But a WFH deal isn't really a transfer of copyright anyway. The copyright is always held by the company; no transfer takes place. (There is, by the way, an open question about whether comics actually qualify for WFH, which is allowed only in narrowly-defined circumstances.)
...and would still look perfectly legal if it merely licensed all rights in perpetuety, leaving the creator with a hollow copyright. You can't bip around lawyers that easily, bud!
False! If you sell a copyright (as opposed to engaging in WFH), the law allows for reclamation of copyright 35 years later (as well as at certain later dates for materials transfered before the passage of certain copyright extensions.) For example, DC has recently been in negotation with the Siegel estate regarding the copyrights that they got to reclaim.
But even Lucasfilm creates work that other people own. For example, the special effects that their ILM division does for movies... those don't end up copyright ILM.
You ask for 15% of the gross, you don't get a movie.
People go a lot slower than if there wasn't any enforcement at all, I am confident.
It sounds to me like saying "the rats keep stealing 1/4 of the baby's food -- we better stop feeding the baby altogether!"

Oh, that's great then! [img]http://209.198.111.165/ubb/smile.gif[/img] But why isn't it set up so that if whomever is exploiting it is (a) screwing it up or (b) screwing you over, it can revert to you immediately?



Well no not in the present state of affairs. But two questions pop into my mind:

(1) Why the hell not? OK, I know why (movies are big big bucks investment risks), but there's no reason why different percentages couldn't be worked out for different project types, just like they are anyway. But, WHY should I have to sell off complete control of my ideas in order for someone to sell copies or derivatives of them?

(2) So what? When did I say I wanted to make a movie? Sure, if I decide that my stuff would make a good movie, then I'll go try to find someone who wants to make the movie (I sure couldn't do it) who wants to license it, and we'll make a deal. As long as I maintain control of what's being done. If not, it's not a big deal to me; it would be silly to be of the opinion that my silly comic book stuff is something so important that it MUST BE RELEASED TO THE WORLD.

Nat, can you tell me about how you think of your work as a writer, and something about your hopes for your material? I mean, yeah lots of us would love to see movies of our creations or whatever, but is that what drives you to do what you do? Would you stop writing if you couldn't make money? Or would you keep writing even if you were working at McDonalds?

I ask because I've undergone a realignment in my thinking about creating and making a living, which might not be clear from what I've said. I'm not feeling any need or compulsion to have my creations plastered all over the world or to only make a living creating them, not anymore. It would be great, but not being able to make a living at it isn't going to stop me from creating stuff. The kind of stress, uncertainty about the future, and ego-damage that I used to feel about my creations, well, it's just bad for me. It's unhealthy to be obsessed about making it big, being famous, being admired or even just making a living, and it keeps me from relaxing and being able to really free up my creativity.

So maybe we're looking at this from different angles, and with different motivations. I'm certainly coming from the point of view that frantically pursuing monetary gain from your creations is a misuse of brain-time; create first, try to make money with it later. A lot of people, including formerly myself, are of the mind that they can't create unless they're looking forward to getting paid for it, and also that any time they spend working at anything else is wasted. I don't feel that way anymore at all.

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

If you want to set it up that way in the contract of sale, you can (although I would expect you'd need more precise definitions of terms in there.) But selling the work was your decision. If you're going to be that hurt by what they do with it, don't sell it.
Because 15% of gross is a huge chunk out of the money, when so many other expenses have to be covered.
If there's not going to be a movie, why worry about the terms?
That varies so much based on the material. I mean, I do everything from computer texts to Mighty Morphin Power Ranger adventures to cotranslating abstract Turkish prose fiction. About the only common link through all that is that I like to write.
It has driven certain decisions on certain projects.
No, but I would write considerably less. Having worked a day job, I found it drained much of the same energies that I use in my writing.
Yeah, I'd keep writing. Suicide notes.
And I'm of the opinion that earning a living is a necessary thing, as well as a respectable one, and if one is happiest doing it through creative efforts, then one should do it.

