differentiation via exclusive content), which would then
| reduce the number of buyers for new content, increasing the
| monopsony effects.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't see how this can be true. Reduced copyright terms
| mean price for old stuff goes down (to however much hosting
| and bandwidth costs). This means more funds are available
| for new content.
|
| Currently, people give a ton of money to Comcast/Disney for
| stuff made decades ago, which in turn gives Comcast/Disney
| more power, since people are far likelier to stay within
| those silos.
|
| If friends/seinfeld/whatever could be accessible via
| multiple sources, then other groups of content creators
| could emerge, offering $15 to $25 per month of new stuff,
| rather than compete for a smaller portion of the budget
| since the old content takes up so much.
|
| The creators of new work don't earn much from 130 year
| copyrights anyway, to fund any decent production, they will
| need outside investors such as Disney or Apple or whoever
| to make the gamble. In exchange, Disney and Apple are going
| to want the ability to sell it for 130 years, but few if
| any new content creators is able to negotiate gross
| royalties, those days are long gone.
|
| >Also, shorter terms would presumably lead to more
| consolidation between media companies (as there would be
| less differentiation via exclusive content)
|
| This is the opposite of what would happen. If everyone can
| sell the popular reruns and holiday movies, then they stop
| being exclusive to Disney and Comcast and Warner Bros and
| so the only thing they can compete with is new stuff,
| forcing then to invest in new stuff.
| brainwad wrote:
| > I don't see how this can be true. Reduced copyright
| terms mean price for old stuff goes down (to however much
| hosting and bandwidth costs). This means more funds are
| available for new content.
|
| Because this syllogism doesn't hold. There's not a fixed
| pot of money that must be spent on content. If now every
| streaming service has access to a bigger pool of old
| hits, then they don't need to buy as much new content to
| satisfy their customers, and total spending on content
| will go down.
|
| > If everyone can sell the popular reruns and holiday
| movies, then they stop being exclusive to Disney and
| Comcast and Warner Bros and so the only thing they can
| compete with is new stuff, forcing then to invest in new
| stuff.
|
| Each service will just become sameier and compete more on
| their UX than their exclusive content. You can see this
| in music, for instance, where the big streamers already
| have more or less identical catalogues. Nobody is picking
| Spotify over Apple Music or Youtube Music due to
| exclusives, because there are none; so putting the
| content into the public domain is hardly going to change
| things.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > then they don't need to buy as much new content to
| satisfy their customers, and total spending on content
| will go down.
|
| Why would they have customers in the first place if all
| they offer is reruns, which everyone else also offers?
| Streaming only old content will be a very, very low
| profit margin business.
|
| > Nobody is picking Spotify over Apple Music or Youtube
| Music due to exclusives, because there are none; so
| putting the content into the public domain is hardly
| going to change things.
|
| Creating and streaming audio is not a comparable business
| to creating and streaming video, due to the vastly
| different sums of money, and hence risk, involved.
|
| But, also, people have to pick only
| Spotify/Apple/Amazon/Alphabet and a couple others because
| of excess copyright terms. All the old hits people want
| are controlled by Universal, Sony, and Warner, and so if
| your audio streaming business does not contract with
| those 3, then you're dead in the water. Which means every
| audio streaming business, and hence every audio streaming
| customer, is always paying rent to those 3 businesses
| that own copyrights.
|
| That means there is less money available for new audio
| creators. And this holds true for all rent seeking. If it
| weren't for excessive copyright, there could be much more
| variety in audio streaming.
| brainwad wrote:
| > Why would they have customers in the first place if all
| they offer is reruns
|
| You can ask the same question for cable TV, but it's not
| dead. Netflix also started as purely "reruns" and was
| still quite popular.
|
| > Creating and streaming audio is not a comparable
| business to creating and streaming video, due to the
| vastly different sums of money, and hence risk, involved.
|
| If anything that extra risk should make studios more shy
| of investing in new content vs just serving up old hits.
| It's noticeable that film leans way more heavily on
| franchises and remakes already, which agrees with this
| hypothesis?
|
| > That means there is less money available for new audio
| creators. And this holds true for all rent seeking. If it
| weren't for excessive copyright, there could be much more
| variety in audio streaming.
|
| You assume this, but I really don't think it's true! Most
| people don't seek out new music; their tastes are set in
| their youths and then they happily listen to the same
| music for the rest of their lives. The choice is to make
| them pay to listen, generating at least some stream of
| royalties, or let them listen for free, in which case
| they will be happy to.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Each service will just become sameier and compete more
| on their UX than their exclusive content.
|
| This is an incredibly good thing.
| danaris wrote:
| The vast majority of money for any given copyrighted work
| comes within the first few years of its existence. (This is
| extra true for things like video games.)
|
| Furthermore, current copyright terms are _decades past the
| death of the creator_.
|
| You seem to be thinking of copyright purely in terms of
| vast media conglomerates, but it affects literally every
| work created by every human in the country. That includes
| these HN discussion posts!
|
| Additionally, I find it hard to see how your second
| paragraph holds. If the amount of exclusive content a given
| entity holds affects their odds of being bought by a larger
| conglomerate, I would think it would be in the opposite
| direction: having more exclusive content would make them
| _more likely_ to be a target for acquisition, so that the
| larger company could then hold _all_ of that exclusively.
|
| If everything older than, say, 35 years were suddenly in
| the public domain, available to be distributed by any of
| the distribution companies, and Hypothetical Media Corp had
| half the back catalogue that they used to, then surely that
| would make big conglomerates _less_ interested in buying up
| Hypothetical Media Corp?
| brainwad wrote:
| I am generally anti-copyright; but it's not really a pro-
| creator policy to curtail copyright; it's pro-consumer.
|
| > If everything older than, say, 35 years were suddenly
| in the public domain, available to be distributed by any
| of the distribution companies, and Hypothetical Media
| Corp had half the back catalogue that they used to, then
| surely that would make big conglomerates less interested
| in buying up Hypothetical Media Corp?
|
| Doesn't your first point contradict this? If almost all
| the value of copyrighted works comes in the first few
| years, then no, curtailing copyright terms doesn't
| discourage buyouts, because the buyout is going to be
| mostly justified on the recent works held by the
| purchased company, not the residual value of its old
| works.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| It's pro-creator as well. Creators are artificially
| restricted from drawing upon the commons to create new
| things due to copyright.
|
| In the 1800s, musicians would freely write new lyrics to
| existing tunes, which is why folk music has various songs
| that share the same music. (There is the satire loophole,
| but that's creatively limiting.)
|
| In the 1980s, musicians would record short slices of
| chords from records (or breakbeats) onto sampling devices
| and make new music from them, giving rise to an
| incredible number of musical genres.
|
| Copyright came for all of them and created a new status
| quo where exercising that sort of creativity is legally
| cumbersome.
