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Entropy
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Post by Entropy »

Freak-

i have to say i disagree with your position.
you are ripping off the creators. i don't care when they created the work many do recieve royalties for new printings. also just because it's old doesn't mean it should be free. look at music. Zepplin, Beatles, Rolling Stones. Old great classic stuff. Doesn't mean it should be free. you talk about BIG corporations. remember they are made of small people, only a few actually make the big $$. Oh, there are plenty of people that like Loeb and Claremont. Just because they are not the vocal majority on the web doesn't mean they aren't there (personally not a loeb fan and i like Claremonts early X and his Xtreme X-men stuff with Larroca but not a fan of his more recent). In fact I know people on my comic art list that infinitely prefer Claremont to most of the new writers.

You cannot use the argument that the comic sucks so you shouldn't have to pay for it. The last book (not comic) i bought sucked so i shouldn't have had to pay for it? Heck the facts weren't even completely right. Solicits on the back did it no justice either.

what is this argument that comics are expensive so i should get them for free online? i like a nice bottle of wine but it's gotten more expensive so i should steal it?

Freak, i just don't understand how you think it is morally right to steal. i apologize, it sounds to me like you're justifying stealing to make yourself feel better.

in regards to the D. Matthews statement think about scale. you have a great cd you love. you make a copy for a friend. Now imagine the you put it on the net to let hundreds of people download it. These people in turn will let others download and you see the artist possibly losing a decent chunk of change. esp. if they are not a big name. think scale.



oh and so people know, i do not download music or comics. i do listen to music radio like on pandora and do listen to music online when the artists release it (which many do, U2 had their new album online to listen to for free for awhile).






[Edited on 3-4-2009 by Entropy]
Dave, your creations brought joy to my life and inspired my imagination. R.I.P.

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Post by Witchbrew »

I'm going to focus on two issues: 1) product advertising and 2) contract evolution.

Product advertising (early preview) is designed to attract consumers (readers). It's similar to a book jacket - a short blurb to get people interested enough to buy. You hear the advertising (always glowing), you buy the product and ... either like it or don't. You can to get additional information from reviews and other sources before buying. Is downloading a way to "preview" a comic? This is problematic. On one hand, you can preview comics at the store before buying. On the other hand, you now have access to the entire issue without initially paying for it.

S.K.'s point about the paradigm shift is important. "A broad shift in thinking about what constitutes "buying" something by the audience, the corporations that represent artists and control distribution, and the artists themselves" is occurring and will continue at a very rapid pace. In this case, markets have evolved faster than contracts. Is downloading going to stop? No. Is file sharing going to stop? No. No matter what artists/companies do, it will continue. All the parties involved know this. They are working to negotiate contracts and design product releases that will fairly compensate the artists in recognition of this illegal activity.

How do you stop illegal downloads? Almost impossible. Too expensive, time consuming and risk bad PR. How do you handle this? You change compensation and product distribution to make illegal downloads less attractive and insure artists are fairly paid. It will happen. It's only a question of how fast and what method.
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Post by Freak »

Entropy: You haven't really read through all of what I wrote, have you? :smirk If you had, you would have realized that I try to not have an own position, but instead try to bring up moral justifications for downloading comics. I am not defending myself or something with them, it's just reasoning I've seen in the Internet and can come up with myself, you are free to argue or even disprove it.
Also, I didn't say "something sucks, so I should be allowed to download it for free". That's completely illogical, who would want something that sucks? The problem with comics however, is that they are part of a continuing story, so even if they suck, you have to get them to keep up to date. Now, there are people out there who write complete summaries of the issue and put them on-line, so I can read them. But that also means THOSE guys had to pay for something that they basically didn't want.

Also, I like Witchbrew's comment about the evolution of contracts. It seems fairly clever to me to shift the source of income of the artists from an easily reproducable product into a barely reproducble one, like merchandise. I mean, the comics still lay the groundwork for the merchandise, so having them have a percentage of that money seems like a good way out. The only problem I see with this as of now might be writers and artists bowing to the wishes of fans to create characters and stories they'll like for sure and of which they'll therefore buy merchandise (invasion of the Wolverine clones, something like that).
I think here the wage of the artist/writer should be coupled with the long-time success of his brand (Spider-Man, X-Men, etc.) which also would finally get rid of the constant artist and writer switching in the comics. Seriously, sometimes I think Joe Q is juggling them around like balls. Though obviously we'd have a run on the already famous brands by the artists and writers, so you'd have to make things fair again...

Nothing's ever easy, eh? ;)
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Post by Entropy »

Freak,

I did read it all. Certain points seemed to jump out at me and got stuck in my head and so I did end up rushing through parts. my apologies.

