John's revolution

Dan Shane danshane at bellsouth.net
Fri Oct 20 15:28:33 CEST 2000


JOHN GARVIN says:

Media corporations have had it pretty good until now.  They could pay
artistic geniuses starvation wages while they reaped millions from their
labor.  The comic publishing industry is especially guilty of this:

a.  How much money do you think Carl Barks made for Western Publishing and
the Disney Corporation?  Carl saw none of this until he started doing oil
paintings in his 70s and 80s, and Disney even tried to take that away from
him.

b. How much money did Superman make National Periodicals?  Joe Shuster and
Jerry Siegel died in near poverty.

c. How much money did Dan DeCarlo make Harvey Publications?  They just fired
him for standing up for his claim to characters he created.

d.  How much money have the various publishers of Don Rosa's "Life of
Scrooge" stories made?  How much of that does Don get?  None.

While such exploitation is certainly legal, it is NOT moral or right.  And
corporations who routinely exploit others certainly do not get sympathy from
me when they use an army of lawyers to protect intellectual property they
have "stolen" in the first place.

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AND I REPLY:

I've watched this debate with interest, though I take no stand on the
legality of copyright laws as they now exist.  I avoid involvement, not out
of the fear John speaks of, but because it really doesn't affect me
personally (for now).

But I do feel the urge to insert one more factor in the case for change.
The laws as they exist (at least as far as they concern Disney comics) don't
keep Don Rosa and others from collecting royalties.  The publishing
companies do.  Because Disney claims the right to all artists' work, then
sells publishing rights to Egmont, et. al., those companies now have the
ability to reproduce the work royalty-free.

That doesn't mean the companies CAN'T pay the creators royalties.  It means
they are not legally (until the court says different) REQUIRED to do so.  If
the publishers were nice folks and willing to share the 3 cubic acres of
cash they have accumulated from repeated issues of "free" material, they
could pay the authors and artists any royalty they fell they can afford.

Instead, they make a conscious decision NOT to.  Disney says they don't have
to pay royalties, but Disney cannot tell the publishers how to spend their
money.  They can put the artist on the payroll just as easily as they do the
printer and the accountant (and the lawyer).  They have simply chosen to
cheap out because Disney says they can.  Is Disney the Evil Empire of Greed?
I'm not about to make a public statement on that count.  But Disney has lots
of help from people who could be making a difference the other way.

I suspect we will see the shakeup John has been talking about thanks to
Napster and the fan sites on the Web.  Good or bad, it looks like this
freight train is going to be impossible to stop.  Whether it is going to
benefit the artists in any way is anyone's guess.

Dan Shane -- taking a firm stand on impartial prejudice (figure that one
out, if you can)





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