|
| And now the paperclip maximizers are trying to chip away
| at fundamental music theory, with lawsuits over chord
| progressions (of which there are very finite
| possibilities) and other attempts to grab slices of other
| pies. (See: the recent suits against Dua Lipa, Katy Perry
| and Ed Sheeran.)
|
| We wouldn't have Wicked, one of the most beloved twenty-
| first century musicals and now a high-grossing film, if
| Oz were still legally encumbered.
| noirscape wrote:
| > Furthermore, current copyright terms are decades past
| the death of the creator.
|
| It's important to recognize why this is the case - a lot
| of the hubbub around posthumous copyright comes from the
| fact that a large amount of classic literature often went
| unrecognized during an author's lifetime (a classic
| example is Moby Dick, which sold and reviewed poorly -
| Melville only made 1260$ from the book in total and his
| wife only made ~800$ from it in the remaining 8 years it
| remained under copyright after Melville died, even though
| it's hard to not imagine it on a literature list these
| days). Long copyright terms existed to ensure that the
| family of an author didn't lose out on any potential
| sales that would come much later. Even more recent works,
| like Lord of the Rings also heavily benefitted from
| posthumous copyright, as it allowed Tolkien's son to
| actually make the books into the modern classics they are
| today, through carefully curating the rereleases and
| additions to the work (the map of Middle Earth for
| instance was drawn by Tolkien's son.)
|
| It's mostly a historic example though; Copyright pretty
| blatantly just isn't designed with the internet in mind.
| Personally I think an unconditional 50 years is the right
| timeline for copyright to end. No "life+50"; just 50.
|
| 50 years of copyright should be more than enough to get
| as much mileage out of a work as possible, without
| running into the current insanity where all of the modern
| worlds cultural touchstones are in the hands of a few
| megacorporations. For reference, 50 years means that
| everything before 1975 would no longer be under copyright
| today, which seems like a much fairer length to me. It
| also means that if you create something popular, you have
| roughly the entire duration of a person's working life
| (starting at 18-23, ending at 65-70) to make money from
| it.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the modern world, some sort of reasonable fixed
| duration seems to make a lot of sense. An elderly author
| cranking out a work partly for the benefit of a soon-to-
| be widow/widower isn't insane. You can argue about exact
| timeframes and details but some sort of duration after
| creation (maybe not less than life of creator) probably
| works pretty well.
| TitaRusell wrote:
| Long copyright also means that the estate can control the
| work- like how Tolkien's son guarded lord of the rings
| like a hawk.
|
| And I also understand Disney's point of view. Imagine you
| invested a lot of money into a franchise and the original
| author suddenly goes crazy and makes Roger the Rabbit a
| Klansman.
|
| Although personally I would put the protection at 10
| years.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| I loved WFRR as a kid, and of all the movies I loved as a kid, it
| has definitely held up the best. I re-watched it recently and it
| is still great. Hilarious, thoughtful and just the right amount
| of dark.
|
| One of the reasons I still love it is that it _hasn 't_ fallen
| prey to the usual Hollywood practice of taking something you love
| and shovelling it down your throat until you're sick of it. It
| saddens me when you see a really good movie with a bunch of bad
| sequels, or TV series that were once great but ran for 10 seasons
| too long.
| lkramer wrote:
| The 8 most terrifying words in the English language are "Let us
| turn this movie into a franchise"
| vintermann wrote:
| Yeah. One thing is what's good for the author, one thing is
| what's good for the publisher. But what's good for us as
| viewers/end users (and every "creative" ought to remember
| that's what they are 99.9% of the time!) is often a third thing
| entirely.
| k__ wrote:
| 35 years seem quite excessive.
|
| Taking half your life to get your stuff back?
| brainwad wrote:
| I mean, it's pretty generous. In most other domains, if you
| sell something of yours, it's gone and you have no right to
| claw it back later.
| vessenes wrote:
| it's a double edged sword -- media companies are generally
| franchise/lifetime hits oriented businesses - they pay (and
| generally lose, per investment, btw) for a shot at a hit.
|
| On the one hand, imagine they could only negotiate rights to
| monetize that hit for, say, one year, and then this termination
| right kicked in. What do you think would be the top offer they
| could make an author?
|
| The fraction of creatives that are great creatives and also
| great marketers/producers/runners of media companies is small,
| really small. So, creatives have an incentive to have a system
| where _some_ amount of time is contractable. And media
| licensors rely on this hits-based model to fund all their
| development and betting on things that don 't work out. And
| also to fund their jets and cool Bel-Air homes.
| k__ wrote:
| Sure, but what about 10 or 15 years?
| vessenes wrote:
| very reasonable ideas! Of course creators could license for
| this term right now, but generally they do not have the
| bargaining power when they need it.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| They could simply set up contracts that give some percentage
| to the author over time. But they don't want to sign away
| percentages, I guess.
| olalonde wrote:
| > Remember, Termination is one of the only copyright policies
| that solely benefits creative workers.
|
| To play devil's advocate, this provision probably lowers how much
| media companies are willing to pay when acquiring copyrights.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Why? A publishers goal is always to pay nothing at all for the
| rights, at best this is simply another excuse.
| olalonde wrote:
| For the same reason a 35-year lease on a house is cheaper
| than buying it outright. If you know you won't own it
| forever, you won't pay as much.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| That's not the right comparison. Is a 35 year lease that
| much cheaper than a 70 year lease? Copyright isn't forever.
| vintermann wrote:
| Probably not, because of the monopoly power mentioned - and
| also because you can't count on a copyright to be worth
| anything after 35 years.
| vessenes wrote:
| It doesn't, in practice. Consider the NPV of year 36 with, say,
| a 10% discount rate. It's low. Also, having watched directly
| some fairly famous friends deal with property coming up on the
| 35 year mark, media companies are adept at tying in other
| deals, finally getting projects financed, cutting a deal for a
| different project with some agreements made about the original
| property.. You can imagine.
| latexr wrote:
| > "Termination of Transfer" was introduced via the 1976 Copyright
| Act. It allows creators to unilaterally cancel the copyright
| licenses they have signed over to others, by waiting 35 years and
| then filing some paperwork with the US Copyright Office.
|
| You have to wait _half a lifetime?!_ Talk about a performative
| (pun unintended) law.
|
| > when Congress gives creators new copyrights to bargain with,
| the Big Five (or Four, or Three, or Two, or One) just amend their
| standard, non-negotiable contract to require creators to sign
| those new rights over as a condition of doing business.
|
| That's the sign of a deeply broken system. It should never be
| possible for someone to sign away their rights. If you can sign
| them away, you can be swindled of them.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| How is business supposed to be conducted under those
| conditions?
| latexr wrote:
| Fairly, respectfully, and without exploitation?
|
| Most business conducted in the world does not require someone
| to reject their lawful rights. For consumers in the EU, for
| example, the law even offers explicit protections by stating
| specifically that contract terms which are unfair have no
| legal binding.
