Disney's writer wage theft, a year on | Hacker News Reader

Disney's writer wage theft, a year on

pluralistic.net

232 pointsgryson84 comments

Even if I try to understand Disney's argument in the most favorable light possible, I cannot follow it. Thinking through different situations, I can't come up with any that make sense to me.

* If I consider "We acquire assets not liabilities" in a bankruptcy court, that could make sense to me, because that is the context in which assets are pooled together to cover the highest priority liabilities while voiding all other liabilities. This clearly isn't the case because the Star Wars assets were not acquired through a bankruptcy court.

* If I consider it as a purchase of assets from another company, then the liabilities stay with the original company. This clearly isn't the case because Lucasfilm no longer exists as an independent company.

* If I consider it as a purchase of assets, followed by the original company declaring bankruptcy, that could result in assets being purchased with liabilities no longer existing. This clearly isn't the case, because Lucasfilm was acquired and merged with Disney, and never itself declared bankruptcy.

I can't come up with any explanation in which Disney's defense makes any bit of sense whatsoever.

There is also the important argument that all contracts for a % of revenue or profit immediately become meaningless if you allow this. Create any film in a number corporation then transfer the film only to a different corporation. The original shell corporation has all the liabilities but no assets to pay them. Too bad for the creators.

That is mergers and acquisitions 101. Look at any mining or chemical company that merges itself into a new entity without taking along its abandoned worksites in need of environmental reclamation.

The interesting part is Lucas's role in all of this. I want to see the purchase contracts. It might actually say in there that Lucas was supposed to buy out these rights and deliver the assets clean of obligations. If I were advising, I would say sue both Lucas and Disney and let them fight it out amongst themselves.

My understanding is that film companies already do a variation on this, where actors are hired by a shell company that is ""hired"" by the main company to produce the film. Thus, the company that hired the actors (and that they have a %-revenue share contract with) makes little to no profit.

That's my understanding as well. That the fraud is so widespread with very few consequences, that it is also referred to as "Hollywood accounting"[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting

Couple of companies I have worked for held their real estate properties in a sub-companies which allowed them to carve off assets as needed. All these companies owned was the asset themselves and liabilities directly associated with the asset. I can see how just selling the films and the film characters could be similar.

Maybe it explains Disney declaration of the EU being no longer canon? I am not familiar enough to know where this writer’s content sits. If it’s considered EU, it’s possible that they don’t hold that liability.

I don't think canon status has anything to do with legal obligations. at least I really hope it doesn't; that would be a crazy legal mechanism. the book in question would probably be considered canon anyway. novelizations of the films are only one step below the films themselves in canon status.

According to this: https://blog.ipleaders.in/star-wars-is-owned-by-disney-walt-...

> Disney bought the operating businesses of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Lucasfilm in live-action film production, consumer items, video games, animation, visual effects, and audio post-production as part of the agreement. Disney also bought Lucasfilm’s entertainment technology portfolio.

If this author’s work wasn’t part of that buy…I’m not sure why Disney would be on the hook for the royalties.

Canon is probably mentioned in the contract re Lucas. He is certainly forbidden from releasing new content that is in any way connected to SW. He is also probably under some sort of obligation not to do interviews or release statements about what is and isn't cannon. Hypothetically, if Lucas came out and said that Episode II was a mistake that shouldn't be cannon, or admit that the existence of the Christmas special, Disney would go after him for acting in bad faith.

It sounds like they're filling the air of the court with words that sound good, individually, for their case, also signalling that they have a lot of power and authority, very good lawyering, prestigious lawyers.

It's like a collage of arguments that have stood up in court. Just like their contracts are collages.

Their contribution is the glue. Like glue code, glue sentences. Transition sentences. Stapling pages together.

So there's like a pecking order of lawyers, from my post-brain-surgery reconstruction of reality. It's like, lawyers don't really duke it out in court even metaphorically, they have a reputation with each other, emnities surprisingly, alliances unsurprisingly, they don't use all the arguments they could use.

