Star Wars Legend Alan Dean Foster Says Disney Is Withholding Book Royalties (gizmodo.com) 279
wiredog writes: Disney has developed a radical new theory of copyright. When Disney bought Lucasfilm and Fox, they acquired the copyright licenses that enabled them to sell Alan Dean Foster's books -- but not the liability, the legal obligation to actually pay him for those books. They have apparently also done this to numerous other authors.
The statement from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) is here, and also a Twitter thread from Cory Doctorow. Foster's complaints go beyond Star Wars. His letter also states that Disney failed to pay royalties entirely for his Alien novelizations. "He noted that he and his agent have tried to negotiate with Disney to resolve it all -- mainly because he and his wife have ongoing medical issues and the royalties would help with bills -- only for Disney to ask Foster to sign an NDA before talks could even commence," reports Gizmodo.
Here's part of his letter sent to the company: "When you purchased Lucasfilm you acquired the rights to some books I wrote. Star Wars, the novelization of the very first film. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first sequel novel. You owe me royalties on these books. You stopped paying them. When you purchased 20th Century Fox, you eventually acquired the rights to other books I had written. The novelizations of Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3. You've never paid royalties on any of these, or even issued royalty statements for them. All these books are all still very much in print. They still earn money. For you. When one company buys another, they acquire its liabilities as well as its assets. You're certainly reaping the benefits of the assets. I'd very much like my minuscule (though it's not small to me) share."
SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal said: "The larger problem has the potential to affect every writer. Disney's argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract. In other words, they believe they have the right to publish work, but are not obligated to pay the writer no matter what the contract says. If we let this stand, it could set precedent to fundamentally alter the way copyright and contracts operate in the United States. All a publisher would have to do to break a contract would be to sell it to a sibling company." The group is asking Disney to either pay Foster foor back and future royalties or cease publication -- either permanently or until new contracts can be signed. They're also asking any other writers who may have had the same experience with Disney to come forward.
The statement from the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) is here, and also a Twitter thread from Cory Doctorow. Foster's complaints go beyond Star Wars. His letter also states that Disney failed to pay royalties entirely for his Alien novelizations. "He noted that he and his agent have tried to negotiate with Disney to resolve it all -- mainly because he and his wife have ongoing medical issues and the royalties would help with bills -- only for Disney to ask Foster to sign an NDA before talks could even commence," reports Gizmodo.
Here's part of his letter sent to the company: "When you purchased Lucasfilm you acquired the rights to some books I wrote. Star Wars, the novelization of the very first film. Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first sequel novel. You owe me royalties on these books. You stopped paying them. When you purchased 20th Century Fox, you eventually acquired the rights to other books I had written. The novelizations of Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3. You've never paid royalties on any of these, or even issued royalty statements for them. All these books are all still very much in print. They still earn money. For you. When one company buys another, they acquire its liabilities as well as its assets. You're certainly reaping the benefits of the assets. I'd very much like my minuscule (though it's not small to me) share."
SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal said: "The larger problem has the potential to affect every writer. Disney's argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract. In other words, they believe they have the right to publish work, but are not obligated to pay the writer no matter what the contract says. If we let this stand, it could set precedent to fundamentally alter the way copyright and contracts operate in the United States. All a publisher would have to do to break a contract would be to sell it to a sibling company." The group is asking Disney to either pay Foster foor back and future royalties or cease publication -- either permanently or until new contracts can be signed. They're also asking any other writers who may have had the same experience with Disney to come forward.
Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
The end result of unfettered capitalism is wealthy organisations eating everything and everyone else.
The power of wealth must be reigned in.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism assumes people get paid for things and contracts are honored.... in much the same way that Communism assumes people will be treated as equals.
Really the problem is putting too much faith in 'isms' to restrain people with power.
Re: (Score:3)
Capitalism assumes people get paid for things
Correct. But the debate about IP is whether or not ideas and expressions of those ideas are "things" that can be owned.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct. But the debate about IP is whether or not ideas and expressions of those ideas are "things" that can be owned.
Without that "assumption" there would be no Disney.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Without that "assumption" there would be no Disney.
If there was no Disney, people would spend their entertainment money on something else. So the world would be different, but not likely worse.
But the choice is not between current IP laws and NO IP laws. Trademarks are reasonable and should continue to exist. Copyrights should have a more reasonable expiration (maybe 50 years). Patents should not apply to software and should expire if not put to use within 5 years.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyrights should have a more reasonable expiration (maybe 50 years). Patents should not apply to software and should expire if not put to use within 5 years.
Copyrights were reasonable until the House of the Mouse got their paws on them. The perpetually-extending copyrights of the '90s were entirely about Disney.