|
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-
| treat...
| philipallstar wrote:
| "Exploitation" isn't an objective term. It often just means
| "I don't like what I signed up for freely".
| latexr wrote:
| > "Exploitation" isn't an objective term.
|
| It means "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly
| in order to benefit from their work". If you're having
| someone reject their rights in a contract because that
| benefits you, that's a form of exploitation. You're
| making someone worse explicitly so you benefit.
|
| > It often just means "I don't like what I signed up for
| freely".
|
| From my first post:
|
| > If you can sign them away, you can be swindled of them.
|
| If you're swindled, you're not given them away freely.
| philipallstar wrote:
| > If you're swindled, you're not given them away freely.
|
| How do you define "swindle"?
| wffurr wrote:
| Your posts read like "it's too hard to precisely define
| these things so why bother" this is what case law is for.
| To precisely define in the context of real cases what the
| precise contours of the law are.
|
| Clearly the EU has figured some of this out and might
| even have some of the specificity you are looking for.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| This really reads like you're playing rhetorical games.
| Do you legitimately not know what these terms mean or how
| they apply in the context of signing legal agreements?
| Are you unaware of their literal definitions?
|
| If you don't then my apologies, we can break them down
| for you and link dictionary definitions (or Wikipedia if
| that's your preference).
| falcor84 wrote:
| That's what we have courts and juries for. If a jury
| unanimously agrees that a typical person in a reasonable
| situation and with full understanding of the conditions
| would not be willing to sign such a contract because it
| would strongly go against their interest, then the person
| who did sign it has likely been swindled.
| tempfile wrote:
| It is really not any harder to define than "freely".
| Presumably by "what I signed up for freely" you mean
| "what I signed up for without any coercion, threat of
| violence, etc". The people using "exploitation" here just
| mean that those conditions also include the _implied_
| threat of not having money to live. This is a real
| material condition which affects what people are prepared
| to agree to (even if they might be able to find a better
| offer by shopping around).
|
| It is not hard to understand, and I suspect you are not
| trying to understand it.
| isodev wrote:
| > I don't like what I signed up for freely
|
| I believe the post makes a good case that "freely" doesn't
| mean by choice at all. In other words, not what people
| consider freely.
| latexr wrote:
| I think you meant to reply to a different post?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46032573
| isodev wrote:
| Oh yes, it was peer comment. Oh well, too late now and
| you made the same point :)
| 7bit wrote:
| That's why it's called copyright. You can perfectly sign it
| away.
|
| In Germany the right is called "Urheberrecht" which literally
| translates to "author's right". And while you can license your
| work and sign away the usage, you cannot by definition sign
| away the fact that you are the author of a work.
| oniony wrote:
| So how does ghostwriting work then? Lots of books have
| unaccredited ghostwriters.
| Lerc wrote:
| Not a Lawyer, but this seems like work-for-hire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_for_hire
|
| I assume Germany has something like this (possibly a EU
| requirement). It would cover more than just ghostwritten
| books.
|
| Most software is written in a similar manner. Microsoft
| didn't write windows, lots of ghostwriting programmers did.
| Lariscus wrote:
| This is handled in the employment contract. The
| "Urheberrecht" is not transferable only inheritable, but
| you can grant "Nutzungsrechte" which means "rights of use".
| So in your contract you just grant your employer
| unrestricted and exclusive rights of use.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The author never had the rights, as they worked under
| contract, so they don't need to sign them away.
|
| But we also the right to be named as author is not a
| requirement to be named as author.
| vidarh wrote:
| In English this is usually translated as "moral rights"[1].
| They are fairly widespread in other civil law jurisdictions
| than Germany too. Less so in common law jurisdictions.
|
| But they exist to a (very) limited extent even in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
| ghaff wrote:
| Which is one of the reasons public domain is problematic in
| some jurisdictions because it requires you to waive rights
| you can't necessarily waive.
|
| Yes, Louisiana somewhat notwithstanding, the US is
| basically common law like the UK (and much of the
| Anglosphere/Commonwealth).
|
| As a bit of trivia, the MIT License was essentially created
| because of issues with "just" making X public domain.
| https://opensource.com/article/19/4/history-mit-license
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| > should never be possible for someone to sign away their
| rights. If you can sign them away, you can be swindled of them.
|
| So, if I sell you my house or car I can't sign away my rights
| on it? - Sure, there is a difference between material and
| intellectual property ...
|
| Against swindling there needs to be protection from fraud, but
| that exists in most legislative systems.
| jimbokun wrote:
| You answer your own question.
|
| Yes, intellectual property rights should be different than
| physical property rights.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Why?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| No, they're not different. If I can't sign away the title
| to my car, it's literally worthless. Exactly the same is
| true of my IP rights.
| falcor84 wrote:
| What? Car leasing is a massive market, and a large
| percentage of people and companies are very happy to pay
| to access cars and trucks without owning the title. Same
| goes for companies happily building on top of leasehold
| properties whenever it makes financial sense for them.
|
| And as for IP, with the time limits, patents and
| copyrights are inherently defined to expire, but are
| definitely not worthless.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Valid argument. Car analogies usually break down at some
| point, and leasing is a definite weakness of that one.
|
| But at the same time, hopefully you won't complain about
| the encroaching "You will own nothing and be happy about
| it" corporate ethos, if you want to restrict peoples'
| rights to buy and sell property of either a physical or
| intellectual nature.
| falcor84 wrote:
| Good point, but in this case I'm arguing for the exact
| opposite: I'm suggesting that (natural) people are the
| ones owning IP, and companies only lease it. I was just
| making the case that a lease is not "worthless".
| jimbokun wrote:
| You are describing the current system, where corporations
| own everything and humans own nothing.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >But at the same time, hopefully you won't complain about
| the encroaching "You will own nothing and be happy about
| it" corporate ethos
|
| This has come about due to a _strengthening_ of IP
| rights, and could be reduced with a weakening of those
| same rights back to where they were a few decades ago.
|
| In the 80s and early 90s, companies like Sony, Nintendo,
| and Sega tried to use copyright and Trademark and patent
| and other IP based rights to legislate their consoles and
| keep people from interoperating with products and
| software they sold. The courts correctly found against
| them: That general consumer product rights, even in their
| minimal state in the US, gave consumers the right to buy
| products that could interact with their other products,
| and that companies that sold those products were not
| allowed to prevent it, generally following first sale
| doctrine.