Well it's based on fighting, I know that well, it's words-fighting. That's its origin, that's exactly what the fuck it is, you talk stupid so you hire an eloquent tongue-tier to say beautiful things for your case. Before the lawyer era--in the champion era--the client fought poorly (was weak), so he paid a strong fighter who would fight for him.

I am however qualified to say what it would be like today if we still had champions instead of attorneys. I would do the same thing if I both were a bad man and agreed to fight on behalf of others for pay. Dude pro-wrestling! Faces and heels! All the way! Then you don't get hurt, ever! All the champions pretend to fight tooth and nail but don't, you hurt him he hurts you back, so it's dance-fighting choreography shit. You keep the fight going if you're paid by the second, and mostly you don't truly want to win for the sake of person you're defending. For your fighting record yeah, not for your client. You might owe the opponent a favor, it was his turn last time. And there's a pecking order, you don't just take any fight against any fighter. There is power projection, linked to price.

Because of all the champions there can only be one champion and the all of the rest are champions who aren't the champion.

I think it's very clear to follow. Here is why:

Since Disney is not facing legal threat, there is no requirement for legal argument. Only PR statements suffice. There is no need to say something legally valid.

From the corporate viewpoint contracts only matter if there is credible threat of enforcing the contract. If there is none, they can brush it off.

Shaming game tries to attack reputation, but big corporations like Disney have deals with them for decades and they know masses don't turn against them.

This is basically correct, but I'd refine it a bit, and note that it's about opportunity cost for the victim to pursue justice being much higher than the upside of a victory. This is a side-effect of a justice system that prices most people out of using it effectively. Interestingly, this failure of the justice system is responsible for a lot of today's "cultural" problems, but for some reason it never gets named as the underlying factor.

Rephrasing, I can understand perfectly from the context of motives and incentives, where a company's incentive is to maximize their bank account regardless of the law. The confusion comes from why they bothered with this particular explanation. Usually, maximizing a company's bank account in the face of potential legal threat either means ignoring somebody entirely for the case of small fry, or starting the PR posturing that will eventually become a full legal defense.

If the legal defense is as flimsy as it seems to me, then the only reason for this type of PR statement would be to demoralize others. To send a message that their actual legal defense doesn't even matter, because they'll win anyways. This seems like a pretty strong statement to make, so I'm trying to figure out where my misunderstanding lies.

"For 40 years, corporations benefited from the Reagan-era doctrine of "consumer welfare," an antitrust theory that embraces monopoly as "efficient" and explicitly excludes the effect of monopoly on worker pay from consideration."

Don't forget to also thank Diane Feinstein for her roles as a life-long Disney shill and a staunch defender of the unholy mess that is copyright law in defense of big media.

Consider this strange comment for a US Senator to make about a corporate CEO change:

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-rele...

Awesome reminder that if you steal a soda from Disney World the police will enforce the law (with extreme violence if they want) but if Disney steals from you no one will enforce the law.

I didn’t steal the soda. I wholly owned an LLC that acquired it from the shelf, then acquired the LLCs assets but not its liabilities.

Physical theft from a store and failure to address contractual obligations are totally different things. This is purely a contract dispute. There is no criminality here. Reneging on a debt is not theft, theoretically because the two parties at some level consented to the relationship. There is no concept of consent when discussing physical theft, hence the criminality.

I don't expect the cops to arrest Amazon when they fail to deliver what I ordered.

> There is no criminality here.

Fraud is a crime. Criminal copyright infringement is a crime.

If amazon were to take your money and not deliver, and it can be proven they did so intentionally, never intended to deliver, they would face criminal charges for fraud.

If Disney, as is alleged here, is "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain"[0] using other people's works, that's criminal copyright infringement.

They say they have the right to exploit these works commercially through contracts, but at the same time say the contracts do not apply to them. So either the contracts do not apply, in which case they have no right to commercial exploitation and therefore commit criminal copyright infringement, or the contracts do apply and they are criminally defrauding the authors.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/506

Why is theft from a store stealing and not withholding payment? It would be one thing if I stole money from the cash register, but if I took an item the store had for sale, the store consented for people to take items out of the store in exchange for payment, I did what the store consented to do, I just hadn’t completed my part.

