Thursday, November 15, 2007

Our top story tonight

For everyone missing The Daily Show because of the WGA strike...it's not back, and here it isn't:



Also, someone needs to tell all studio executives and media moguls the same thing someone should tell all politicians: anything that you say or have ever said in front of a camera can be found and be made available for everyone to see. It's not possible to escape your own words anymore...so either quit lying, or at the very least try to be consistent and tell the same lie all the time. The following example repeats and underscores the central point made in the above video:



On a side note, to anyone interested in the future of comics online...this issue is going to affect our industry too, especially with those publishers operating under the same non-creator-owned "pay once, profit from forever" model.

3 comments:

  1. It's not much, but in the absence of the Daily Show, I'll take what I can get.

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  2. I'm missing how this impacts online comics...

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  3. I'm thinking of this specifically in relation to Marvel -- and eventually DC -- putting old comics online for viewing or downloading. It's pretty risk-free for these companies and the overhead costs are negligible, so the fees they take in are almost pure profit. How many pennies from that profit will a Steve Gerber or Steve Englehart see in royalties when one of their old stories is viewed? (Or any other writers or artists, of course.) Is the predominant attitude going to be "these people created something that continues to make us money, they deserve a percentage of the profit their work now earns for us" or will it be "we bought it fair and square decades ago, so we don't HAVE to pay you losers another dime"? The latter is the way comics reprint were always treated in the past. That's changed lately. But online archives will change the game yet again, and new rules will need to be made.

    That's what the WGA strike is about as well. The agreement that ultimately ends this strike won't have any direct effect on the rights of comics creators...but it could help establish what a writer is entitled to expect.

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