|
| You as a video game seller could literally violate Sega's
| trademark rights to make your game work on the sega
| consoles, as verified by a judge, that was "Fair use". If
| you could find a way to get by Nintendo's security chip,
| you could sell games for their consoles, and Nintendo
| could not stop you through lawfare. You could build an
| emulator of the sony console that you sell for cheaper
| than a playstation, and that was also fair game. You
| could reverse engineer the IBM PC bios in order to sell
| machines that could use the same software that was
| written for those PCs. All these things were litigated in
| court and affirmed by judges as "No, consumers have
| rights and companies should not be allowed to stop you
| from buying stuff from other people that works on their
| machine"
|
| Companies didn't like this though, because having to
| compete with someone else selling stuff for your console
| meant you had to compete. So they got the DMCA, and now
| all they have to do is put a teeny bit of "copyright
| protection" code somewhere, and it is now a crime to
| interoperate with that system.
|
| The reason computers stopped being so interoperable and
| stopped being so open and stopped cultivating a vibrant
| market like that is because you just can't do those
| things anymore. Microsoft can legally prevent you from
| writing software that interacts with systems in ways they
| do not want. You cannot sell non-Nintendo approved games
| on the Switch like you could on the SNES not only because
| cryptography and computer security improved, but because
| trying to get around that can now be a crime!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| circumvention#United_Stat...
|
| Imagine if physical product manufacturers had such insane
| laws benefitting them. Not only would your car need to
| take Ford branded gasoline, but any company trying to
| produce a gasoline that was compatible with Ford cars to
| compete with Ford branded gasoline would likely violate a
| bunch of laws and lose their shirts in court.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| They're absolutely different. IP rights are a creating of
| artificial scarcity for what would otherwise be an
| infinitely-copyable work. Physical property rights are a
| codification of rights to a naturally scarce item.
|
| IP rights require specific limitations on speech _for
| everyone who is not the owner of an IP_. It 's walling
| off some expression as "copyrighted" so that no one other
| than the "owner" can express them (in a commercial way at
| least). Compare this to traditional property rights that
| merely prevent you from walking up to the owner and
| taking their (non copyable stuff) - a much lesser
| restriction.
|
| This is why IP rights need to have limitations like a
| time limit, but I don't see why other limits like non-
| transferability are out of the question.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It's very simple if you spend more than 12 seconds
| thinking about it. _Non-transferability devalues the
| property you 're trying to sell._
|
| Why is that so hard to understand? You're free to
| negotiate such terms, but the buyer can and will push
| back.
| lukifer wrote:
| They're inherently different: creative work (especially
| in a digital, trivially replicated format) is non-
| rivalrous, and at least partially non-excludable. "You
| wouldn't download a car." [0]
|
| Property rights are a social technology to balance
| incentives and peacefully negotiate scarce resources
| (including time and effort). It's helpful to think about
| them in reverse: that they encode legitimacy to use force
| (usually via the State) against anyone who violates the
| right. That doesn't make the force right or wrong, a
| priori; it simply describes what happens. Exactly when
| that force is legitimate is the question at hand.
|
| "Intellectual Property" is a post-hoc neologism. What we
| actually have are three very specific institutions:
| copyrights, patents, and trademarks. The last is arguably
| more like regulation than property: persistent brand
| identity to prevent fraud and confusion. Copyrights and
| patents are extremely clear in the Constitution, that
| their purpose is _collective_ , moreso than an individual
| right for its own sake: "To promote the Progress of
| Science and useful Arts". Hence why they expire: at some
| point, the incentive has already been provided, and the
| body politic benefits more by their being open-sourced.
|
| Whatever "rights" framework one subscribes to, it is an
| extremely thorny question, whether they include the right
| to _alienate_ those rights, to give them up on purpose.
| We allow people to alienate their labor, an hour at a
| time; but not to do so for a lifetime (voluntarily sell
| one 's self into slavery). Many US states now refuse to
| defend "non-compete" clauses: that you cannot constrain
| your future self from working for a competitor for X
| years, even if you wanted to, even for very lucrative
| terms in the contract.
|
| I'd argue that intellectual/creative works, are more like
| non-compete clauses: you actually create _more_
| bargaining power if you limit the scope, and take away
| the capacity to give up _future_ bargaining power.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gZZHu4TBk
| Talanes wrote:
| You're describing literally Ferrari.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Ferrari can only enforce those terms by refusing to sell
| you any more cars, though. There's not much they can do
| beyond that.
|
| GM also comes to mind, where they void the warranty if
| you flip your new Z06 or ZR1 within 6 months. It's
| nothing more or less than an encumbrance on the title,
| and they shouldn't be able to demand that without
| consideration in the form of a discount. But they can,
| because they have monopoly power in that particular
| niche.
|
| Key point is that Ferrari and Corvette are niche markets.
| Car customers in general wouldn't put up with it, because
| there's plenty of competition for their business.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Your car (or other real/chattel property) is capital
| which can be used directly for gain (e.g., commuting to
| work, driven for hire), loaned, used as collateral in
| loans, have its likeness or image used, amongst other
| potential financially-beneficial actions, all without
| sale or transfer of title.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| What kind of collateral does not involve putting the
| title as the collateral?
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Point, though so long as the terms of the loan are met,
| possession does not transfer.
|
| The broader point of my comment remains: a vehicle is a
| useful asset even without transferability.
| scotty79 wrote:
| "you wouldn't steal a car" again?
| Asmod4n wrote:
| You can't sign away your copyright in germany, you can only
| hand over the rights of distribution of your work.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| An exclusive usage right (Nutzungsrechte) is pretty much
| the same (and not limited to distribution)
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Tangent to your point, the Bible requires that home ownership
| work exactly like this. You can sell your family's home and
| lands, but every 50th year, the Jubilee year, the lands must
| be returned to your family.
|
| The intent was to prevent permanent poverty (poverty = not
| owning land), and any slaves are also freed on the Jubilee
| (because slavery was also a poverty thing then). Today,
| though, it'd probably be more of a tool of a permanent ruling
| class, so it's probably a good thing that Jews and Christians
| mostly ignore that section.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Christians don't need to ignore it, it's part of the Old
| Covenant. Jesus said he fulfilled the requirements of the
| old covenant, the new one is very basic "love God, love
| your neighbour, don't sin".
|
| It (Leviticus 25) was a tool of a ruling people-group; it
| kept Jews special and relegated other people's to
| potentially be slaves, and to not own property in Jewish
| lands. Also have special privileges to priests (Levites).
|
| I mean that's part of why it's not relevant to Christians -
| per Galatians 3:28 - there's not supposed to be racial
| distinctions! And there are not supposed to be priests
| either.
| cnnlives8472 wrote:
| > You have to wait half a lifetime?!
|
| I know you meant average age, but no one knows how long they'll
| live. Even those given a death sentence by a doctors can
| survive or die at any time, just like the rest of us.
|
| With regard to the article and as a former artist, the RIAA was
| scary to me, once I learned about it. It makes sense why even
| though most bands play covers, almost no one records their
| covers, and the thought of getting a lot of plays is a little
| scary.
|
| (Note: Statistically, people don't live forever.)
