Signs & Portents?

[boji.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering about the timing of all this, the fact that Fanlib opened it's doors at roughly the same time as Simon & Schuster have made a move towards an all rights grab of pro-fic. The Authors Guild is up in arms about the proposed rights grab, the SWFA concurs and if the article in the Herald Tribune is a portent of things to come then Hollywood could be facing the same kind of strike it saw back in 1988.

That strike saw the rise of the spec script moving to prominence as a way of working. Which meant that from that point forth authors wrote for belated fee, rather than under contract (I'm paraphrasing what I remember from Joe Straczynksi's book The complete book of Scriptwriting) - The coming strike is in part about royalties for digital rights. Or, as the article says, in part it's about:

complex issues involving how much TV and film writers should be paid when their work is distributed on new media platforms, including the Internet, cell phones, digital media players and other devices. The writers argue the payments — modeled after the structures used for DVD rights — are too low.

I wonder how the current kerfuffle with fanlib, how fanlibs very conception fits into this climate.

Comments

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

That's the whole business model for FanLib. They say as much in their investment brochures. Why rent the cow when you can get the milk for free without assuming any of the potential liabilities?