Point is, I’m not arguing with your legal argument but from a moral perspective, the law seems (in)conveniently bent towards supporting institutions and not people. If Amazon kept your money and didn’t deliver a product, then yes, they should be held criminally responsible.

> There is no criminality here.

Perhaps the most insidious part of what’s happening and the argument you make: it’s criminal when you or I do it but it’s “a civil matter” when a corporation does it!

>Reneging on a debt is not theft, theoretically because the two parties at some level consented to the relationship.

So should I assume that when you eat at a restaurant, you leave without paying because the restaurant at some level consented to the relationship?

The legal term of art for this is "fraudulent conveyance". "We strip off all assets and then declare bankruptcy" has been a known failure mode for like 500 years.

cf, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraudulent_Conveyances_Act_157...

I’ve wondered if “stripping assets” should require a sort of liability insurance. In the simple case: a company requires 5m in liability insurance to give out 5m in dividends. If the company later declares bankruptcy, any creditors/regulatory agencies can go after the insurance company.

Given the high bankruptcy rate of newer businesses, I'm not even sure how insurance could be feasible unless the policies cost millions per year. Which is a non-starter obviously.

Also known as private equity playbook

Anecdotal, but a friend of mine who wrote for Marvel comics in the 80s and 90s told me that she (and all the other Marvel writers) has a few % royalties for the characters and stories they wrote, and that neither she nor her peers from back then have received anything after some corporate restructuring that happened before the Disney days (I think they declared bankruptcy to get out of those)?

The copyright law, as it currently exists in the US[0], is an unholy mess created by dozens of interest groups with more or less lobbying power.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with promoting creativity, arts, or making sure artists can live off their work. It has everything to do with how much muscle somebody had in negotiations and lobbying.

If you have doubts, read "How to suceed in the music business" and weep. (Film is worse, and for books, just read the OP)

[0] And most other countries I'm aware of, to a different/lesser extent.

The patent law is even worse.

Anything that requires courts will favor the large corps that have the money to spend endlessly on lawyers.

Patents keep the new guys out of the game.

Say a big company steals a product from a startup, guess who cannot afford the legal battle? If threatened, the big guys claim that ten of their not-quite-related patents were infringed by startup, and counter-sue.

From first hand experience, the patent keeps ideas out of use (all patent lawyers recommend submarine patenting any new ideas instead of developing them), hurt small companies and inventors, and are huge bludgeon against anyone that the big cos want to hit.

The US is trying everything to force their copyrights down the rest of the world's throat as well. Switzerland was added to the US copyright watch list[1] because its copyright laws are a bit less draconian.

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/online-laxity_us-puts-switzerla...

So the “we acquire assets not liabilities” argument forwarded by Disney… I have heard of many acquisitions that follow this model.

Any lawyer/lawyer-adjacent people have any thoughts about the validity? It does feel pretty uncontroversial that Disney owns the book contents but is it obvious that the royalty payment scheme must transfer with that? But the opposite seems odd as well…

It is utter nonsense, let me show why:

1: Acquire a license for ARM/x86/ISA and patents of your choice, at a license fee of 20,000$ / CPU-sized-die.

2: (Declare bankruptcy), sell the "asset" of being allowed to use the ISA, but not the "liability" of having to pay any fees.

In other words, it would make literally all contracts meaningless, since you're only ever one (shell) company restructuring away from keeping only the parts of the contract you want, and discarding any obligations.

This doesn't happen between corporations because they are powerful and savvy. All the terms of a contract are reviewed in detail by the lawyers. Objectionable terms are negotiated and changed. The same is true for wealthy directors and actors.

But how much power does an individual have when signing a contract with a media giant? The contracts are probably "take it or leave it". You may not be able to afford a lawyer to review the contract in detail and if you do and they flag something, you cannot make Disney change the term.

