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One thing that's always been confusing to me is this: I assume that Sesame Street must have received a significant amount of public funding over the years, fro
by derbOac 4y ago
One thing that's always been confusing to me is this:
I assume that Sesame Street must have received a significant amount of public funding over the years, from governments, while it was being broadcast on public television.
As such, it seems like there should be some kind of legal obligation to keep it public.
This is one of my pet peeves — when a project receives significant public funding and then it is just essentially reverted into an entirely private benefit. It shows up in a number of domains of activities (telecommunications, research grants, and so forth) and always seems to me that there should be significant legal consequences for not maintaining public benefit or access in some way.
I might be wrong in this particular case though — maybe the public funding was always indirect, through the broadcasters?
- colechristensen 4y agoSesame Street was developed by a 501c3 (Children’s Television Workshop renamed to Sesame Workshop) and sold to PBS. Episodes were licensed by a publicly funded organization, they weren’t produced by one.
- gdubs 4y agoFascinating — but I'd be curious how much of the production was funded with those licensing fees. Maybe they're not legally obligated to keep it public — but ethically?
- bradleyjg 4y agoIf I sell software to a government agency am I morally obligated to give up my copyright?
- prepend 4y agoIf you subsist entirely on grants and charitable donations and you yourself are a charity then I think it’s reasonable that your software should be open source. There’s actually a push for all custom developed code for the US government be open sourced, even if produced by a contractor. Seems reasonable to me.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThat is something that should be determined up front by the purchaser. If you want it to be open source, require it. It isn't something to blame a vendor for several decades after you agree to a contract when you feel like you missed out.
- prepend 4y agoI’m not blaming a vendor. I’m calling out how I think it is immoral. And I don’t donate to such vendors. I understand why they do it as I like money too.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI think there is a big difference between donating to a for profit project and paying for a service. There is also donating to something because you want a for profit service to exist as something to buy.
- fncypants 4y agoLaws (usually) reflect ethics. Keep in mind there is a balance where the "ask" for receiving government funding may prevent the creation of the work in the first place. Sometimes, the right balance may be to require the work to contractually enter the public domain in return for receiving funding. Sometimes, the government could negotiate something less than in order to get a net benefit.
- Retric 4y agoRevenue from public television was used to fund new episodes. So the question is why it’s OK for public TV to have these kinds of arrangements not why Sesame Workshop can own it’s content. Any way money can be extracted from a nonprofit to create private IP is dubious be that a University or public television.
- colechristensen 4y agoHow much should public funding be a taint to things it buys? You can easily get to a point where public funding can’t buy anything and can only be used to produce things directly.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago> How much should public funding be a taint to things it buys? For higher education the rule is 100%, even when the funding isn't supposed to be buying anything in particular, or going to the organization which becomes attainted.
- Retric 4y agoIt's not aboung tainting what it buys, it’s about what it can pay for without owning. I have no issue with a nonprofit buying buildings, paying employees, or paying consultants market rates to design a logo it owns. You can value such transactions to verify people arn’t extracting money from a nonprofit this way. However when it comes to creating IP that they don’t own it gets tricky because the IP owner also benefits from the exposure of being on public TV and can then turn that into toy sales etc. On the other hand if the IP flops then public TV has taken all the risk. In many other contexts having a nonprofit take in the risk while a for profit sees the profit is illigal. Just imagine doing this with startups rather than childrens TV shows.
- robertlagrant 4y agoThe public isn't taking all the risk. The creator accepts a lower fee in exchange for the IP rights, commensurate to the future value of any spinoffs/merchandise, etc.
- objclxt 4y ago> As such, it seems like there should be some kind of legal obligation to keep it public. The challenge here is royalties. You have to pay people royalties for broadcasting their work. You could take the position that publicly funded media should be in the public domain, but then it's going to cost considerably more because you'll have to compensate people for the royalties they won't receive. > I might be wrong in this particular case though — maybe the public funding was always indirect, through the broadcasters? Yes, Sesame Street wasn't commissioned by PBS, it was originated by the Children's Television Workshop which was funded via grants (some from the state, but mainly by non-profits like the Carnegie Corporation). And originally it aired on the precursor to PBS (National Educational Television), which was funded by the Ford Foundation.
