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Comment by objclxt | Hacker News Reader

> As such, it seems like there should be some kind of legal obligation to keep it public.

The challenge here is royalties. You have to pay people royalties for broadcasting their work. You could take the position that publicly funded media should be in the public domain, but then it's going to cost considerably more because you'll have to compensate people for the royalties they won't receive.

> I might be wrong in this particular case though — maybe the public funding was always indirect, through the broadcasters?

Yes, Sesame Street wasn't commissioned by PBS, it was originated by the Children's Television Workshop which was funded via grants (some from the state, but mainly by non-profits like the Carnegie Corporation). And originally it aired on the precursor to PBS (National Educational Television), which was funded by the Ford Foundation.

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> You have to pay people royalties for broadcasting their work.

Might be a dumb question - but is this a contractual thing? Why do people still need to get royalties for broadcasts of something made 40 years ago vs just paying them for it back then?

>is this a contractual thing

Yes. In general the content owners (less often so actors, screenwriters, etc.) work on a combination of upfront fees and royalties. This is true of book authors as well who typically get an advance against royalties. Purchasers generally won't pay a fee commensurate with "if this is a big hit" so the content owners are willing to accept a smaller fee in exchange for a cut of the big hit proceeds--even if those often don't come about.

It’s similar to startups paying in stock and options. It allows for more speculative projects since the upfront cost is lower.

Yes, it's contractual because of copyright. If someone (and many parties in the process) created it back then, there is a web of copyrights that require royalties to the creators. Contracts would control who this obligation is owed to (if anyone) years later.

What? It has nothing to do with copyright. It's a provision negotiated by unions for the benefit of members which means you can't employ anyone in certain unions without a minimum royalty schedule.

Notably, live action productions covered under SAG-AFTRA and WGA get residuals while animated works under IATSE did not until very recently.

Nonprofit funding is, in significant measure, a form of public funding as the organization's income is not taxed and its donors receive a tax deduction.

If the public wants that credit, tax ‘em and pay for the programs. Otherwise I’ll give you the government didn’t discourage the effort.

By that logic, a pack of cigarettes taxed at 500% is "publicly funded" because it could have been taxed at 1000%.

There is no functional difference between a tax break and a subsidy. And everything is private property only if a sovereign authority says it is. Much of it is not even remotely justifiable even by the most generous Lockean assumptions. But it remains private property because an entity with the power to do so has deemed it so.

> everything is private property only if a sovereign authority says it is

This is simply untrue. Private property proceeds the existence of the modern state.

Many parts of the world have extremely weak states, yet a distinction between private and public property remains.

Arguably, the states role is to ensure private property protections are available to the weak and the powerful, not just the powerful.

“The commons” - in the European and British sense were/are public property long before a meaningful state became involved.

Both s public and private property proceed modern states, and can have their origin in customary law as much as legal statutes.

Sovereign authorities also precede the existence of states.

Claims of ownership are only as legitimate as the potential to do violence to assert such claims.

Authority isn’t always rooted in force or threat of force.

“The commons” is/was publicly owned, but without any real threat of force behind it.

The commons was managed in a decentralized manner, but indeed there were consequences for violating the written or unwritten rules.

And government was often involved in managing them historically.

Hence the poem:

>The law locks up the man or woman

Who steals the goose off the common

But leaves the greater villain loose

Who steals the common from the goose.

That's great. Here's it set to music.

https://mainlynorfolk.info/folk/songs/thegooseandthecommon.h...

and wikipedia on the Enclosure acts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

> Private property proceeds the existence of the modern state.

Stop intimating that private and personal property are the same. Private property is enforcable only by coordinated violence. Its manifestations in the past (serfdom, slavery etc) have been universally agreed to be negative.

> Both s public and private property proceed modern states, and can have their origin in customary law as much as legal statutes.

You're still conflating personal and private property here.

Da comrade, even "your" life belongs to the state, and you should feel fortunate they permit you to keep it!

By that logic, your posting uses public funds. The government could have taxed your comments, but they didn't.

This presumes that all income belongs to the government by default, and not being taxed is some special favor.

That’s backwards, all income belongs to the people who earn it by default. We agree to use a portion for the common good to fund the government. Since a nonprofit is presumably already working for the common good, there is no reason to take any of their income to fund the government.

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