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Star Wars Prequels The Almighty Buck

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.
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Star Wars Legend Alan Dean Foster Says Disney Is Withholding Book Royalties

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  • by MrNaz ( 730548 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:55PM (#60744602) Homepage

    The end result of unfettered capitalism is wealthy organisations eating everything and everyone else.

    The power of wealth must be reigned in.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:59PM (#60744620) Homepage Journal

      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.

      • 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.

        • 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.

          • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @07:01PM (#60744930)

            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.

            • by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @09:47PM (#60745386)

              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.

              • by dryeo ( 100693 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @11:30PM (#60745590)

                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)

        • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:53PM (#60744888) Homepage Journal

          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.

          • by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @06:34AM (#60746160)

            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?

        • by dryeo ( 100693 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @11:21PM (#60745570)

          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.

      • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:57PM (#60744902)

        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.

      • Which is why the United States of America was founded as a Republic and not a Democracy or a Capitalist nation. They knew a Democracy would eventually devolve into a gimme, gimme, gimme scenario where only people who promise to give you everything you want get elected. They also knew a Capitalist society would end up with only the strongest surviving by hook or by crook. Sadly in the last 100 years we've seen shifts towards both of these ends and the damage they do. Worse still, a large contingent of Americ
        • by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @09:34PM (#60745356)

          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.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        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.

    • by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:14PM (#60744676) Journal

      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.

      • 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.

        • by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:59PM (#60744916)

          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.

        • by cpt kangarooski ( 3773 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @02:20AM (#60745822) Homepage

          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.

      • by sjames ( 1099 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @07:54PM (#60745142) Homepage Journal

        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...

    • by alexo ( 9335 )

      The power of wealth must be reigned in.

      By whom?

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Villagers with pitchforks, torches, and guillotines if necessary.

        • by alexo ( 9335 )

          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.

    • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:17PM (#60744698) Journal
      There's 'capitalism' and then there's 'capitalism gone bad', which is what we see too much of today: profit above all else, the ends justify the means, and if that means being immoral or unethical, then tough shit, they'll let their attack-dog lawyers obfuscate, confuse, and drag the whole thing out in the courts in what amounts to a war of attrition, until the plaintiff(s) are drained economically and can't pursue matters any farther.
      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:50PM (#60744860)

        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?

    • 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

    • 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.

  • 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.

    • 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?

    • by frank_adrian314159 ( 469671 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:09PM (#60744658) Homepage

      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.

      • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:26PM (#60744736) Journal
        The question remains: how can you divorce the obligations that come with a contract from its benefits? You shouldn’t be able to. When Disney bought Lucasart, they should be free to sell the entire agreement to a shell company, but not only the obligations part. There’s always only one licensee, having both the right to publish and the obligation to pay for it. To claim otherwise would be like me claiming that I sold half of my freelance contract to a shell company: they are obliged to take care of the work, but I retained the part of the contract that entitles me to bill them.
        • by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:40PM (#60744812)

          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.

      • 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].

  • by JeffOwl ( 2858633 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:59PM (#60744616)
    How can you purchase the right without the liability? How can the purchase of Lucasfilm include the rights but not the obligation to pay for exercise of those rights? Did the liability somehow transfer to someone else?
    • 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

    • by Actually, I do RTFA ( 1058596 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:23PM (#60744724)

      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.

      • by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:39PM (#60744806) Homepage

        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.

        • 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.

          • by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @09:13PM (#60745330) Homepage

            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.

            • 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.

              • 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

  • Basic Contract Law (Score:5, Interesting)

    by weiserfireman ( 917228 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @05:59PM (#60744622) Homepage

    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.

    • 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”.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 ) <slashdot@worf.ERDOSnet minus math_god> on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:15PM (#60744680)

      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.

      • 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.

    • I dont think its so much that Disney knows that this guy wont sue (because in fact, they dont know that) ...

      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
    • 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.

    • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @09:05PM (#60745314) Homepage Journal

      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 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)

    by labnet ( 457441 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:04PM (#60744634)

    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.

    • It isnt one-off interactions where morality comes into play, because on the day to day nearly all businesses are just trying to do the day to day stuff efficiently. Whatever it is makes money and they want more volume, not angry customers.

      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
    • 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.

  • I think he might be, considering what they've turned Disney into.
  • 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.

  • 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)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @06:41PM (#60744818)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Disney seems to have taken the slime-ball approach lately. It's not the Disney I remember watching on Sunday nights so many years ago. I sort of get a "yuck" feeling now.
    • Probably since the 80s, actually. There's reason a drawing of a cock ended up on the cover of little mermaid, and it's not because Disney was paying artists well.
  • Well, I was wondering what Di$ney would since they appear not to be pushing to extend copyright back again. Now it's "Let's screw people on royalties and say it's legal" bulls#!t. I wonder how long before their lawyers get Congress to pass a law making it OK too?
  • by steveha ( 103154 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @07:09PM (#60744968) Homepage

    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.

  • 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

  • by IonOtter ( 629215 ) on Thursday November 19, 2020 @07:14PM (#60744998) Homepage

    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]

  • He shouldn't be "negotiating with his agent", of course Disney will just tell him to eff off. He should negotiate with his lawyers.
  • when I pirate Disney's property, because because some of it is pirated ( or ripped off in one form or another ) in the first place. Hmmm
  • by nagora ( 177841 ) on Friday November 20, 2020 @06:32AM (#60746158)

    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.

Keep up the good work! But please don't ask me to help.

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