Disney isn't arguing that there is a clause in these specific contracts that allows them to split liabilities and assets. They're arguing that they can do so generically, to any contract.

So being a big corporation with lots of lawyers wouldn't help - no matter what clauses they insert in a contract, they can be discarded as "liabilities".

Usually contracts have clauses about what happens in case of a merger or acquisition [0]. If you are powerful, say a wealthy star or a big corporation, you can push for terms that are favourable to you. If you are not, you have to sign whatever they put in front of you or walk out. I guess in this case, there was a clause in the contract that was most favourable to the company and least to the contributor.

[0] For examples, look at any SaaS company's privacy policy. Here is Figma's:

If we are involved in a merger, acquisition, financing due diligence, reorganization, bankruptcy, receivership, purchase or sale of assets, or transition of service to another provider, then your information may be sold or transferred as part of such a transaction, as permitted by law and/or contract.

https://www.figma.com/privacy/

> Usually

So has Disney, the writers, or anyone pointed to such a clause in this case?

That's a good question. What has Disney publicly said about this case? I don't know where to look for their official public communications.

IIRC, Disney wanted the writer to sign an NDA before they'd even negotiate to pay him what they owe. So giving their silence the benefit of the doubt now goes beyond charity and firmly into idiocy.

Has the writer posted the text of the contract somewhere? Is the text of the contract under NDA? I am asking because media companies (film, music, anything really) screwing over artists in contracts is fairly commonplace. Them ignoring contracts altogether and just doing whatever is not something I had heard of before. In the absence of other information, I lean towards believing they had snuck a term into the artist's contract allowing them to do what they have done here, because that's their MO. If you think that makes me an idiot, so be it.

That's why IP licenses usually have a termination clause for failure to pay licensing fees and often have a non-transference clause.

And for real assets you keep a "security interest" that allows you take the proceeds of the asset sale.

I understand your example, but it's not very convincing. Purchasing a license for use seems extremely different from a book scenario for licensed material, where I imagine Lucasfilms owned the actual book and its contents.

I suppose my question wasn't very precise. There are lots of contracts for licenses and the like that state they are non-transferable. Imagine you did not put that in there. Is there some sort of contract law backstop to prevent this from happening then?

So I was working at this place...at one point the boss asked my why I'm leaving right on time every single time. Very direct. Meaning why I don't let him steal from me. Not basically, literally.

I said, "I show up on time, so I leave on time too."

I was the only person in the company who arrived before the clock, without fail, including the boss, including everybody. It was a weird thing, I got a ride and that meant I showed up early, saved time. So I just stood there waiting for the work to start in any capacity, for the second person to arrive. On standby. And I did in fact allow a little wage theft, don't even consider it in those terms, the standby and in addition the ten minutes before the shift started where I'd already be helping the business start its day, unlocking places and readying stuff, undeniably still work.

A little unpaid overtime before is different than after.

But when the shift ends, the boss might get an extra 30 seconds today, or 10 seconds less tomorrow, but there is no mercy. If the boss starts a fire to try to get me to stay I will call the fire department on my way home.

The clock is the boss's boss.

I can't wrap my head around this "the assets but not the liabilities" argument.

Surely the asset in question here is "the right to publish a work in exchange for paying royalties", no? The right to publish without paying anything can't be something Disney acquired, because Lucasfilm never had that right to begin with.

It's as absurd buying a company and saying you acquired the asset of the employee work contracts, but not the liability of having to pay them salaries. How can anyone say this stuff with a straight face?

The problem with legal discussions on HN is that for every strained metaphor, you can make one in the other direction.

I buy some milk from Albertson's. Am I now responsible for their corporate debt? I buy _all of the milk_ from Albertson's. Am I now responsible? I buy all the milk, the veggies, the building that holds them, the delivery trucks. Am I now responsible?

The point is that it isn't patently absurd in the same way that the opposite isn't patently absurd.

I would imagine that Lucas owned the books, even if somebody else wrote them. And there is a royalty agreement, of course. But there is a possible context-free explanation that is at least logically consistent.