There's no reason we should have copyrights extend longer than patents. That makes no sense. And one of the SCOTUS decisions which infuriates me most was holding that retroactively extending copyrights met the intent of the Constitution.
Anyway, IMHO copyrights ought to last something like 15-30 years. I'm even willing to allow infinite extensions for the life of the creator so long as they take some action to extend it.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Interesting)
The push for infinite copyright goes right back to the beginning of modern copyright law at the beginning of the 18th century. They lost the first round to a 14+14 year monopoly, 28 years later they were in court arguing that it was a natural right that the government didn't have the right to remove. After that, it was pushing the government to extend it. First was doubling it to 28+28, then more extensions until today where Disney is one of the leaders pushing it, with useful idiots like Trump adding longer terms to trade agreements. (Part of the CUSMA pushes Canada to extend our copyright to 70 years after the death of the author, as if the author needs a 70 year monopoly in death)
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but is that debate what's relevant here? Is *either* side taking a different position on IP rights?
What's going on here isn't a philosophical dispute at all, but an raw exercise of asymmetric power. People may be equal before the law, but when it costs millions of dollars to pursue a lawsuit against a major corporation only the wealthy get to take their case before the law. Disney can simply ignore its contractual obligations and there's nothing an author like Foster can do about it but bring his grievance to the court of public opinion.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4, Interesting)
Disney can simply ignore its contractual obligations and there's nothing an author like Foster can do about it but bring his grievance to the court of public opinion.
Or die. ADF probably doesn't have the time to push this to the Supremes which is where Disney will take it because they're confident that they'll win in the end. When has the US legal system EVER stopped Disney from taking money for things they have no moral right to?
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4)
A lot of the debate is how about the limits of that government granted monopoly. The original reason for granting that property was to "advance learning by granting a limited monopoly" with the expectation that works would enter the public domain in at most a few decades (14+14 years with a 35 year grandfather clause). The Americans used a very similar formula, except they called it advanced learning, the arts and sciences and even used the same 14+14 year formula with the same registrations and the same having to put a copy in a (different) famous library.
I think most of the debaters would be happy to go back to the original deal, even throwing in the 35 year grandfather clause.
Most all art is built on others art, writers reading, musicians playing others music, painters studying others techniques. In the world the publishers such as Disney would like to see, independent art would stop being created.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4, Insightful)
In this political age, the rule is that if you're big enough the rules don't apply to you. And if you disagree you are free to throw money into a legal black hole in hopes that the big guy will pay attention.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4)
Marx wouldn't invent "capitalism" until ~70 years after the founding of the USA. Technically, he didn't even invent that word, he called it "the capitalist mode of production", or whatever the German word for that is. It was he followers who shortened it to capitalism.
But the big trick is that most people have been taught that America = free market = capitalism. But the capitalism that Marx described is what we've been moving towards for the last 100 years or so, which isn't at all similar to the economic system at our founding, and it surely isn't what free market advocates are in favor of.
Where it gets a bet messy is that the founding fathers were political geniuses, but not necessarily gifted in economics. Not that it would have done them much good - economics has matured a lot over the last 230 years, so even if they had been right at the cutting edge at the time, we know a lot more now than they could have.
But the few bits of economics they put in the Constitution were good ideas - ideas that everyone who isn't literally a communist (and for a change, I'm not using that word as a slur) would agree with. It is a shame that we abandoned those good ideas.
Re: (Score:3)
Capitalism assumes people get paid for things and contracts are honored....
You are perfectly correct there. It "assumes". It does not enforce this. And because it does not, it does not work by itself. It needs a framework that makes this assumption true in order to be viable and that framework is in parts missing and in parts defective.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Interesting)
This one is particularly galling because Disney pushed very hard in the 1980s and 1990s to get copyrights extended, so that Disney characters like Mickey Mouse wouldn't end up in the public domain. It's interesting to see Disney's interpretation of copyright law is solely one-sided; that they can hold copyrights for what amounts to in perpetuity, and yet they'll treat the copyright holders of works they are still publishing as having effectively been null and void.
Re: (Score:2)
so that Disney characters like Mickey Mouse wouldn't end up in the public domain.
Mickey Mouse is a trademark. Trademarks don't expire. So the Mickey Mouse character would not end up in the public domain regardless of changes to copyright law.
It is the earliest Mickey Mouse films that would go into the public domain.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Informative)
Disney is also holding copyright on its Mickey Mouse films, not just the trademark. Trademark does not matter in a case of being able to make have a public showing of Steamboat Willy. No customer is going to be confused and mistake Steamboat Willy to be a property of anyone other than Disney. Trademark and copyright are very different things.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Informative)
Mickey Mouse is a trademark. Trademarks don't expire. So the Mickey Mouse character would not end up in the public domain regardless of changes to copyright law.
