Disney's writer wage theft, a year on

Even if I try to understand Disney&#x27;s argument in the most favorable light possible, I cannot follow it. Thinking through different situations, I can&#x27;t come up with any that make sense to me.<p>* If I consider &quot;We acquire assets not liabilities&quot; in a bankruptcy court, that could make sense to me, because that is the context in which assets are pooled together to cover the highest priority liabilities while voiding all other liabilities. This clearly isn&#x27;t the case because the Star Wars assets were not acquired through a bankruptcy court.<p>* If I consider it as a purchase of assets from another company, then the liabilities stay with the original company. This clearly isn&#x27;t the case because Lucasfilm no longer exists as an independent company.<p>* If I consider it as a purchase of assets, followed by the original company declaring bankruptcy, that could result in assets being purchased with liabilities no longer existing. This clearly isn&#x27;t the case, because Lucasfilm was acquired and merged with Disney, and never itself declared bankruptcy.<p>I can&#x27;t come up with any explanation in which Disney&#x27;s defense makes any bit of sense whatsoever.

&quot;For 40 years, corporations benefited from the Reagan-era doctrine of &quot;consumer welfare,&quot; an antitrust theory that embraces monopoly as &quot;efficient&quot; and explicitly excludes the effect of monopoly on worker pay from consideration.&quot;<p>Don&#x27;t forget to also thank Diane Feinstein for her roles as a life-long Disney shill and a staunch defender of the unholy mess that is copyright law in defense of big media.<p>Consider this strange comment for a US Senator to make about a corporate CEO change:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.feinstein.senate.gov&#x2F;public&#x2F;index.cfm&#x2F;press-releases?ID=19AB764A-49FF-4FE8-9B7E-AF9F8B1BAF18" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.feinstein.senate.gov&#x2F;public&#x2F;index.cfm&#x2F;press-rele...</a>

Awesome reminder that if you steal a soda from Disney World the police will enforce the law (with extreme violence if they want) but if Disney steals from you <i>no one</i> will enforce the law.

The legal term of art for this is &quot;fraudulent conveyance&quot;. &quot;We strip off all assets and then declare bankruptcy&quot; has been a known failure mode for like 500 years.<p>cf, <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fraudulent_Conveyances_Act_1571" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fraudulent_Conveyances_Act_157...</a>

Anecdotal, but a friend of mine who wrote for Marvel comics in the 80s and 90s told me that she (and all the other Marvel writers) has a few % royalties for the characters and stories they wrote, and that neither she nor her peers from back then have received anything after some corporate restructuring that happened before the Disney days (I think they declared bankruptcy to get out of those)?

The copyright law, as it currently exists in the US[0], is an unholy mess created by dozens of interest groups with more or less lobbying power.<p>It has nothing whatsoever to do with promoting creativity, arts, or making sure artists can live off their work. It has everything to do with how much muscle somebody had in negotiations and lobbying.<p>If you have doubts, read &quot;How to suceed in the music business&quot; and weep. (Film is worse, and for books, just read the OP)<p>[0] And most other countries I&#x27;m aware of, to a different&#x2F;lesser extent.

So the “we acquire assets not liabilities” argument forwarded by Disney… I have heard of many acquisitions that follow this model.<p>Any lawyer&#x2F;lawyer-adjacent people have any thoughts about the validity? It does feel pretty uncontroversial that Disney owns the book contents but is it obvious that the royalty payment scheme must transfer with that? But the opposite seems odd as well…

So I was working at this place...at one point the boss asked my why I&#x27;m leaving right on time every single time. Very direct. Meaning why I don&#x27;t let him steal from me. Not basically, literally.<p>I said, &quot;I show up on time, so I leave on time too.&quot;<p>I was the only person in the company who arrived before the clock, without fail, including the boss, including everybody. It was a weird thing, I got a ride and that meant I showed up early, saved time. So I just stood there waiting for the work to start in any capacity, for the second person to arrive. On standby. And I did in fact allow a little wage theft, don&#x27;t even consider it in those terms, the standby and in addition the ten minutes before the shift started where I&#x27;d already be helping the business start its day, unlocking places and readying stuff, undeniably still work.<p>A little unpaid overtime <i>before</i> is different than <i>after</i>.<p>But when the shift ends, the boss might get an extra 30 seconds today, or 10 seconds less tomorrow, but there is no mercy. If the boss starts a fire to try to get me to stay I will call the fire department on my way home.<p>The clock is the boss&#x27;s boss.

I can&#x27;t wrap my head around this &quot;the assets but not the liabilities&quot; argument.<p>Surely the asset in question here is &quot;the right to publish a work in exchange for paying royalties&quot;, no? The right to publish without paying anything can&#x27;t be something Disney acquired, because Lucasfilm never had that right to begin with.<p>It&#x27;s as absurd buying a company and saying you acquired the asset of the employee work contracts, but not the liability of having to pay them salaries. How can anyone say this stuff with a straight face?

Holy mother of Mickey Mouse I had no idea. Cancelling the Disney+ subscription now. Bootleg contents here we go.

It seems to me, if you grant a copyright contingent on some royalty, if the royalty is not forthcoming, then the copyright must revert to the author ... is that not true?<p>And if that is not happening, then it means the author never held the copyright, but rather had a royalty that was based on some other mechanism. If the author did not have copyright, it means they must have been doing their work as a work for hire.<p>This does not change the fact that Disney is a bunch of scum bags.

Seems like this is breach of contract. What’s preventing the authors from selling the creative works to Netflix? If Disney tries to pull them into court, they can’t really show a contract where they’ve kept up their obligation to the creator.

&gt; &quot;we only acquire assets, not liabilities&quot;<p>Maybe Florida could use that line as it annexes the Reddy Creek Improvement district into Orange County.

Meanwhile all the authors and artists were shaming the individual pirates.<p>Deceived they were, by Sauron&#x2F;Disney.

This should be used by anyone who is sued by Disney for copyright infringement. Why should I respect the copyright of your corporation if you don&#x27;t play by the same rules?

It sounds like SFWA is doubling down on as PR based strategy for making Disney pay up. It hasn&#x27;t worked so far. Doctorow mentions labor organizing - perhaps a page from labor is warranted and writers should strike against Disney.

When I look at anti Disney art like in this article, I find it ineffective and just weird how they still use Mickey Mouse. Sure he’s still the mascot like Mario to Nintendo. But when you look at what Disney really is now, he doesn’t represent a whole lot. I don’t think a lot of kids even know what he is. It’s like using Woody Woodpecker to represent Comcast.

Wouldn&#x27;t it be neat if programmers could take back the copyright on their code?

To be honest, I find it hard to be sympathetic to authors or other royalty paid workers collectively, since they are often complicit in creating this situation, see Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act.<p>It&#x27;s similar to all the BS about patents that focus on the little inventor.<p>I&#x27;m much more interested in<p>a) popular culture not being owned and monopolised by anyone, including the original author(s)<p>b) giant corporations abusing laws generally<p>Having said that, Cory Doctorow is usually right about most things. I just find it hard to get excited about George R Martin getting his copyright back so he can sell it again.