The way the company buyout example works is that the company sells all their assets, then you have litigation/bankruptcy proceedings that use the money to make employees and owners as whole as possible. Employee work products are owned by the company, there isn't some unbreakable link there by default (beyond some natural rights about being able to say you are the author). But in that model, of course, if there are a lot of useful assets, a lot of money is then in the bank to pay out the employees!

> I would imagine that Lucas owned the books,

If Lucasfilm ever owned the copyright to these books, they could grant themselves the right to publish without obligations. They didn't, so they never owned the copyrights, so Disney doesn't either.

After all, a contract to let somebody publish your book in exchange for royalties is basically a license agreement, right? The copyright owners granted Lucasfilm a license to publish as long as certain obligations were met, same as when you publish code under GPL. Disney's position is analogous to saying they acquired the right to use your GPL code, but not any of the obligations the GPL imposes. That's why it's absurd.

I think this metaphor doesn't pass the smell test, because there are loads of examples of products with royalty structures where ownership is kind of well defined.

I don't believe that Harrison Ford owns just the vertical slices of star wars scenes he is present in. An editor of a book doesn't own just the changes they made.

And for things like books based off of existing material, the author of the book doesn't own Star Wars concepts right? They're using that under a specific license as well.

And yet royalty payments for movies exist. Though to your point Hollywood accounting is _the_ classic example of doing a bunch of sneaky stuff to avoid paying royalties.

The payments might not be tied to the rights.

(I would expect the initial contract to give Lucas as much of the rights as would have been possible at the time)

> I can't wrap my head around this "the assets but not the liabilities" argument

Because it's impossible. Take a loan, acquire the money and not the debt, repeat. It's a mental bomb planted by corporate drones to melt your mind. Because if Chewbacca is not a wookie why is he living in Endor? It makes no sense.

Holy mother of Mickey Mouse I had no idea. Cancelling the Disney+ subscription now. Bootleg contents here we go.

There is another option: buy used media. People are dumping DVDs and Blu-rays for nothing, so it costs very little to build up a library legitimately and without any ambiguity about ownership, with the upside you can watch without internet or a smart tv! Public libraries, good will, even pawn shops will sell you dvds for $1 and blu rays for $3.

Or, perhaps even better, stop watching mass media lowest common denominator crap and read a good novel. Strongly recommend Paulo Baucalupi's Windup Girl, or Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries. Or for something political and uplifting, Meachem's "The Soul of America".

Windup Girl isn't uplifting? (I kid. Somewhat. I should read more solarpunk)

> Windup Girl isn't uplifting?

Well, given the degree to which humanity fucked up the world in the story, I'd say its not uplifting. It is uplifting compared to The Road, or On The Beach - but what isn't? (The energy storage breakthrough subplot has real utopian potential, actually.)

I took the entire energy storage subplot as a metaphor for labor-powered capitalism vs post-scarcity capitalism.

Although I guess in the years since it's been written it more modernly opines on planet-death-be-damned-hydrocarbon-burning transitioning to renewable energy.

Bootleg contents here we go.

That's not how Pay It Forward is supposed to work. =(

It doesn't hurt the creators, and does hurt Disney. It passes my morality sniff test.

Steal It Forwards!

It seems to me, if you grant a copyright contingent on some royalty, if the royalty is not forthcoming, then the copyright must revert to the author ... is that not true?

And if that is not happening, then it means the author never held the copyright, but rather had a royalty that was based on some other mechanism. If the author did not have copyright, it means they must have been doing their work as a work for hire.

This does not change the fact that Disney is a bunch of scum bags.

Really not a lawyer, and not in the US, so not sure I understand the 'work for hire'. But 'work for hire' requires some sort of employment contract, surely? And the pay was part of that contract?

So if Disney doesn't uphold the contract, doesn't that mean it wasn't a work for hire, and therefore the copyright belongs to the author?

Seems like this is breach of contract. What’s preventing the authors from selling the creative works to Netflix? If Disney tries to pull them into court, they can’t really show a contract where they’ve kept up their obligation to the creator.

