11 ms·
My pay went from $240k to $0
- misssocrates 3y agoWhat are the odds there are missing details in this story?
- deltree7 3y agoA lot. But it would not make reddit/HN headlines. If OP had negotiated the contract in good faith, I don't think this would have been an issue, but if there were lot of assholery in getting that contract, the network is happy to stick it back
- harry8 3y agoLet's re-phrase that same, fair question. What are the odds that a story of hollywood skulduggery ripping off the non-famous is actually dishonestly maligning hollywood execs & deal makers? Possible, sure. My prior on hollywood execs turning out to actually be honest is pretty damn low. Yours?
- internetter 3y agoIs this bait and switch actually legal?
- DANmode 3y agoThat doesn't matter. What matters is having enough money or power to hold someone responsible for wronging you, without it ruining your life.
- sircastor 3y agoI suspect even with attorneys you have another risk of alienating yourself among producers and studios. If you have a bad reputation (like having the audacity to demand pay for your work) you find yourself unhireable.
- nullc 3y agoYou take the hit for actually suing, but if you look like you can afford to sue and win, you'll find that parties are magically more reasonable when you flag something unjust. That's part of the double prejudice-- that if you're in the class that looks like it can get its way you get your way without the costs. If you're not and you scrape together the resources, you'll actually have to spend them and be thought of a trouble maker for it.
- internetter 3y agoMakes sense. We have laws & a justice system to protect workers, I suppose, but the workers just can't apply them in this hostile system. Man. This isn't news of course, but a nice reminder.
- DANmode 3y agoI'm sorry, honestly...it sucks shit to write.
- gkoberger 3y agoWhich is why unions exist. No individual could fight back against "Hollywood", but combined they're able to.
- adastra22 3y agoIf they still wanted him to do work for the series after the switchover it would be slavery / indentured servitude. If they ever replayed the show on broadcast television I think he'd have a case for backpay.
- tshaddox 3y agoWe need to get used to describing things as legal only when there is reasonable access to the legal system to achieve justice. The laws should be judged according to what the actual outcomes are, not what some written law says.
- JBiserkov 3y ago"Single-digit millionaires have no effective access to the US legal system."
- eviks 3y agoThe studio lawyers say this is perfectly legal, why do you ask?
- quickthrower2 3y agoIANAL. I imagine he could win if he sued, because "broadcast" should be understand as, well a cast, i.e. distribution, transmission (technology agnostic), that is broad, i.e. to many people. If he is not the only person this has happened to, then such people could form a group and sue together.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoBroadcast, at least in some contexts means a radio or television transmission. Maybe it depends how old you are?
- mulderc 3y agoYes you are not a lawyer. These type of terms were very common and it is likely the contract even defined broadcast as being broadcast over the airwaves. There was not much money in other forms of distribution at that time. Also , this was probably a dummy contract (as in, only a dummy would sign it) but that was also probably the only offer on the table and most writer don’t have much, if any, leverage in these negotiations. The creator and show runner of Babylon 5 has talked extensively about these issues over the years and has commented on how much of the cast and crew only see residuals from the show being run on broadcast TV. A huge part of the previous writer strike was over these issues.
- shagie 3y agoSome of that bit from JMS on B5 can be found at http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/misc/cc-leave.html http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/misc/cc-leave.html regarding residuals, contracts, and Claudia Christian's departure from the show.
- wmf 3y agoIt probably was. I rarely defend unions but this is a case where a standard contract could help. If you do the work you should get paid.
- CameronNemo 3y agoThe PATRIOT Act. Read it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Wdo4J7uy0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2Wdo4J7uy0
- themodelplumber 3y agoI almost had something similar happen to me with music production & licensing (I was contracted to help build out an e-store library of sweet tunes and FX for Flash websites and interactive CD-ROMs, lol). It's a matter of perceived power and often some perceived norms as well. Fortunately somebody in my family had previously warned me about...was it Winston Groom? Anyway, I read the contract and got suspicious, and saw money being redirected in all kinds of sneaky ways before it would finally trickle in the direction of the actual creator, me! I called an attorney. The attorney was super upset about it after some review, so I ended up pushing back in the negotiations with what amounted to way too much effort. The attorney was new, but at least they were on my side... The contract was then handed off to someone with more time on their hands to negotiate with me. This person happened to be irritated by sneaky moves in general (lucky me) so he drafted a brief, completely new letter contract on the spot, right there with both of us in the office, and I signed it immediately. At the time this creative effort was meant to pay my rent, and to think I almost did a bunch of work for no reasonable recompense and therefore almost couldn't make rent despite hours and days and weeks spent on the project made me really angry. I still really feel for people who end up in that same kind of situation. If you are a creator you should at the very least know your industry groups. Whether you become an official member or not. Working in music and 3D animation more regularly a bit later on in my early career, I was surprised to find the Graphics Artist Guild Pricing and Ethical Guidelines handbook extremely helpful. It had a lot to say about contracts as well, IIRC, and the organization also put on helpful webinars on contracts even in the early 2000s. Few things felt quite as helpful around this topic as having someone who had negotiated hundreds of contracts with the Disney Corps of the world saying to you, "you are right to ask about that, and here are some ways to negotiate those terms" or just "that's a ridiculous thing to see in a contract, strike it out and give them my number if they complain".
