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  1. - Top - End - #1
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    Default Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU books)

    http://www.sfwa.org/disney-must-pay/

    To summarize, according to the SFWA after Disney acquired Lucasfilm the books continued being sold but he stopped getting Royalties. And they mostly stonewalled but the most troubling part is "Disney’s argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract." Which as the SFWA points out would be a rather horrid loophole if they were successful with that. It is of course possible that the SFWA is omitting something important, but considering it is Disney I am not exactly surprised by something like this.

    Anyway I found it interesting because if Disney's case was legal that would have rather big implications.
    Last edited by Ibrinar; 2020-11-19 at 04:12 PM.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Ibrinar View Post
    http://www.sfwa.org/disney-must-pay/

    To summarize, according to the SFWA after Disney acquired Lucasfilm the books continued being sold but he stopped getting Royalties. And they mostly stonewalled but the most troubling part is "Disney’s argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract." Which as the SFWA points out would be a rather horrid loophole if they were successful with that. It is of course possible that the SFWA is omitting something important, but considering it is Disney I am not exactly surprised by something like this.

    Anyway I found it interesting because if Disney's case was legal that would have rather big implications.
    It took me a hot minute to realize that that last sentence was supposed to read "if Disney's case is legally correct", and not "if Disney's case is a legal matter".

    Anyway, non-lawmaster opinion here, but ADF's lawyer is going to recreate that scene from Goodfellas in the legal system. "Disney's got Alan Dean Foster works as a property. Trouble with new content, reprint ADF book. Trouble with new authors, publishers, Tommy, they can reprint ADF. Bit now Disney's gotta come up with Foster's royalties every month no matter what. Didn't sell many books? **** you, pay me. Oh, Bob Iger got fired? **** you, pay me. Bob Chapek got hit by lightning, huh? **** you, pay me."
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    The big problem here is that we do not actually know what the contract is that Disney signed with Lucasfilm. I suppose it is possible, as I am not a lawyer, that somehow the contract they signed specifically said that they do not acquire the obligations to pay those royalties. Of course, that couldn't override the contract ADF has with Lucasfilm, so if it was arranged that way, then I believe that Lucas himself would be on the hook for paying ADF. Any way you look at it, though, ADF absolutely deserves to be paid and frankly Disney has at the very least a moral obligation to be the ones to do so.

    I hope that the authors that are currently writing the High Republic series for Disney read about this, and make sure that there are no loopholes that will screw them over.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Yeah. Looking at this another way, all a company would have to do is 'sell' a work to a sibling company under the same corporate umbrella and *poof*, no more residuals. Considering Hamill, Ford, Fisher's estate etc are still getting residuals from the OT, well, under Disney's current thesis they shouldn't be paying those either. Or RDJ for Iron Man 1, 2 & Avengers, Ryan Reynolds for Deadpool, etc.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Darth Credence View Post
    The big problem here is that we do not actually know what the contract is that Disney signed with Lucasfilm.
    Doesn't matter; that's not how it works. There are almost certainly no "magic words" that would let Disney do this - at least, not without Foster getting something out of it. They just figured they could probably screw him over with a decent chance of success (legal battles can be pricey) and little fuss. And they drastically underestimated how much fuss.

    As Rogar Demonblud pointed out, if this was legit, it would have happened long before now with much higher properties. For example, Peelee offers to take 5% of the gross in lieu of cash for starring in SuperMovie 18: Revenge of the Villain. Movieman Studios sells to Disney the day before release. SM18: RotV ticket sales top twenty billion dollars (Peelee has a lot of drawing power). Peelee gets nothing because Disney claims they bought the rights but not the liabilities.

    Ain't gonna happen. Caveat emptor, mus domum.
    Last edited by Peelee; 2020-11-19 at 05:46 PM.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    1. I hope this goes to court
    2. I hope Disney loses
    3. I hope Disney is forced to pay punitive fees
    4. I hope an example is made about this or else you see a lot more [censored] behavior from any media conglomerate worth an arbitrary amount let's say 1 billion dollars. Any number where Corporations already have lawyers on retainer and will be spending dozens of millions of dollars a year anyway to "sustain" the corporate conglomerate. For corporations may not be a country, but they are as large as "state" governments.
    5. And "fun fact" currently Disney's market cap is $252 billion dollars.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Interesting bit about this that I found by looking into the comment thread is that DelRey, which hold the rights to a large number of Star Wars novels, is apparently still submitting royalties payments correctly (including for certain Star Wars novels written by Alan Dean Foster). I suspect that the novels published under the Bantam label are also still being paid royalties correctly. Otherwise this would be a much bigger deal and we would have heard about it years ago. This case seems to apply to a relatively small number of works produced a long time ago with unusual contract arrangements and it may be somewhat unclear exactly which subsidiary with which accounts is supposed to be paying the royalties.

