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Where do you draw the line? If an artist pays a model and paints her, is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting because it sucks, and because

• fl7305 3y ago
  > is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting Perhaps not prohibited. But we could make it so they lose all IP rights. Copyright is intended to promote the creation and distribution of new works. It is not a natural human right, like ownership of your physical things.
  • Terr_ 3y ago
    > Perhaps not prohibited. But we could make it so they lose all IP rights. I'm not sure how that would work. Suppose I make two draft comics of my original character ExampleMan. One features a dark brooding morally ambiguous anti-hero, and the other is a wholesome family character. Are you saying if I destroy one draft and publish the other, the character comes partially or wholly into the public domain? Or that I am prohibited from claiming the time and money used to make one of the drafts as the legitimate business expense? Would same logic also apply to a patents of a company that creates 10 different prototype engine designs, and decides to only bring one of them to market?
    • AlbertCory 3y ago
      Good points. Normally, your discarded drafts are just written off as the cost of creating the keeper. It's not worth anyone's time to put them all out for bid. However, for a really big project, there's a "salvage value" or "scrap value." It's not zero.
    • Dylan16807 3y ago
      Do those 10 engines have ten different patents? Then definitely take away 9 of those patents if they won't use them or FRAND license them. If all the prototypes were for the same patent, there's no issue. For the draft comics, I think you could pretty well argue those are part of the same work. And I'd be okay excluding projects under a certain size from the rule.
    • fl7305 3y ago
      You can't have your cake and eat it. If you want to use copyright protection, you should only be able to do so after making your work public. If you then destroy your original work or refuse to let other people use it on reasonable terms, you can't sue people for copyright infringement when they use it. > Would same logic also apply to a patents of a company that creates 10 different prototype engine designs, and decides to only bring one of them to market? I think you shouldn't be able to use patent protection unless you also make your design available on the market for a reasonable fee.
      • fauigerzigerk 3y ago
        Do you seriously think that artists should not be allowed to throw away drafts they don't like?
  • gruez 3y ago
    >But we could make it so they lose all IP rights. If they're actually destroying all copies as claimed, then IP rights is irrelevant.
    • fl7305 3y ago
      > then IP rights is irrelevant. Not if someone managed to make a copy of the movie. And I don't think you should be able to use copyright protection unless you register a copy with a central authority. Just like how patents work.
  • zokier 3y ago
    In what sense is ownership of physical things natural human right?
    • Exoristos 3y ago
      To take it to the primitive level, the thing in your grasp is in your grasp and not in else's. "Intellectual" property is really not like that at all altho we spend tremendously on legal artifice and violent enforcement to make it so.
    • pawelmurias 3y ago
      There are biological instincts to defend your stuff. Like animals will attack you when you try to steal their things.
      • DoughnutHole 3y ago
        Many animals are extremely social - they'll attack you for taking the group's resources, they won't necessarily have any individual resources. At the extreme end you have things like ants with no individuality, but you also have social mammals that are more group-oriented than individual-oriented. If you look at anthropology pre-modern humans were extremely family/tribe oriented. Resources were generally the property of the tribe as a whole. I don't think that the modern understanding of personal property would translate well to someone from such a culture, which makes me sceptical of the idea that personal property is an innate element of human nature.
• sokoloff 3y ago
  I don't think they need to claim that "no one would pay even $1 for the rights to the movie in its current state" but rather the lesser "in our judgment, the best thing for us as a profit-seeking studio is for us to not release this movie". Damage to the Batgirl franchise brand, damage to the studio reputation, damage to the relationship with the stars, legal fees, etc. could all be reasonably factored in to the studio's judgment to scrap the current WIP.
  • AlbertCory 3y ago
    You are confusing "not releasing it" with "claiming a value of zero."
    • sokoloff 3y ago
      If they irretrievably destroy it, its value becomes zero. That's the essence of being able to claim the tax loss (to "finally determine the value"). It's no different from having a stock position in a company that's in limbo. You can't claim the tax loss and keep the position. You have to get the clearinghouse to take the position for $0 in order to claim the loss. The studio's position is that they've already incurred the loss; now they're taking the action necessary to recognize the loss on their taxes.
      • AlbertCory 3y ago
        In the IRS's eyes, you destroyed an item that had value. Its value was whatever someone was willing to pay for it. Say $30M. If you destroyed it, that was your choice, but you didn't thereby incur a loss of $30M. Any more than if you had dynamited your HQ building.