Here's something that may boggle you a bit: on some of the projects I've worked on over the last few years, I've been offered my choice of either retaining long-term ownership and making royalties, or being paid more money up front and signing over all rights, with no royalties to come. Generally, I've ended up making the decision on a purely economic basis -- sometimes I've chosen one route, and sometimes the other (and I've made both right and wrong economic guesses in each directions.) Why is it solely economic? Because I'm really not all that interested in owning the rights to Easy Works For Windows 95 for the rest of my life. Those rights are already basically worthless. Not every writing, drawing, or composition needs to be treated as the probable source of one's happiness in one's retirement.

The Factor is currently optioned for TV. (Don't start sounding excited; it's a minor thing and the show will not be made on this option.) If a show gets made, am I worried that they'll ruin my comic? They can't ruin my comic, it's already been done and is already in print. The worst they can do is create a lame TV series with some resemblance to my comic. And since one point that I will always stick to in any negotations is that I get to keep the original tales in print, I'll always have something to be proud of. Beyond that, they can basically do what they want, so long as they don't crush my begonias when they back the dumptruck full of money onto my lawn. I'd like to have a big pile of money; it would give me more freedom to pick and choose what I spend my time writing.

No, that doesn't boggle me at all Nat, I understand. I've done the exact same thing with various works I've done, some with royalty contracts and some for just up front and sell the rights for an up front fee. I'm not necessarily happy about some of that tho, because in one case in particular, I know the client will be raking in the bucks and I won't see any. However, I've now built a relationship with the client, they love my stuff, so next time I can ask for more money and royalties.



Well, I sure hope they do that! But they'll try their very hardest NOT to, as I know you're aware. But I really do hope it happens. [img]http://209.198.111.165/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

Wow, I've got a headache from reading that entire thread in one sitting. I have to say that I appreciate alot of what you're saying, Jeff. I tried breaking into the syndicated comic strip field for a few years with no success. I ultimately gave it up, not because I didn't think my work had tremendous merit, but because most of the suggestions I got back from editors showed they had a pretty narrow view of what worked in the industry. What I wanted to achieve didn't fit in the regulation format, and the plotlines that I thought were funny and meaningful often weren't politically correct. Obviuosly the established outlets were never going to work for me and without them there was virtually no way of getting my work in front of a substantial audience. I came to the same conclusion you did, that spending my time trying to SELL my work was cutting into time better spent CREATING my work, as well as depressing me quite a bit (a rejection's a rejection even if you don't particullarly have any confidence in the opinion of the rejecter). Since I started my page a few weeks ago http://homestead.com/pollixcomix/ I'm alot happier and even feel less stressed at my day job. Do I still hope to eventually make some money off my work, maybe even enough to quite my regular job and start doing it full time? Hell, yes! But the important thing is that's no longer the focus for me. I'm just happy that it's out there, and if a few people tune in it to week to week and I never make a dime, at this point I'll be just as happy.
Gotta hand it to Nat too. He really knows his stuff. But as a writer I think he has a different perspective in reference to signing copyright over to a publisher. A book, if it's a singular work with no plans for a sequel is pretty much done when it's done, the characters and storyline suspended in those pages for all time. The problem that arises, in books as well as comics, although it's more of a hazard to comics, is that these characters are never completed, each storyline creates another facet and more fully defines the character. When you sign your copyright, and your control, over to a conglomerate, they can change the character anyway they want to fit into a different format or a particular storyline (I direct your attention to every movie derived from a comic book ever made - Oh, so Superman has to give up his powers to be with Lois Lane. what a shock! - What? It was actually the Joker that killed Bruce Wayne's parents? How ironic! - etc, etc.) It would eat me up to sign over my control to my own characters to some company because it was the only way I could see my work reach a mass audience. Giving it away for free on the web is the best solution for me and I'm sure for alot of other creative types. Plus, I don't have any Editors trying to make my work cleaner or more PC than I want it to be. A dangerous freedom but one I value.

Okay. I think that Nat and I have presented a lot of info and things to talk about. Nat, I know you'll be very busy this week in preparation for your Saturday nuptials (Many congrats! And, thanks for the Frisbee!) so please don't feel the need to spend a lot of time here. You go party on!

But, now might be a good time to review the info and thoughts presented so far, and to maybe think about some possible scenarios for what might happen.