    Of course Mr. Foster should still get his money. I can't see how it makes sense economically for Disney to fight this. These works sell maybe a modest five-figure number of copies each year. The total royalties owed since Disney acquired them cannot possibly be a sum worth fighting over for a corporation on this scale (I doubt the total amount owed is even $100,000). That this is happening at all is brutal condemnation of Disney's corporate culture.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    Interesting bit about this that I found by looking into the comment thread is that DelRey, which hold the rights to a large number of Star Wars novels, is apparently still submitting royalties payments correctly (including for certain Star Wars novels written by Alan Dean Foster). I suspect that the novels published under the Bantam label are also still being paid royalties correctly. Otherwise this would be a much bigger deal and we would have heard about it years ago. This case seems to apply to a relatively small number of works produced a long time ago with unusual contract arrangements and it may be somewhat unclear exactly which subsidiary with which accounts is supposed to be paying the royalties.

    Of course Mr. Foster should still get his money. I can't see how it makes sense economically for Disney to fight this. These works sell maybe a modest five-figure number of copies each year. The total royalties owed since Disney acquired them cannot possibly be a sum worth fighting over for a corporation on this scale (I doubt the total amount owed is even $100,000). That this is happening at all is brutal condemnation of Disney's corporate culture.
    Maybe they wanted to see if they could get a precedence set? Like, I'm really grasping for straws there, but I don't know. Because you're right, it seems like a really weird decision to make.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Doesn't matter; that's not how it works. There are almost certainly no "magic words" that would let Disney do this - at least, not without Foster getting something out of it. They just figured they could probably screw him over with a decent chance of success (legal battles can be pricey) and little fuss. And they drastically underestimated how much fuss.

    As Rogar Demonblud pointed out, if this was legit, it would have happened long before now with much higher properties. For example, Peelee offers to take 5% of the gross in lieu of cash for starring in SuperMovie 18: Revenge of the Villain. Movieman Studios sells to Disney the day before release. SM18: RotV ticket sales top twenty billion dollars (Peelee has a lot of drawing power). Peelee gets nothing because Disney claims they bought the rights but not the liabilities.

    Ain't gonna happen. Caveat emptor, mus domum.
    But that happens all the time. It's the official reason Darth Vader's suit actor doesn't get any royalties - legally speaking, the project he was involved in has never turned a profit, because it spends all its excess money on hiring a related company as a consultant.
    Last edited by Prime32; 2020-11-19 at 08:20 PM.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Prime32 View Post
    But that happens all the time. It's the official reason Darth Vader's suit actor doesn't get any royalties - legally speaking, the project he was involved in has never turned a profit, because it spends all its excess money on hiring a related company as a consultant.
    David Prowse agreed to net, not gross, which is why Hollywood accounting screwed him. My example specified gross exactly for that reason, and even if it didn't it wouldn't have had anything to do with the company being bought out.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Maybe they wanted to see if they could get a precedence set? Like, I'm really grasping for straws there, but I don't know. Because you're right, it seems like a really weird decision to make.
    I think there may be an argument about which corporate entity owes what at the root here. Normally royalties are paid by the book publisher. The small number of Star Wars novels produced prior to 1991 (when Bantam became the publisher) were published by Del Rey / Ballantine Books. Since Del Rey apparently is paying out the royalties for all the Star Wars books they published since 1999 when they re-acquired the license this implies something strange with regard to the contract for this small group of books (that's the three OT novelizations, the 3 Han Solo Adventures novels, the three Lando Calrissian adventures novels, and Splinter of the Mind's Eye). That Alan Dean Foster chose to complain to Disney and not to Del Rey also implies something unusual with regard to the contracts.

