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Yeah 360 deals are really prevalent in big-time music so to see them showing up in, uh, Skilled Labor (?) is really kind of a shock to me. I hate 360 deals. Hat

Yeah 360 deals are really prevalent in big-time music so to see them showing up in, uh, Skilled Labor (?) is really kind of a shock to me. I hate 360 deals. Hate hate hate. So very anti-capitalistic.

libertymcateer 10y ago
> So very anti-capitalistic. Depends. Is this an entry level programmer? If so, is that entry level programmer fresh out of college and making $150k? Or is an executive making $500k? Is there an equity package? Or is this some guy making 55k and working 60 hour weeks? There is a continuum. Also, 360 deals in music industry typically relate to the fact that all royalty and endorsement deals must go through the label - it used to be that artists could directly license their names for things like cereal endorsements or clothing lines. A 360 deal means that the artist must do that licensing through the label. Whether or not this is a good deal depends on the artist, the label, and the specific percentages involved. That is not quite the same thing as a work for hire agreement that states that all of an employees inventions, whether or not developed on or off the clock and whether or not developed with company hardware - are company property. Similar, to be sure, but if you talk about a 360 work for hire agreement, people may get what you are talking about, but some may not. I don't think it is 'term of art' in the same way - even though I may use it as one.
pjc50 10y ago
No, it's very capitalistic: IP is capital on which rent can be charged, so naturally the system coerces transfer of ownership to the rentier class and away from the labour class. :(
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Interesting counter point! I happen to think though that Deals-That-Never-End on the 360 path are more Feudalistic exploitation than a supply-demand-free market kind of thing. I do see where you're coming from and I understand the wrinkle.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Well, this is where people end up having no-true-Scotsman debates about what is really meant by capitalism, which is tremendously dull but sometimes necessary :) Note that most of the free market analysis work has assumptions built into it about market power and the prior distribution of resources. IP is a little weird because it's so non-substitutable; if you don't like the price of fish you can go buy some other fish, but if you don't like the price of a Phish album you may not find a substitute. One of the main improvements of capitalism over feudalism is that contract terms usually last for at most a lifetime, and where they don't they're at least limited to a piece of real estate.
- Exofunctor 10y ago
  Many would argue that IP itself is inherently anti-capitalistic, because it imposes artificial scarcity where it would not otherwise exist and, relatedly, because IP "theft" doesn't actually deprive the "victim" of a scarce resource they created or purchased. Ideas have (effectively) zero marginal reproduction cost. That's not to say there aren't some good arguments for IP, but they sort of inherently have a planned-economy bent.
  - AimHere 10y ago
    One argument you missed is that IP laws generally create state-granted monopolies, which is something capitalists usually claim to be against.
- geezerjay 10y ago
  >No, it's very capitalistic: IP is capital That's quite wrong. the very basis of IP is a state-imposed monopoly, which is the complete opposite of what capitalism is, what its basic principles are, and how it works.

Yeah 360 deals are really prevalent in big-time music so to see them showing up in, uh, Skilled Labor (?) is really kind of a shock to me. I hate 360 deals. Hate hate hate. So very anti-capitalistic.

libertymcateer 10y ago

> So very anti-capitalistic. Depends. Is this an entry level programmer? If so, is that entry level programmer fresh out of college and making $150k? Or is an executive making $500k? Is there an equity package? Or is this some guy making 55k and working 60 hour weeks? There is a continuum. Also, 360 deals in music industry typically relate to the fact that all royalty and endorsement deals must go through the label - it used to be that artists could directly license their names for things like cereal endorsements or clothing lines. A 360 deal means that the artist must do that licensing through the label. Whether or not this is a good deal depends on the artist, the label, and the specific percentages involved. That is not quite the same thing as a work for hire agreement that states that all of an employees inventions, whether or not developed on or off the clock and whether or not developed with company hardware - are company property. Similar, to be sure, but if you talk about a 360 work for hire agreement, people may get what you are talking about, but some may not. I don't think it is 'term of art' in the same way - even though I may use it as one.

pjc50 10y ago

No, it's very capitalistic: IP is capital on which rent can be charged, so naturally the system coerces transfer of ownership to the rentier class and away from the labour class. :(

6stringmerc 10y ago
Interesting counter point! I happen to think though that Deals-That-Never-End on the 360 path are more Feudalistic exploitation than a supply-demand-free market kind of thing. I do see where you're coming from and I understand the wrinkle.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Well, this is where people end up having no-true-Scotsman debates about what is really meant by capitalism, which is tremendously dull but sometimes necessary :) Note that most of the free market analysis work has assumptions built into it about market power and the prior distribution of resources. IP is a little weird because it's so non-substitutable; if you don't like the price of fish you can go buy some other fish, but if you don't like the price of a Phish album you may not find a substitute. One of the main improvements of capitalism over feudalism is that contract terms usually last for at most a lifetime, and where they don't they're at least limited to a piece of real estate.
Exofunctor 10y ago
Many would argue that IP itself is inherently anti-capitalistic, because it imposes artificial scarcity where it would not otherwise exist and, relatedly, because IP "theft" doesn't actually deprive the "victim" of a scarce resource they created or purchased. Ideas have (effectively) zero marginal reproduction cost. That's not to say there aren't some good arguments for IP, but they sort of inherently have a planned-economy bent.
- AimHere 10y ago
  One argument you missed is that IP laws generally create state-granted monopolies, which is something capitalists usually claim to be against.
geezerjay 10y ago
>No, it's very capitalistic: IP is capital That's quite wrong. the very basis of IP is a state-imposed monopoly, which is the complete opposite of what capitalism is, what its basic principles are, and how it works.