What other industries can try this? For a restaurant built on a cement foundation... maybe the cement company can release a product to fix the cracks in their flawed mixture, and then demand 10% of every pizza sold in the building. ... I think the industry needs to get away from OS vendor tyranny, somehow.
If you write a software program for a client, you get paid. If a actor works for a day on a TV show he may get cheques forever.
If you hire a photographer for a wedding, you will pay him the same rate as a contract developer. But you won't own the rights to the photos and keep having to pay the guy if you want copies.
I can understand the owner of the TV show or owner of a song charging for commercial use, in the same way if you work for Gmail Google will sell the product forever.
Gmail developers past and present don't get cheques every year.
> If a actor works for a day on a TV show he may get cheques forever.
Most actors get paid either a fixed fee or hourly. It's only the top talent that can negotiate points. And honestly, that's pretty good for the producers, since that decreases their risk if the TV show or movie doesn't do well.
> If you hire a photographer for a wedding, you will pay him the same rate as a contract developer. But you won't own the rights to the photos and keep having to pay the guy if you want copies.
This part is so weird to me. But I honestly suspect that most photography customers don't care so much about owning the rights to the photograph they pay for, as long as they can use it how they want. And over time, the norm gradually became baked into the industry.
> that decreases their risk if the TV show or movie doesn't do well.
The risk is not decreased. The risk is the same, just moved around. Instead of the producers risking not making a certain amount of profit, now you have the risk that the actor only asked and got a paltry sum for a runaway success.
The uncertainty of how a movie will fare cannot be removed from existence through contracts or financial arrangements. But you can make it so some other party suffers instead of you.
...it's possible we have the same opinion. I'm not sure if this is a counter argument or just a rephrasing :)
I think the core idea is to avoid someone actually losing money. The producer might end up with a loss, the actor's profit is strictly positive (not accounting for opportunity costs...).
Or something in between: for my wedding I got digital files and a perpetual license for personal use, so I can print and share with family, etc. That’s all I really wanted. The photographer kept her copyright.
If the photographer uses the photos they created at your wedding as publicity on their website, or if they sold prints widely, or if they set up something like a stock photography business ... you and your spouse would be models/actors, and your poses would be modelling/performances.
There ought to be some remuneration for your efforts in those situations.
This is the key point. If you hire an actor for a live stage show, it is a one time fee. The live show happens, the tickets are sold, the actor gets paid, and at the end of the day everyone goes home.
But what if you recorded that show? You’ve now made a copy of a performance. When you sell a copy of that recording, you’ve made a copy of the actors work. But you only paid for the single live show, so or course there should be some kind of further compensation. The original payment was to see their one-time performance. The actor still owns the artistic/intellectual rights to their interpretation/performance. If you want a copy of that, they need to get paid.
For software developers, they are paid specifically to create intellectual property and as part of their employment agreement, any IP rights belong to the company. But this is part of their contract.
It’s all in how the employment agreements are setup. Any actor/photographer/etc could be hired to a contract that would allow unlimited copies without royalties. It happens all the time. But. if you are an actor with enough clout, such a contract would be very expensive. I’d also imagine stock photo shoots work this way. The models are paid a one-time fee with an unlimited release.
But, I think the key part is that contracts with royalties are cheaper (cashflow) for the producers. The actors get paid a small fixed amount with a percentage of the ongoing profits. The alternative would be a large payout initially with no share of the profits. Both contracts are possible, but the former spreads the risk (and rewards) across a larger pool of people.
Whether or not this applies to Apple and foundational use of software is a different story, but it’s pretty well established for arts.
My very limited understanding of retail real estate in the US is that leasing agreements in shopping centers and malls typically include a percentage of sales.