You're probably wrong.
Trademarks can be maintained perpetually, but they can be lost under various circumstances. The one that is applicable here is genericide. That is, the sine qua non of a trademark is that it is an indicator to the relevant members of the public that goods and services bearing the mark originate from a common source and have a consistent level of quality. This is why you can treat every can marked as COCA-COLA as interchangable with every other one.
But, if the mark no longer indicates that, then it can no longer serve as a trademark. ELEVATOR, ESCALATOR, TRAMPOLINE, all used to be trademarks, but people started treating them as generic words for a particular thing, instead of brand names for particular things. THERMOS is on the knife's edge and is already partially-generic. KLEENEX, BAND-AID, and XEROX are all perpetually teetering too. SANKA was for a while but eventually people started calling decaffeinated coffee 'decaf' instead.
The reason why this is relevant is that when Steamboat Willie falls into the public domain, everyone is free to not only copy and distribute it verbatim, but also to create new, derivative Mickey Mouse creative works so long as they're only based on that cartoon and not anything later. (So he can't have his modern appearance or mannerisms, for example). This means that Disney is no longer able to be the common source for Mickey Mouse works (the trademark might hold up better for other goods, such as the ice cream bars) and cannot control the level of quality. The trademark ceases to function and suffers genericide.
The key issues have all already been litigated. This exact thing happened with patent expiration causing trademark genericide about a century ago (the trademark was SHREDDED WHEAT and when the patent for making it ran out, everyone was allowed to call the stuff by that name) and in this regard copyrights and patents function the same way in how they interact with trademarks. The superiority of copyright (and the copyright public domain) over trademark, and the inability to use trademark as a substitute for copyright was litigated in the 90s in the Dastar case.
Disney knows all of this, and were warned somewhat not to keep trying retroactive extensions. With luck the Mouse will be in the public domain in a few more years.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is exactly the sort of hypocrisy that causes arguments for longer and stronger copyrights for corporations to fall flat. They inevitably fall back on supporting the artists, and they inevitably cheat those artists themselves at first opportunity, ignoring the very laws they lobbied for in the process.
I wonder how Disney might feel about the argument that since I bought only the rights, not the restrictions to the DVDs at the garage sale, I can freely copy and distribute the contents...
Re: (Score:3)
The power of wealth must be reigned in.
By whom?
Re: (Score:2)
Villagers with pitchforks, torches, and guillotines if necessary.
Re: (Score:3)
Villagers with pitchforks, torches, and guillotines if necessary.
1) The villagers are easily managed by bread, circuses, social media, and manufactured controversies. They have been divided and conquered. They will not revolt.
2) Pitchforks and torches are hardly a match for a militarized police force with an "us against them" mentality. The villagers know that.
3) The moment a villager tries to look into guillotines, they will be noticed, surveilled and, if deemed a threat, dealt with.
The chance of a popular revolution in the US is literally zero.
Re: (Score:3)
The people are divided, which means a revolution will be one third against the other third with rest not getting involved.
Look at the latest election and the support the authoritarian has no matter what he does.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's 'capitalism' and then there's 'capitalism gone bad', which is what we see too much of today: profit above all else
So just to be clear, exactly when did the pre-greed era of capitalism end?
Re: (Score:3)
Disney has a market cap of about 1% of America's GDP.
John Rockefeller's Standard Oil had a market cap of about 3% of America's GDP in 1905.
No, I don't think corporations today have more reach. They are bigger, but so is the economy.
Re: (Score:3)
Pretty much. Small companies are often different, because there individual people matter more and there are lots of people around that have basic ethics and decency and care about others and the society they live in. But as corporations get larger, the perverted incentives at work make sure the worst people get to make the decisions, because that is the ones that get hired for "leadership" or promoted into it.
The really messed up thing is that you can have 99.9% people with intact ethics, but just the 0.1%
Re: (Score:3)
This is reverse piracy, not capitalism. I can't believe this could possibly be legal. Christ, how evil can you be? I can see the temptation, because we all know how much Disney is hurting for money. /s
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose maybe I just like labeling them as "pirates" because they're always moaning about how much piracy hurts the legitimate authors' bottom line (and not co-incidentally, theirs as well). You're correct though - this is pure theft, couched in sleazy legalese.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Interesting)
Funnily, the origin of copyright is completely about this. In historical England, publishers would rip off the works of artists without permission or paying anything and would get rich off this. Hence copyright was introduced
Not quite. The original copyright was the Stationers' Copyright, which was the agreement by the publishers not to step on each others' toes. Whichever publisher registered a particular copyright, only they got to legally print that book. The author had no involvement, other than that they might get a pittance for the manuscript to make it easier for the publisher (or they might have to pay to have their book published). It was also part of the system of state censorship.