Okay, so we have a basic set of problems. Copyright, in terms of being practically enforceable, is coming into a major crisis as a result of digital technology and the Internet. Copyright (and also patent) was originally designed to protect the rights of people who create things of "value," whether physical items or concepts and ideas; it makes it illegal for unauthorized persons to claim ownership of such things or to make copies of them for which the original creator receives no credit or compensation.

All this new technology is threatening that protection. The ability to digitally duplicate something instantly and share it with the entire planet just as fast makes it very easy to render copyright almost useless. Napster and other peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing software have basically made it so anyone can get a copy of anything made of bytes -- MP3 music files, movies, books, images, whatever -- nearly instantly and free, if illegally. Napster can be targeted because it has a central server and database, but other technology like Gnutella is totally P2P and simply cannot be monitored or contained.

My personal position on this is that the rapid proliferation of this technology is going to seriously damage or destroy the enforceability of copyright, and that there's essentially nothing we can do about it; therefore creators need to think ahead about the ramifications of this, and what it means to our ability to make a living creating.

I don't relish the thought of copyright being rendered useless. But, if this happens, I'd like to be ready for it with a Plan B, so to speak.

Another major problem, which is coming to light in the general public as a result of the Napster phenomenon and to us comics folks particularly from things happening in comics, is the perversion and erosion of creators' rights by major media distributors. The music companies have been seizing artists' rights almost by force, and failing to properly compensate them for their creations, while comics companies have similarly been seizing artists' characters and art without equitable compensation -- both by abuses of the Work Made For Hire provision of US Copyright law. While this seems like a separate problem, I believe that they should be addressed simultaneously, since they're rather intertwined. Copyright is feeble or no protection when in order to see publication of your creations, you must abrogate your copyright contractually and hope that those who have forced this will be ethical enough to pay you what you're due -- something that clearly is NOT happening much.

I want to state clearly (in case it's not obvious from all the above) that my position on this is 100% AGAINST the distributors. I've been a victim of their perfidy; I am in no way impartial about this, and everything I say, especially about Napster, is colored by my experiences. Until the media companies start treating creators like the assets they are -- since they'd have nothing to sell if creators didn't create stuff -- I will be of this mind, and (probably fatally to any hopes of working with them) vocal about it.

My thoughts about non-transferability of copyright are along these lines, as an idea off the top of my head for weighting the copyright so that it's much more difficult to get around. Obviously, that's not going to force the media people to pay artists, since under present contracts they are supposed to but don't.

Here's an article that provides a nicely contrasting viewpoint to mine, as published on Suck.com a while back:

www.suck.com/daily/2000/09/08/

Anyway, so I DON'T want artists to give up their copyrights. I DO want them to retain control of their creations, and to receive appropriate compensation for their sale or other exploitation.

The main question is then what are the possible scenarios for the future? What do we think is going to happen? How do we react to the situation, and how should we plan ahead to deal with it?

Will the government attempt to regulate this in some way? Can they do so with any hope of success? Would such regulation require serious blunt-trauma administration and enforcement, or is there a way to do it without such measures?

If it cannot be stopped, and digital duplication proliferates of its own accord (currently happening), what do we creators do if we can no longer be assured of any recourse for payment for our creations? Do we attempt to maintain the current conditions, or do we come up with some other "business model" for our creativity?

I'm interested in what others have to say, and what scenarios others might imagine. Please, share your thoughts, old pros and newbies!

My thought is that having no control over who's copying what puts the true creative control back in the hands of the creator by default; "To publish, or not to publish, that is the question." Finding a way to get PAID for publishing under that circumstance, now that's a sticky one. I suggest that having total literal control over our creations will allow us to forge new relationships with our potential consumers, as well as possibly improving the quality of creations as a whole -- since in order to attract and maintain clients, a creator is going to have to really stand out in terms of quality and ability to deliver. However I have no idea how this would work in a practical sense.

So Nat, enjoy your wedding and honeymoon, with my compliments and best wishes! Write more when you get back and are rested. Everyone else? What's your take?

