Gun culture in America is so ironic. People buy these weapons for protection and to feel powerful, but having them makes you a target for violent crime; justifies deadly force by the State; and makes you a threat to yourself. This guy posts photos of his wall-o-guns and ghillie suit to look like a badass threat, and it sure did. To the feds!
In the civilized countries of the world. A 74 yo man can be rolled into custody by a pair of officers with a can of mace between them. In America, they have to go in like it’s the rebel camp in Predator(1987).
I don’t get any money from the systems I setup at work as an IT worker years ago, even if they are used every day in perpetuity and make the company billions.
Where’s my income in perpetuity for creative problem solving?
Ok… but then why would they pay to have it done in the first place?
I’ve solved issues that have saved transit riders hundreds of thousands of hours of time… but so have other people. I don’t know how such an accounting of the return for investment I made would work.
When my solutions stop working as well, due to misc design/need drift, how do we decide how much I lose and the next me gets?.
If investors do 0 work and generate 0 value, why are they included at all?
Writers and actors should cut out investors and make their content independently. If they need money, they could borrow some under the condition that they share the profits if their content makes money. Wait a second…
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work? Your compensation package was different. Did you not have a steady job? Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I think the latent question here is - how we’re expectations and/or contracts for writers any different from hourly workers who have never expected royalties?
The previous comment did most of the work for you. Writers, actors, crew, and generally everyone involved in the entertainment industry does not have a salary gig like office workers. They aren’t working consistently–which has only gotten worse in the streaming era–and thus rely on royalties as part of their total compensation.
So, in summary, they are completely different situations that cannot be directly compared.
I don’t think I’m ignorant of these things - I am, by choice, a contractor, but in a different field (engineering services). My contracts specify that the deliverables are “works for hire” and that the client owns all IP, and I am not entitled to residuals or royalties or any other income from the work I’ve done under such contracts.
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?Because there are plenty of analogous (i.e. IP-generating) jobs that don’t have such arrangements.
It’s different with writers, because if their contracts worked like ours did they would have no hope of retiring. So when a fat fish like Suits comes along everyone who has a hand in making it is hoping to swing that either into money or more lucrative work.
That’s the way I’ve come to see it. Actual writers may disagree
This is about who holds the IP. Sometimes, depending on the employer and contract, an engineer will get to share in a patent created in the course of the job. Or might have incentives such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) or options.
So it’s not true that the IT folks are exclusively paid salary. Many share in the risk as well as the returns of their firms.
Let’s unpack that.
Yes, there are ‘writers for hire’ in licenced tie-in fiction and comics. These authors get a flat advance BUT they still get royalties based on the number of books or comics sold. That is - base payment and then returns based on success if the product.
Film and television writers are compensated by residuals in addition to salary. The studio owns the IP but the creators have a stake. It’s a risk and return sharing relationship with the studio. That’s the standard arrangement.
How is this different from an ESOP or options as an incentive remuneration?
How would an IT employee feel if a firm licenced the IP and then excluded its value from the calculation of ESOPs and options due, or the dividends on the nonvoting shares issued to employees?
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?
What do you mean by “more”, and relative to what? The main complaint from writers are that in recent years the trend has been them all getting paid significantly less. Not just a few percentage points, more like 1-10% of what they used to get.
So, they want to get paid the same as they used to, which is more than currently but not “more” when looked at from a longer time frame.
There are freelance/gig workers in other industries. Programming has had a massive freelance market for ages. It’s practically unheard of for them to receive royalties, so it seems like you don’t need to rely on royalties.
And writers do have a salary gig in the vast majority of cases. It’s just usually not a long term position. They are hired for the duration of the project, and then need to find something new.
That’s not unique to writers or Hollywood at all. Many people are hired for the duration of a project, including managers, engineers, construction workers and so on. None of them receive royalties.
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work?
Writing as a profession gets this too in many scenarios.
Your compensation package was different.
Almost everyone’s is. It’s all based on what you can convince people to pay you and the real winners are the ones who are friends and family of the ownership and/or executives, always.
Did you not have a steady job?
Can good writers not land steady jobs? Of course they can! Have I always had a steady job? Of course not!
Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I have had many roles in IT that you never know when something can or would happen to terminate employment. I’ve had an entire department let go so they could shift the work to another group. I’ve had acquisitions happen where getting a pitiful severance is commonplace. I’ve seen MANY contract roles where a hiring manager on a whim can choose to terminate employment and you’re left holding the bag. As an employee you NEVER know if you’re going in there next week, you just hope that you are. After all, you are an employee at-will. This is most roles as very few have duration contracts overall.
I wish IT workers would unionize and demand better pay - but then outsourcing would be even more prevalent than it is. Show business isn’t known for meritocracy in high paying roles anyway.
Paying people in perpetuity for doing one role for a small period of time is aligned with permanent ownership and dividends of something. Why writers wouldn’t just ask for stock or buy stock with earnings like everybody else is puzzling. There are so many stories about abuse with contract negotiation by people at all levels of showbusiness that i’d argue the whole thing should be overhauled but any disruption causes some to win and some to lose… and we couldn’t have anyone brought down to the same level of anyone else, could we? Let’s just keep those executive pay and bonus structures the same as they’ve always been too while we’re at it, wouldn’t want to stop their meteoric rise in wage y/y while the rest of us get boned.
