Comment by mikestew
12 days ago
However, that seems like something that could be worked out.
That’s a pretty heavy lift for that poor sentence. The way it “works out” in my mind is that the instant an indie work pokes its head above water, Disney sweeps in and makes a franchise out of it without payment to the artist. Because your proposal works both directions.
There's lots of ways that this could be done.
A franchise could only become open for unauthorized developers once it has made a certain inflation adjusted revenue, or once a franchise has works created by more than a certain number of artists.
Or these changes could simply only apply to corporations. So individuals could own franchise IP but corporations could not. Or corporations would be required to compensate the original creator but independent artists would not.
It's not necessary to make a perfect system. Just one that is better than our current dysfunctional system where corporations own most of our culture.