After that fell apart, it was replaced with a system where the authors got the copyrights, and could sell or license them to the publishers.
to make sure content creators get a fair share.
Oh definitely not. The authors still needed the publishers, and there are on the whole, lots of would-be authors; enough that no publisher ever really suffered for rejecting uppity ones. They never got a fair share unless they were already a major author with clout and a built-in audience and were shopping for a new publisher. Most authors still got screwed. And book publishing is positively nice compared to, say, the film and music industries.
Re:*ism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:2)
This isn't unique to capitalism. Every 'ism' is, at its core, a study in working around human nature. But no matter how hard you try some ass hat somewhere will say 'this is mine, fuck you'.
Name one political or economic approach that is immune form human nature ?
Note, I'm not really defending capitalism, just pointing out it's not unique.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Weird that you blame "capitalism" for an unnatural right to imaginary property invented by the government.
It wasn't invented by the government, it is just enforced by it (after sufficient lobbying efforts)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Are you seriously claiming that, in the absence of government, authors would have no problem being compensated for their work?
No he said the opposite: that governments enforce copyright so that authors get paid.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Before folks rail against the concept of copyright, they should look at the history of copyright in the US. Once upon a time, an author would have to register his work in each state of the US, otherwise a book written and published in Connecticut could (and would) be reprinted elsewhere with zero compensation to the author. Eventually, the federal government established a national copyright which was for a relatively short amount of time, 14 years with the option to renew for another 14 years. Quite reasonable in my opinion as it allowed the author to profit from his work but within 28 years the work would enter into the public domain. The current copyright length is beyond broken and is an abomination, thanks in large part to the House of Mouse. The fact that HoM refuses to pay royalties for material under copyright does not surprise me in the least. Just another case of rules for thee and not for me. I hope ADF lives long enough to collect his money and that HoM burns to the ground.
Re: Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4, Informative)
This is essentially what chemical companies and asbestos manufacturers used to do, transfer all their toxic (literally) liabilities to a shell company (Haiti was a favorite home for them) and then spin it off and let it go bankrupt. That's why the US government is paying asbestos liability claims rather than Halliburton (which originally bought Dresser Industries along with its asbestos business). That tactic was thought to be dead in the US, but apparently Disney has managed to revive it.
Re: (Score:3)
There's some history that copyright came from religions, to control access to scripture and especially scripture that diverged church's official versions. Government and religion were not so partitioned at the time of the first copyright laws, and preaching heresy or blasphemy have had lethal consequences since as long as history has existed. Shall we count those, even when they were merely spoken and not published by the speakers?
Government invented cars and food? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody would take your car if there wasn't any cops to intervene. And your food. Government enforcing the law that I can't take your stuff doesn't mean that government invented the stuff.
You give government far too much credit. Al Gore may have invented the internet, but government did not invent clothes and food and houses - protecting your stuff doesn't mean they invented it.
For some reason, if you spent a week in an preschool you will hear the cry "he copied me!". Always in an upset tone. The fact is, by age three (if not before) we express an indignation about our artwork being copied. There is an apparently innate sense that having someone else copy your creative work is injustice. In some way, we sense ownership of creative works - and that innate understanding is apparent by the time we learn to say the word "mine".
Recognizing that, knowing that the fruits of your labors inherently belong to you, I can then present you with the GPL or a BAD license or whatever and try to convince you to open up your work. I can show you open-source work I've done and talk about the benefits. Much as I posted the other day encouraging people to donate their money to CURE International and similar organizations.
What I can't rightfully do is snatch your money from you and send it to CURE. In the same way, I can't rightfully take the fruits of your creative labors, your artwork, because we've known from age three that "he's copying me!" isn't an expression of joy - it's decrying an injustice that we've all understood innately for our entire lives.
Re:Government invented cars and food? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't rightfully take the fruits of your creative labors...
No, you can't, but Disney can. And it has in this case.
Re: (Score:3)
Yet, it has always been the publishers (stationers way back) who have pushed for copyright, so they can pay an artist a pittance and then profit for as long as possible. About the beginning of the 18th century they discovered the best argument was that "it was for the artists" as they pushed for infinite copyright on the works that they controlled. Today, in this article, we see the same thing, the publisher ripping off the artist and people like you who think it is for the artist.
Today there are still a co
Re: (Score:3)
such as the fashion industry
The Macys stores in Seattle did a hilarious thing a few years ago, they displayed Ivanka Trump knockoff clothes on the rack next to the (IIRC) Donna Karan originals. Identical right down to the stitching on the hem.