This just in: different payment structures are different. Different valuation of output is different. Unfair under-valuations are unfair. What a discovery.
I don’t understand why people are so up in arms around artists and the entertainment industry. Flat payment is commonplace in most industries. These people agreed to the payment they were given.
You basically agree to it with a knife in your back because it is the only deal available and they’re using the money and power against your desire to be heard or seen.
And now they’re put here trying to get a better agreement because the last one has resulted in not paying a living wage for many of them, and you’re here bitching about them doing this for crab-bucket reasons.
Explain why you think people shouldn’t fight for a liveable wage.
I think I can see where you are coming from here. The difference between your creativity and writers, actors, musicians is that while your work is used by the company you built the system for that company isn’t selling it to someone else. You built infrastructure.
Writers, actors, and musicians work is being sold by the companies they work for as a revenue stream.
The platform that IT Engineers created for netflix is being sold by the companies they work for as a revenue stream.
See what I did there? Your argument is that they are more important but in reality they are replaceable like everyone is. Most of the writers out there aren’t in high paying GRRMartin level roles, they’re writing episodes of sitcoms and reality TV. The quality is all over the place.
so you saying, if a book are publish and sold, a writer only paid for writing the book and all the profit should go to the publisher only?
or song writer should be paid one off for writing a song and all the profit should go to music label only?
and no, netflix not selling the platform. it is like saying Grocery store sold their store everyday. it make no sense. the engineer is a builder, they build a platform. netflix pay them for the platform, netflix sell stuff on said platform.
So, as an engineer in the oil industry, should I be paid a % of all the sales in projects I’ve been a part of? These weiters are paid a salary for their work (I assume), a book author is usually not.
How about if one person should make money in perpetuity for doing a job, everyone should?
You want to keep paying the architect, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and all the other construction crew that worked on your house right?
Oh wait… not that…
Maybe payment in perpetuity is a bad idea because it just funnels wealth to the few at the expense of the many… I mean it’s ok to charge people a billion times for something done a single time right?
There’s a huge philosophical discussion here, but instead you want to throw names. Things are the way they are overwhelmingly because of arbitrary bullshit.
Intellectual Property is a construct enabling monopolies and generating billions of dollars off the trivial reproduction of work done by others. All this perpetual money making bullshit is just piggybacking off of something that never should have been.
Intellectual Property is abused by monopolies, sure, but it’s not a construct made by those monopolies. If you write a book you should have rights to how that book is distributed. That’s the idea behind copyright.
If you write a book you should have rights to how that book is distributed. That’s the idea behind copyright.
Copyright is all about preventing anyone else from profiting off of your work by simply copying your work. Thanks to Mickey Mouse that duration is now life+70 years which is absurd.
Distilling the concept down and removing the nuance: As of today if you produce a written work you have monopoly control over that work for life+70 years unless you sign contracts stating otherwise.
Today, copyright as a construct creates monopolies that survive the creator.
In the case of Drug copyright, the duration is 20 years from the invention, which generally ends up being about 10 years after clinical trials to make money before anyone can make a copy. I struggle to see why the rules do not evenly apply, but the rationale behind drugs seems to be that humans benefit from them being available for as cheap as possible. If we had 20 year durations on TV and Movie copyrights it would be better for the masses and would give creators decades to earn profits on their work.
Drug makers try everything possible to extend copyrights on their drugs by doing things like creating medical devices with superior delivery methods in the case of injectable drugs. Since the new delivery method is more effective the old one is generally not used and so generics have to then wait for the delivery method to be out of copyright… This is just one example though. There’s no promises a generic drug ever comes to market if the drug is not widely used. The same shenanigans would be used by the entertainment industry to re-package their content with remastered versions or re-scanned original films like they have done with DVD, Blu-Ray and Streaming versions. Extended editions would also be an option… but the original copy would be free for all to enjoy after 20 years.
Why anyone is able to profit off of the original edition of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings for another hundred years is beyond me, it should just be free and available to everyone imo. The money has been made.
That’s my opinion anyway. Monopolies and income in perpetuity are horrible concepts generally only abused by the few at the detriment of the many. In the real world many just pirate content anyway. If it were up to rights’ holders NO copies even for personal use would be allowed. They would just have us pay per view even for copies we purchased.
I can agree with most of what you wrote. I’m not entirely convinced the life +70 protections for some things is wrong. An artist should have control over their work, but once they pass things need to become public domain. I’ll go one step further and say that no one should be able to own things they didn’t create or commission. The Happy Birthday story is a prime example.
My argument wasn’t that they are more important. My observation was that the things writers, actors, and musicians produce is being sold over and over and over for other people’s profit.
Apparently my mistake was in thinking that the IT infrastructure created was purely infrastructure in the same vein as electrical, plumbing, or even physical buildings. I didn’t know that the IT systems created to provide streaming services was being sold to other streaming platforms without credit to the designers.