- pirate787 4y agoNonprofit funding is, in significant measure, a form of public funding as the organization's income is not taxed and its donors receive a tax deduction.
- dwighttk 4y agoIf the public wants that credit, tax ‘em and pay for the programs. Otherwise I’ll give you the government didn’t discourage the effort.
- enriquec 4y ago
- lotsofpulp 4y agoThen why does society allow someone to reduce their tax liability for “charity”? Of course, it would be better if there were no deductions in the first place, and the government just paid for content if it wanted to pay for content which was then automatically in the public domain.
- qubex 4y ago
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoThe Today, Explained podcast had an episode on Sesame Street a while ago, which got into how the show has been funded over the years and the compromises Children's Television Workshop has had to make. https://dcs.megaphone.fm/VMP1713252129.mp3 https://dcs.megaphone.fm/VMP1713252129.mp3
- swatcoder 4y agoIf a creative work or research endeavor costs $10,000 to produce, and public grants provide $1, does that dollar buy the public unrestricted rights to the work? It sounds like you think it should, which is a fine position to take, but odds are that the contributors of the other $9,999 have a different opinion and may make different choices about contributing were that the case. So — assuming that the public can’t justify the entire production cost of all grant-worthy work — what ends up happening is that you have a negotiation of rights and contracts and lawyers and all that banal, complicating stuff.
- paulddraper 4y agoThat's a valid counterargument. ...if Sesame Street were 0.1% public funded.
- antasvara 4y agoA more charitable view of the situation would be a requirement that any content which has taken public funding should always be able to be "reasonably accessed." This allows private businesses to seek out solutions that are in their best interest, while also offering some protections to consumers. I don't see it as any different from the way we regulate other public utilities, like not allowing power companies to shut off service during the winter. Note that I specifically used ambiguous language so that a wide range of uses for the content are possible. I don't necessarily have a problem with Sesame Street being behind a paywall, provided that the service isn't priced in an absurd manner.
- peder 4y agoBut does an obligation exist to stream it freely forever? Who pays hosting costs for that?
- nextstep 4y agoThis is a great example of why neoliberalism is a scam. This is also true when a city or country begins to “privatize” it’s parks and fire department and water infrastructure, etc.
- kristopolous 4y agoPublic cost and private profit. There's plenty of ideology sunglasses people wear to prevent themselves from seeing this. It's hard to convince people of a reality wherein their identity demands them to oppose it. HN has been more reasonable recently but there's still threads mobbed by Hayek and Rothbard partisans. The giveaway is they have an unfalsifiable ideology. Bad results are because they didn't adhere enough, every problem has an identical solution, any purported tests aren't true tests, examples given aren't real examples so it can't be observed, it's just pure rhetorics and pseudo-intellectual dogma Don't bother. It's team sports to them. See y'all in the replies with whataboutisms and personal attacks.
- dhosek 4y ago>I assume that Sesame Street must have received a significant amount of public funding over the years, from governments, while it was being broadcast on public television. The Republican party has been battling to keep that significant amount of public funding as close to zero since PBS was founded. There was the famous Mr Rogers testimony in Washington DC (where the Corporation for Public Broadcasting managed to prevail) and there was the Gingrich era where the stated goal was to shut down CPB: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/17/us/gingrich-foresees-a-world-without-public-broadcasting.html https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/17/us/gingrich-foresees-a-wo...
- paulryanrogers 4y agoSome segments and full episodes are free in the PBS Kids app on smart TVs. They appear to rotate over time, so I suspect there are rights issues involved. They may also not want to cannibalize viewing of local stations.
- citizenkeen 4y agoIt is public. HBO pays just for exclusiveness for some time. You can still watch those lost episodes, PBS still had the right to distribute them. They’re not gone, just gone from HBO.
- throwawaymaths 4y ago> Sesame Street must have received a significant amount of public funding over the years You'd be surprised by how little it is. Most pbs and ctw funds are derived through nonprofit foundations and "viewers like you" (and corporate sponsorship), NPR likewise has relatively little government funding. A good chunk of what does wind up coming from government gets earmarked for things like rural media access. While it's not zero, lots of things like science research, military weapons, get a much much bigger relative slice of their r&d funds from the public purse and still get to keep their IP.