| fragmede wrote:
| Estimates suggest around 117-120 billion people have ever
| been born, while only about 8 billion are alive today,
| meaning roughly 93% of all humans are dead. So statistically,
| if you're alive today, there's a 7% chance that you'll live
| forever.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| That's not what the statistics indicate.
|
| Not at all.
|
| 7% have uncertain lifetimes, >= (current value).
| Ntrails wrote:
| > You have to wait half a lifetime?!
|
| Yeah, I cannot quite believe the term on that thing. Somewhere
| between 10 and 20 feels far more reasonable since businesses
| _do_ need time to work plan around and develop property.
|
| I'm not sure how I feel about auto-reversion as a concept. I
| can see real problems with it conceptually (creating a deadzone
| around expiry etc)
| jimbokun wrote:
| How about 14? Which as the article explains was the original
| copyright term.
| tptacek wrote:
| He of course leaves out that the term was doubled in 1831,
| and that renewability became assignable at the turn of the
| 20th century almost 15 years before Disney was even
| founded.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| No. You don't need to wait half a lifetime. You only need to
| wait that long if you sign a contract and sell all of the
| rights. If you don't want to wait, just insist upon another
| time period. And it should be noted that the contracts only
| transfer ownership rights to a piece of property. It's like
| selling a car or a house. Would you buy a car with a legal
| backdoor that lets the builder take it back after a few years.
|
| My guess is that you won't find any publishers interested. Why?
| Because developing a work requires quite an investment and only
| the hits make any profit. The backlist is what keeps everyone
| in business.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Would you buy a car with a legal backdoor that lets the
| builder take it back after a few years.
|
| Plenty of people lease. One way of looking at this is that
| Congress has kind of said you can only lease copyright (of
| certain types) and the maximum lease term is 35 years. Other
| jurisdictions have similar things with different names.
|
| You could get different terms, but I'm sure you need clout
| first. Of course, the majority of my output is work for hire
| and I retain no rights and can't terminate it later; oh well.
| cptnapalm wrote:
| Termination of Transfer is what happened to the Friday the 13th
| franchise. The screenwriter wound up owning the name Jason
| Voorhees, but not the adult visual of Jason. As I understand
| it, the F13 franchise owners could have made movies with adult
| Jason Voorhees as long as they don't call him Jason Voorhees.
| All in all it was a mess. I think it's all resolved now, but
| the situation did tank the online game that a lot of people
| enjoyed.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _It should never be possible for someone to sign away their
| rights. If you can sign them away, you can be swindled of
| them._
|
| What are you talking about? These aren't human rights we're
| talking about, it's copyright we're talking about.
|
| Of _course_ you should be able to sell your copyright to
| something. That 's a major way you can make money, and a major
| way to get funding to create something in the first place.
| Every day you go to work and write code, you're selling your
| copyright to that code in exchange for your salary. You're
| saying you don't think that transaction should be legal...?
|
| Yes you can be swindled. Guess what -- you can be swindled when
| selling a house or a car too, if you don't check the market
| rate and sell it for too little. Do your research, your due
| diligence, and if something looks like a swindle, then don't do
| it.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| The real cheat isn't the 35-year wait, it's work-made-for-hire
| and assignments of future unknown rights (VR, AI, metaverse,
| whatever - in 1995 for example it was the digital-performance
| right in sound recording)
| strogonoff wrote:
| > In other words, Glazier doesn't want these lawsuits to get rid
| of Midjourney and protect creative workers from the threat of AI
| - he just wants the AI companies to pay the media companies to
| make the products that his clients will use to destroy creators'
| livelihoods. He wants there to be a new copyright that allows
| creators to decide whether their work can be used to train AI
| models, and then he wants that right transferred to media
| companies who will sell it to AI companies in a bid to stop
| paying artists <...>
|
| There's a timeline where big media publishers at least
| accidentally defend the rights of small-time IP holders
| (individual creators)--they'd go to court with the likes of
| OpenAI and Midjourney and put an end to training commercial ML
| solutions on unlicensed material. Specifically, if they would owe
| a large media company for training on their original works,
| presumably they just as well owe an average Jane. (Granted,
| assuming that Jane has not signed away her rights to a large
| media company she works with, but that would not apply to a
| massive number of small-time creators.)
| isodev wrote:
| > The answer lies in the structure of creative labor markets,
| which are brutally concentrated. Creative workers bargain with
| one of five publishers, one of four studios, one of three music
| labels, one of two app marketplaces, or just one company that
| controls all the ebooks and audiobooks.
|
| > The media industry isn't just a monopoly, in other words - it's
| also a monopsony, which is to say, a collection of powerful
| buyers. The middlemen who control access to our audiences have
| all the power
|
| I'm happy to see apps included here, I feel sometimes folks
| forget these are also a form of creative works and having the two
| gatekeepers constantly filter and influece what can and can't be
| released is absolute nightmare for both developers and consumers
| (who don't even know the things they could've had but were denied
| by big A or big G).
| Gormanu wrote:
| With Who Framed Roger Rabbit, it's not really clear whether the
| author originally came up with such a great idea and script, or
| if Disney just brought it to life so brilliantly on screen. I'm
| leaning toward the second. It's cool that he got the rights back,
| but without Disney this idea just isn't going to "sing" again.
| havblue wrote:
| It would be difficult. Aside from the characters and the cast,
| one of the biggest heroes of the movie was the script. It was
| dense with irony, jokes about the noir genre, straight
| man/funny man jokes and physical humor. You don't need the
| original cast to make a new Chinatown comedy with toons. It's a
| matter of assembling a story that's interesting and funny, with
| associated recognizable cartoon characters.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > Copyright is a very weak tool for protecting creators'
| interests, because copyright only gives us something to bargain
| with, without giving us any bargaining power,
|
| This is drivel written by someone who doesn't understand the
| mechanism of supply and demand. If you don't like the price,
| don't sell. If you don't like the terms, propose alternative
| ones. The real risk to creators is artificially suppressed demand
| through industry consolidation, not nuances to copyright law.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Hot damn I'm a sucker for a good analogy...
|
| _"Giving creative workers more rights without addressing their
| market power is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money.
| You 're just enriching the bullies."_
|
| The big "5,4,3,2,1" is also a powerful piece of rhetoric. Who is
| this Doctorow person? He has my attention! :)
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| You're today's lucky 10,000!
|
| https://craphound.com/category/redteamblues/
| neves wrote:
| The phrase below is worth the read:
|
| > giving creative workers more rights without addressing their
| market power is like giving your bullied kid more lunch money.
| There isn't an amount of lunch money you can give that kid that
| will buy them lunch - you're just enriching the bullies
| skybrian wrote:
| Misleading phrases like this are why I dislike Doctorow.
|
| Just before that he tries to sell us on the idea that there are
| no alternatives when actually there are. For example, you don't
| have to publish a book through the Big Five. There are many
| large and small independent publishers, and some authors have
| had good luck with self-publishing.
|
| I do think copyright law needs reform, but don't trust Doctorow
| to explain it properly.
| badlibrarian wrote:
| His book "Why None Of My Books Are Available On Audible: And
| why Amazon owes me $3,218.55" captures the soul, heart,
| nuance (and grammar) that he repeatedly brings to these
| issues.
|
| He once sat in his basement for an entire month "playing the
| DRM off" his record collection. Resulting in twice compressed
| 128k MP3s and innumerable blog posts.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > He once sat in his basement for an entire month "playing
| the DRM off" his record collection
|
| What are you referring to here?
| badlibrarian wrote:
| He set up two computers and manually played low-res DRM-
| protected MP3 files out of one and into the other for
| weeks, documenting the process on BoingBoing. He touted
| this not only as freedom but "preservation."
