Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism [LWN.net]

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 31, 2023 0:09 UTC (Fri) by dvrabel (guest, #9500)
Parent article: Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Given all the problems with royalty based compensation pointed out in this article and how it is grossly unfair by disproportionately rewarding a tiny handful of authors and musicians, why do authors and musicians (indivduals and their respective unions) continue to insist on royalties instead of insisting on being salaried or negotiating a fair hourly rate or flat fee contract?

The video game industry is mostly salaried artists, writers, and sound designers. Soundtracks are either composed in house or (as I undrestand it) for a flat-fee contracts and voice actors are paid hourly rates. There's no shortage of interesting, unique, and creative works from both large studios and small, so I don't think the lack of royalty based compensation is harming creative output in this space.

to post comments

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Mar 31, 2023 7:32 UTC (Fri) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

It's the classic risk/reward trade-off. People working for a salary get paid a fixed amount and carry no risk. On the other hand, authors apparently prefer to take the risk themselves. So there's a good chance they earn almost nothing, but maybe they'll become a millionaire. And publishing houses offer to take some of the risk in exchange for some of the royalties.

Before the existance of copyright there were creative works, but they were often work-for-hire, usually rich patrons. Even now, I suspect the majority of code is written as work-for-hire.

I think there's also a stigma against work-for-hire books. As if they're not as creative or something.

Rebecca Giblin on chokepoint capitalism

Posted Apr 13, 2023 5:33 UTC (Thu) by ebwb (guest, #144520) [Link]

> why do authors and musicians (indivduals and their respective unions) continue to insist on royalties instead of insisting on being salaried or negotiating a fair hourly rate or flat fee contract?

Ah, but they do becomes salaried/flat-fee contract workers! They're called session musicians and music writers, and they work at the creative director's behest for the project they're working on. When it comes to musicians writing their own music for their own sake, where the musician (or group of) themselves is the creative director, they're going to have quite the difficult time convincing a record label to hand them over a salary!

It's the chokepoint on creativity that this article is describing, not a chokepoint on talent alone.