Disney is relying on the fact these people don’t have resources to handle legal threats. The person who raised the alarm first had to reach out to writer guild type organizations, because he needed his money to pay for his cancer treatment.

Also, many of these authors are writing under existing franchises. (The kickoff incident is a bestselling author of Star Wars novels.) They couldn’t sell their work elsewhere even if they wanted to, because the franchise they wrote for is still owned by Disney and the organization that would buy that work would need to negotiate for some kind of licensing agreement.

Also, Netflix probably don’t want to give its own authors any ideas of expectic fair treatment.

The entire creative industry is full of this stuff, and generally folks know they aren't going to get fair treatment. And it has been a problem for decades.

I mostly know this stuff because I looked. I had dreams of doing animation or something like that as a child/teen. That was back in the 90s, and the stories about bad treatment have continued to current times. Don't get me wrong, at the same time there are folks out there working on this stuff that are living their dream despite it all, but it definitely deterred me. I can do art without it making money with it, after all.

That seems like rather a baseless assumption without supporting proof.

One important detail: the works in question where written using Disney (Lucas Films,Marvel, ...) characters, so even if the original contract is void, the authors can never own the full rights to sell it to Netflix.

"Breach of contract" by one party doesn't mean a court will allow the other party gets to do whatever they want. But more practically, if the creator sells the work to Netflix, they're going to get sued, and they would then be on the hook (legally, financially and reputational) for proving in court 1) contract was breached, and 2) that gives them ownership of the work product that allows them to sell to another party. Against Disney's warchest.

> "we only acquire assets, not liabilities"

Maybe Florida could use that line as it annexes the Reddy Creek Improvement district into Orange County.

Meanwhile all the authors and artists were shaming the individual pirates.

Deceived they were, by Sauron/Disney.

Individually pirating from authors when you can afford the book is indeed something to at least look on suspicion if not outright critique for the consequences of consuming a work and not paying for it in any way. Publishing is cutthroat and lack of sales, especially new in a series or authors career, is basically used as justification to ditch the author and ditch the book series… in every way one is consuming the authors work as a fan and also working against the author producing in the future.

At the very least why not become a reviewer, that way you can receive advanced copies and in return write a review to generate hype for the book?

This should be used by anyone who is sued by Disney for copyright infringement. Why should I respect the copyright of your corporation if you don't play by the same rules?

"You're a hypocrite" doesn't strike my as a particularly strong defense. I understand the moral impetus of your argument, I just don't think it's very good legal advice.

Totally not a lawyer. But this could be very damaging to some copyright cases that aren't clean cut. At least here (not from the US) if you can show that the plaintiff doesn't respect the law they're asking to uphold, the judge has some leeway.

Since they're a global company and very litigious, this might prove useful to some lawyers.

Interesting! If you don't mind me asking, what country are you in? I'm asking because I'm an American and I don't think I've ever heard of this.

I think the person you're replying to was referring to the "clean hands doctrine". In common law, one of the Maxims of Equity--or principles by which courts try to rule--is that "he who comes into equity must come with clean hands."

An incredibly simplified overview of this doctrine is that a person cannot claim equitable relief (that is, win a civil suit on the basis of equity) in a situation where the person has also acted wrongly or unfaithfully. A common example is that a landlord may not pursue eviction of a tenant if the landlord has violated the tenant's rights.

The clean hands doctrine is very nebulous and since I'm not a lawyer I don't claim to know all of the twists and turns. In my reading, the doctrine does not mean someone must be "completely pure" in an area in order to prevail. Generally there has to be a relationship between the thing the person wishes to sue for or defend against and their own actions. So while Disney might be abusing copyright in other areas, the doctrine (probably?) would not stop them from claiming copyright privilege in unrelated suits, such as against someone selling derivative works.

Not good legal advice at all under the current state of the law, but very effective for shaping public opinion, which can then lead to shaping the future state of the law.

Because they have more money to pay for lawyers that make your life miserable.

Might is merely a fact not an argument.

The question was "why should", and might is merely why something does happen, not why it should happen.