- internetter 3y agoI'm hearing mixed thoughts on the general legality. Of course, even if it's illegal there's the practicalities of workers rarely being able to stand up for themselves, I guess outside of a union. > I still really feel for people who end up in that same kind of situation. But regardless, I think our systems have failed if such a contract can exist legally, or without repercussions (because you aren't breaking the law if you don't get caught)
- oh_sigh 3y agoNo, because the way he explains it, there is no consideration in the contract. "You give us something, and we give you nothing" is not a a valid contract. I bet there is something more to it than what he posted. Like, he got paid a certain wage, and would have received a bonus if the show was picked up by a major broadcaster.
- ggm 3y agoThe entire residuals model in content is a giant scam. Most people have no option to negotiate real money: its based on accounting firms returns on investment to the (shell) company which makes the content. they hide most of the profit in wierd finance games. So, the residuals? they dont have to be paid: its not "profitable" Alec Guinness is an example of somebody smart enough to make his residuals work in Star Wars. He is said to have been overjoyed at the income, but continued to be underjoyed (tm) in the product. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-guinness-star-wars-obi-wan-1235152814/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/alec-gui...
- gjsman-1000 3y agoAnother example: The Tolkien Estate got into a lawsuit with New Line because the movie rights came with a stipulation that they would receive a modest 7.5% of profits, if any. Notice the “if any.” The lawsuit was because New Line had used crazy accounting to argue that the whole Lord of the Rings movie series was unprofitable. Of course that’s absurd on its face (no profit on $6 billion of revenue?), but don’t underestimate accountants. New Line had so butchered the accounting, they even had the audacity to claim that LOTR was responsible for “horrendous losses.” Edit: Initially said Warner, because New Line is owned by Warner, but they weren’t back then and the lawsuits were involving New Line.
- cratermoon 3y agoHollywood Accounting is a world of its own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
- 93po 3y agoI wish they'd rename this from "hollywood" to "fraud"
- markdown 3y agoI mean, that's just embarrassing from The Tolkien Estate. Random bus drivers in third world backwaters know about Hollywood accounting. They should have negotiated for 7.5% of revenue.
- ecuaflo 3y agoThe Back button on Mastodon takes you back to your previous page in your history stack interestingly.
- fastball 3y agoSeems like there shouldn't even be a back button there if I have nowhere to go back to on Mastodon.
- fwlr 3y agoWeb pages have the ability to fire a “back event” that (I am pretty sure) works identically to clicking the back button on your browser. I imagine they’re using this because it’s very simple, you just put onClick(History.back) on the button and you’ve implemented a fully functional back button. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History/back https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History/bac... Many sites will of course eschew this simple solution in favour of custom back button logic (usually to the mild detriment of the user experience).
- robinson7d 3y agoOn the other hand: why? Browsers already have a back button that works that way. Users are used to back buttons on the page moving up some in-app hierarchy, which, admittedly maybe they oughtn’t be used to because maybe it’s not a good pattern in the first place. But instead of reimplementing the browser’s one and potentially confusing the users, why not remove the button entirely and have people use their browser’s more consistent UI? If the extra space is awkward surely there’s something else that can go there. There are useful cases for history.back, but I’m not sure a back button is it.
- fwlr 3y agoThere are good uses for app-specific back buttons, for sure! Two cases I’ve seen - one is a site with “single page app”ish flow for reading sequential posts, where rather than reloading the entire site it fetches just the JSON data for next and previous posts and updates the HTML; the back button here uses the already-fetched data rather than getting the whole site again. The other case used custom back logic on their site’s back button on form pages to avoid “re-sending form” pop-ups and to avoid losing entered form data. When I said “mildly detrimental” I was thinking of a specific example (go back to the previous page that is on the same domain, implemented solely to improve metrics), so perhaps I shouldn’t have said “usually”.
- javajosh 3y agoThere are too many situations in our society where money wins because they hire better lawyers. The solution is not to make more money to hire better lawyers, but to change the system so such a step isn't necessary. I don't know if people have noticed, but lawyers win when people fight, and the more they fight, the more complicated the law and the case, the more wealth is transferred to the legal profession. I'd like to see short contracts, arbitration, and reasonable support for pro se representation in court. Judges cannot and should not look down on self-representing litigants, and the law and court rules should not be so complex that an average citizen cannot navigate it. Of course, lawyers represent the single most powerful political bloc in the nation, so it's a tough road.
