Larger and larger entertainment firms offer shabbier and shabbier treatment to creative workers, as striking members of @WGAWest and @SAGAFTRA can attest. Over the past year, I've seen a sharp increase in the presence of absolutely unconscionable clauses in the contracts I'm offered by publishers:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/27/reps-and-warranties/#i-agree
I'm *six months* into negotiating a contract for a *300 word* piece I wrote for a magazine I started contributing to in 1992.
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At issue is that they insist that I assign *film rights* and *patent rights* from my work as a condition of publication. Needless to say, there are no patentable inventions nor film ideas in this article, but they refuse to vary the contract, to the obvious chagrin of the editor who commissioned me.
Why won't they grant a variance?
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Why, they are so large - the mag is part of a global conglomerate - that it would be impractical for them to track exceptions to this completely fucking batshit clause. In other words: we can't strike this batshit clause because we decided from now on, all out contracts will have batshit clauses.
The performance of administrative competence - and the tactical deployment of administrative chaos - in giant entertainment companies is grotesque, but sometimes, it backfires.
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