Actually, he said it is about writers' rights... to money. There's no distinction between the two.
Harlan Ellison COTEF Lawsuit Gains Momentum
- Thread starter Ryan Thomas Riddle
- Start date
Actually, he said it is about writers' rights... to money. There's no distinction between the two.
No, he claims that those writers, AC Crispin and DC Fontana, somehow magically knew to ask him for "kind permission" to feature the Guardian of Forever in their work. Ditto Barbara Hambly, with "Ishmael" (although her editors failure to recognise the "Here Come the Brides" characters caused other troubles), and Peter David with "Imzadi".
RobertScorpio
Pariah
i agree..and wouldn't it mean that the all new books/episodes would be told not to reuse anything from the past? Meaning, if Harlan wins, and he had to be paid a residual if they used Edith Keeler in a book, that the editor would tell the new writer "Just don't use Edith. Create a new character?"
I think if Harlan wins, he may win the battle. But the "WAR" would be lost. Studios would, in these times of cutting back, just tell all new writers to avoid using past properties so as to limit how much they have to pay. I think that is what would happenen. Harlan wins but his legacy will be trapped in the past because no one will want to have to pay to use it.
Dicey situation to be sure..
Rob
Bear in mind that part of the question is just what constitutes significant use.
The court may decide, for instance, that enough sequences from "The City..." are re-created in the Crucible trilogy that Crucible uses Ellison's characters significantly, but that using Ellison's characters in an original context, however importantly they may be featured in those new scenes, does not. It would, in essence, be ruling that the incorporation of a previously-written sequence into a tie-in is what makes for significant use. So there's a question as to what's a reasonable definition of that term.
Bear in mind, also, what Ellison and other writers often note:
They don't get to see a dime from these novels if they haven't written them themselves, yet the studios get to profit from their creations. Ellison didn't get a dime from the Crucible trilogy, even though CBS made money off of a story about the Guardian of Forever, Edith Keeler, and the general "City on the Edge of Forever" story. Why should CBS make money off of Ellison's work and yet Ellison not make money off of his work? How is that just?
I actually agree that it would be a shame if novels lost the creative freedom to use Trek's army of supporting characters in new and original ways. But by the same token, I don't think a reasonable person can argue that it is moral for studios to profit from a writer's work and not that writer -- and protecting the moral and legal rights of the writers is obviously far more important than making a new Star Trek novel.
Well said Sci.
I have read those novels, and if I were Ellison I'd be pretty annoyed if I didn't get to share in the profits from them too.
I have read those novels, and if I were Ellison I'd be pretty annoyed if I didn't get to share in the profits from them too.
Thanks.
I should hasten to say that I don't necessarily agree with Ellison's interpretation of the MBA contract. I haven't researched this to any great extent, but my inclination would be to interpret "significant use" of a writer's concepts and characters as referring to direct adaptations of a given script. In particular, I am skeptical of the idea that any use of a character requires a royalty when there have been four decades of precedents against that idea -- particularly, in Ellison's case, given the appearances of the Guardian of Forever in Trek novels such as Yesterday's Son or Imzadi that he hasn't requested royalties for.
I might be inclined to require a lesser royalty when a character/concept is used in an original way, but I would have to hear good arguments on both sides. Alternately, I might consider the idea of only requiring a royalty if a character is used in an audio/visual tie-in (such as a video game) rather than in a novel or comic.
I do, however, find myself agreeing, at least in principle, with the idea that the studios shouldn't profit off of a writer's work if the writer does not. As such, I can see all sides of this argument, and I think they all have validity. All said and done, I trust that the courts will be able to come to a just decision on this.
If Trek ever returns to television with new material, new series might have to be more like the anthology style of TOS rather than featuring the recurring characters and story arcs that characterize TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT.
I wonder if Ellison should try to claim Yesterday’s Enterprise. The timeline gets changed, resulting in the good guys losing a war, people dying in numbers too vast for the human mind to really grasp, and possibly the end of freedom and democracy, and a terrible sacrifice must be made to restore history. It owes almost as much to Ellison’s teleplay as does the version of TCOTEOF that ultimately aired. Which is to say, a basic story concept and not a whole lot else.
You know who really gets the shaft in TV production? Artists.
You write a script, you get paid for that every time the show is aired, sold on DVD, etc. You design a starship while you're working for a show...the studio owns it.
You write a script, you get paid for that every time the show is aired, sold on DVD, etc. You design a starship while you're working for a show...the studio owns it.