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > He set up two computers and manually played low-res
| DRM-protected MP3 files out of one and into the other for
| weeks, documenting the process on BoingBoing. He touted
| this not only as freedom but "preservation."
|
| I see. When I hear "record collection" I think of vinyl
| records, so I was quite confused how DRM was relevant
| there.
| jandrese wrote:
| Sounds like the analog hole. You play DRM material out
| the audio port and at the same time capture the input of
| that and re-encode in a non-DRM format.
| cholantesh wrote:
| Why is it misleading? The fact that alternatives exist
| doesn't mean that they're any _good_ .
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| There are plenty of fine, even higher quality and
| credibility, publishers out there.
|
| In fact even a mediocre university press likely has higher
| standards, in just about every conceivable quality aspect,
| than even the best imprints of the big 5.
| Taek wrote:
| Yes but do the books make more money and get more
| distribution? Quality is not the critical factor here
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| It's true that the alternatives may not be good, but if so
| it suggests that maybe publishing is a business that
| requires certain behavior.
|
| I think the best thing that Doctorow could do is set up his
| own publishing business and show the big companies the
| right way to do it. If he's right, he'll get the best new
| talent and quickly succeed.
|
| But I'm guessing he'll discover what the major companies
| know: the consumer is fickle, developing a new
| book/movie/song is expensive, and only a few hits pay for
| the rest.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Or set up a social content recommendation system.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Doctorow has been distributing most of his books for free
| for at least 20 years.
|
| That's how I read them as a kid with no money.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > some authors have had good luck with self-publishing
|
| Indeed. What are the relative statistics on authors who have
| managed to bootstrap themselves vs. authors who make a
| comfortable living through the Big Five?
| Asparagirl wrote:
| It's not common, but it does happen. Andy Weir, author of
| "The Martian" and "Project Hail Mary", originally gave his
| work away for free online on his website. He only self-
| published to Kindle (for the lowest possible price setting,
| 99 cents) because some of his fans didn't know how or
| didn't want to manually install his home-rolled ePubs on
| their devices, and begged him for the Amazon/Kindle
| distribution.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Hugh Howey is a similar case.
| xoxxala wrote:
| According to this survey:
|
| "The median income of full-time self-published authors in
| 2022 was $12,800 from books and $15,000 total from all
| author-related activities. Full-time self-published authors
| who had been publishing since at least 2018 reported a
| median income of $24,000 compared to $13,700 in 2018, a 76
| percent increase."
|
| Traditionally published commercial authors made about
| $10,000 more.
|
| https://authorsguild.org/news/key-takeaways-
| from-2023-author...
| wrsh07 wrote:
| And what alternatives existed for Wolf in the 80s? What value
| were publishers providing?
|
| Like many industries, book publishers integrated: editing,
| production, marketing, and distribution. They may have also
| helped with licensing.
|
| Would _Who Censored Roger Rabbit_ have been the success it
| was with a different publisher? These counterfactuals are
| hard to prove! (Look at the discussions this year around k
| pop demon hunters - how much credit does Netflix get for
| growing an objectively good film's audience? Reasonable
| people debate this!)
|
| The big publishers do provide utility, but there's also an
| incredible asymmetry (they have trivially made many more book
| deals than any of their authors)
| echelon wrote:
| You don't need to tie yourself to distributor control if
| you catch fire and maintain your rights. It's never been
| easier to build your audience and personal brand.
|
| VivziePop with Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss was able to do
| this on YouTube and then ink deals with Amazon and merch
| retailers (where the real money is). Her shows alone rake
| in over $100m and the merch significantly more.
|
| Glitch with Murder Drones and Amazing Digital Circus did
| the same. And they've stolen a lot of high profile folks
| from Disney for Knights of Guinevere and upcoming shows.
|
| Psychic Pebbles did it and how has an Adult Swim show. Joel
| Haver, lots of others...
|
| This is basically what George Lucas was able to engineer
| with his 20th Century Fox deal to maintain merch rights.
| But it's even better for creators today.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| It feels like you're not responding to my actual point,
| so let me repeat my first sentence:
|
| > And what alternatives existed for Wolf in the 80s?
| echelon wrote:
| Really? It isn't obvious?
|
| > The big publishers do provide utility, but there's also
| an incredible asymmetry (they have trivially made many
| more book deals than any of their authors)
|
| Literally doesn't matter in today's meta for people
| making music, video, or games. A substack or podcast
| following will do the same for authors.
|
| It's not that this isn't hard. I'd argue it's harder to
| get noticed today now that everyone can make content.
| It's just that the power asymmetry is disappearing
| because you can hold onto more of your rights.
|
| Today it's about building a brand following. If you can
| do that, the publishers will chase you.
|
| It wasn't available for Wolf because nobody realized this
| strategy yet. A lack of Internet made it more difficult,
| but not impossible. George Lucas kind of got it.
|
| Now it's glaringly obvious. Just not easy.
| wrsh07 wrote:
| > Literally doesn't matter anymore
|
| This is incredibly incorrect! The examples you've pointed
| to illustrate the smiling curve [1].
|
| Publishers still have an enormous amount of leverage and
| power, and that is extremely important for other
| businesses operating in that space. Not everybody is an
| individual creator, and some creators prefer to work on
| small teams. You're describing this incredible
| transformation of the value chain (who provides value,
| who captures value) while missing the point!!
|
| > It's just that the power asymmetry is disappearing
|
| This is so fundamentally untrue. Do individuals have more
| power? Yes! Their BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated
| agreement) is now "fine I can self publish and survive."
| That doesn't mean there's not a huge power asymmetry
| still. Without the blessing of Microsoft, Sony, Apple,
| valve it is hard to get my game featured. Can I still go
| viral? Of course! But listen to Zach Gage talk about the
| funding difference for making a game for Apple Arcade. It
| prefunds development and allows him to hire a team.
|
| As for rights negotiations, even Taylor Swift had some
| difficulty reclaiming ownership of her masters. The power
| asymmetry is alive and well.
|
| > Would you rather I delete my comment
|
| No, I want you to read more carefully and engage with the
| things people are actually saying and not what you think
| they are saying from briefly skimming what they write.
