{"id":110,"date":"2013-03-19T15:20:30","date_gmt":"2013-03-19T20:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/?p=110"},"modified":"2013-04-26T12:35:25","modified_gmt":"2013-04-26T17:35:25","slug":"an-untold-stories-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2013\/03\/an-untold-stories-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"An Untold Stories Tax?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Carnivale<\/a>HBO canceled Carniv\u00e0le<\/em>, a serial show with deep mythology, after two of a planned six seasons. The remainder of Creator Daniel Knauf's story was never told.<\/p>\n

The AV Club :: Daniel Knauf tells us his plan for the end of Carniv\u00e0le<\/a><\/p>\n

AVC<\/strong>: Have you ever considered trying to do it as a novel or a comic book [of the remaining story line]?<\/p>\n

DK<\/strong>: Constantly. Yeah. Marvel, we had it all set up. At one point, they wanted to go forward and do a series of graphic novels, and they just couldn\u2019t turn the corner with HBO. Since then, yeah, I\u2019ve considered it. But one of the things that makes me a little crazy about Hollywood is, they\u2019re idiots when it comes to their contractual stuff. If I write a novel, it\u2019s like Random House publishes the novel, copyrights it, but when you do business in Hollywood, they say, \u201cEverything in this thing, in all forms, in all potential forms invented and uninvented\u2026\u201d The language is draconian! \u201c\u2026throughout the universe. We own everything in your head. We own everything.\u201d And it\u2019s like, \u201cIf you own everything, at least exploit those rights, please. Could you please exploit the rights? And if you\u2019re not going to exploit the rights, can I at least have them back, so I can exploit them?\u201d It\u2019s just a silly way of doing business. [...]<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t make sense to spend $3.5 million an episode. So let\u2019s do a graphic novel. Let\u2019s tell the story!\u201d But they\u2019re on to other toys now. It\u2019s like doing business with that kid down the street whose parents give him really bitchin\u2019 toys, and he\u2019d just leave them broken in the backyard. It makes me crazy, Hollywood.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think you could make an analogy to Georgist taxation here, or perhaps more generally Gobry's argument in favor of the French wealth tax<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If property ultimately derives from mixing your labor with things, it's not unreasonable to suggest that people have an ongoing responsibility to continue doing so. If you hold some property, most especially land, you may have a responsibility to society to put it to productive use. (We're talking about theory here, not practice. The arbitration of what counts as responsible, productive use is nearly impossible in practice and so even if you had such a responsibility in theory it is likely best if that responsibility is never legislated into reality.) Gobry's argument is, briefly, that capital gains taxes discourage people to put their resources to use, while wealth taxes do the opposite. In essence, capital gains taxes makes it more expensive to put your resources to work, so people do less of that. OTOH if you're going to loose %1 of your accumulated resources anyway to a wealth tax that gives you reason to put your resources out in the world to try to get them to grow more than the amount you'll lose.<\/p>\n

If a studio owns the rights to further adaptations in other media, do they have a responsibility to society to actually use those rights? Land may be a special case of property, because people aren't making any more of it. Or so I gather the Georgists, the Diggers, etc. would say. But people aren't making any more Carniv\u00e0le<\/i> either. That idea can only be invented once, only to be owned by one person, just like a particular acre of land. Does that put an extra responsibility on HBO to do something with it? If an owner of arable land has a onus to see it cultivated, does the owner of fecund IP have a similar onus to see it reified?<\/p>\n

I have absolutely no idea how you would actually structure this as a policy. Doing so in a way that wouldn't put the actual tax burden on the creators rather than studios would be harder yet. Even so, I think it's an interesting way to look at the ethical responsibility of content owners, if not a way to structure their legal responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HBO canceled Carniv\u00e0le, a serial show with deep mythology, after two of a planned six seasons. The remainder of Creator Daniel Knauf's story was never told. The AV Club :: Daniel Knauf tells us his plan for the end of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[6,7],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-2","tag-business","tag-entertainment","wpautop"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3sddF-1M","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":226,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2013\/04\/ruby\/","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":0},"title":"Ruby","author":"jsylvest","date":"25 April 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Coding Horror :: Jeff Atwood :: Why Ruby? I've always been a little intrigued by Ruby, mostly because of the absolutely gushing praise Steve Yegge had for the language way back in 2006. I've never forgotten this. For the most part, Ruby took Perl's string processing and Unix integration as-is,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "CS \/ Science \/ Tech \/ Coding"","block_context":{"text":"CS \/ Science \/ Tech \/ Coding","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/cs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1219,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/book-list-2018q1\/","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":1},"title":"Book List: 2018Q1","author":"jsylvest","date":"7 June 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I realize it is now most of the way through the 2nd quarter of the year. Whatever. Here are the books I read in the first three months. Sourdough, Robin Sloan I love technology, and I love baking bread. I'm pretty much right in the cross hairs for target\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/reviews\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover of \"Sourdough\" by Robin Sloan","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Sloan_Sourdough-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1046,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/what-ive-been-reading\/","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":2},"title":"What I've Been Reading","author":"jsylvest","date":"25 July 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, Dan Koeppel Not bad. I'm a sucker for this type of history of a single commodity or common household object. It did make we want to try to get my hands on one of the few non-Cavendish cultivars of bananas\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book List"","block_context":{"text":"Book List","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/book-list\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Banana, Dan Koeppel","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/71K3llKhVL-200x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1282,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2019\/01\/book-list-2018q4\/","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":3},"title":"Book List: 2018Q4","author":"jsylvest","date":"24 January 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The Tree: A Natural History of What Trees Are, How They Live, and Why They Matter, Colin Tudge Exactly what it says on the cover: all about trees. This was exceptionally well organized. As an amateur woodworker, the first few chapters were particularly helpful to sort out all of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Book List"","block_context":{"text":"Book List","link":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/category\/book-list\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Cover of Colin Tudge's, \"The Tree\"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/91GF9YeLrhL-198x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1113,"url":"https:\/\/www.jsylvest.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/some-brief-book-reviews-to-close-2017\/","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":4},"title":"Some brief book reviews to close 2017","author":"jsylvest","date":"4 January 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"A Wild Swan, Michael Cunningham I would think we've saturated the \"modern re-tellings of fairytales, but for adults\" genre, but this was supremely good. They reminded me of Garrison Keillor in the way that some sadness or loss was mixed in to the stories without them being outright tragic. 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