Should fans write for official products ?

[Robo4900]

That's $10,000,000 profit, I should add. Which means the production budget has been made back and now the film's made $10,000,000 profit. This means the film enters public domain and can be adapted or sold by anyone. Of course, Disney already being a massive studio is going to be able to do those things quite easily and quickly.

I mean, Hollywood accounting makes it impossible to determine how much profit any big film has made. You can get a ballpark, probably a couple of years after release, but the way things get tied up in this and that, it's a mess.

I'll also add that Infinity War's budget is stated to be about 300 mil, whereas its opening weekend was 600 mil. So, it would still have entered public domain in its first weekend.

Mind you, though, Endgame is already based on a lot of concepts and characters that would already fall under public domain at that point.

Public domain doesn't mean "The previous owner can't use this", it means "Anyone can use it."
Infinity War and Endgame could very well still have happened in a world with sensible public domain; even if anyone can use the characters, not just anyone could make the MCU.

Though if no one can make more than $10,000,000 off any piece of media, the MCU wouldn't have happened AT ALL. No company puts $140,000,000 (the budget of Iron Man) into a movie for only a $10,000,000 profit.

I was completely behind you on the idea that copyright should only last 20 years, but profit capping is just not something that would ever work. Policing it would be impossible, and if it wasn't, it would stifle all large-scale mass media, and any workarounds for that are just as problematic (for instance, if the cap is somehow arranged to be set to $10,000,000 per person profiting from it, then congratulations, corporations still get to rake in billions of dollars, because they can just spread the money out between the gigantic number of people who work on a major movie, so Infinity War's copyright lasts years; meanwhile, if an indie video game made by one person suddenly gets mainstream success, it goes into public domain over a weekend. It would just be yet another seemingly-good-faith change to law that actually just screws over the little guy even more).

Again, the $10,000,000 figure is just a random number that at present seems ridiculously high. In practice that figure would be different because I chose the figure for a book based on the idea of "Well, the cost of creating and publishing is minute in comparison".

In big business terms, though, $10,000,000 is peanuts.

Profit consolidation needs to be capped, however. A progressive tax system would help with that but adding in a "Christ, you've made all this money so quickly? Fuck off, your dumb movie/book/whatever now belongs to the public" would make things better.

It wouldn't, though. It would mean no movie/book/whatever of a scale similar to Infinity War or Endgame would ever happen. It would stifle creative work, not support it.
And "You're making too much money; now you don't get to make any more" is such a hostile move towards any kind of business... Not only would all the companies be against it, but all the fans of any kind of mass media would be too. It would never happen, and if it somehow did, everyone would hate it.

[LoganForkHands73]

Well, now this has become pretty loaded.

I'm not a huge fan of current copyright laws but I definitely believe that the creator of an artistic property at least deserves some degree of sovereignty, unless their explicit goal is to allow others to use their ideas (i.e. with the Jenny Everywhere project). And as shitty as some corporate strangeholds over beloved IPs can be (*cough* Disney), the financial producers are not undeserving of some share of the profits if they helped fund what was made.

You'd be expecting everyone to have the common decency to not steal all your ideas, which is unfortunately all too common in all walks of business with the current stringent copyright laws in place. I've made a few films and scripts and I would understandably be displeased if anyone could outright steal my ideas and hard work and claim it all as their own without repercussion, even if my projects are extremely low level - without any safeguards in place, all anyone at my level can do is trust others to not do that.

With much larger franchises, there's all sorts of logistical issues to consider. How would anything be funded? How would anything be able to reach a wide audience? The best thing that could happen is that everyone could write fanfiction, which is already fully legal.

[Matches Malone]

Nobody should be allowed to be the sole owner of something that absorbs so much wealth.

I genuinely think it's insane that a comic from 1984--that has rapidly generated billions in profit off the backs of the people.

DB isn't education, medicine or food that people are forced to invest in to survive, it's optional, time wasting entertainment. Saying that DB is absorbing $$$ off the backs of people implies they're being forced to pay into it, but they're not.