        • gruez 3y ago
          >If you destroyed it, that was your choice, but you didn't thereby incur a loss of $30M. Any more than if you had dynamited your HQ building. Where's the line between "dynamited your HQ building" and "investing money into FTX"? Both are intentional activities that leads to total loss of value, but I think most people would agree that the latter is tax deductible.
• Schnitz 3y ago
  Where do you draw the line? If someone buys the Mona Lisa and burns it for the tax credit, is the owner to be prohibited from doing so based on the public interest?
  • Notatheist 3y ago
    I feel the Mona Lisa's destruction would be more valuable to culture than its continued existence. Imagine the headlines, the people with stories of having seen it in person, the conspiracy theories...
  • AlbertCory 3y ago
    Try being realistic. Is "cultural treasure" your line?
  • derivative7 3y ago
    If I pay 25% marginal income tax and I make a profit of 200 million dollars, I get to keep 150 million. If instead I decide to buy the Mona Lisa for 200 million dollars, and burn it I walk away with nothing but the satisfaction of not have given one cent to the government. Please tell me how my evil mastermind plan to burn the Mona Lisa works anyway?
    • nerdponx 3y ago
      Buying the Mona Lisa for $200m is not at all the same thing as netting a $200m profit. Better analogy: you buy a big museum collection that contains some lost Rembrandt paintings, widely regarded as his worst, but still considered valuable because it's Rembrandt. You think you might have a hard time selling them, so you look up their original purchase price and find that it was $1 million, so you burn them instead and claim a $1 million writeoff, for a guaranteed $250k decrease in taxes for essentially 0 additional cost, resulting in $250k of extra profit.
      • prepend 3y ago
        This example doesn’t work. You’d only be able to deduct your cost to buy them, not their potential value. It only works if you pay $1M now and then years later burn them to offset a different $1M in income. But that would still be stupid as you’re better off selling them for $1M than burning. I don’t think you’re thinking the math through properly. Studios aren’t writing these off because they are stupid or scheming. They are writing them off because they can’t sell them.
• lekangoo 3y ago
  We can draw the line right here. We don't need spurious analogies when we have a clear case where a company is abusing the tax system.
  • nerdponx 3y ago
    We don't need to draw any line. Larger corporate entities should get progressively smaller caps on deductions. Hard cutoffs breed adverse incentives.
    • prepend 3y ago
      You think that some costs shouldn’t be tax deductible? So companies should pay taxes not only on profit, but revenue independent of profit? I don’t think that would have a positive effect as you imagine.
  • prepend 3y ago
    How is the tax system abused?
• ysofunny 3y ago
  where to draw the line? when other people get their hands on the files we must admit (and later on embrace) the digital possibilities we have. if the artist or model want it deleted they best make sure nobody copied it first else, in my opinion, they must convince every person holding a copy from voluntarily agreeing to destroy it. nobody should have a right to force other persons to act against their own will even if they created some artifact they no longer fully control
• zoky 3y ago
  > The solution to their "attribution" problem was found by directors a long time ago when they didn't want their names on a film: it's directed by "Alan Smithee." That’s not exactly how that works. A director can’t just decide to take their name off a film because they don’t like it. They have to petition the DGA for permission to do so, which is only granted in the event that the director can show that the producers took creative control away from the director and substantially changed the product from the director’s creative vision as a result. In practice, this rarely happens, as the DGA is extremely reluctant to allow directors to take their names off of movies simply because they weren’t happy with how it turned out. Also, “Alan Smithee” isn’t actually used as a pseudonym anymore, but that’s beside the point.
  • AlbertCory 3y ago
    Your point, whether you realize it or not, is that Hollywood is heavily unionized. The contracts that all the talent sign specify who owns the final product, and what will happen to it if it's a bust. So that's the real answer. The unions have to make this an issue. Or maybe they already have.
• prepend 3y ago
  > It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up How so? They aren’t selling it. So its value is $0. If the artist burns the painting, its value is $0. Is it bad because the artist could have sold it and chose not to? And it’s not fraud, because if the studio ever chooses to sell, they will pay taxes on 100% since they already deducted all expenses. I’m not really sure what you’re arguing. What’s the alternative? The IRS forcing you sell at a liquidated value so you only deduct 90% instead of 100%? This seems like a really odd argument.
