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Deleting and destroying finished movies

rogerebert.com

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Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#201

Post by Dylan16807 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #78
ok_dad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I burn down my house and claim insurance or tax losses, they’ll laugh and send me to jail. Explain how a corporation doing the effectively the same thing should get a write off. It’s a sham.

A company buys a balloon making machine for $100k. They use the machine and depreciate it over the years to $20k, getting $80k of deductions over the years. They decide to stop making these balloons. Someone offers them $1k but they decline. They destroy the machine, and have a $20k loss on their taxes. This is all above board, totally normal behavior. There are reasons to be against destroying these movies, but tax…

But why wouldn't they sell it for $1k and then have a $19k loss to deduct?

And how do we encourage them as much as possible to take that option?

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#202

Post by Veserv »

AlbertCory wrote: post #22

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…

That is easy. If they claim the contract-encumbered work is worth 0 dollars for tax reasons, then anybody (who does not intend to commit breach of contract) should be allowed to buy the fully encumbered work for 0 dollars and the original owner can take the loss/write-off.

That should get like the central 90% of cases. Probably need some fine-tuning to get the rest and reduce opportunities for abuse (maybe some minimums, deposits for legally complex products, etc.), but the core concept should be sufficient to develop a robust solution.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#203

Post by pradn »

onionisafruit wrote: post #193
pradn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

Yes I want to live in a world where this happens. It’s a wonderful world even if this particular aspect isn’t great.

I dig your optimism!

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#204

Post by persnickety »

pradn wrote: post #165
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

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…

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

In a world where "this" means what exactly?

That's what the line is for.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#205

Post by resolutebat »

jb1991 wrote: post #191
ronsor wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're off by almost an order of magnitude there. It's 95 years of copyright protection nonsense, not a mere 30. Edit: very few would complain if it were only 30

That is much less than “almost an order of magnitude.“

Since we're being pedantic here, it's just over half an order of magnitude, and could be rounded up to 1.

log(95)-log(30)=0.5006

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#206

Post by fbdab103 »

chx wrote: post #126
fl7305 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you even prevent that? Keep the working copies on computers in a special lab with no external network access. Restrict access and physically search the people leaving the lab. Not fool proof, but it will reduce leaks by a lot. But yeah, once you send out thousands of review copies, there's no stopping the leaks.

But usually a movie is worked on by multiple VFX companies and whatnot.

I would be shocked if copies shared with third parties did not contain obvious and hidden fingerprint watermarks through the film. If the leak can be traced back to a particular studio, they are going to be black balled forever.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#207

Post by s1artibartfast »

imgabe wrote: post #197
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

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…

The line is at claiming a loss for tax purposes. Destroy the film if you like, but then you get no tax break. There's a similarity with the "hobby loss rule". In order to be a valid business who can deduct business expenses like losses, you have to demonstrate that you have a "profit intent". That means that you make at least an attempt to turn a profit on your work. If you don't, it's considered a hobby and you don'…

Warner Brothers has not only intent, but a demonstrated profit margin, which they are deducting the movie from.

Why shouldn't they be able to deduct there very real losses.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#208

Post by tpmoney »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #192
tpmoney wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't work differently and the framing of all of this in the media is terrible. No one goes into making a movie planning on writing it off. They made a movie and decided that it was actually not going to be something worth releasing / unable to recoup the expenses, so they're not releasing it. This happens all the time with movies at all sorts of various stages of production. It just so happened this movie wa…

It doesn't make any sense to claim that, starting now , the expenses to release are higher than the revenue they would get. Already-spent money doesn't matter because it's not coming back. If they cancelled many months ago, the expenses to release would have been a much bigger number. That's why it wouldn't have gotten the same complaints.

> It doesn't make any sense to claim that, starting now, the expenses to release are higher than the revenue they would get.

Why not? Distribution isn't free. Contracts that specify payment on gross revenue aren't free. Just because the movie itself is manufactured doesn't mean there aren't still more expenses to be realized in release any more than just because your program compiles it means that your company can deploy it for no additional costs.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#209

Post by s1artibartfast »

pradn wrote: post #165
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

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…

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

> You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no".

I think any decent person would say yes.

I'm sure it is a bummer for those people, but they were paid to do a job, and don't own the film.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#210

Post by Dylan16807 »

tpmoney wrote: post #208
Dylan16807 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make any sense to claim that, starting now , the expenses to release are higher than the revenue they would get. Already-spent money doesn't matter because it's not coming back. If they cancelled many months ago, the expenses to release would have been a much bigger number. That's why it wouldn't have gotten the same complaints.

> It doesn't make any sense to claim that, starting now, the expenses to release are higher than the revenue they would get. Why not? Distribution isn't free. Contracts that specify payment on gross revenue aren't free. Just because the movie itself is manufactured doesn't mean there aren't still more expenses to be realized in release any more than just because your program compiles it means that your company can de…

Distribution isn't free but it's pretty cheap for getting to sell tickets in major theaters.

And if it's that bad then why don't you sell to a streaming service for one million dollars? Then you only have to deliver a few files and nothing else.

Contracts based on revenue are fine in this situation, aren't they? If you only get moderately low revenue, then you don't pay much into them.

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