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

Pollix, you read this all at once? Ouch! Well, thanks! [img]http://209.198.111.165/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

I have to point out that Nat is several kinds of writer, including of comic books, and his knowledge of the comics industry is as extensive as his knowledge of other writing-related media. He too struggles with the same dilemmas faced by freelance creators and particularly independent comics creators, having self-published his own comic, The Factor. He's been fortunate enough to be able to make a living writing things that are perhaps less to his creative satisfaction -- just as I've been able to do the same using my art and computer skills.

We've both been frustrated in our attempts to succeed with the creations we really care about, for myself in both music and comics -- and I think both of us would agree for reasons unrelated to the worthiness of our creations, tho I can't speak for Nat. He's got a much more comprehensive interior view of all types of print publishing than I do, and he's much better versed in the law as it applies to this.

While there's been a bit of sniping between us, I listen to everything he has to say. He's got a highly effective POV on this -- so pay attention! Also, I haven't really had time to respond to many things he's said here that I want to! [img]http://209.198.111.165/ubb/smile.gif[/img] I started something I can't quite keep up with... Ay!

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

Here's what I give away:

Living Behind The Moon http://hometown.aol.com/lbtm99rb/lbtmhome.html

I've found that the important thing for me is to just keep doing it.


Robert Bostick http://hometown.aol.com/lbtm99rb/portfolio.html

Hmm... well, I find myself with some time to respond, so here goes!



I agree with this 100%, there is going to be a very serious problem with selling downloadable files of anything when there's an existing infrastructure that makes it supersimple to get it for free. This is one of the core issues that we face. It's already easy to take a physical thing like a book or CD and translate its content into a digitally exchangeable format; if major media publishers hope to move to online delivery of these properties -- which they surely will want to -- that's already in big trouble, and in fact may be unworkable through the non-proprietary Internet.

I believe that by definition it's going to be impossible to expect a revenue stream to come from online electronic distribution -- given the present state of affairs. Before the Net, it was relatively easy to create this stream, by controlling the distribution of the PHYSICAL OBJECTS containing the creations, like books and CDs and videotapes -- hence my emphasis, Nat, on the physical items. You wanna see this movie? You give me money, I'll lend you or sell you the tape. Even cable and satellite TV, whose products are non-physical electronic signals, are controllable by owning the network infrastucture - the cables, the box, the dish, the satellites, and charging access fees and hardware rental.

However, the Internet is FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT. It is NOT controllable, is NOT "owned" by anyone, cannot be shut down all at once, and is very inexpensively available to anyone with a phone line. It is, in effect, a free resource for information exchange -- the first such that is available worldwide across national boundaries -- which makes it an entity unto itself, and essentially unboundable by law as we know it. It's nearly impossible to govern or track the information that's on it. Plus, the P2P technology now allows anyone to connect to anyone else's IP-addressed computer or device and exchange information with no intermediary involved.

Because of this, I have to take the position that it is a FUNDAMENTALLY FLAWED notion to attempt to sell downloadable information over the Internet in its present form. It's a fabulous delivery system, but the very structure of what's being delivered -- packets of information -- changes the whole paradigm. Frankly, the media outlets are safer if they continue to only distribute hard copy...

...except that since it's easy to translate hard copy to digital, anything that gets published can be converted to bits and shared out. Plus it's really hard to trace who did the translating in the first place.

Yeah it gives me a headache too. But I really think that this uncontrollable worldwide distribution system is going to change EVERYTHING about selling creations -- and that we should get ready for the change.



Well yeah, the revenue generated from radio airplay is entirely indirect, and comes from sales of CDs to people who hear the songs on the radio and from concert money, merchandising etc. as a result of enthusiastic fans going to see their favorite bands. Mind you, people who download stuff from Napster are still going to go to shows and buy T-shirts, they're just less likely to buy the CD.