|
| [1] https://stratechery.com/concept/aggregation-
| theory/smiling-c...
| echelon wrote:
| > You're describing this incredible transformation of the
| value chain (who provides value, who captures value)
| while missing the point!!
|
| Yikes. I really do not appreciate your unkind tone in
| these last few messages.
|
| There's a really big trend you're missing by focusing on
| old anecdotes.
|
| The creator economy is on pace to exceed the size of
| Hollywood and the music industry combined.
|
| There are kids on Roblox making six figures while still
| in school. The next generation knows what's up - they
| want to be YouTubers and not movie stars, because they
| know how fundamentally the world has changed. How a world
| that once relied on nepotism is opening up more
| opportunity. (It's still hard, but you don't need the
| "right parents" anymore.)
|
| $100M brands and franchises are launching on YouTube.
|
| Publishers and distributors will take what they can get.
| They make money on volume now, and if they screw over
| publishers, new players enter to fill the gap.
|
| You could even go raise capital on that narrative of
| servicing the creator economy. The VCs I've talked to are
| excited about it.
|
| > But listen to Zach Gage talk about the funding
| difference for making a game for Apple Arcade.
|
| It's becoming easier than ever to raise funding for video
| game development. There are now dozens of funds specially
| for this. Including funds that give you six figures
| without a demo if you've already worked in the industry.
|
| > As for rights negotiations, even Taylor Swift had some
| difficulty reclaiming ownership of her masters.
|
| Taylor Swift is a billionaire and she negotiated her
| early contracts two decades ago. Before steaming, ie.
| ancient times, ie. when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And
| she's found ways to wiggle out of them.
| TitaRusell wrote:
| Artists can put their big boy pants on and negotiate better
| deals instead of crying about them retroactively.
| huslage wrote:
| He describes what he sees as a monopsony. That is not
| misleading. You can have lots of options and still be stuck
| in this monopsonistic (sp?) world that controls your rights
| and your financial future.
| munificent wrote:
| You're correct that you no longer need to go through one of
| the big five publishers to get your book in front of readers.
|
| But Doctorow also says:
|
| _> or just one company that controls all the ebooks and
| audiobooks_
|
| And this is largely true. I don't think there's any viable
| path for self-publishing success right now that doesn't go
| through Amazon.
| mold_aid wrote:
| >There are many large and small independent publishers
|
| Are there many small press distributors? How's SPD doing
| these days?
| raldi wrote:
| This is the problem with basic income if you don't also
| increase the housing supply: landlords will just raise rents
| and soak it all up.
| benmanns wrote:
| It does, however, make providing housing more profitable,
| which, on the margins, will drive more landlords and home
| builders into the market, decreasing long term costs
| (relative to a straight 100% increase relative to the basic
| income). So you might send everyone $100 per month and costs
| go up $100 per month, until supply chains shift towards
| supplying lower income humans with more goods and services
| than they used to get, at which point costs will decrease
| (from the $100 increase).
|
| With enough forewarning, suppliers could anticipate the
| increased demand and prepare for it.
| raldi wrote:
| Not if desirable places restrict zoning in a way that
| prevents more housing from being legal to build.
| falcor84 wrote:
| A major factor in what makes places more desirable is
| access to jobs. In the case of full UBI, it will be
| easier to: stay unemployed, negotiate a remote work
| contract or launch a new venture from anywhere, so I
| expect that we'll see people spread out a lot more.
| triceratops wrote:
| No need to stay in a "desirable place" (read: place with
| jobs) if you have UBI.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > It does, however, make providing housing more profitable,
| which, on the margins, will drive more landlords and home
| builders into the market, decreasing long term costs
|
| Landlords are, by and large, not the ones who create new
| housing units, and "lack of profit potential is" also
| generally not the main impedance to creating new housing in
| most locations either.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >and "lack of profit potential is" also generally not the
| main impedance to creating new housing in most locations
| either.
|
| It somewhat is. Housing builders can only do so many
| projects per whatever cycle they run. They will optimize
| towards building fewer projects that are highly
| profitable rather than building tons of low income
| housing or starter homes that each have much lower
| profit.
|
| Builders don't want to scale up, they want to make money.
| Building would also be abysmal to scale up anyway,
| because it's somewhat skilled labor that you pay peanuts
| for.
|
| This is just one of the ways that wealth inequality
| results in market failures.
|
| People with lots and lots of wealth value each individual
| dollar significantly less, and are therefore willing to
| part with significantly more dollars per unit of service
| or product. That means you always get a much higher
| profit margin targeting stupid rich people than anything
| else. So everything is built around bilking these dumb
| but wealthy people for everything you can, and nobody
| builds or sells much to the poorer people. This drives
| prices for things up in general, and starves the market
| of oxygen for meeting the needs of less wealthy people.
|
| Ask any developer, big or small, who their target market
| is, and they will not say "poor people" and this has been
| true for decades, and the difference between "poor" and
| "not poor" has only continued to grow.
| jandrese wrote:
| Really, any place where building falls behind demand you
| should expect the lower profit affordable housing to be
| the first projects cancelled. Economically it only makes
| sense to service the affordable housing market if the
| luxury housing market is too saturated to support more
| projects.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Or you could have progressive real estate tax so you don't
| let the bully keep the stolen lunch money and you can give it
| to your kid again.
| raldi wrote:
| That would be amazing, but places like California prohibit
| that as well.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| haha, you probably want to replace "their" with "[media
| conglomerates']"
| kwanbix wrote:
| 35 years seems to be a lot of time. Make it 15 maybe. Which is
| still a lot of time with your creation collecting dust. Or am I
| missing something?
| layer8 wrote:
| You're missing who had the better lobbyists. ;)
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| It amazes me the number of people who are raging at how AI is
| hurting creators, and will make long videos and posts about this
| subject, without touching on the fact that the __ENTERTAINMENT
| INDUSTRY__ is the single largest abuser of creators, and it's far
| worse than AI is or probably will ever be.
|
| That's how you can tell that the RIAA/MPAA propaganda campaign
| against AI to protect its racket is working.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The RIAA isn't opposed to AI as much as they're saying "join
| me, and together we can destroy indie music forever".
|
| The RIAA is a cartel monopsony that demands songwriters and
| singers negotiate away all equity in their work as a condition
| of market entry. But there are alternative markets for music,
| and successful musicians that have navigated them. This is why,
| for example, mainstream music has been so strangely stagnant
| while the independent space is a lot more innovative. The
| labels don't pay good money for innovation; hell, they don't
| even _want_ it. They want a sure hit saleable product every
| time.
|
| As nerds, we're predisposed to look at generative AI through
| the framing of the Napster Wars. Except file sharing wasn't
| doing what generative AI does. P2P gave you a more or less
| faithful, if lossy, reproduction of a specific work. It might
| have missing or wrong metadata, but it was still clearly
| identifiable as that work. A generative AI system is instead
| producing legally distinct work - which is why all the AI
| training lawsuits are failing - using the creative input of the
| data the company scraped to train on. It infringes on the moral
| grounding of copyright but not the copyright itself.