Re: (Score:3)
Recognizing that, knowing that the fruits of your labors inherently belong to you
Bullshit. But kudos for your novel pro-copyright argument based on selfish preschoolers. That's a new one to me.
Property -- all property -- is either what you can personally defend from others, what you can convince other people to not take, and what you and other people banding together can defend from others.
Why can't I sell you the Brooklyn Bridge? Because if I do it on my own, I'm just some nut. But when it really is me and my army and we can march in and stop anyone from disputing my claim to be abl
Re: (Score:3)
Weird that it was capitalists who used government as a tool to create imaginary property for themselves. Oh wait, no. That's what capitalists do.
Re: (Score:2)
So, just to be clear, you are claiming that the author of the book is the filthy capitalist, and Disney is his victim?
Re: (Score:2)
According to Aaron Swaqrtz, yes. "All information should be free", so it's OK to steal copies by the Petabyte.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you suggesting Alan Dean Foster travelled back in time to the founding of our country, and helped set up copyright law?
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure he is. And the corollary is that you should be able to freely copy any of Disney's works. You can argue one side or the other, but don't imply he's being inconsistent.
Disney wants to have their cake, and eat it, too. Disney is pure evil. Disney built their empire based on expired copyrights for works by authors such as the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and Mark Twain. But, since, they've pushed for longer copyright terms to protect their own creative works.
Copyright is granted (in the words of the US Constitution)
, and extending terms after a work has been created doesn't do that. There's no public good for extending the copyright term of existing works. And there's no public good for anything by the Beatles, or the early Star Wars movies, to still be under copyright. The original 14+14 year term was completely sufficient.
Disney is stealing our culture from us. Disney--.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4)
And when the monarchies lost power in the 17th century (and copying became easy), copyright went away. The stationers who had the Royally granted monopoly were upset and pushed the government, in the form of Parliament to give them back their monopoly. Eventually they bribed the elected part of government to do just that and then the unelected part of government pushed back, with a 14+14 year limit on the monopoly as well as the publishers having to put the works in a famous library, register the work and such, as they considered that art should eventually benefit everyone as almost all art is built on the shoulders of those who went before. The idea of those unelected was to advance learning by granting a limited monopoly on the understanding that works would enter the public domain after a limited time.
The writers of the American Constitution thought it was a good idea and incorporated it into the Constitution for "the sciences and arts", another way to say advanced learning and since the publishers have been pushing to make that limited term as long and broad as possible, often by paying for people to get elected.
So current copyright is mainly a result of capitalists using their capital to influence lawmakers.
Re:Capitalism is a good tool, nothing more. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is that weird? Capitalism and government isn't mutually exclusive, in fact one is generally provided by the actions of the other.
But more fundamentally if you want to talk about abolishing "unnatural" right to IP then you better first start by ensuring writers get paid a living wage. Otherwise you're only lobbying for the abolition of artform.
Re: (Score:2)
Capitalism works just fine with the free exchange of goods and services and gets distorted the more groups impose themselves on said free exchange, whether they be actual government entities or de facto rulers like cartels that are able to effect a restraint of trade. It's an evolved system with all of the imperfections (and resiliency) you might expect based on that.
Now, it's true that the way things work, there's a need to avoid a power vacuum lest some big company just take over, just as we use the GPL
Re: (Score:3)
Otherwise you're only lobbying for the abolition of artform.
Nobody is arguing that, because it is not true. Plenty of people create all sorts of great stuff without the possibility of being paid.
Writers would have a problem without copyright though.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody is arguing that, because it is not true. Plenty of people create all sorts of great stuff without the possibility of being paid.
Yep, art relegated to hobby alone. Sorry but if you think that you still will have the same level of art being produced as a result you're delusional.
Re: (Score:3)
Weird that you blame "capitalism" for an unnatural right to imaginary property invented by the government.
Free markets only work when all participants have the same information and transactions happen as expected/negotiated. If the authors knew that the publisher wouldn't pay them, they either wouldn't have written it or would have gone with a publisher they knew would pay. Since faceless corporations behave like in the article, which is exactly the opposite of market behavior, government is needed to help enforce.
I more associate him with the Humanx Commonwealth (Score:2)
The "Flinx of the Commonwealth" series are probably his best books. Not that his numerous movie adaptations are bad, but when he's working on his own stuff it's better. Good, rollicking space opera. Not heady, hard sci fi stuff but he's got well drawn characters, jaw dropping settings, with a good sense of action and adventurous pacing.
Don't see how you can purchase a copyright but not the obligations that go along with it, unless it was in the original contract.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't see how you can purchase a copyright but not the obligations that go along with it, unless it was in the original contract.