Sure, Napster has made some money, and it may not be legal -- however I'm going to reserve my comments on that until the courts have their say. The big problem is that Napster is not the only P2P software. There are now quite a number of P2P sharing applications that use no central server (here's the list: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.10/p2p_pages.html ). They are freeware apps that are essentially running wild on the web. Once Nullsoft published the Gnutella source code, all bets were off. There is no targetable "Gnutella Corporation," no single hardware set or brick-and-mortar establishment that can be closed down to stop the file trading. Gnutella WORKS, and it's far too late to contain it -- and there is NO REVENUE associated with it in ANY WAY. There is, in effect, no tangible "object" to attack in terms of the law, unless authorities attempt to find everyone who's got a copy of the software, a monumentally difficult task for already-overloaded law enforcement agencies.

Also, since the Net is non-centralized and is spread all over the world in many different countries -- each of which has its own laws and enforcement agencies -- attempted government control of the Net in one country would be highly ineffective in any other -- and there's no way that ALL countries containing servers will ever agree on enforcement. Witness the online gambling phenomenon; it's illegal to run a sports book operation in the US, but if it's running on a server in Bermuda or the Caymans, it can't be touched!

Lastly on this thought, the Internet and technology in general are currently driving the economy of the Western world, and infiltrating everywhere else too. It's a huge chunk of the economy here in the US; attempts to regulate it now would cause a financial disaster of incredible proportions. It's not likely that the government can bring force to bear on the web without killing the economy.



I can see you feel very strongly about this one, and rightly so! Here's the text of the AHRA: www.brouhaha.com/~eric/bad_laws/ahra.html

The AHRA was enacted because the record companies panicked that people would be able to make perfect digital copies of digital music. And boy is it bad! They screwed up right in the "Definitions" section at the beginning... but this applies specifically to digitally recorded music ONLY on devices specifically designed for recording and reproducing music digitally for private use. SPECIFICALLY EXCEPTED are:



Which leaves out computers with audio-recording capability. It goes on to define "digital recording medium" and "digital music recording" as MATERIAL OBJECTS that contain music recorded in digital format... and SPECIFICALLY EXCEPTS some things, as follows:



Hoo boy, that was pretty shortsighted... looks to me like (i) applies to pre-recorded tapes, CDs, vinyl, or any other media which comes from the manufacturer with music on it! And I think the first half of (ii) was probably included so as not to piss off the film companies -- while the second half is what allows us to LEGALLY RIP CDS to MP3! MAN, were those record people STUPID! And too bad they added the stupid "tax" that forces manufacturers of digital music recording devices (and I think CDs and DATs too) to pay the record companies a royalty for every device they build -- which of course they blithely passed on to us! Thanks, record companies! You've figured out how to legally screw YOUR ENTIRE MARKET BASE out of money, while also allowing us to legally copy stuff for free! Gad!

That does apply to my specific example of burning CD to CD on my computer -- note that since I use a computer instead of a dedicated "music CD recorder", this law doesn't cover that at all.

But, and correct me if I'm wrong about this, but doesn't the original copyright law provide for a private person making a copy of a musical recording or videotape, and even to distribute that copy or copies to others non-commercially? I'm reading thru the Act now, and of course it's all convoluted legalese, which takes a lot of time to unravel. Does anyone know the particular section that covers this? I can't find it, does it not exist? Was it, in fact, illegal prior to 1992 to make a mix tape??

Here's the original Copyright Act, Title 17 of the United States Code; it can be found here, published by the law department at my alma mater:

www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/

I'll keep reading and I'll see if I can dig that out later.

Meanwhile, there's definitely an analogous "enforceability" problem involved here, which existed BEFORE digital recording and reproduction became widespread. Audio tape recorders of all sorts have existed for many years. How many of us here used to make tapes of our vinyl albums (and eventually CDs) so we could listen to them in the car, as opposed to buying BOTH the tape copy and the vinyl? I'd bet most of us.

And you know, I got pulled over by State Troopers on many an occasion, and none of them, while writing me my speeding ticket and searching (illegally without a warrant -- probable cause? Long haired hippie driver!) my car for contraband, bothered to inquire as to whether my home-recorded cassette tapes were duly licensed copies of my vinyl collection. And since I got pulled over in oh, every state in New England and the Mid-Atlantics, technically (in any state except New Jersey whence I got my plates) I would have been transporting illegal tape copies over state lines, thus erasing any questions of jurisdiction -- copyright is Federal, therefore crossing state lines with illegal tape copies should cement that as a Federal offense.

