Kinda weird to bring legislation into it. Should my employer not be allowed to delete my code because it's my special little snowflake?
Deleting and destroying finished movies
71–80 of 369 posts
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#72Where 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…
> is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting 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.
> Perhaps not prohibited. But we could make it so they lose all IP rights.
I'm not sure how that would work. Suppose I make two draft comics of my original character ExampleMan. One features a dark brooding morally ambiguous anti-hero, and the other is a wholesome family character.
Are you saying if I destroy one draft and publish the other, the character comes partially or wholly into the public domain? Or that I am prohibited from claiming the time and money used to make one of the drafts as the legitimate business expense?
Would same logic also apply to a patents of a company that creates 10 different prototype engine designs, and decides to only bring one of them to market?
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. 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.
The deductible losses are supposed to be incurred in pursuit of profit. Not every expense a business incurs is tax deductible. Not even trying to sell it calls into question whether it was in pursuit of profit. They’re expecting the American tax payer to make up the shortfall and that’s likely based on Hollywood’s unique accounting practices, which has a tendency to inflate the claimed expense amount.
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#74This argument reminds me Robert Rauschenberg's, Erased de Kooning
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.298/
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#75my saddest story there is "frank'n stein" a hilarious comedy movie and theatre play toying with the Frankenstein plot.
I've seen the movie and it made ma watch a local play and I loved both.
when I tried to get hold of the DVD years later I learned that the heirs to the author Ken Campbell had withdrawn all rights. this removed all prints from all libraries too. the thing is _gone_. because the heirs hated their gene provider so much.
I was amazed this is possible... "freedom of speech"? nope. intellectual property.
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#76Commenting before I've read the article: That's ridiculous. There's no obligation for anyone to bring something to market regardless of how far along it is. After I read the article: Still not persuaded. It reads like motivated reasoning, the person doesn't like things not getting released and says that governments should step in. There's some mention of taxes and lost work, but nothing tht holds water. As an example…
If $15m of taxpayer money is being paid out as a write-off for a finished movie, I feel like I as a taxpayer should have the right to see the movie. Nobody is forcing anyone to sell anything.
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#77The contrary argument, that a creator has the right to destroy their creation, is made in the Gary Cooper movie "The Fountainhead" (1949).
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.
Many of the people on this site are involved in technology (software and/or hardware) product development. If they work for a company that spends $10M in development salaries & related costs to build a product, and then decides not to release that product, the company certainly deducts those development costs from its revenues when it files its taxes.
This is true even if some third party had made an offer to acquire the product - there are many valid reasons why the first company may choose not to sell it.
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That they actually incurred the losses they claim to have incurred, so they get a tax break. The taxpayer is defrauded. 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.
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 fraud really isn’t one of them. They actually did take the loss of whatever was the remaining value of that asset.
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#79Where 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…
We can draw the line right here. We don't need spurious analogies when we have a clear case where a company is abusing the tax system.
We don't need to draw any line. Larger corporate entities should get progressively smaller caps on deductions. Hard cutoffs breed adverse incentives.
Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies
#80To me, the weird thing is that the tax write-off doesn't even seem to make sense.
Let's say you spend $80M making a film and you write it off for a $30M benefit. You're still in the hole $50M. Let's say that you sell the film for $20M and write off the remaining $60M loss for a $23M benefit. In the latter case, you're only in the hole $37M instead of $50M. That's a lot better.
Is there some weird accounting rule where you're allowed to write off full losses, but not partial losses? I understand writing off losses: if you make $100M on one project and lose $50M on another project, you pay taxes on the $50M you've made - but you're only getting a fraction of the money back. It's better to get 100% of $20M plus a fraction of $60M than getting a fraction of $80M.
No one seems to be explaining how this is working in Warner Bros Discovery's favor. Sure, I get canceling popular shows where the actors might be looking for more expensive contracts. I might think it's short sighted given that you need popular shows to keep your subscribers, but I get what they're trying to do. I understand licensing content to a competitor for a quick pay day. Again, it seems short sighted, but I get what they're trying to do. What I don't get is why it's better for them to completely scrap content than to let it flop upon release. The only possible explanation I can see is that they'd be able to claim the tax relief earlier. If they released it in late 2023, they'd have to wait to claim any losses since they'd be making money off it into 2024. If they cancel it in 2023, they can take the write off for 2023. It must be something else, right?