131–140 of 260 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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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 t…
> 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.
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
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…
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?
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 charact…
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.
> 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.
> 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…
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 b…
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
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…
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)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Why is it misleading? The fact that alternatives exist doesn't mean that they're any good .
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.
35 years seem quite excessive. Taking half your life to get your stuff back?
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 ar…