Drive by posting...because I've wasted enough time on this today ;-)

[shadowkat]

From flist:

1. Don't know if American Apparel has shown up anywhere else - but there are two in the area I live and look - someone actually visited them and did a videotape which they then posted online - How American Apparel Makes you Look Like A Fat Hooker
Made me giggle uncontrollably for five minutes. Yes, I'm easily amused.

2. Apparently procedurals don't just write themselves after all, who knew? To prove the point - SGA members provide the following example - Murder Unscripted starring people from Law and Order franchise

3. A poll on whether fanfic should be legal and if it is ethical from an intellectual property attorney's or copyright professional or legal professional perspective. Go here: http://community.livejournal.com/fandom_lawyers/58023.html?nc=21&style=mine

Off to get lunch, go shopping, and hang with a friend.

Current book:Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. So far? Pretty freaking good. Much better than last two books. But considering I liked them when I first started reading them, am going to hold off providing much of an opinion until after I've finished the thing.

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the L&O group's video in support of the writers...that was cute.

I'm not sure that that post about the fan fic actually adds much to any serious discussion on the subject. Pretty much it just tells us that people who write/read fan fic wish that it was accepted as legal, but IMO if it did become legal then the problems for writers would become insurmountable. It would become impossible to protect your copyright. If any fan fic writers have any ambition to ever write anything original then I would think they would understand that.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I don't know.

On the fence a bit regarding all of this.

Should writers continue to get royalties for work they produced? Should they own the work until their death? Not all of them do, by the way - comic book writers, tv writers and film writers don't - which makes sense. Should art be for sale? Should we place a dollar value on it? Should stories be something you buy?

And to what extent does placing a dollar value or making a story a piece of property hurt it? Can you really say that fanfic isn't original? After all there are no true original ideas. We borrow from each other all the time. We play with each other's ideas. It's part of living in a society.

It's not the same as copying another's work and passing it off as your own. All you are doing in fanfic is taking an aspect of the story that intrigues or obsesses you and saying what if? Is a fanfic writer any different than Bryan Lynch writing Angel After the Fall? Yeah, Whedon hired him and is helping with the plotting, ya da, ya da, ya da...but...it is still Lynch, not Minear or Greenwalt or Fury or DeKnight writing it.

To say fanfic writers aren't writing original fiction isn't all that different than me telling you that your fanart isn't original.
Or that the novels Ahab's Wife or The Wide Sargasso Sea isn't original. Or even for that matter, Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. Sure we pooh-pooh fanfic, but are we right to do so? I'm starting to think not so much.

Where should the line be drawn? How much should we give the poor woobie writer? I know for a fact that most of what you read or view is not written solely by the writer - it has been edited, it has been cut, and it has often been the work of more than one person.
Should the writer really get more than his/her due? I don't know.

As a writer, granted a non-published one, I don't know what I think on the subject. On the one hand I see where the writers are coming from, on the other they sound greedy and whiny to me - like children who want to eat their cake and have it too. Perhaps that is envy talking. I don't know. I'm ambivalent.

As for the poll - I think the poster was trying to figure out how lawyers felt on the topic of fanfic, specifically intellectual property attorneys who read it and participated in fandoms, in contrast to non-legal professionals. I found the results interesting - the legal professionals seemed to agree with the non-legal professionals.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

well you know the question isn't between writers owning their copyrights and the work being in public domain.... It is between the writer owning and profiting from their own work or some mega-conglomerate owning it, and for a lot longer than the author's life time (Disney Corp is leading the way, they've kept their copyrights for almost 100 years and intend to do whatever it takes to keep them forever).

So yeah, I want to see writers profit from their creations. I don't think that writing should be something that can only be done by people with other means of support (which is too often true for painters). Comic book writers are a great example, there are guys who created great story lines and characters, who have no health insurance or retirement while Marvel or DC sells their work for huge movie deals. I would always rather see the authors I love be able to profit and have a safe and comfortable old age rather than be exploited by some corporation.

Which shows that we are talking at cross purposes and looking at these questions from different POVs.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Possibly. ;-)

I know back in the 1980s, a bunch of comic book writers and illustrators got fed up with Marvel and DC owning their characters and stories and work - so they started their own company - WildStorm, I think is the name. It was started by two of the biggies - Jim Lee and Chris Claremont, who got sick of the Marvel crap. Somewhere along the way they made their peace with Marvel and DC though and started writing and illustrating for them again.

I also know that back in the 50s or maybe it was the 30s? United Artists was started by a bunch of actors who got sick of being slaves to the studio system. Tom Cruise did much the same thing. Actors became free agents, no longer contracted to one studio. Same deal with writers.

I don't think that conglomerates should own art. Or treat it like a commodity. Because art isn't something that can expand like corn or gold on the market. I think part of the problem is the corporations think they can weild power by controlling the production of it, that they can get rich off of it. I just read a great essay by Ursula Le Quin on this topic.

