klingongoat said:
GLS_3rd said:
T'Pol in Enterprise was originally supposed to be be a younger version of T'Pau from TOS. The producers couldn't come to an agreement or just didn't want to pay at all to use the character and T'Pau became T'Pol. Ellison may or may not be a rather unpleasant person but he is due payment for use of his work.
I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea that Ellison is owed money for the use of his work so many years after he was paid for his story. If Ellison sold a bicycle to Desilu/Paramount/Star Trek in 1967, why would he be entitled to payment every time the owner took the bike out of the garage for a spin? Guess its the difference between "intellectual property" and "physical goods".
Well, see, here's the thing. "The City on the Edge of Forever" didn't stop making money for Star Trek's copyright owner the after the first time it aired. (Trek's gone through three copyright owners -- it started out as the property of Desilu, then became the property of Paramout, and is now the property of CBS. For the sake of conveiniance, I'll just refer to CBS when I refer to the owner.)
Every single time "The City on the Edge of Forever" airs, it makes money for CBS. Every time a copy of it is sold on VHS or DVD, it makes money for CBS. Every time it is sold on the Internet (if that happens -- I don't know if the Trek eps are available online yet, but it'll happen eventually), it makes money.
Mind you, no one who works at CBS today was involved in the production of "The City on the Edge of Forever," but it's still making them money. So why shouldn't Ellison get a check every time an episode that he contributed his time and energy to makes money? If a character from "City" is used in another episode, then that character -- a creation of Ellison's -- is making them money. Why should a character of Ellison's make someone else money, but not him?
Your question basically questions the entire concept of residual payments for writers, but the problem is that you're not acknowledging the consequences of the differences in types of work. You correctly identify that the issue here is intellectual property (standard repetition: If Ellison's WGA contract is like other TOS freelancer's, "City" characters aren't his intellectual property, they're CBS's, though hew would still be owed money for their use), but you can't compare it to a physical object. It would be more akin to if Ellison had
designed a new type of bike and CBS had bought it and then made many many copies of his design.
Another way to think of it is in terms of a novel. If an author writes a novel, she isn't paid a flat fee for it by the publisher. She gets money every time a copy of the novel is sold. And that's how it ought to be -- because why should the publisher get money every time the book is sold for years and years after the book is written, but not the novelist? Why should the publisher make money on someone else's work but not the novelist? That's why, even when the novel is work-for-hire -- that is, even when the novel is considered the intellectual property of someone other than the author -- the novelist still gets a percentage of every copy sold. (Original novels remain the intellectual property of the author; work-for-hire novels, such as TV or film tie-ins, usually are the intellectual property of the franchise owner. But that's not germaine to the discussion.)
Think of it this way:
I Love Lucy was produced in the 1950s by Desliu, who owned it. When Desliu was sold to Paramount,
I Love Lucy became Paramount's property; when Viacom, Paramount's parent company, split in two,
I Love Lucy became the property of CBS. Anyway, every year, for five decades now,
I Love Lucy has made its owner millions of dollars. No one at CBS today was involved in
I Love Lucy's production, but they get money from it. It's like free money raining out of the sky for them. And yet, because of the contracts at the time, the writers of
I Love Lucy -- some of whom are still alive -- don't get money when it reruns or is sold on DVD, because at the time they were just paid flat fees and nothing else.
CBS is profiting TODAY off of these guys' hard work from fifty years ago, but they get nothing.
Do you see now why writers ought to get residuals?
) is: Protect The Supply. Anyone or anything that is perceived or feared to interfere with the availability of the commodity/substance/drug/entertainment is an obstacle to be dismissed or disposed of with urgency and as little reflection as possible. 