  • theshrike79 3y ago
    > How so? They aren’t selling it. So its value is $0. If its value is $0, I should be able to buy it for that price.
    • prepend 3y ago
      That’s not how private property works. The owner doesn’t have to sell to you. Have you ever had a car totaled? Just because the insurance company salvages your vehicle doesn’t mean you get to buy it for that value.
      • Dylan16807 3y ago
        The company's officers are obligated to be fiscally responsible. If they won't accept half a million dollars for something with negligible value, they're not being responsible.
      • sokoloff 3y ago
        I agree with your first paragraph, but my experience with the second is that I’ve always been offered it at that figure. (The insurance company is negotiating with you to buy the car from you. They may not want to present it in those terms, but that’s what’s going on. You own it; they have an obligation to you; in some cases, it’s advantageous to all sides for the insurance company to buy the wreckage from you. If they think they can get $X for salvage, it’s cheaper and easier to offer it to you for that; it ends storage fees, avoids transport and selling costs, and in most states avoids them paying sales tax to you on the salvage amount.)
• smarx007 3y ago
  At claiming a tax break. A tax write off is intended to help you when you suffer a loss. In this case, a company does not suffer a loss but inflicts it on itself by destroying its asset without even trying to liqudate it properly.
  • cryptonym 3y ago
    Change the rule so destroying in purpose no longer qualify for tax break and someone will accidentally the only hard drive.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
• pradn 3y ago
  Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fall into the void?
  • hyperhello 3y ago
    Many people believe that banning disliked things is not what laws are for. If it was you’d see the powerful banning everything they didn’t like, making the law tyranny, and the powerless banning everything they didn’t like, and you get the French Revolution.
    • pradn 3y ago
      This is again "slippery slope" thinking. Just because it's possible to go to an extreme - and this is possible in everything humans do - that doesn't mean we don't go somewhere along the line. We have laws to ban poisons from food, but we don't ban junk food altogether. We have laws to cap the speed limit, but not at 30mph on a highway - etc etc. We pick a spot on the spectrum.
    • interroboink 3y ago
      > Many people believe that banning disliked things is not what laws are for Surely some laws are for exactly that? Like: murder, rape, theft, etc? I'm taking your statement a bit out of context, and I don't have much involvement in this overall issue being discussed, but that statement on its own seems pretty off to me.
      • LoganDark 3y ago
        Those things being disliked doesn't mean a law shouldn't be made about them. They are much worse than merely being disliked, which is why there are laws.
• jfdh6 3y ago
  On the flip side the artists and engineers in the Western Entertainment Industry dont complain about Tax subsidies, govt grants and advantages they have in terms of access to capital, cheap outsourced labour to do boring or dirty work etc. that artists and engineers sitting elsewhere somewhere else dont. When the rest of the world looks at them, propped up by an extremely unequal playing field engineered by the financial class, there is nothing Fair to see.
• imgabe 3y ago
  The line is at claiming a loss for tax purposes. Destroy the film if you like, but then you get no tax break. There's a similarity with the "hobby loss rule". In order to be a valid business who can deduct business expenses like losses, you have to demonstrate that you have a "profit intent". That means that you make at least an attempt to turn a profit on your work. If you don't, it's considered a hobby and you don't get to deduct any expenses. If Warner Bros is going to make movies just to delete them without even trying to sell them, that sounds like they're just indulging in a movie-making hobby rather than being in the movie business.
  • s1artibartfast 3y ago
    Warner Brothers has not only intent, but a demonstrated profit margin, which they are deducting the movie from. Why shouldn't they be able to deduct there very real losses.
    • imgabe 3y ago
      They're not real losses. They could sell the movie. They could release it. They're deliberately forgoing those options and deleting it. You don't have a loss until you attempt to generate revenue and find that the revenue is less than your expenses. If you just throw your product away, that's not a loss. Ultimately we write tax policy for the benefit of society, not for Warner Bros. In theory, we could write tax law so that it made financial sense for a factory to produce widgets and send them directly into an incinerator, because they could claim this as a "loss" and offset profits from other activities. But we shouldn't have a tax law that does that, because that's a huge waste of society's resources (materials for the widgets, fuel for the incinerator, people's time and labor). We could use those resources to do something more productive and tax laws should encourage companies to do productive things that improve the world, not spin their wheels for imaginary losses. If you deliberately burn down your house and try to collect insurance on it, we call that insurance fraud. If you deliberately destroy your product and try to claim a tax loss on it, that should be fraud too.