It sounds like smoke and mirrors, a get-out-of-jail-free card for Disney- "We own your stuff now but we don't have to pay you for using or selling it."
How can you buy the rights to a copyrighted work without having to pay legitimate downstream royalties?
Re: (Score:3)
I believe the answer is "We have more lawyers than you, nyah!"
Re:I more associate him with the Humanx Commonweal (Score:5, Funny)
Don't see how you can purchase a copyright but not the obligations that go along with it, unless it was in the original contract.
They probably sold the obligations to some unfunded shell company that immediately filed for bankruptcy because they couldn't pay.
Re:I more associate him with the Humanx Commonweal (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I more associate him with the Humanx Commonweal (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree, this sort of precedent would completely destroy the author-publisher relationship. Literally every author would be a company sale away from losing their royalties for life. It's such a hideous, evil concept, it's sort of hard for me to believe Disney is seriously trying to get away with this. I had always thought the "evil Disney" bit was overblown, but now I'm not so sure.
I hope this gets swatted down by the legal system hard and fast. I suspect Disney may buckle to public backlash here, but that doesn't mean they won't pull the same crap with other lesser-known authors.
Re: (Score:2)
This is precisely what SCO tried to do with SysV UNIX from Novell. They didn't actually buy UNIX, they bought a resale license, and tried to sue various Linux users and contributors for copyright violations. Novell finally paid attention to the lawsuits and pointed out that they'd never actually sold SysV UNIX and demanded the license money SCO had been collecting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
How does that work? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Because Disney employs entire legal firms, and has the muscle to effectively do whatever they want. Foster has, I'm sure, done well during his long years as a novelist, but I doubt he has anything like the bank accounts Disney has. What I don't get is why Disney would even take this line. I can't believe the novelizations generate that much revenue any more. I mean, Splinter In The Minds Eye came out in 1978, and while I'm sure during the first trilogy era it probably sold pretty well (although, as I recall
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
The Lion King is a pretty good example of how Disney just nakedly steals pre-existing IP. That one was absolutely shameless. It's such an obvious rip off. And yet Disney will come down with Thor's hammer on anyone who even looks like they might expropriated anything even vaguely Disneyesque. I can't quite figure out how South Park got away with their portrayal of Mickey Mouse, though I'm gonna say with each passing day, Matt and Trey's portrayal of Disney is only hyperbolic in that Mickey Mouse spits out li
Re:How does that work? (Score:5, Informative)
I mean, in theory you could get the rights but not the liability. Royalties don't typically attach as a lien to the copyright but are a separate transaction. So it's more akin to if you declare bankruptcy, there's no guarantee that selling your TV will have the proceeds go to the credit card company you owe for that purchase. So, if they had gone bankrupt that could have happened.
Lucasfilm was acquired, so I don't know what theory Disney is using. Probably the "fuck you, I got a bunch of lawyers" approach. I'd love to see the response be "breach of contract, copyright reverts to author". Real financial penalties are the only things corporations like Disney understand.
Re:How does that work? (Score:5, Interesting)
The royalties do in fact always attach to the copyright, they're part of the same transaction and the same contract. In principle yes you can purchase the assets of a company but not it's liabilities, but only insofar as the assets and liabilities are separate items. If the company for instance owns a truck and is paying off a loan, a buyer could purchase the truck without also purchasing the debt owed for the load. However, if the loan is secured by the truck and it says so in the loan contract then whoever holds the loan contract can still come after the truck if the loan isn't paid. Same thing here: Disney didn't buy just the rights to the book, they bought the contract that grants those rights and with it any obligations that went along with that contract. The problem for ADF is getting his money without going bankrupt in the process. Although I'd wonder if there's a way to gather multiple creators who have the same problem and get statutory rather than actual damages awarded for all of them in one case. That'd maybe make it worth enough to get a lawyer interested.
Re: (Score:2)
If the contract is a WFH contract, than there is an obligation, but the original copyright holder, in fact the original author, is Lucasfilm. They may be part of the same transaction, but it doesn't follow they are connected. You wrote a lot of text, but it all comes down to I've yet to see anything that indicate that the royalties are intrinsically tied to the copyright in a way that established a lien.
Re:How does that work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that this isn't a work-for-hire contract, it's a standard novelization contract. ADF is the original author and copyright holder, with Lucasfilm being given exclusive rights to publish the novels in return for royalty payments. Liens don't come into it at all. If Lucasfilm (or Disney, now that Disney's bought the contract) fail to live up to the terms of the contract then the contract is breached, they lose their exclusive right and rights revert back to the original author (ADF). They can claim to have bought only assets but the obligation to pay royalties isn't a liability separate from the contract granting them the exclusive rights they claim as an asset, it's an integral part of that contract.