Good thing they never looked at my clearly labeled bootleg of Van Halen at the US Festival, huh?

Anyway, so how, in the presence of commercially available and simple to use reproduction systems and recording media like dual decks and cassette tapes -- which, mind you, the music industry fought like DOGS against, to no effect (substantial non-infringing use clause) -- do you stop people from making technically illegal copies of anything???????????

It's pretty obvious that you can't, not in a practical sense anyway.

There's a quote from Barlow's article that I want to add here, but I left my copy at home and the article isn't available online yet, so I'll edit this post to include it when I get home.

So, if it becomes impossible in a practical sense to prevent what is now unauthorized copying & distribution and infringement of copyright, where does that leave us? We'd better figure that out, and soon, because I don't think there's any stopping it. I could be wrong...



Granted. However, the same issues are about to apply to the publishing of words and art, since PDFs are already here to stay, and book reader hardware is steadily improving and will eventually offer a similar reading experience to print books. For the moment, as evidenced by the Splash article from today (?) that describes the bulk of e-book business being of the print-on-demand variety, that's being held off, but eventually that will change, and the book industry will have to deal with the same problem. New print books may be rarities in 25 years, as holdouts for paper books pass away or adopt attractive new digital technologies that differ little from paper. The recording industry is merely the first market sector to suffer the fallout -- and film is likely to be next.



As I stated well up there somewhere, I believe the treatment of creators in the book publishing world is inherently more ethical than in other media. Again this is just a feeling, but what you say here bears it out rather nicely. Also note that there really aren't any technical expenses involved in writing a book once you own the computer (or the 10-pitch Royal, a bottle of whiteout and a stack of bond). It's all labor time -- which is what your advance compensates you for.

Now, in comics, how many people get advances? I'm sure a few, but I have no idea what the specifics are. Do writers get advances? I don't know. To my knowledge, artists get paid a page rate, and it's NOT in advance in most cases, nor is it paid out on delivery of art for the most part; my own contract specified 50% payment within 30 days of delivery of art and the other 50% within 30 days of actual publication. If someone was paying me, oh, say $100/page in ADVANCE for pencils on a 24 page book, I'd be able to draw comics for a living... and so would almost all of us.

Changing subject a bit, I acknowledge my ignorance of book sales volumes and reprinting practices. I should not have made those suppositions. Ditto the stuff about Seigel and Shuster, tho they certainly got the shaft from National/DC, stipend notwithstanding.



Yeah see, that would be great, except that film, TV, and music companies basically make it a contractual condition that you surrender your rights to the property -- agree that what you're doing is a work-for-hire, thus completely removing ANY CLAIM you might have to the property, even if it existed BEFORE you signed the deal -- in order to close the deal, and in perpetuity "throughout the Universe", too. There's a big difference between an acknowledged and legal sale of copyright as opposed to declaring your creation to be a work-made-for-hire, isn't there? Do you think that this is equitable and sensible??

Perhaps you've been fortunate in your dealings with such folks, but my experience has been uniformly bad. I tried to get my attorney to force the label to remove the work-for-hire clauses from my contract, and they basically laughed in my face and said "you want a deal? Then you sign our deal the way it is!" Yeah, I wanted to be a big rock star, so I signed -- just like everybody else does. And they didn't make me a rock star... and even tho they dropped me, I can't get my songs or the master tape back because they made me give up my claim to them -- in perpetuity -- in order to have a record deal. Everybody I know in the biz has done the same thing, and have uniformly been heavily shorted or unpaid on their sales royalties, WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Which is why the entire musical artist community isn't screaming about Napster ripping them off -- they're already getting ripped off by the companies that are supposed to protect their author's rights.

My dealings in comics are limited to a single contract with Warp -- a work-for-hire contract, which is fine since they're not my characters -- and they've been 100% ethical. But I won't create any new ElfQuest characters (not that they've asked me to), because it's been said in advance that they would be subsumed into the EQ world and would therefore be of no value to me. The same would be true of working for Marvel, DC, Dark Horse... We wouldn't sign with any of them to do Mystic For Hire (not that they're interested), because we'd lose our characters and control over the story -- and probably not get fully paid for it either. No good. I haven't heard of too many comic creators being pleased with their contracts and payment rates and payment schedules, either, in fact it's almost uniformly bitching and moaning no matter whom I talk to.