      • s1artibartfast 3y ago
• Veserv 3y ago
  That is easy. If they claim the contract-encumbered work is worth 0 dollars for tax reasons, then anybody (who does not intend to commit breach of contract) should be allowed to buy the fully encumbered work for 0 dollars and the original owner can take the loss/write-off. That should get like the central 90% of cases. Probably need some fine-tuning to get the rest and reduce opportunities for abuse (maybe some minimums, deposits for legally complex products, etc.), but the core concept should be sufficient to develop a robust solution.
  • throwaway69123 3y ago
    Public auction seems appropriate
  • cryptonym 3y ago
    I create multiple movies, one works well and I think to myself I pay too much taxes this year. I sell the next one for 0 dollars to my cousin so I can write it off immediately. If the movie works, money stays in the family, if it doesn't I already got deductions and it was a no-op for my cousin.
    • Veserv 3y ago
      Oh no, you are presenting a simple problem that would take you, cryptonym, all of 30 seconds to figure out a solution to since you are obviously smart enough to think things through. In fact, you could even cheat by looking at the other responder who responded before you suggesting a public auction which is what I was alluding to by saying "anybody" as in you must allow all people (within reason) to compete to purchase, not choose a specific person. Can you try to spend 30 seconds countering whatever problems you came up with and only then propose non-trivial problems? I promise I gave the idea more than 30 seconds of thought and did think of the obvious problems, it is just tiring to exhaustively list out and pedantically enumerate a complete proposal instantiated for this specific domain. That is also why I explicitly said it solves the central 90% and would require tuning and mechanisms to reduce abuse since I do, in fact, know the proposal is incomplete, just that the problems I am aware of with this class of solution generally appear to be quite amenable to solutions that should be at least as robust as the status quo.
• gmerc 3y ago
  “Where do we draw the line” is the most common argument for inaction on a complex dilemma. Society can always choose to draw the line. We always draw the line - criminal code, taxation, copyright. The answer is - you gather a work group legitimized by democratic process and figure it out.
  • lobocinza 3y ago
    The issue is that the people complaining only like the democratic process when it agrees with them.
• konschubert 3y ago
  If the market value was nonzero, why would they be scrapping it? They could still count the delta between their production cost and the money they got as a loss and deduct that from their taxable income, no? They have no incentive to underestimate the value of the final product. Income - expenses = taxable earnings. As a business, the money you get by earning a dollar is always bigger than the taxes you pay on it. If they’re scrapping it, they are clearly deciding that the cost of finishing and marketing this movie is greater than the value of the movie. What am I missing?
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • Majromax 3y ago
    > What am I missing? I'm a bit confused about the accounting details as well, but I think the key bit is that a scrapped movie becomes an immediate tax write-off, whereas a released move must depreciate its costs over time. By writing the movie off entirely, Warner Brothers foregoes the marginal profit from releasing the movie (income less distribution costs, considering the movie itself to be a sunk cost), but in return it can claim the tax benefits now rather than over time. At some implied internal interest rate (where a dollar today is worth more than a dollar next year), that makes sense. Unless there's some detail that I've missed in the above, Warner Brothers seems very desperate to bolster its current accounting profits at the expense of longer-term financial health.
• andybak 3y ago
  I don't believe that the artist's wishes should always win out. We would have lost Kafka if his wishes were followed. I don't believe copyright should always win out. We nearly lost Nosferatu. As for ownership? We lost a wonderful portrait of Churchill because it displeased his wife. There are countless lost works - late Sibelius, a ton of Brahms, Bacon and Monet paintings. History judges such things severely. Unless you believe in a specific variant of life-after-death then an artist's wishes only carry moral weight whilst they are still around. Destruction has effects that last forever.
• qingcharles 3y ago
  Does art belong to the artist or the public? I only ask because of things like the alterations to Star Wars by Lucas. It felt like he was modifying something that no longer belonged to him. At the other end of the spectrum you have the Bobs who refuse any manipulation or sequels to Back to the Future and turned down Universal's offer of a 3D conversion of the movies, which I actually thought might be OK.
• Procrastic 3y ago
  How about a floor of, say, $1mn USD expenditure? Spend less than that on a media product, and you can axe it as you like without any release. Spend more than that, and if you want a tax write off it goes straight to the public domain.