andrewducker | Interesting Links for 23-03-2021

A write up of how someone was scammed for their savings: (tags:banks fraud viaSwampers OhForFucksSake )
Some details on why Sturgeon was found to have not breached the ministerial code: (tags:Scotland government )
UK, EU and US impose joint sanctions against Chinese officials over Uighur 'industrial scale human rights abuses': (tags:UK USA rights Europe GoodNews )
Drone flight over a volcano: (tags:drone video volcano amazing )
Major employers scrap plans to cut back on offices: (tags:work office pandemic )
Edinburgh Sick Kids: The unusable hospital that is finally open: (tags:Edinburgh children hospital )
Making honey without bees and milk without cows: (tags:bees cows technology milk vegan )
Abortion: Brandon Lewis to take powers over Stormont laws: (tags:NorthernIreland law abortion )
UK and EU vaccine impasse ramps up: (tags:UK Europe vaccine )
At last: Rational Villainy: (tags:evil comic rationality funny )
Ed Brubaker has "mixed feelings" about The Falcon And The Winter Soldier: (tags:comics copyright tv marvel )
Food Exports To The EU Saw A Huge Collapse In January, With Salmon Sales Falling By 98%: (tags:trade europe doom uk food )
Result from LHCb experiment challenges leading theory in physics: (tags:physics )
Douglas Adams' motivational note to himself should go on every writer's wall: (tags:douglasadams writing )
What would the UK need to do to be ready for the next pandemic?: (tags:pandemic thefuture )
As things stand, the chances of defeating Johnson at the next election are miniscule (unless the economy goes horribly wrong or the opposition parties work together): (tags:politics uk viaDanielDWilliam )

I wonder if society would benefit from a minimum % which has to be assigned to the creator for a creative work. It could be complicated, but it would mean that companies had an obligation to track who the creator was, even if they only paid the minimum, which might make it easier to track and negotiate in future. And conversely, having a standardised process might make it easier to deal with orphaned work ("set this much aside").

I don't want copyright to be too complicated, but I also don't want a situation where "the person who created the story gets nothing, the big company with all the lawyers build a media empire out of it and get all the profit", whether that's because they worked for hire, or because the distributor just refused to pay them, or because the rights were whittled down with edge cases, or somehting else...

It's a really tricky one. Because Ed Brubaker didn't create the character "Bucky Barnes". He wrote a story with that character in it, which built on the work done by other writers previously.

How do you divide up payments for that?

Yeah, shared universe development is a quagmire for this sort of thing, that's one reason why publishers DO want work-for-hire for a lot of work. I imagine it would be even worse for TV shows where each episode often has one writer, but also a show-runner, and maybe uncredited suggestions, etc, etc.

But I also think, there could be reasonable guidelines for that sort of thing, like so much credit for writing a story, so much credit for writing an original story that's adapted into a new medium or has a sequel, so much for creating a character who is a major feature in a following story, etc. I know George Martin's shared-universe wildcards stories operate on that model: GRRM is the main editor and cat-herds everyone, and the ownership is a shared corporation everyone gets shares in in proportion to their contribution. And it mostly works, albeit most of the people involved probably want it to work.

And admittedly, there can be endless wrangling over was this character "featured" or "co-staring", etc, etc, and the publisher can still claim, "oh no, this isn't a sequel, it's a totally unrelated story that's just similar". So I'm not sure it could ever work. But if there are some minimum of "you get at least this much", it would mean that at least you don't get NOTHING when you write one of the comic books that turns into a highest-grosssing box office hit of all time. And even if there's fights about how to credit individual things, there's an obvious standard to aim for, "I wrote it, I should be credited", not a fight later.

Interesting Links for 23-03-2021

Ed Brubaker has "mixed feelings" about The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

Re: Ed Brubaker has "mixed feelings" about The Falcon And The Winter Soldier

Re: Ed Brubaker has "mixed feelings" about The Falcon And The Winter Soldier