Re: (Score:3)
The copyright was filed with the author as "The Star Wars Corporation". It's a Work-For-Hire. There is no original natural author, the corporation is the original author. Hence, any royalties are a contractual matter of backwages.
See also, how royalties in films work.
Re: (Score:3)
Whether or not it's a work-for-hire depends on the contract, not the copyright registration. I've seen plenty of copyright registrations that don't match the contract, usually because a lawyer screwed up and didn't read the contract before filing them (and in this case there's the added twist that there's two books at issue in the same contract, one an adaption of the "New Hope" screenplay and one an original story, with likely different terms for each). Plus given that Disney is making the argument that th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This is why we need to make it so that loser pays for all legal fees plus damages in civil lawsuits.
Doesn't work too well as the rich side pads their legal bills and files appeal after appeal delaying things. Just when did Exon finally pay their penalties for the Exon Valdez spill?
Re: (Score:2)
Flagrant (Score:5, Interesting)
This already exists in copyright cases. If someone is found flagrantly, not negligently, violating someone else's copyright, they are entitled to treble damages - that is 3x damages on top of legal fees. It might come into play here.
Basic Contract Law (Score:5, Interesting)
Says that for a contract to continue to be valid, all parties have to adhere to all the terms.
Basically Disney is saying "F.U." and daring him to have the contract declared invalid.
If Disney is not paying royalties, they are in breach, and Mr. Foster would be able to negotiate the rights to his books with a new publisher. But that would require him to hire lawyers and sue Disney. It would take years and years and cost him more money that he would receive.
Disney knows this is and is taking advantage of the issue.
What if Mr Foster negotiates a new contract with a new Publisher, knowing that Disney will sue, then the new company uses Disney's breach as a defense, and countersues Disney for copyright violations for continuing to publish the books.
This seems like a class action waiting to happen, if Disney is doing this to lots of authors.
Re: (Score:3)
hire lawyers and sue Disney
Any lawyer worth his salt will tell you what they told that Japanese anime studio from whom Disney straight up stole the Lion King: “Don’t fuck with Disney”.
Re:Basic Contract Law (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is, Disney owns Star Wars and probably the Aliens franchise as well.
Which means a new publisher cannot publish those books either because ADF would no longer have the license to those franchises.
Effectively, Disney is being Disney. ADF can sue for breach of contract, but that's about it - Disney stops selling those books, and the licenses are invalidated. As well, if a new publisher wants to sell those books, they'd have to negotiate with Disney to get the license to use the name and all that.
About the only option left is to screw everyone over and release the books DRM free. He isn't getting royalties now, so and by making it DRM free, he's encouraging the copying of it, hopefully wide enough that it starts to impact real book sales which screws Disney out of the money from the books.
He's probably within his legal right to do this as he still has the copyright to the content, his unpaid Disney royalties contract still gives him the license so he can make it available for free. He won't be able to sell it, but he might as well poison the well and tell people if they want a hard copy version, to just print the book out rather than enrich Disney.
Re: (Score:3)
Actually, it's my hope that he can show that Disney violated his copyright and collect statutory damages. They're high enough that he could end up owning his own theme park.
Re: (Score:3)
More likely, the lawyers when going over the acquisitions and contracts on file, suggested that maybe they arent actually liable because of peculiarities in the contracts that these authors had with the former company. In such a case, the correct course of action is of course to not to pay these things that you dont think you are liable for, until such time that a court says that you are in fact lia
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that any potential publisher would probably balk at getting into a legal fight with Disney. Disney's position pretty much leaves Foster in the cold. Unless he has very deep pockets, even if he's in the right, he's 74 now (according to Wikipedia) and he has a good chance of being six feet under before a court rules on the case. A company of Disney's size and legal firepower doesn't have to win, they just have to keep proceedings going until the other party is dead or bankrupt.
Re:Basic Contract Law (Score:4, Interesting)
Mary Robinette Kowal, president of SFWA, has contacted Disney. They told her that when they purchased Lucasfilm's assets, they obtained Lucasfilm's rights to Foster's novels, but none of Lucasfilm's obligations.
This is, to say the least, a novel legal theory. Kowal doesn't think this is a serious position, that it's just stonewalling.
I don't think Foster would be able to publish his books with a different publisher, because as novelizations they make use of copyrighted material owned by Disney. It would be good of the law gave him that option, that'd be a threat Disney would take very seriously.
I think in the end that Disney is going to pay up in this case. The amounts involved in this one case have to be insignificant to them. The question is how many other artists are getting the same treatment but don't have the notoriety or resources to force Disney to disgorge their royalties. How many have been forced to renegotiate their contracts in order to get anything?
Disney? (Score:2)
Disney doing something unethical for money?
