Why make continuing payments for a completed, paid job?

Great Debates
1

Inspired by the recent Hollywood writers strike, I began to think in the abstract. The writers want a bigger share of sales and residuals to better reflect a changing market.

Which brings me to the question, and this is a moral or philosophical one, not a legal one. If Buyer A is hired to perform a task or create a product by Provider B and has been paid for it, should Buyer A have to continue to pay again for the service long after it is rendered?

In other words, what is the philosophical justification for royalty/residual payments for something long after the product is completed and the ownership turned over to the employer? When should something be “for hire” and when should it have attachments that the owner must continue to pay?

Art works such as paintings are sold and the artist relinquishes control or rights to future appreciation. If I sell a book, I don’t share in future appreciation, resale, or depreciation. If I sell a car, even if it becomes more valuable due to time or restoration, I have no claim on it after the sale.

So what justifies residuals for movies and music? Proposals have been made to compensate everyone who works on a film long after their salary has been paid. Should this apply only to the writers, or to anyone involved like the gofer or caterer, and if so or not, why the distinction?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been the recipient of residuals for years after I performed the service. There’s nothing quite so enjoyable as getting an unexpected check for 50% of the original payment again and again. It was in my union contract, so I took it. But I’m not sure I deserved it.

I submit that in the absence of any moral obligation by employers, it comes down to “I offer you 10 and you want 20”, which is not quite the same as saying, “Bastard - you’re stealing my livelihood!”

2

If you didn’t deserve it…did they?

I am no expert (not even close on this) but WHY should they not be entitled to residuals?

From a more practical standpoint, if the artists don’t get residuals, should they get paid a huge price outright? I think a system where both parties share the risk would be more efficient (smaller pay up front – If it flops, little residuals – if its great much more residuals.)
P.S. - ‘non-linear income’ is the holy grail. To get paid for your work once is fine. To be paid for it again and again is how you do well.

3

I want to sell you something I wrote. I tell you “You may not publish this unless I recieve payment for every copy published, and there is no time limit on this stricture.”

You now have a decision to make. Do you purchase what I wrote, or not?

I’m not sure what justification I need for giving the requirement I gave. I gave it. You can either agree to it, or not. If the former, we have a deal. If the latter, the piece has not been sold.

Am I missing something?

Is your question something like “How can it possibly be reasonable to put such a requirement on purchase of one’s work?” If that’s your question, I’d need to know why you think it’s not reasonable.

Rather, is your question “Shouldn’t payment arrangements conform to what is actually the moral thing to do–i.e., the payee should only be required to pay what it is moral for him to pay–and isn’t there something immoral about requiring payment for services that have already been paid for?”

If that’s the question, I would say it’s a misdescription of the situation. There is the initial purchase. That has been paid for. There is then also the right to publish in any particular instance. These rights are paid for individually. Their price is not wrapped into the initial purchase. So there is no case of “payment for services already paid for.” There are different things being paid for at different times.

-FrL-

4

"Which brings me to the question, and this is a moral or philosophical one, not a legal one. If Buyer A is hired to perform a task or create a product by Provider B and has been paid for it, should Buyer A have to continue to pay again for the service long after it is rendered?"

Maybe the moral reason is that unlike another service that’s rendered and paid for and the new owner merely owns it now and only gets appreciation on the value, let’s say, if it’s real estate; that unlike that, in the case of movies and such they are on the active market continuously producing more income for the new owner and the feeling is that if there’s new money being earned, then share it.

The comparison to books is interesting; don’t they get royalties?

Art is an interesting one; maybe because the art can’t be reproduced like a book or a movie since there’s just one copy. If you made prints and sold millions off of the one original though, I wonder what the law is; is that a derivative work that gets royalties?

The post upthread from here talked about splitting risks and I think that’s what’s often done when working ‘on spec’ so that the film can get made.

It’s a really good point though, I think. From a capitalism point of view (and sorry if that’s going too far afield from a moral question), it would seem like the ‘owners’ of things would be entitled to all of the money if they had a binding contract.

[full disclosure: i’m on the opposite end and shoot films on a ‘work for hire’ premise, for which performers receive no future compensation]

5

The market system is based on an underlying philosophical precept: that there must be a relationship be how much something is worth and its cost. What we’re seeing here is cases where the monetary value of the artwork turns out to be worth far more than was initially thought. Hence it’s reasonable for the artist to want extra money, in accordance with the philosophical precept.

6

Simple. Because they can.

7

Like BlinkingDuck said, the residual system allows the artist to get more work published, or heard, or seen and have a chance to share in the profit of that work. If you thought you wrote the best song ever, but wanted to charge $8 million for it up front, you would never sell it. But, if you are willing to take $20,000 for it now, and $1 every time it plays on the radio from now until you die you can sell it and potentially make more than $8 million. Same applies for TV shows, books, etc. Actors sign contracts all the time that pay a flat fee plus some percentage of ticket sales. It’s the same theory more or less.
I usually don’t like unions and strikes, but I can certainly understand that the writers want to get the whole internet issue ironed out, that’s where everything is headed and they deserve their piece of the pie. Exactly how big that piece should be, I have no idea.

8

I have no qualms with a voluntary contract between providers and receivers. If producers negotiate a deal with writers that both willingly agree to, so be it.

But often such negotiation terms are couched in moral language – “they are getting rich off of the sweat of my brow, and it’s unfair”. “They have no right to continue to earn if I don’t.” “I’m a slave to their demands.”

If we have a moral problem, that’s quite different than a mere, “I want more because I want more. Gimme.”

Why should they BE entitled? Justify it either way.