    Disney, very importantly, does not own Del Rey. I suspect Foster, and potentially the small group of other authors associated with these works (that's three other people, since the author of the Han Solo adventures, Brian Daley, died in 1996), isn't getting paid because each corporate entity believes the other one should be paying him. One reason for Disney to fight this hard might be that there's some large number of other orphaned works lying around in their pile of corporate acquisitions with a similar status but potentially a much higher royalty payout involved (early Marvel comics productions perhaps) that they don't want to end up on the hook for.

    Another complication might be who decides whether the novels remain in print. After all, you don't have to pay royalties on books that aren't being sold. I can actually see a legitimate source of conflict being that Lucasfilm/Disney owes the royalties while Del Rey retains the ability to determine printing/digital sales. That's the kind of corporate responsibility struggle that could leave an author caught in the middle.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    If what ADF is saying is true, that's just a truly **** move by Disney. The guy wrote five, count 'em, five novelisations of some of the biggest sci-fi franchises of the 20th century and Disney hasn't paid him for any of the books they sold on his authorship. It's not just Star Wars, it's the first 3 Alien novels.

    I hope he got his royalties off my purchases; I have all five of those books, although given how long ago I got them I think I would've had them before the Mouse acquired Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox. I know most people look down their noses at novelisations, that they're a half-breed form of novel or literature, but I like the way ADF did all of them. He even introduced consistent themes and images to the Aliens novelisations, which you just don't get. And the Aliens novelisation is a great read on its own, never mind whether you've seen the film or not.

    Bad idea for him to go out there and tell them he's got cancer, though. Now the empty suits can literally just wait for him to die. The company could very well be betting on the fact he'd spend more in legal fees to fight this than he'd get back by way of royalties. Ain't justice grand?

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    Doesn't matter; that's not how it works. There are almost certainly no "magic words" that would let Disney do this - at least, not without Foster getting something out of it.
    We are talking about the company here who are pretty much single-handedly responsible for the extension of copyright to ridiculous extents after the original author's death, I wouldn't put it past them to somehow get the law changed to make this all legal and above board.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Bad idea for him to go out there and tell them he's got cancer, though. Now the empty suits can literally just wait for him to die. The company could very well be betting on the fact he'd spend more in legal fees to fight this than he'd get back by way of royalties. Ain't justice grand?
    My bet would be that's why this is happening. He may not have time to go to court, (really this should be an open and shut case, but lawyers are very good at delaying things coming to trial) so he's going public to get faster relief and highlight this for anyone else that this is happening to.

    If there was some extra fact we don't know about, wouldn't Disney be shouting it from the rooftops by now?

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by factotum View Post
    We are talking about the company here who are pretty much single-handedly responsible for the extension of copyright to ridiculous extents after the original author's death, I wouldn't put it past them to somehow get the law changed to make this all legal and above board.
    It depresses me that that's an excellent point.
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    If there was some extra fact we don't know about, wouldn't Disney be shouting it from the rooftops by now?
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
    In the game of chess, you can never let your adversary see your pieces.

    That.... that isn't how chess works... what exactly do you think chess is?

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    He's talking a sans voir game.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post
    That.... that isn't how chess works... what exactly do you think chess is?
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Gallowglass View Post
    That.... that isn't how chess works... what exactly do you think chess is?
    Paradox-Billiards-Vostroyan-Roulette-Fourth-Dimensional-Hypercube-Chess-Strip-Poker, obviously.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Peelee View Post
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Calvinball?

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    A fine example of the legal argument involved.

    Seriously, if this really works out, then the entire publishing industry goes down in flames.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Sapphire Guard View Post
    A fine example of the legal argument involved.

    Seriously, if this really works out, then the entire publishing industry goes down in flames.
    Not just the publishing industry. The only reason I can't see Disney muscling this through with their fearsome legal department is that it's a precedent that would destroy the foundation of contract law in general if you can transfer a contract's benefits while making the obligations disappear in a puff of logic.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Lapak View Post
    Not just the publishing industry. The only reason I can't see Disney muscling this through with their fearsome legal department is that it's a precedent that would destroy the foundation of contract law in general if you can transfer a contract's benefits while making the obligations disappear in a puff of logic.
    Or, as someone said about this elsewhere (I think it was Twitter): what's stopping you from racking up massive debt with your company, then incorporating a second company (or having a buddy do that) which buys the first company's assets but not its obligations? That would be essentially getting free money, and I bet the entities the first company was in debt to (as well as the courts) would not be too amused by these shenanigans. Then again, that depends on how powerful are the parties involved - stealing from a lone author sounds a lot easier to stick than stealing from a large bank, say.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    The problem is, that happens all the time. Coal and other mining companies, for example, use it to get out of clean up and environmental remediation costs.

