21–30 of 369 posts
I wonder, is it even possible to truly delete a movie? I am surprised Batgirl didn't leak. How do you even prevent that? It's just bits.
It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up, as @cnees says. Failures are part of the process of creation. If the producer says the market value of the work is zero, they've committed tax fraud if it's not.
The solution to their "attribution" problem was found by directors a long time ago when they didn't want their names on a film: it's directed by "Alan Smithee."
Destroying it should be legal. Writing that off as a loss should be considered fraud, especially when there's an offer for it.
>Writing that off as a loss should be considered fraud, especially when there's an offer for it. From wikipedia: >In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Where's the deception here?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, that sounds fine, but the taxpayer ought to not be responsible for footing the bill in any way. The studios do this for the tax writeoff, which is tantamount to robbing the people paying taxes (eg:us) blind.
It's not "robbing the people paying taxes" because the money was never theirs to begin with. Taxes are paid on profits, and if profits are not made they're not owed. Suppose I make a painting worth $1000. If I had sold that, I would have been required to pay taxes on that at the marginal rate, say 40% so $400 worth of taxes. Instead of doing that, I set it on fire. Does that mean I just robed taxpayers of $400?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"fraud" doesn't mean "losing money in a manner I don't like", so I ask again: where's the deception here?
That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. They would rather delete the movie to claim the tax break than sell it to another studio offering more than the tax break. If you think they actually lost that amount of money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Did they not incur such losses? Did they claim to delete the movie but actually kept a backup? Granted, the loss is self-inflicted, but that's not a relevant factor in the tax code.
Where do you draw the line? If an artist pays a model and paints her, is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting because it sucks, and because the model wants credit? What about a music producer who pays a studio band to record a song that turns out to be terrible -- is the producer prohibited from deleting it? It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up, as @cnees says. Failures are part…
Perhaps not prohibited. But we could make it so they lose all IP rights.
Copyright is intended to promote the creation and distribution of new works. It is not a natural human right, like ownership of your physical things.
Seems like a less controversial solution would be to allow the same tax write-off if the studio releases the film for free distribution (e.g. via the Internet Archive), either into the public domain, or under a license like Creative Commons Noncommercial if there's concern about implicitly allowing derivative works by competitors or similar.