If I sell you a book (the physical entity) and you resell it, I don’t get anything beyond the original payment. I am not talking about selling rights in this example.

9

"If that’s the question, I would say it’s a misdescription of the situation. There is the initial purchase. That has been paid for. There is then also the right to publish in any particular instance."

It seems to me that’s the crux of the matter that’s being questioned in the OP from a moral point of view. Should “the right to publish” be considered a separate thing?

A separate thing that requires compensation. The owner is now publishing something that belongs to him and is his sole property, whose creation he already paid for. Those practices do happen and they’re called work for hire agreements.

The question isn’t why **shouldn’t **they be entitled, the question is why **should **they be?

10

OK. I’ll bite. Why?

11

Morality has nothing to do with it. There’s nothing inherently moral or immoral about seeking royalties for your work.

12

**

**

Yes, but the rights to that future worth can be transferred to the new owner and though it’s reasonable for the artist to want it, what about subjective worth of the money they were paid given time and place?

What something’s worth can be subjective; a coat is worth more to me if I’m freezing than if I’m not or don’t need it. It may have a standard market value at any given time, but does the worth to me come into play, morally?

It’s intriguing and reminds me of the poor songwriters you’d hear of in the south that got paid pennies for their work and then millions made off of it by the companies. Obviously, that smells bad but the morality of it is questionable I think.

There are times when I’ll work for less because I’m in dire straits even if my work is technically worth more on the market; the supply/demand thing on an individual basis if you will. Theoretically, that balances out over a large number of people in terms of supply/demand but it’s interesting. Like someone said earlier in their hypothetical of making an offer and you can take it or leave it; what’s missing there (they asked) is what the moral implications are if you’re forced into negotiating with the person making the offer by the law. It becomes a moot point of course if that’s the law. But the morality of that law then comes into question; not leaving it to the pure market which can obviously be ‘cruel’ when unfettered in any one given instance which then goes to whether or not the person/artist/seller can be considered at moral fault for their position in life that requires them to take less than what their work is worth in the example of the southern writers.

13

“Might makes right?”

That’s not a moral justification, but a practical one.

I’m inclined to agree, but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise.

14

"If I sell you a book (the physical entity) and you resell it, I don’t get anything beyond the original payment. I am not talking about selling rights in this example."

In that case, I think one possible moral justification that distinguishes the artistic work is that unlike the book you’re selling that you didn’t write, sharing in money from something you helped to create and bring into existence in the first place might make a difference if it’s continuously generating new income through publication or dissemination (unlike building one car).

It’s pretty close though, I think, in moral terms and an excellent point.

15

Indeed. My wife has been given a choice of getting royalties for a book or accepting a larger upfront payment. This was purely a financial decision.

There is some degree of ownership of intellectual property involved also. My friends who have written novelizations tell me that they typically do not get royalties for this work, but only a one-time payment. That seems reasonable when the creativity comes from the original writer.

It also is a mutually agreed on decision to balance the risk and reward for a risky enterprise. My daughter got royalties for commercials and TV. She didn’t for industrials, where there is a pretty much fixed market - in her case predefined when the thing was filmed. And to the best of my knowledge nonunion jobs don’t pay residuals, neither do modeling jobs.

No morality involved. Just good old free enterprise.

BTW, a agent we went to had a large framed cartoon, of somewhat dressed starlet type and what was clearly a producer type on couch. Starlet, snuggling, was saying “Now tell me about residuals again.”

BTW, to bring up another thing, we are going to get royalties from my father-in-laws music after he dies. Since he, and eventually his estate, holds the copyright that sounds reasonable to me. Does this fall into the not sure he’s entitled to it category also?

16

My layman’s understanding of it is that it the law looks at it this way:

Buyer A wants to make make money by getting advertisers to pay for a television show to be broadcast. But A doesn’t know how to write a script.

Provider B does know how to write a script, and under copyright law, has a right to decide how his work is distributed, adapted, and performed.

So, knowing that A is going to try to milk the crap out of B’s script, airing the resulting show as many times as humanly possible, advertisers paying for it each time, and then releasing it on DVD to hopefully sell millions of copies, why should B agree to do the work without arranging to get a piece of all that pie that A is trying to get for himself based partially on B’s work?

17

It just seems like the best way to share the risks and costs of publication The alternative is that publisher and author need to know in advance how well a book will sell - not just theis Christmas, but until it is taken out of print (publisher needs to know this because he doesn’t want to pay through the nose for something that might flop; author needs to know this because he doesn’t want to give away a golden goose).

Or to look at it another way - physically publishing and distributing a book is already a fairly costly process - the publisher does not necessarily want to add to those costs by acquiring the title outright - it would probably mean fewer books would be published, because again, it’s a step into the unknown.

And there’s also an element in which authors regard their works as their children - that they’re just not willing to cut the cord, and if nobody is offering sufficient incentive to induce them, then that’s just the way it goes.

18

Yeah, I don’t know why I wrote my longer post above. This is exactly what I should have said. Thanks Mosier.

It’s like debating the morality of getting paid in gold bullion or cash. Morality is not a part of the equation.

19

If the writers are asking something unreasonable, they won’t get anything at all, since anyone can write a successful drama, right? So, the fat cat producers can just laugh at them, and write their own shows.

Like “big brother survives the dance for dollars”, or something. Art for art’s sake. Society and culture are the big winners, that way.

Tris

20

How is that different from the publishers’ position?

Who is more responsible for the success of a show like, say, Friends? The writers, the producers, or David Schwimmer? And who is making the most money? If compensation is a reflection of the value that people are bringing to the product, I would argue that the writers are getting the short shrift whether they get what they want from the strike or not.