Why should media patents last like 150?

Let me ask you this, if you spent your entire life working and saving money, and ended up with a good size bank account when you finally retired, would it make sense to have to share it with your neighbor who sleeps all day and doesn't have a $ to his name ? If Toriyama has to share his success, then why not you ? Before you say you're just talking about super wealthy people, they'll eventually move down the food chain once they're done with them until they reach you, so do you owe anyone parts of your savings ?

[JulieYBM]

Nobody should be allowed to be the sole owner of something that absorbs so much wealth.

I genuinely think it's insane that a comic from 1984--that has rapidly generated billions in profit off the backs of the people.

DB isn't education, medicine or food that people are forced to invest in to survive, it's optional, time wasting entertainment. Saying that DB is absorbing $$$ off the backs of people implies they're being forced to pay into it, but they're not.

Why should media patents last like 150?

Let me ask you this, if you spent your entire life working and saving money, and ended up with a good size bank account when you finally retired, would it make sense to have to share it with your neighbor who sleeps all day and doesn't have a $ to his name ? If Toriyama has to share his success, then why not you ? Before you say you're just talking about super wealthy people, they'll eventually move down the food chain once they're done with them until they reach you, so do you owe anyone parts of your savings ?

There should be high taxes on high income (capital gains should be dissolved and merged with normal income), there should be a wealth tax to take back the money the wealthy have stolen from the people. Billionaires should not exist in our current world. $999,999,999.99 is enough money for one person and their family. Actually, I'd argue that's still far too much but I'm being charitable.

[jjgp1112]

I mean it was pretty obvious where this was headed from the moment you started talking about it but let's not turn this into a political thread?

[Robo4900]

Let me ask you this, if you spent your entire life working and saving money, and ended up with a good size bank account when you finally retired, would it make sense to have to share it with your neighbor who sleeps all day and doesn't have a $ to his name ? If Toriyama has to share his success, then why not you ? Before you say you're just talking about super wealthy people, they'll eventually move down the food chain once they're done with them until they reach you, so do you owe anyone parts of your savings ?

Except you're criticising something I never argued.

I'm not advocating for taking anyone's money away, or forcing them to share their hard-earned cash with "your neighbour who sleeps all day and doesn't have a $ to his name." In the significantly-less-than-twenty-years that Toriyama did Doctor Slump, he had earned enough money to comfortably live for the rest of his life, then in the significantly-less-than-twenty-years he spent doing Dragon Ball, he continued to earn ridicuous amounts of money, then kind of retired from doing regular manga, continuing to earn ridiculous money from both properties, for the full 20 years that they would have remained in copyright... As well as earning money from other ventures.

If Dragon Ball then became public domain, he wouldn't then have to give up his money, he just would stop earning royalties off each volume as it reaches the point of being 20 years old. (At which point it enters the public domain; anyone can freely study the work, adapt it, parody it, etc. as they see fit with zero legal ramifications)
No reason he couldn't then come back and do Super to earn more money, if he really wants more money. Or something entirely different, like his work on Dragon Quest... But at the same time, anyone can put out their own Dragon Ball, and if people like that more than they like Toriyama's, then it becomes the more popular sequel. Because that's how capitalism is supposed to work, really -- consumers are drawn to the greater of any competing products, financially encouraging the best work to continue. And any original characters or storylines the new author makes are off-limits to other authors for 20 years. (Though, legal, commercially-sold fanfic may not be the most commercially-viable business venture, to be fair... Though it would be entirely legitimate. More likely, the main takeaway we'd get is we'd start to see stuff like movies and TV adaptations of Dragon Ball made by various companies around the world)