And before anyone thinks I am saying electricians, plumbers, carpenters and the like aren’t creative I am NOT saying that. A family member is a plumber and the stuff he has to dream up to get stuff to work is incredible.
Did you take your job at a rate of pay based on getting paid residuals in perpetuity?
This is like you taking a contract where they continue to pay you a licence fee for each server that they use your product on, then they move the product to a cloud system so they can get the output of 100 servers with only a single server licence.
Wait writers normally get royalties for their work? What the fuck that’s amazing, so Netflix is just in violation of a contract then? Why doesn’t the WGA just sue them?
I don’t understand how streaming isn’t just considered syndication. It seems like a dictionary definition of what it was, even if it didn’t exist when syndication agreements were made.
It’s a rerun of a show on a separate channel/platform. And the writers/actors should get the agreed revenue for it the same as if it were on TMC, nick at night or Netflix b
Indeed. an impartial judge wouldn’t let studios split hairs over words like this but as long as they’re appointed by politicians, they will side with whoever has the deeper pockets, because that’s what’s required for a continuing bright career.
One of my brothers fell off a cliff, and another one jumped off a cliff and broke his neck (a few years apart). You always push it a little more and a little more every hike, and then all of a sudden you realize life is dangerous.
Two-thirds of gun-related deaths are suicides. This obsession enables people who are hurting and struggling to end their lives, and in some cases, the lives of many people around them first.
There’s way more firearm accidents and suicides than incidents where guns actually helped. They make everyone, especially gun owners, less safe. If safety is the primary concern, the less guns the better.
I didn't read the affidavit, but folks are reporting that it doesn't justify the warrant for identity theft. I'm sure there are spurious allegations of a crime are in it.
Edit:
An affidavit justifying the warrant is being withheld by County Attorney Joel Ensey, whose brother owns the hotel where Newell has her restaurant.
If this is a prejudice your truly hold, have fun trying to develop any kind of deep relationship, romantic or otherwise, with a man ever in your life …
Nah, it’s all rape. We know for a fact, statistically, that men are the rapists by an overwhelming majority. When women are responsible for 90+% of sexual violence then we can say women are the problem. Until then, men are the problem. Because we have this data and it isn’t incorrect or interpreted incorrectly. Stop covering for the rapists, bro.
Pining it on a gender or any other human characteristic that you cannot control is as stupid as it can get.
Raping is caused by men
Sodomy is caused by gay people
Murders are caused by black people
The economy is shit because of Jews (Godwin in 2)
And then the positive ones:
Women are better for handling money
Asians are better at math
Black people are faster
I would love to go on and on with this. But as you can see, it’s a fallacy that will get you to flawed conclusions, and dangerous if you plan to act upon them. Because by that point, you could say that killing all the men is a very good thing to do in order to avoid raping. And we all know where that goes.
I’ll just stop my post here because I think I made my case, and I would love for you to reconsider your position, even if you don’t change it, in light of understanding how dangerous that way of thinking is.
“Over half of women and almost 1 in 3 men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes. One in 4 women and about 1 in 26 men have experienced completed or attempted rape. About 1 in 9 men were made to penetrate someone during his lifetime. Additionally, 1 in 3 women and about 1 in 9 men experienced sexual harassment in a public place.”
Let’s do domestic violence next! You can learn all sorts of new things about men today.
“1 in 4 women and 1 in 9 men experience severe intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner contact sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking with impacts such as injury, fearfulness, post-traumatic stress disorder, use of victim services, contraction of sexually transmitted diseases, etc.
1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. This includes a range of behaviors (e.g. slapping, shoving, pushing) and in some cases might not be considered “domestic violence.” 1 1 in 7 women and 1 in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner.
1 in 10 women have been raped by an intimate partner. Data is unavailable on male victims.1 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men have been victims of severe physical violence (e.g. beating, burning, strangling) by an intimate partner in their lifetime.
1 in 7 women and 1 in 18 men have been stalked by an intimate partner during their lifetime to the point in which they felt very fearful or believed that they or someone close to them would be harmed or killed”
Crazy how women are the ones being abused more! I would have thought, based on an argument I heard about not feeding into stereotypes, that it would have been more evenly distributed /s
I guess men are just statistically much more likely the aggressor in the majority of sexual/domestic violence.
Most likely Border Patrol or some group of “Compassionate” Conservatives. Who else would do something as inhumane? Literally nobody else has the motivation.
Border Patrol has a long history of destroying water stores left out for migrants. It’s usually plastic jugs that they slash open and leave behind to be found by the migrants, which is almost worse to find than just taking the water and USBP knows that.
Dissolve the supreme court. Jail every justice that has so much as bummed a cigarette from anyone related to anyone who had business before the court. You want your word to be law and the only real oversight to be literal death? You need to be beyond the shadow of reproach. You should be held to the highest standard that we can imagine.
Seriously. You’re going to jerk off, in public, on an airplane, post-9/11 when there is so much security, next to a minor? What thought process, if any, leads you to do this?
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