- deanCommie 3y ago*American society. Not to say the problem is nonexistent in other countries, but American society minimizes laws (due to worries about government overreach) and hand-waives away concerns because either the legal system, or worse "the free market" will decide and make everything just. It incentivizes a complete lack of individual ethics in any decision. "Is it legal? Then we should do it." is the only question being asked.
- fallingknife 3y ago> American society minimizes laws (due to worries about government overreach) Not sure how you come to that conclusion. Here's just one example of the opposite - almost 30% of US workers need a government license just to do their job: https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2013/11/is-the-us-%E2%80%9Cover-licensed%E2%80%9D-the-case-for-reforming-america%E2%80%99s-professional-licensing https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2013/11/is-the-us-%E2%80%9Co...
- lazyasciiart 3y agoThat’s part of the same trend: instead of writing laws, the government just says “you must be licensed by x group” and then that group writes the rules.
- 3y ago
- jpster 3y agoOff topic but this is the first time I’ve seen a Mastodon post hit #1 on HN. Interesting datapoint re Twitter’s self-imposed mortal wound.
- loeber 3y agoFirst time I've ever looked at a Mastodon post. The level of visual elements on the page is overwhelming. Not clean at all. Commensurate with its reputation for being overly complicated.
- mastodon183663 3y agoThe web interface assumes that you want some kind of tweet deck type thing. Most of the apps are very minimal, clean.
- loeber 3y agoReasonable assumption, but not for a first-time user who isn't logged in :)
- internetter 3y agoI agree the default UI is a little bit... Weird. I'd highly recommend checking out alternate ones. Despite it's quirks, "The grass is greener" is definitely true for the larger network.
- barathr 3y agoCheck out elk.zone: https://elk.zone/mstdn.social/@Devilstower/110299576469326182 https://elk.zone/mstdn.social/@Devilstower/11029957646932618... It's a Mastodon frontend that's super simple/clean.
- zimpenfish 3y agoSeems to have been hugged to death [edit: but back now] (Also from previous testing, it doesn't correctly support non-Mastodon instances which is depressing.)
- breck 3y ago[flagged]
- CameronNemo 3y agoYeah he should have just got paid a good wage as a talented writer, not some arcane formula based on residuals.
- Gunnerhead 3y agoI’m not sure I understand the difference or technicality. Could someone help explain?
- djmips 3y agoI am guessing that broadcast means 'over the air' and Sci Fi Channel is on cable. So they were not 'broadcast'. His contract was per 'broadcast' episode.
- hermannj314 3y agoBroadcast means an over-the-air on public airwaves and typically also implies a huge viewership, definitely so in 1999. The Sci-Fi channel was a cable television station and therefore not a "broadcast" station. However, broadcast can also mean, in a general sense, to air a show. I'm speculating here, but saying you will pay someone residuals if you "broadcast their show" may not have been a term that was equally understood by everyone. The writer and NBC both seem to have interpreted that term differently, to an amount that means nothing to NBC and a lot of money to an individual person.
- manuelmoreale 3y agoUnrelated but I find it amusing that your “however” sentence uses the definition “to air a show” that is clearly a reference to broadcasting something using air as a medium but in this context you were using it more broadly to include both air and cable.
- chihuahua 3y agoPresumably "Broadcast episode" means an episode shown on broadcast TV, which means "transmitted via radio waves" and is distinct from cable TV (channels only available via cable TV)
- carlivar 3y agoI wonder if that was the show "Sliders"?
- mulderc 3y agoIt is about the only show it could be but I thought sliders was on Fox initially.
- m3kw9 3y agoCapitalism at work? Seriously, why am I not surprised if they can get away with saving fees they wouldn’t? Big corps are ruthless, the calculations are cold. Unlike if you work for me personally for example I wouldnt want to screw someone that bad if I can help it
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hiyer 3y agoI thought it was some tech dude who got laid off, but this is so much worse.
- amatecha 3y agoDoes "per broadcast episode" not mean "per episode that was broadcast"? The irregular verb "broadcast" is the same whether present or past tense. Or is there some definition of "broadcast" specified at the top of the contract to make sure it's not interpreted as a past-tense verb? Or something? That said, good luck fighting it in court regardless I guess...
- wodenokoto 3y agoYeah. I mean, the point is he got cheated on a technicality, but my take away is "I want to know more about the technicality"
- amatecha 3y agoYeah exactly -- just how badly did he get screwed over? Or was it nearly "obvious" this might happen, knowing the industry? Contracts suck when it's an individual vs. a $multi-billion corporate behemoth.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- izaidi 3y ago"Broadcast" in this context means over-the-air terrestrial television, i.e. free networks like NBC, ABC and CBS. Sci-Fi (now Syfy) is a cable channel and writers have historically been paid less for cable shows.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- Moneyyyyy 3y agoNot getting it. Why would his salary change? Or is this again a waitress issue? Instead of paying them proper money they get nothing and royalty?
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoIf people are watching it then it is being broadcast so I’d dispute that. Clearly moving it to a different channel would be covered in the contract.