[B5JMS] attn. JMS: A TV writing question...

[b5jms at cs.columbia.edu]

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From: "Eliyahu Rooff" <lrooff at hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 04:23:39 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 52


"Aisling Willow Grey" <aisling at fjordstone.com> wrote in message
news:3EFE34A3.1040702 at fjordstone.com...
> >>Jms at B5 wrote:
> > Correction to my last post: I put up the wrong link (that was my
standard link
> > to movies playing in the LA area).
> >
> > The correct link is:
> >
> >
> >
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/opinion/perspective/06082003A.html<<
>
> Great article, although at first I wondered if you were trying to get us
> to take you to the movies or something...
>
> Anyway, you could change a few words here and there and it would have
> been a great article about the music industry, too.  And look how the
> music industry is starting its slow spin into the toilet.  It's taken
> decreasing profits in double digits for the music industry to even
> realize that its death throes have begun; but, all death is change, and
> change (while painful) is often good.  So maybe there's hope for the
> music industry -- similarly, let's hope the movie/tv industry has an
> epiphany at some point.
>
Part of the problem with the music industry is just that -- it's become an
industry. What everyone in it forgets is that the idea of musicians becoming
filthy rich from songs they've written or performed is an extremely recent
innovation.

Likewise, copyright that's virtually held in perpetuity is a new concept
that IMHO isn't sensible. One of the factors affecting this, of course, is
that the ability to record a performance is something that didn't exist at
the time the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and wasn't anticipated.
The argument in favor of the most recent extension of copyright was that it
is needed to encourage writers and musicians to innovate and create. It
isn't. What it does is give large corporations control over the works of
others long after their deaths.

Can anyone seriously conceive of writers or musicians deciding that they
aren't going to write or perform any longer because the copyright won't last
more than fifty years beyond their deaths? Writers write because it's what
they want to do. Musicians compose and perform because they love to.
Painters paint and sculpters sculpt, again, because it's what they want to
do. To put the question to JMS --  Joe, would you cease your writing if the
duration of copyright were only fifteen years, renewable once?

Eliyahu




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From: jmsatb5 at aol.com (Jms at B5)
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2003 09:09:10 +0000 (UTC)
Lines: 48

>Can anyone seriously conceive of writers or musicians deciding that they
>aren't going to write or perform any longer because the copyright won't last
>more than fifty years beyond their deaths? Writers write because it's what
>they want to do. Musicians compose and perform because they love to.
>Painters paint and sculpters sculpt, again, because it's what they want to
>do. To put the question to JMS --  Joe, would you cease your writing if the
>duration of copyright were only fifteen years, renewable once?
>

No...but you're not getting the crucial point.

Residuals, and royalties, are part of a writer's compensation for the work he
does.  They're not a bonus, they're part of his (or her) compensation.  It may
take a novelist five years to write a given novel.  The money he earns from
that book covers the down-time between that project and the next one.

Writing is a notoriously ill-paying profession, and it is not especially
gracious on aging writers.  So a writer's only chance for income past a certain
age is the royalties he's built up on prior works.  

If those works become public domain after ten or fifteen years, he can no
longer make a living from those books.  Will that writer stop writing when
younger because of that issue?  No, of course not.

Will that writer be able to *survive* financially if the rights to public after
a while?  

In most cases, the answer to that questino is no.  

We're not talking corporations here, we're talkling writers who, in a lifetime,
may turn out maybe five, ten really good books, in the hope that the royalties
from those books will help to keep them alive in their golden years.

So many of those writers may have to take other jobs to survive, limiting their
ability to write, and hence their output.  Or, if they cannot take othe work --
writers are notoriously poor employees -- more of them may have to survive in
serious poverty than before.

 jms

(jmsatb5 at aol.com)
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