So now that copyright is so seriously threatened, how in the hell are creators going to be able to negotiate equitable contracts, when the essential thing they're transferring -- the right to copy their stuff and to sell those copies -- may have its intrinsic value destroyed?

This is my main question, not "should we give up our copyrights" but "what will we do when and if copyright ceases to be enforceable, and therefore becomes valueless?" THAT is a very tough question. I don't pretend to have answers, but I'm trying to think of something.

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Jeff Zugale
Pagan City Comics
www.pagancity.com

And yet, there is a regular flow of people being arrested for internet activities. Gee, maybe the Internet is not as impervious as anarchist digit-jockeys would want you to believe.

I was refering to income for the radio station. However, I will note that you are wrong that income for the music biz is entirely indirect. Radio stations pay money to get the right to play music.
And they ain't exactly taking the world by storm... the closest has been Gnutella, but that's suffering badly. The lack of a central server makes it rather problematic in a number of ways.
Tried finding a file with it lately? It didn't scale well.
That's false. Sports book operations with out-of-country servers have indeed been touched. Furthermore, such casinos are reliant on credit card companies offering them access... and credit card companies (with the encouragement of legal rulings) are taking a loooong look at whether that is wise for them.

You appear to be refering to the Fair Use clauses, which are largely misunderstood. Fair Use is not a simple "if it's this, then it's okay" test. Rather, Fair Use involves a weighing of a number of factors -- non-commerciality being just one of them. (Others include such things as the extent of the reproduction, whether its for an educational purpose, and whether it is likely to hurt the sales of the item being copied. So, for example, copying one little bit off of an out-of-print Sinatra recording to show a voice class how his voice warbled at that one point is apt to be judged "fair use"... but distributing CD-R copies of the new Frank boxed set to all your Frank-loving friends is more likely to fall on the other side of the line.)
Not knowing of any specific rulings on that, it's hard to find a hard-and-fast answer... but you were more likely to be safe if you made that tape for yourself than if you made it for a friend. Prior to 1992, I didn't make mix tapes for friends.
Yes, and we'd likely be covered by the "archival purposes" interpretations in fair use.
It's also primarily a matter of civil, not criminal, law, so the police are not generally looking for infringers.
Some police I know might well have offered to let you off the hook in return for that tape.
I'd stand in favor of trying to take pirates to court. I've been in position of threatening just that with people who have pirated my work.
There can be some very serious expenses, particularly in research. In working on my books, I've had to buy software, to buy other books, and even to go on trips.
You have a common confusion about what an "advance" is. It's not necessarily in advance of the work being done. It's in advance of publication (in contrast to royalties, which are paid after publication.) As such, your first 50% could be considered an advance.
The most major difference isn't until about 35 years down the road.
If you don't think a deal is equitable and sensible, don't take it. I've seen Work For Hire deals which work out quite well for some folks -- just because you signed a WMFH deal doesn't mean that you aren't getting royalties or long-term financial involvement. That the recording industry makes some ugly-sounding deals using the term Work For Hire doesn't mean that all WMFH deals are bad. I am certainly glad that my creative desires aren't musical, however. I'm much happier dealing in comics... which isn't to say that I don't sometimes run into rights problems.
It depends on one's definition of "value". If you're talking in strictly a financial sense, you're off by at least a bit. Off the top of my head, I can't speak to ElfQuest (my EQ contracts aren't close at hand), but I can tell you that if you create a character now for, say, DC, you end up financially involved in that character. They turn him into a movie, a TV show, an action figure, a breakfast cereal -- you make money. This is pretty standard these days. It may not give you creative control, but financially these things can be of value.
Because who complains when things go okay? Did you ever come home and say "honey, the bus was on time today, and the copier didn't jam, and no one forgot to refill the coffee machine"? Sure, we'd all like to be paid more... but we rarely talk about when things go right.