I remember reading online once an argument that maybe copyright law hurts art. That once it gets published or put in the hands of another it ceases to be the artists, the viewer interacts with it. The mask you make may not be used the way you intend once you give it to another. Should someone tell you not to create a graphic novel of Jane Eyre?
Or not to do an icon of Firefly? Or not to put on a Buffy Sing-Along of OMWF? Where do we draw the line?

And when art becomes a business - where the jobs of people like accountants, cooks, makeup artists, production assistants, janitors, security guards, etc - who are not represented by a creative union are at stake - to what degree should the "creatives" who are represented be awarded above those who are not? Should these people lose their jobs? Who do we blame? The corporations who can't pay them and please their shareholders - who by the way are everyone who makes any money off of the stock market. Are you willing to lose money that pays your rent - in order for someone who writes a filmscript to get more money? I don't know the answers to these questions.

Life was easier before Reagan, Carter, Bush, and Clinton started shredding the Anti-trust act to the extent that mergers and acquisitions have become a fact of life. Sony should not have been allowed to take over several film studios. Disney and ABC should not have been allowed to merge. Viacom should not have been permitted to buy Simon and Schuster. I don't think our society was benefited by those mergers, I think we were hurt by them. But what do I know.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

And now the Bush White House has cleared the way with the FCC so these huge mega-conglomerates who own all the televised news will also be able to buy up all the newspapers! People complain that online all you get are opinions, but I would rather get the mish-mash of assorted opinions online than be force fed whatever these corporations feel like telling me through all other news sources!

And I don't think that artists should be enslaved for the convenience of the 'below the line' people.... If any company I was working at offered me roll backs, less money for more work, no heath insurance or any hope of retirement benefits, then of course I would walk. If I was part of the union I would expect the union to walk, or if I was on my own I would walk out on my own. No one should accept whatever the corporations feel their job is worth (because you know they don't think any of us are worth shit), people who can stand up for themselves have to. If the corporation takes revenge by firing and/or laying off other people, then that is on the corporation, not the responsibility of the striking writers (IMO).

I just wish we could get some laws passed to break apart these enormous companies. Back in the 1930s or 1940s the government did pass laws saying that studios couldn't own theaters, but now they own everything! It is very frustrating.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ghod yes. This strike may go on forever. I really don't see how it can be resolved at the moment. For a lot of reasons - the main one being that the AMPTM is not an united front. They have conflicting interests. The people behind the Oscars are going to try and push things, but I'll be surprised if they are successful. Best we can hope for is agreements by studio, which is hardly fair to the writers who write for the studios that won't negotiate.

There's option 3 of course - which I finally chose, not to work for corporate America. Not that government will be much better, but at least I won't be laid-off to make some share=holder happy. Writers could make their own films, own tv shows, and produce them on the internet. Heck people already are. I don't want them to, but it is an option. It's what writers like my father are doing - who have gotten fed up with the publishing industry and are publishing it themselves.

I don't know. I'm tired of being angry about it. I can't fight them. And to be honest? The WGA isn't striking because they don't have health ins (they do - got that way back in the 60s) and they aren't striking because they don't get vacation (they get more than I do) and they aren't striking because they don't get decent pay (they get paid for their work - $6,000 a script depending). No, they are striking to get residual royalties. Which isn't the same thing. Not that I don't think they have a right to these things or shouldn't be concerned about them. But...at the same time I'm not sure they are worth someone losing their employment and being laid-off (but then I've been laid-off three times, so my sympathy is obviously with those people and not the ones who can't be laid off because it is against the law to lay-off or fire a striking union member).

This is VERY different than the striking Viacom freelance writers who did get their vacation (only had five days to begin with), health insurance, and sick time yanked out from under them without warning. I don't blame them for walking. I'd walk too. But they aren't part of the WGA deal or affected, that's another union. Or the soon to be announced Amtrack employees who have been working without a contract for eight years, no increases, no wage increases, and are afraid of losing their benefits. Of course the effects of the Amtrack strike will be felt a lot more severly and a lot faster just as the Broadway stage hands strike was felt (that was about proposed lay-offs).

Sigh. I live in strike central. LOL! And I've been unemployed or fighting to get a job for so long now that I have troubles understanding people who take it for granted.
And yes, I've done slave labor. Crappy jobs that would make people roll their eyes. So it's hard for me to understand. At the same time, I do think the AMPTM is wrong. But I also know that the situation is insane - the WGA is united, the AMPTM is not. They have diverging interests. Newscorp really has no reason to negotiate - they've got American Idol and produce mostly reality - allowing reality show writers to join and granting residuals hurts their bottom line. But ABC, NBC and CBS are getting hurt. As is CW - Warner already announced lay-offs.

What I see? Is the beginnings of a class war.
The rich vs. the poor. We're in a recession. People are losing their homes. Their jobs.
The middle class is shrinking rapidly. Raises and bonuses are almost non-existent. And prices are sky-rocketing. Meanwhile we have a deficit in the stratosphere and an enviromental problem. The decisions made in the 80's, 90's and early 00's are catching up with us. This is going to be a very interesting year. And a hard one for a lot of people.