Yes comics are a continuing story. But that doesn't mean you have to buy them. As you said you can read the summaries. But saying that people who wrote those summaries had to buy something they didn't want is ludicrous. They want to know how the story goes so they obviously wanted it. Even if they disliked the author/artist.

Those people who feel they have a right to download a comic for free should ask the writer/artist how they feel about it. It's not hard to do in this day and age. Get the creator's feedback. This goes also towards those who want to ink/color an artists work. Some are fine with it, others, Alan Davis for instance, have good reasons why they don't want this done.

Regarding merchandising, from what i understand this is how the companies make most of their money. I cannot see how shifting an artist/writers income to depend on this works. Take James Asmus (recently wrote Quitting Time). Smaller name writer- how are we to tie his income into merchandise. How much quitting time merchandise is really going to sell? Enough to justify the costs of making it? And should we tie his income into a brand that he's only contributed a small part of? If the writer/artist does create something that is a success then when it is placed into trades they get a percent. If those sell well then they are compensated. It is in their best interest to make the best possible product.

I just find the moral reasoning to download stuff for free has become to prevalent. If i were a creator this would irritate the hell out of me. It seems with the internet people (not anyone i've met here) feel they have certain rights. The best example i can point out (not directly related to this subject but something that has been bothering me) is Adam Hughes sketches being turned into unofficial statues. These statues are made by fans who often don't credit the source material and secondly often sell these as garage kits. If it were a single statue for personal use this would be fine but the making of money off adam's work is ridiculous. These creators may be well known but they don't make nearly as much money as people think and many are freelancers that have no health insurance. People rationalize by saying it's an homage, that the artist makes tons of money what's a little to the side.





[Edited on 4-4-2009 by Entropy]
Dave, your creations brought joy to my life and inspired my imagination. R.I.P.

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Post by steyn »

Quick question, the writers and artists at marvel and dc and the big name companies, do they get paid according to sales, or do they get a stable salary each month?
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Post by Freak »

The big comic publishers have a steady salary for their staff, so yes, the income of writers and artists doesn't depend on the sales figures (at least directly). So maybe I should say that it's better to connect the income of the artists/writers with the merchandise in your mind, meaning you don't go and say that they're relying on the comics to sustain themselves, but instead create a hype with the comics which then brings more income via merchandise.

Also, I have to admit that I am somehow on a warpath with creators' rights at times, they seem to be protecting too much. Like, when one fan creates a figure in the likes of a character over weeks of hard work. And then he has to move and therefore wants to sell that figure, by law he'd have to give the rights owner a share of that money. Considering how much money and work this single person put into the thing, shouldn't he have earned himself the rights of selling this one figure?
Another example would be a PC game we have over here in Germany. It's a football simulation which doesn't have the rights to names of clubs and players. But it has an editor and there used to be groups that in hard, hard work created packs that automatically edited the fake names into the real deal. It kind of goes without saying that they didn't charge for it. Anyway, those groups and their product don't exist anymore, because EA Sports (the rights holder in Germany) sued to stop them.
It just seems so damn unfair to me that someone has because of paying some money (Marvel and DC characters aren't owned by their creators, but by the companies, for example) more rights to something than someone who puts an assload of work into it.
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Post by The Drastic Spastic »

Freak again reveals that he has no idea what he's talking about. Yes, the comic companies have a steady salary for their staff but the creators are NOT staff. They are contract workers, NOT regular employees. Some are paid by the book, some would be on contracts for a set number of issues which is kind of like a salary, but not really. They are freelancers, it is temp work. It is connected to sales since their sales record would have to figure in to how much they can ask for the next contract. Depending on the contract, they may also get a bonus if sales are at or above a certain level.
steyn wrote:Quick question, the writers and artists at marvel and dc and the big name companies, do they get paid according to sales, or do they get a stable salary each month?
So the answer to the question is neither, but more the former than the latter.
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Post by Saint Kurt »

Freak wrote: It just seems so damn unfair to me that someone has because of paying some money (Marvel and DC characters aren't owned by their creators, but by the companies, for example) more rights to something than someone who puts an assload of work into it.
It seems that you may have just discovered that the world isn't always fair. :)

The creators who work for that company (be it Marvel or DC or Image or whatever) signed papers when they were hired giving up the rights to work created on behalf of the corporation so it's not like anyone was surprised. And from my discussions with Darick Robertson, Chuck Austen, and others (as well as my own personal experience as a freelancer), they were contracted not on a per book/sales figure basis but on a time basis (ie a 2 year contract for such and such number of scripts/pages per year). Their contracts were adjusted or renewed based on sales.