I would tend to consider the artist to be equivalent to the actor: He or she finds a way to bring a writer's concept to life, but has not actually come up with the concept.
I wouldn't object to the idea of the artist, like the actor, receiving royalties to his/her work for every copy of their work sold on DVD. But in a novel, their work is no more applicable than the actor's, and neither deserves a royalty. The character exists as a pure idea, just as it did when the writer first came up with it. This may entitle a writer to a royalty, but not an actor or artist.
RobertScorpio
Pariah
Yes, the courts. I know, it's strange, but I actually trust that a professional judge, fully trained in the law, will be better able to reach a wise decision about how to properly compensate people for their labor than we could.
So could I. Without reservation.
Know what I think? I think the Hollywood system of royalties is ridiculous to begin with and is one of many reasons why we have to pay outrageous prices for all this stuff.
I think Hollywood directors, writers, producers, actors, etc. should be treated like employees in most any other business. You get hired to do a job for the company, you agree on a set salary, you get paid that salary once for doing the work, and the result of your work then belongs to the company. Period. End of story. No residuals, no royalties, nothing. You get paid based on what's considered a fair market rate for the WORK you do, not based on what the company is going to get out of it down the road.
I think Hollywood directors, writers, producers, actors, etc. should be treated like employees in most any other business. You get hired to do a job for the company, you agree on a set salary, you get paid that salary once for doing the work, and the result of your work then belongs to the company. Period. End of story. No residuals, no royalties, nothing. You get paid based on what's considered a fair market rate for the WORK you do, not based on what the company is going to get out of it down the road.
Good for you. Good luck willing to find writers to work for that.
Remember: In business, "fair market rate" is whatever the traffic can bear. If you can't entice writers to work for that plan, then it's not fair market rate, and your business will collapse.
Meanwhile, the writers don't think you should profit off of their work for years and years when they don't -- and, really, why should you?
In a majority of the places where I have worked during my career, I got stock options in addition to my salary. In the case of high mucky-mucks in big corporations, stock options and results-based bonuses are often a larger part of their compensation than salary. There’s no such thing as stock options in a single movie or television program; residuals are the effective equivalent.
But why treat them like employees when that's not what they are?
Stephen King doesn't work for Columbia Pictures, so why the hell should he loose all rights to the story that became "Stand By Me"? The studio merely acquired limited rights to use the story for a motion picture. Chances are the studio doesn't own the right to do anything else with the characters, story, or situations that King created.
That's the difference between being a staff writer (who is merely an employee) and being a self-employed, independent author like King, who is not beholden to the studio at all.
And like King, many of TOS' authors weren't employees of Desilu, but freelance writers who were free to peddle their wares wherever they damn well pleased, and to make whatever contractual demands that the market would bear. You want to get someone like Ellison, or Spinrad, or Bloch to write you a script? You want a story by an actual author or establish screen-writer, rather than the usual television fare cranked out by a committee of staff writers? Well then you're sure a hell gonna have to pay for it. You're not only going to have to meet their own personal demands, but if they belong to a literary guild or union, you'll have to meet meet the minimum standards of that guild or union.
And guess what the WGA says? It says that as long as you are profiting from an author's work, you have to pay him/her a percent of those ongoing profits. A/k/a royalties.
And also, keep in mind who it was that Ellison and his brethren were dealing with: Desilu. Not Paramount, but Desilu. A studio specifically started by Desi Arnez and Lucille Ball, because they were sick and tired of loosing the rights to their own work, at the hands of greedy studio bosses. A studio that from the very outset was utterly dedicated to the ideal that writers, producers, etc, should never simply lose the rights to their own works, but would continue to profit from them for as long as those works were profitable. A studio that always permitted these creative individuals to retain almost all of the rights to their works, and to ultimately regain what few rights that they were forced to give up.
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Yeah, well the stuff you shuffle at your job probably doesn't have an indefinite shelf life that can be endlessly repackaged and resold, and what you do probably isn't something that only a few thousand people in the country are successful at. If what you suggest goes down, get ready for nothing but reality TV and 3STOOGES reruns for the next century, because no one will be able to afford to make a living as a creative. Christ, the strikes are mostly about getting a tiny piece of these ancillary markets, and they're still not getting more than a toenail in the door.
See Art Buchwald versus Paramount, regarding "Coming to America," where a vague 'treatment' was considered so vital to the end product he won millions.