|
| The threat that generative AI systems pose to artists is
| twofold: spam and standardization. Generative AI makes it far
| easier to churn out samey-looking outputs, while losing utility
| as you try to get more interesting or innovative styles out of
| it. It's a slop machine. And, notably, these are exactly the
| sort of things the RIAA wants out of mainstream music:
|
| - AI music is safe and approachable. If you ask it for jazz,
| you're getting a stereotype of the jazz genre.
|
| - AI music can be mass-produced at scale without needing to
| advance an artist royalties. That means you can spam it on
| Spotify and destroy the discoverability of independent
| musicians.
|
| - More importantly, generative AI turns the act of music
| production into ownable equity. The artist is cut out of the
| picture completely, there is not even the need to find a naive
| artist that will sign their life away in a 360 deal for
| peanuts.
|
| The ideal world that the RIAA wants to live in is one where
| each label sues and then buys out an AI music company, and then
| has that company train a fully-owned "house model" on their
| back catalog only. No other entities will be allowed to train
| models, either through aggressive copyright litigation or
| through some new "AI safety law" that conveniently exempts
| them. They'll own the streaming sites and digital marketplaces,
| and any independent musician making real music will get crushed
| under the weight of AI slop.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| There's a real discoverability issue on platforms from
| generative AI; real artists are getting crowded out due to
| poor algorithmic curation. 100% agree on this point.
|
| Real talking head videos do way better than AI videos though
| (there's a huge authenticity movement), and a lot of what
| people like about consuming content is the connection with
| the creators, so I don't think creators are really threatened
| by AI.
|
| Generative AI is dangerous to pop, but for subculture fans,
| the uniqueness of the art means a lot more, because
| subculture people tend to be discovery motivated.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| So does this mean that the developers of abandonware can get
| legal rights to their old work?
| layer8 wrote:
| Only if they didn't work for hire.
| randallsquared wrote:
| > _Termination is a powerful copyright policy, and unlike most
| copyright, it solely benefits creative workers and not our
| bosses._
|
| That's an interesting framing. I know why Doctorow wants to
| import the boss/worker concept here, but it just doesn't apply.
| Disney wasn't Wolf's boss in any sense that is usually
| understood, and it just obscures the picture with a bunch of
| class-based chaff.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| They can tell him he can't use the IP he created. That may not
| be precisely a "boss" but it's a powerful constraint on his
| freedom.
| peepee1982 wrote:
| I read it more like "workers" being the ones who actually
| produce the good stuff, and "the boss" as being the entity to
| stick it to (as explained in the classic film "School of
| Rock").
| dragonwriter wrote:
| You can make a case that the relation with creators and
| media/publishing is,in formal structure, more petit
| bourgeois/haut bourgeois than proletarian/bourgeois, but even
| if strictly the class dynamic is different, the essential
| dynamic is broadly similar between those who do the work and
| those who purchase it and functionally, if not strictly
| necessarily, provide access to the broader market.
| glroyal wrote:
| Let me get this straight: the author is angry that Disney didn't
| release a series of shitty Roger Rabbit sequels, prequels, and
| shared cinematic universe pictures with Pixar and Marvel, so he's
| re-taking his copyright in order to sell it to another studio who
| will exploit and debase his creative works more rapaciously?
| scotty79 wrote:
| > .... by waiting 35 years ...
|
| Should be 3.5
| scotty79 wrote:
| It's really nice to read about the side of things that sheepish
| defenders of copyright seem to always be blissfully not aware of.
| thayne wrote:
| > The original US copyright lasted for 14 years, and could be
| renewed for another 14 years, but only by the creator (not by the
| publisher).
|
| I wish we would go back to that.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Yes, I always preferred the short term with renewals; I didn't
| realize that it used to be the creator not the publisher. I
| wonder how that would interact with the current "work fore
| hire" laws that exist.
| thayne wrote:
| > I wonder how that would interact with the current "work
| fore hire" laws that exist.
|
| The simplest interaction would be "it's practically
| impossible to renew copyright on something created by a large
| number of employees", but IMO, that's not a bad thing.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _Under Termination, a media company can force you to sign away
| your rights in perpetuity, but you can still claim those rights
| back after 35 years. Termination isn 't just something to bargain
| away, it's a new power to bargain with._
|
| It's sentences like these that make it hard for me to take
| Doctorow seriously.
|
| No media company is "forcing" anyone to do anything. They're
| _paying_ creatives for their work. Every creative is free to say
| no. Musicians are free to shop their music to different record
| labels for the best deal. Authors pitch their books to different
| publishers to see which one offers the best deal. And there 's
| always self-publishing as well.
|
| We can have a reasonable conversation about copyright without
| saying silly untrue things like media companies are "forcing"
| creators to take deals.
| CivBase wrote:
| Does this takeback include the likeness of Roger and Jessica
| Rabbit from Disney's _Who Framed Roger Rabbit?_ or just the
| content from the original 1981 novel? From what I can tell, the
| familiar cartoon movie designs are unique to the Disney movie and
| affiliated Disney shorts.
| jmpman wrote:
| Disney has the Roger Rabbit themed rides at Disneyland. How is
| that not considered using the IP?
| rickdeckard wrote:
| Really interesting read, but I wonder if the character design
| everyone associates with the story isn't still owned by Disney
| even after termination. As I understand the original work is a
| written novel (and not a graphic novel), and I assume Disney
| designed the characters.
|
| Otherwise ("creative works" based on the original material also
| transfer to the author of the original material) would mean that
| the author suddenly owns the MOVIE as well...
| tptacek wrote:
| There's something very weird in this editorial. Doctorow implies
| that he's unhappy that copyright renewability became assignable
| in 1909+. Assignability to publishers is, by implication, bad for
| creators.
|
| How exactly could that be the case? Assignment isn't automatic.
| Creators have to agree to assign to publishers. It's not clear to
| me how this doesn't make them strictly better off. Assignment of
| renewability, in Doctorow's framing, is valuable. How are
| creators made better off for not being able to sell it?
|
| _+(he refers to the framer 's original term of 14 years +
| renewability for 14 years, leaving out that the term was extended
| to base 28 + 14 year renewal in 1831 --- he also leaves out that
| assignability predates the modern media industry by decades)._
| wilg wrote:
| > But at the same time, the amount of money being earned by
| creative workers has only fallen over this period [50 years, so
| since 1975], both in real terms (how much money an average
| creative worker brings home) and as a share of the total (what
| percentage of the revenues from a creator's work the creator gets
| to keep).
|
| Is there evidence this is true? It doesn't sound very true.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Intellectual property rights should go away after 10 years.
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