So actually, it is very important to support the sales of artists you like on books you like. Artists with poor sales will be moved to different books in an attempt to increase the sales of the failing book. (It's kind of a backwards system to me - if the book is tanking a creator may be moved to a less popular book so that a more popular artist can replace them and hopefully increase sales. This means an artist in a slump may slump themselves out of a renewal.)

And it's not just comics that work this way:

I have several patents on designs that I created but the patents are held by Microsoft, not me. Why? Because like all Microsoft employees I signed over the rights to my work as a condition of employment. Can you imagine an employer doing otherwise?*

If I'd wanted to keep those patents for myself, I would have done the work and applied for the patents on my own time AND my own dime.

The same goes for my costumes. All of them were technically illegal and I operated inside the law by marketing myself as a tailor who would build them on request. (My super ancient website) So despite the fact that Lucasfilm hired me to work for them BECAUSE I possessed homemade copies of costumes that they owned, were I to attempt to market those costumes for profit by name, I would have been slapped with the cease and desist. (In other words - because they recognized my hard work, they were willing to pay me to be a glorified usher, but not as a retailer.)

This was Lucasfilm's choice though and it was a good one. The 501st and Rebellegion act as a ready source of free accurately costumed labor willing to work at events simply for the opportunity to be a part of it. As long as both parties think it's a fair trade, everyone is happy. Some of my costuming friends have been in it for almost 10 years so I think you could say they are very very happy with the deal they get. (Their costumes cost thousands to build and maintain not to mention hours of work.) 20th Century Fox also owns the XMen movie property and similarly I was allowed to work as Nightcrawler as part of a Fox sponsored museum exhibit. (There were properties from Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, XMen and other Fox owned films.)

Warner Bros on the other hand is much more protective of their properties. Though I never attempted to sell "Hogwarts school robes", the fact that the pattern that I drafted was an exact replica of the robes in the first two films was enough for them to slap me with a cease and desist letter when I started to make them in quantity (all via commission). Apparently it was close enough and I was making enough money that I was no longer protected by Fair Use. I didn't have the money to fight Warner Bros and so I quit. They must be much less concerned now since there exist websites like Alivans that are totally freaking obvious.

All this points to exactly why I don't download music or software without paying for it. I've put in the work and I did it so that my company and I profited. (I'm not a saint.) When you stole copies of Windows in the 90s you were stealing my weekends and my evenings, my time with my friends and my pets, days I could have been snowboarding instead of rotting in my office... Stealing copies of Windows meant that I was going to have to spend even more hours in my freaking office because we had to sell that many more copies legitimately to make our quotas. I took piracy personally.

I was on the other side as a tailor, but I was acutely aware that I was working with properties owned by others. I treated those properties with the respect they deserved; I only took commissions (direct requests are legal - covered by the first amendment) and I billed for construction and materials only.

I'll be the first to bring up fan fiction as it is another area where people put in a lot of work with no possibility of financial reward. (I remembered and found a brief discussion of why I couldn't publish my novel length fan fiction: I don't own Nightcrawler. :) Scroll down to about 4 or 5 posts from the bottom.) Or... Nightscrawlearth! The game, which has an audience of... I'll guess 40 - 50 people at most, represents years of incredible effort and a lot of time.

Sometimes people do things just because it's fun. Like program in football teams.

Okay. I think I've exhausted everything I've got to say on the subject of "creativity as its own reward". :)

-e




* (By the way, any scientist going into research in industry will have similar constraints - the results of any experimentation are the work of the researcher but will belong to the company. In other words, work started at company A could not be continued at company B unless the two companies agreed to share the previous data. This is how it worked for me while I was in R&D at Microsoft. When I left, I had to turn over several years worth of signed numbered notebooks with all my notes and designs in them.)
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Post by The Drastic Spastic »

Saint Kurt wrote: All this points to exactly why I don't download music or software without paying for it. I've put in the work and I did it so that my company and I profited. (I'm not a saint.) When you stole copies of Windows in the 90s you were stealing my weekends and my evenings, my time with my friends and my pets, days I could have been snowboarding instead of rotting in my office...
Didn't you once say you took several months off every year to go snowboarding when you worked at Microsoft? The time argument just isn't making any sense over here.
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Post by Saint Kurt »

The Drastic Spastic wrote: Didn't you once say you took several months off every year to go snowboarding when you worked at Microsoft? The time argument just isn't making any sense over here.
I certainly did have a schedule like that when I started there!

Though it was not "time off", it was "time compressed". I worked the equivalent of 12 months compressed into 10 months by tracking what eight 40 hour weeks would add to my time and spreading it out through out those 10 months. It meant I worked a 70 hour week. (which usually turned into a 90+ hour week. Often I didn't go home for days - I kept a folding cot in my office and our building had showers etc.)

