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>Do you really think that authors are paid in percentage of the publisher's profits? For books authors generally get a percentage of revenue (with some caveats
by qwytw 5y ago
>Do you really think that authors are paid in percentage of the publisher's profits?
For books authors generally get a percentage of revenue (with some caveats) which is even better.
> They bought the rights for a relatively unknown story paying peanuts, made it big and profited.
I assume the the author still made a lot of money from increased book sales.
> Do you really believe that the Witcher could become a HIT on its own merits?
If it was written in English then perhaps.
> I imagine a system where if the publisher makes a lot more money (with a lot to be defined) than the original author made before the creation went public domain, then __they could be forced to compensate the original author__
Sorry I think I missed this bit. However again this would only benefit the publisher and not the author until the threshold is reached. After it's reached I assume authors would get something similar to what they get under the current system?
I'm not completely against having some compensation mechanism similar to books royalties for derived works like games or movies under which would be entitled to receive some % of revenue as opposed to whatever they have negotiated with the studio in advance. However I'm afraid this would disincentivize studios from making on movies based on less successful/well-known books altogether.
> Shortening the life of copyright would make this hoarding practices useless, because everybody could make a Witcher after 20 years, now nobody can, because whoever bought the rights will keep renewing them for a century.
Is that a necessarily positive outcome? Even if you don't believe that authors should have the right to excise creative control over their work why is it any better for the society if anyone can freely make movies, games or sequels based on the Witcher universe?
Even if is, wouldn't it better to ban or limit the exclusivity clause in contracts rather ban copyright all together? (e.g. Authors could have the right to sell their rights to multiple companies or any contract would legally be limited to fixed numbers of years after which the author would be able to resell them someone else)
>No it's because Mickey mouse is a trademark and they will sue everyone who tries to create whatever fictional mouse.
Unless you're suggesting that trademarks should be abolished as well Disney will still be able to do that.
>Life long copyright is the root of all evil in the publishing/entertainment business.
I disagree, I think overall it's one of the main reasons the current publishing/entertainment industry even exists and the world would have been a much bleaker place without it. I mean yes corporations often abuse the current system and it's flawed in many ways but throwing it out of the window and introducing an arbitrary 20 year (or any other fixed limit) would just further disadvantage individual authors without solving any actual problems.
- peoplefromibiza 5y ago> For books authors generally get a percentage of revenue (with some caveats) which is even better. Yes and it's very small. Like less than 10% You make more money by autoproducing. Very few authors make money with books. > Is that a necessarily positive outcome? Even if you don't believe that authors should have the right to excise creative control over their work Please, stop using this false dichotomy and to pur words in my mouth. You have to stop talking like what you're saying is true, what is true and what usually happens is Felix Salten that sells the story of Bambi to a movie director for a thousand dollars, the director then sell it to Disney, Disney wins 4 oscars and makes a pile of money out of it while Salten dies alone in Zurich few years later without even being mentioned in the Disney movie. The English translation has also a complete different meaning than the original German one. Talking about creative control... The story of the copyright of Bambi is interesting because after Salten death his daughter fought for the rights and after a few controversial rulings, her husband, that continued after Salten's daughter's death, won. But that means two things - nobody knows what the original author would have wanted, but others that never wrote a single line of the book claimed the rights - with that ruling the US courts basically said that as long as someone renew the copyright, it can well be ethernal, there is no need to be authors, there is no right to creative control (which is granted BTW for being the author, that has nothing to do with copyright, you conflate the two things constantly) it's all about the money In the end those holding the copyrights most of the times are not the authors, Disney wrote none of the stories that made him rich and famous. So the rethoric about poor authors not being compensated it's completely fabricated, it's already happening, it always happened. It's the "think of the children" of the publishing world.
- qwytw 5y agoYou think you're mostly right. The one thing that bothers me is that you seem to be suggesting that because the current system is bad for most authors we should replace it a system that's bad for ALL authors (i.e. instead of introducing sensible limits or restricting the ability of corporate entities to hold copyright, or allowing authors to renegotiate their contracts based on the actual revenue earned you're basically suggesting removing it all together (the 20 year limit is simply infeasible due to the arguments from my previous comment)).