That's so unlike them...I mean except for all the other stuff they've done since the day they opened their doors.
Sociopaths (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been in business for 30 years dealing with micro business to multinationals (we have over 60 staff in a high tech manufacturing business), and have found honesty and integrity in 99% of my business interactions. It was only recently when we started some negotiations with an M&A guy from a mega corp that I saw the 'other side'. He wanted to screw an inventor out of his royalty rights for a patent we owned. I called him out on it and boy was he upset. 'Are you questioning my integrity': damn right I was.
I think these sociopaths migrate into finance and upper management of megacorps because I don't see many of them around my end of town.
Re: (Score:2)
In cases like this, its not a one-off. Royalties are a long-term recurring liability. Just as nearly all businesses just blow through the day to day stuff on the up-and-up, the bean counters look at the long-term liabilities a company has as the most promising targets to
Re: (Score:2)
I called him out on it and boy was he upset. 'Are you questioning my integrity': damn right I was.
to use a line from an old satirical series, get some integrity, then we'll make fun^H^H question it.
Is Walt spinning in his grave right now? (Score:2)
Disney is a cold hearted money making machine (Score:2)
Everything on the inside of disney is about making money, there decisions are cold and calculated. You even have to pay for dinner at their corporate holiday party and nothing is free. They would slight anyone if they knew it would put they ahead a few dollars. On the outside they offer fake fleeting happiness good job disney that you pay for to receive.
Not even a legal argument (Score:2)
Disney's argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract.
I can't imagine that would hold up in court for even five seconds for obvious reasons. My guess is Disney is just making him have to pay to go to court, knowing that the royalties he would be due won't be worth it. How many copies of 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye' have sold since Disney acquired Star Wars?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Poodoo (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Mouse Strikes Back (Score:2)
Hard to vote with my money since Disney is so big (Score:3)
I want to pay money for The Mandalorian because I like the show and I want to reward the people making it.
I want to not pay any money to Disney, to punish them for their abuse of copyright.
I can't do both!
The problem is that Disney is big and includes both people I want to reward and people I want to punish.
Western District of Texas (Score:2)
File a case for willful copyright infringement at the courthouse in Waco, TX. Ask for damages of $150,000 per book sold. Let your law firm take a huge cut of a judgement or settlement if they agree to work on contingency.
I've only looked into this for five minutes. Certainly there is nuance that I'm overlooking. But practically speaking, you should be able to take businesses to court for exactly this sort of thing. Even if a company has deep pockets, there are ways to go after them.
P.S. Please sue these bo
Epic Rap Battles Warned Us (Score:3)
M-I-C
I rock the mike properly!
K-E-Y
Turning profits, I've got the key!
I'm the juggernaut of stacking knots unstoppably!
The Disneyland-Lord of your intellectual property!
So get back to work, that's MY dime you're wasting!
I didn't buy you for billions, so you could play around debating!
You belong to Disney, which means you stay busy!
Cranking out magic and assembly line whimsy!
Artists begging me to stop - I won't let em!
Labor conditions in my shop - I don't sweat em!
I'm powerful enough to make a mouse gigantic!
With only three circles, I dominate the planet!
Clearly, there's nobody near me - I'm owning this battle!
In fact I own this whole series!
So hop on my Steamboat boys - but don't rock it!
I'll put a smile on your face - and green in your pocket!
You'll be safe and insured, when you're under my employ,
Now look at it!
Gaze upon my empire of joy! [youtube.com]
Well that's the problem right there (Score:2)
So I should feel no guilt ... (Score:2)
Largest Canadian Copyright Lawsuit (Score:4, Informative)
The largest lawsuit in Canadian Copyright history was about the recording industry not paying artists. [michaelgeist.ca] The defendants included: "Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG, EMI and Universal Music Canada ... as well as “their parent, subsidiary and affiliated companies." [thecord.ca] The defendants eventually settled. [michaelgeist.ca]
That's the Disney Philosophy (Score:3)
Disney have worked like this since the day Walt stabbed Ub in the back and stole all his creative input - and royalties - on little things like Micky Mouse.
As far as Disney are concerned "creatives" are just disposable work for hire and paying them after they finish the work simply doesn't make sense in that world view.
They are scumbags and always have been.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, Sonny Bono was quite happy to shepherd the infinite copyright law through Congress, so basically we have as an apt example of the Golden Rule; he that has the gold rules, as one could ever see.
Re: (Score:2)
Pardon my pedantry but public domain is by definition public property, you literally cannot steal it. As a counterpoint to your "subsequent derivations" there has been a slew of works from books, to movies, to live performances based on works that Disney has adapted. There were three movies based on Snow White in 2012 alone.
But yes, Disney can burn.