And beyond Toriyama, any other artist who makes a thing gets to commercially exploit it for 20 years. Again, just like a hardware patent, it's considered plenty of time to earn a lot of money, and after that, either you continue making new things using that base, but you have competition this time around, or you already moved onto something else entirely, and won't be done any harm by some old thing you made 20 years ago becoming public domain.
The point is, if you're a struggling artist, either your 20-year-old work is just another thing that didn't earn a ton and so losing it isn't losing much, or the art was taken away from you so you don't earn off it, but after 20 years, you get to return to it because it's public domain... Either way, the small artist has no negative effects from this, really. So neither the wealthy nor the poor artist feels any ill effects. The only negative effects are on the big corporations like Disney that bank their trillions of dollars a year on nostalgic properties that no one else can do anything with, and that are frequently produced with a significant disconnect from those involved in the original. They're earning big money just because they happen to be the same company that once housed the guys who made a popular thing 20 years ago... Or a hundred years ago, in Mickey Mouse's case.

Either way, once again, the point is that as the system currently works, Toriyama makes ridiculous amounts of money forever. Then he dies, and his offspring get to earn millions for doing absolutely nothing, forever. And then their offspring get that too. In other words, I'm saying that in the current system, wealth that was originally for Toriyama and the animators of old goes to some guy who sleeps all day and doesn't have a $ to his name except what he's had thrown on his lap by happening to be Toriyama's son.

Rather than Toriyama's kids being supported by him until they're financially self-sufficient, at which point they strike out on their own and do their own thing to earn their living, they get to earn millions from just being the guy's offspring.
This system makes no sense. It's subsedising people who've done no work, just because their dad happened to make a popular thing a hundred years ago.

[Matches Malone]

I mean it was pretty obvious where this was headed from the moment you started talking about it but let's not turn this into a political thread?

You're right, can we please not turn this into a topic it's not. If anyone's interested in continuing the discussion of whether or not DB should be in the public domain, please open a separate topic for it. I'm not saying it shouldn't be discussed, just not here. I'll gladly continue it if anyone's willing to open the topic for it.

[Robo4900]

I mean it was pretty obvious where this was headed from the moment you started talking about it but let's not turn this into a political thread?

You're right, can we please not turn this into a topic it's not. If anyone's interested in continuing the discussion of whether or not DB should be in the public domain, please open a separate topic for it. I'm not saying it shouldn't be discussed, just not here. I'll gladly continue it if anyone's willing to open the topic for it.

Except, fans writing for Dragon Ball, and Dragon Ball in the public domain, are very relevant to each other.

If Dragon Ball was in the public domain, ANYONE could make their own Dragon Ball. It's a scenario in which, literally, fans could make their own Dragon Ball, whenever they wanted. If, say, Justin Lin was a fan, and wanted to make a Dragon Ball movie, he could pitch it around to studios, and get it made, because it'd be public domain.

And personally, I think that would be very good. Obviously, if people could make their own Dragon Ball, there would be some shit. Just like how we have fanfic, mockbusters, etc. etc., there would be a lot of weird direct-to-DVD "Dragon Ball" stuff, because some people will want to cash in, and a lot of fans are bad writers (and honestly, it'd be much the same as what we have now; there's a deluge of Dragon Ball fanfic and such online, and a huge portion of it is shit), but it would allow any creatives out there with an ambitious idea to decide to do a really awesome TV show or movie. Because a lot of good writers are fans too. The MCU is stacked with writers who are fans of Marvel comics, for instance.
And fans like myself, who hate Super, would probably have an alternative new Dragon Ball to watch... Meanwhile, people who like Super would have TWO Dragon Ball shows to enjoy.

[JulieYBM]

Yeah, then creators who I love and support can find greater financial stability that way, too. FunSexyDB could release all the books she likes and not have to worry about getting sued, for example.

The idea that a judge doesn't laugh IP holders out of the courtroom when they try to sue creators of derivative works is just disgusting to me. It's such a waste of time.

[Jord]

It depends on the person writing it. An appreciation for a product can certainly help as long as the person isn't an extreme fanboy that praises everything the official product churn out. In video games we've seen some pretty cool stuff the last few years with products made by 'fans' but supported by the company that made the original like with the recent Wonder Boy games, Sonic Mania and (a while back but just re-released) Ghostbusters the video game.