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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    It's not uncommon for tech companies to acquire each other by having the purchased company go out of business, and the purchasing company hire all its employees and buy all its assets. But technically the new owner didn't buy the company, which doesn't exist anymore, so various contracts don't apply to the owners.

    Now I have no idea how Disney acquired Lucasfilm, or the licensing agreements and rights structure used for old Star Wars novels. So the reality of the situation could be anything, but it's not automatically ridiculous that Disney isn't bound by those contracts.

    Well, not any more ridiculous than saying you didn't buy company X, you just own all its stuff, make the same products, and employ the same people working in the same offices. So kinda ridiculous, yeah.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by SirKazum View Post
    Or, as someone said about this elsewhere (I think it was Twitter): what's stopping you from racking up massive debt with your company, then incorporating a second company (or having a buddy do that) which buys the first company's assets but not its obligations? That would be essentially getting free money, and I bet the entities the first company was in debt to (as well as the courts) would not be too amused by these shenanigans. Then again, that depends on how powerful are the parties involved - stealing from a lone author sounds a lot easier to stick than stealing from a large bank, say.
    Welcome to something that has been happening for decades with “Vulture Capitalism” via private equity. How an equity fund buys a controlling share of a public company and then takes it private, then it splits it into smaller companies or sells its good assets from its bad obligations. Then it resells the company or takes it public again.

    Yet with how this works in practice with vulture capitalism is the private equity firm is paid massive consulting fees via the new subsidiary. Furthermore you can use debt to acquire the company in the first place not real money, and thus when things go bankrupt if they go bankrupt you really do not lose the principle for there was no principle only debt. Thus it coin flip metaphor if it is heads I make massive amounts of money via making the company leaner, meaner, and I sell it as a profit to someone else or it does an IPO. Tails and I screw up the company goes bankrupt and I lose almost nothing and prior to the bankruptcy I made obscene consulting fees where “I instruct my own subsidiary how to be more efficient” (remember though this company is going bankrupt 6 months to years later.)

    We had a presidential candidate for one of the two main parties who ran one of these private equity funds. The “concept” has been mainstream for decades!

    This is all an artifact about the bankruptcy laws and how bankruptcy allows you to shed some of your contract liabilities but not all your contract liabilities.

    The difference here is Disney is arguing by buying a company they get to do something similar to bankruptcy even though the previous company was healthy. It is obscene!
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    I'm rather surprised this topic isn't violating forum rules, as I've been modded for less when it comes to discussing copyright.

    But yeah, this seems rather disgusting on Disney's part. I know they've done more than their share to create the absurd copyright laws we have now, but this seems like a bridge too far. I really hope they don't win this case, as it seems to me that would effectively be stealing all rights and royalties from the entire pre-Disney expanded universe.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Everything I understand about legal principles suggests that if Alan Dean Foster isn't getting paid, the publication rights can be retaken for breach of contract. Disney will have to pay up if they want to keep the rights, if whoever actually "owns the obligations" doesn't do it. There's no reasonable scenario in which Foster isn't getting paid but Disney retains the rights anyway. That's not how contracts work.

    But then, when some Baseball major league teams decided to just stop paying their minor league players during Covid, they should have all become free agents right then and there, and I don't think that happened either. This sort of thing is part of why I didn't become a lawyer in the end.
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    Default Re: Alan Dean Foster in interesting conflict about Royalties with Disney (about EU bo

    Quote Originally Posted by Velaryon View Post
    I'm rather surprised this topic isn't violating forum rules, as I've been modded for less when it comes to discussing copyright.

    But yeah, this seems rather disgusting on Disney's part. I know they've done more than their share to create the absurd copyright laws we have now, but this seems like a bridge too far. I really hope they don't win this case, as it seems to me that would effectively be stealing all rights and royalties from the entire pre-Disney expanded universe.
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