Lit Books Disney reported to be refusing to pay royalties to Alan Dean Foster

What's the story with Williams?

 

Agreed on all counts.

For what it's worth I did post a polite comment to the SFWA article asking if Mary Kowal or some other knowledgeable individual could explain why Disney, and not Del Rey, is considered the entity responsible for paying ADF's royalties. As best as I can tell, my comment is currently "in moderation." If I get any sort of response I'll discuss it here.

And may I add that every time I type out "SFWA" my fingers actually want to type "SWFA" which is definitely not the same thing

 

Nothing, just a random example.

 

This twitter thread by Cory Doctorow goes into some detail (in case anyone here hasn't seen it already)"

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1329240246584627201

 

Can't seem to access it

 

Might be because of the /i/web/ version of the URL if you're not logged in to Twitter. I think this link should work for you though. As John mentioned, it's a whole thread with 12 tweets total so make sure to click through, it's more than just the first tweet (which I'm also embedding below):

 

That's great, I got it cheers

 

Wow. Having read the thread, this is potentially a whole bigger than just Foster.

 

It’s bigger than Disney. It’s tantamount to, oh, let’s say, asking the courts to hand you an election you lost.

 

This is gonna decide a lot of writers' futures. I hope to god this does not go the way of the spidey thing where fandom consented to even more unjust copyright law cause "gotta have muh spiderman"

 

I mean, that's pretty much what it comes down to. This is the system working as intended. Disney has a lot of money and power, so they can basically just do whatever they want. That's Capitalism.

 

Disney has always affirmed this. Look at how they union busted back when Uncle Walt was in charge

 

Really rooting for Mr. Foster here, and for writers in general, because of the possible precedents outlined upthread that could be set by this. I am admittedly one of the "Capitalism=Bad" crew, and regardless of whether this is so far the result of deliberate "villainy", accidental oversight, legal confusion, and/or just mega-business as usual, I am concerned that Disney et al. will now run with it as far as possible in their own favor -- which makes sense and cents to and for themselves as businesses, but squeezes the writers and separates them from the fruits of their creative labor even further.

I also feel bad that I did not even know until reading this statement that Mr. Foster was dealing with a cancer diagnosis. Many sympathies to him and his wife with their medical issues (and the financial issues those can so easily bring on...).

I'll end my piece by sharing one of my favorite character descriptions from all of SW prose and which can be credited to Mr. Foster, from the original novelization of Star Wars, introducing Tarkin: "...a thin, hatchet-faced man with hair and form borrowed from an old broom and the expression of a quiescent piranha." I love that imagery.

 

Disney has actually been in trouble for a while now. Most of their new films have fallen over, with the Mulan live-action film being filmed in the same place the Chinese Communist Government has their "re-education camps" causing controversy. Captain Marvel and Brie Larson didn't help matters from what I heard. And the Sequel Trilogy got flamed so badly that even Solo suffered.

Disney is actually getting a clean-up at the moment, getting rid of the "Social Justice Warriors" (really just anarchists finding the smallest thing to whinge about and just annoying others about it). But Hollywood is dead at the moment too. Most of the older generation of actors are getting accused of stuff left, right and center, and the younger generation are just as bad activists as ever.

 

Oh god please don't bring up that whole ****-show. Bunch of manbabies complaining about wamen.

 

I'm of two camps here:

1. Disney absolutely DOES pander to the LGBTQIA+ community. But their pandering is alrgely inconsequential and token. (See: The background same-sex kiss in TROS and the subsequent editing out of that shot from some international releases)

2. People who complain about "SJWs" and "Politics" in modern media are usually not doing so out of a sense of kindship towards the LGBTQIA+ community.

 

Regardless of politics, just give Alan Dean Foster his money.

 

My comment on the article was approved by the SFWA moderators, and responded to by an account calling itself "SFWA Communication." Their entire reply reads as follows:

This response, while not as clear as I would have liked, does offer at least some of the information I've been looking for. We can gather from this response that ADF's early work for Lucasfilm was indeed governed under some sort of non-standard publishing contract that placed Lucasfilm (and Warner Books/Hatchette, apparently) in the position of paying royalties rather than Del Rey (which would be why Del Rey, the actual publisher, referred payment questions to the rightsholder).

There are still plenty of unanswered questions, and I still feel SFWA's handling of the situation leaves much to be desired. Further, none of this proves actual malicious intent on Disney's part. But at least it is now somewhat clear why Disney is the target of their PR campaign rather than Del Rey. I suspect ADF and SFWA have already exhausted whatever legal options were available, but perhaps this effort will be successful nevertheless. I'll continue to hope the matter resolves in favor of ADF and he receives the royalties he should have received.

 

We must burn down the system, as it is inherently corrupting and will eventually lead to our destruction.

 

Unless they mean the fact that it was an airforce propaganda cavalcade that felt like it was gonna become an onion article about Carol shredding families apart in Bosnia or Kuwait or something.

But yeah on topic I think Disney knows they can just outlive poor Alan. People will forget and then go back to doing whatever. It always happens. They know they get more pushback for stupid remakes than they do for actual labor violations

 

Oh that's horrendous. But do you honestly think the comicsgate crowd was up in arms because of the military propaganda?

 

That was this part:

Disney’s argument is that they have purchased the rights but not the obligations of the contract. In other words, they believe they have the right to publish work, but are not obligated to pay the writer no matter what the contract says. If we let this stand, it could set precedent to fundamentally alter the way copyright and contracts operate in the United States. All a publisher would have to do to break a contract would be to sell it to a sibling company.
​

The Disney representatives that have communicated with Alan’s team have acknowledged that Disney does own Alan’s contract (which stipulates the payment of royalties) but claim they aren’t obligated to honor its terms. Even if the contract(s) didn’t specify the continued payment of royalties (which we know at least the contract for the Alien books does, because Alan’s agent read it out loud during their press conference), Disney’s refusal to pay an artist for his work while profiting off of it themselves could be described as nothing but malicious.

This is the company that denied a grieving family permission to put a picture of Spider-Man on their dead toddler’s grave, including a little plastic headstone that the family constructed themselves. They really don’t deserve any benefit of the doubt.

 

There doesn't need to be "malicious intent". They smell an opportunity to save money, and like any successful corporation, they're going for it. We shouldn't be expecting anything less.