The reason this even worked out is that even though I was hired as a sound designer, there wasn't enough work for me to keep me busy full time. This means that for my first two years there I was also a release manager for the Encarta CDROM which had a release schedule tied to the academic year. In order to release in early september we worked pretty much 24/7 during the summer. Then the remainder of Sept through about Halloween we were releasing OEM and foreign language versions of the CDROM. And then around the time the snow began to fly the release team was entirely spent and it was time to turn the product over once again to the creative and editorial team to plan next years version. At some point during it all, I'd put together all the sound and music as well. :)

The release team was entirely made of avid skiers, snowboarders, and various other winter sports people. We'd do paperwork etc. to put the build to bed until around Christmas and then we'd head for the mountains. Most of us returned to work again full time in March to get the build ready for summer.

I could only keep it up for 2 years because it was physically and mentally exhausting. It wasn't like I went on snowboarding vacations during this time either - I was training and competing. Plus it required working on a product that was on a yearly schedule and shipped in the fall. I still have vivid memories of signing the papers to RTM (release to manufacturing) and handing over the final build - totally hallucinating from utter exhaustion and lack of sleep. I could have handed over a stack of pancakes instead of our build CDs and I wouldn't have known the difference. I PAID for those 2 months. :)

When Encarta became an online service, I left the consumer department, went to operating systems as a designer and happily worked (mostly) 40 hour weeks (with 2 weeks paid vacation). I stopped competing ( I never won anyway), had fun teaching and coaching on the weekends and evenings, and had a much saner life. Still, since the design team worked on multiple projects, things did get pretty crazy right before "design freeze" because it meant we had to have the entire architecture finalized AND built so the developers could finalize the UI code and on down the line to a shippable product. So every few months I was back to my old Encarta schedule, working nights and weekends with the team to put the thing together.

The end result: I got more days on snow in per year when I was on Encarta but I sacrified my ENTIRE summer and most of spring and fall for it; working on Windows was more predictable but I missed a lot of good powder days. All and all my social life while I was at Microsoft was lived around Microsoft. All my friends had a @microsoft.com email address.

This is a really long post about working at Microsoft. It's probably boring actually because what it is really about is the corporate culture of Microsoft in the 90s. I was 23 years old when I started there. Most of my co-workers were in their early to mid 20s. We had money, we were young, smart, and super driven. Working for 12 hours and then going out to the field to play soccer at like 10 at night was completely normal. So was going wakeboarding at lunch (or more often at about 5am when the lake was flat). Work hard and play hard was the norm. My desire to work extra hard in order to earn a little time screwing around was not unique. Sure sounds like I spent a lot of time in the mountains and having adventures, but that's only because endless stories about how I sat at my desk for 8 hours straight prioritizing the bug database are boring. When I tell work stories they are things like how Bill Gates threw a design portfolio at me and said it fucking sucked, because those are funny, but the majority of the time it was just regular work. at a desk. with a computer. And we didn't have the internet to slack off with yet.

And it wasn't just me - it was thousands of people. They didn't like having their time stolen either.

So it does make sense. :)

-e
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Post by The Drastic Spastic »

Yesssss, I got another long story about working at Microsoft! I love those. Seriously.

The Windows on my computer now is technically pirated, but considering I've paid for Windows XP twice already, I have zero moral qualms about that particular bit of piracy.
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Post by Saint Kurt »

The Drastic Spastic wrote:Yesssss, I got another long story about working at Microsoft! I love those. Seriously.
Do you?

This may be surprising but I hate writing/telling them. It seems like I'm talking about another person and I feel 200 years old. I do like talkinga bout snowboarding though. That was fun.

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Post by Entropy »

Freak-

Typically while you may not own the character of the statue created if you only create one and later decide to sell it the owners of the character typically look the other way and it is not an issue. Warner is tougher on this sort of thing esp. if you do something that twists their characters (such as a homosexual batman and robin). It's when you copy a specific piece that issues with artists arise. lest say you create a Crawler statue and decide to sell it. chances are nobody will care. if you mass produce marvel will shut you down. now if this statue is taken directly from an image created by chris bachalo you add another dimension. once again chances are if you do it for yourself he won't care but if you decide to make more than one and make money...well that's wrong.

what some of these guys are doing is taking a drawing by an artist and making a statue based off it. not crediting the origin they then sell garage kits. hell even if they credit the artist they are causing issues. and what if the statue sucks. would you as an artist want your name on a product that sucks? this can cause issues about whether the artist supported a product (and if it's based off their work even if it doesn't have their name many people will either recognize the style or the origin of the piece).
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