It sounds like SFWA is doubling down on as PR based strategy for making Disney pay up. It hasn't worked so far. Doctorow mentions labor organizing - perhaps a page from labor is warranted and writers should strike against Disney.

When I look at anti Disney art like in this article, I find it ineffective and just weird how they still use Mickey Mouse. Sure he’s still the mascot like Mario to Nintendo. But when you look at what Disney really is now, he doesn’t represent a whole lot. I don’t think a lot of kids even know what he is. It’s like using Woody Woodpecker to represent Comcast.

Wouldn't it be neat if programmers could take back the copyright on their code?

To be honest, I find it hard to be sympathetic to authors or other royalty paid workers collectively, since they are often complicit in creating this situation, see Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act.

It's similar to all the BS about patents that focus on the little inventor.

I'm much more interested in

a) popular culture not being owned and monopolised by anyone, including the original author(s)

b) giant corporations abusing laws generally

Having said that, Cory Doctorow is usually right about most things. I just find it hard to get excited about George R Martin getting his copyright back so he can sell it again.

>I find it hard to be sympathetic to authors or other royalty paid workers collectively,

First off it's a little messed up to not care if people get paid for their work, second you say you're concerned with >giant corporations abusing laws generally

which is often the cause and in this case exactly the cause of the royalty paid workers not getting paid.

third, I often encounter variations of this attitude at HN which, considering that the mean wage of authors and writers https://www.bls.gov/ooh/media-and-communication/writers-and-... is $69,510 annually, and considering that many of the people on HN earn significantly more than that (I definitely do) seems especially gauche.

Now I don't know how much you earn per year, but if you are earning above that maybe it's messed up to think the people earning less than you should earn even less.

>I just find it hard to get excited about George R Martin getting his copyright back so he can sell it again.

argument by outlier isn't that great, but it should also be noted that writers and authors are more like entrepreneurs in how they create and get paid for creation, so maybe it is fair that some people who take risks earn more than others when those risks succeed.

They're not being paid for their work, they're collecting royalty payments based on a government granted copyright monopoly.

Having a conversation about how that government intervention could be altered to make society better is something I'm here for. Discussing how it can be tilted more towards the people taxing the general population, and so directly fund the people that even this article thinks are the bad guys I'm less interested in.

Having said that, copyright termination is similar to what I propose to fix patents.

Any inventor should be able to re-auction their patent after 12-years to the highest bidder. It would immediately become clear that this would be writing a blank cheque and people would avoid using any patented work and we can move on with our lives in a more efficient post-patent era.

At the moment only a complex game of legal brinkmanship between corporations keeps this system stable.

This isn’t really about copyright, its about them promising to pay X for work Y, then refusing to pay X. The bigger authors in this case can afford good lawyers so they don’t have this problem. Its the authors who make 40-70k/yr where taking this to court would cost them most of the money they are owed.

If this goes in Disneys favor, than any transaction under the cost of legal action you can ignore paying if you are a large company.

A large companies legal costs per case is also lower as they have lawyers on staff and you don’t, so you end up paying the consultant rate (~3x more). The goal of the staff lawyer would be to drag the case out as long as possible to make you want to give up or run out of money (yours or lawyers contingency) to keep the suit going.

This (if it stands) would also be a great counter for your patent auction idea as they could just setup a shell to “buy” it, sell the patent back to themselves for $1 then have the shell declare bankruptcy (reality will be more tangled than this example) because they owe you money.

>They're not being paid for their work, they're collecting royalty payments based on a government granted copyright monopoly.

yeah, which they have because they didn't get paid for their work, took a risk that it would sell, it did, and because they hold the copyright they can get a share of the money when it sells.

at any rate copyright and patents are not the same thing either, although they are certainly related.

Let’s go back to the fact this is partially started by a guy who has cancer and a company is selling copies of his books without paying him any money despite a contract saying he should get a exceedingly small portion of sales, being the original creator of the thing. This pie in the sky “well systemically this guy fighting cancer should just starve” isn’t a great position.

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