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A comment on The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost nothing. Parent comment

Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by Retric on Sunday April 23, 2017 @10:29AM (#14178289)
The problem is conflict of interest. If you make a deal with company A, but for no reason profits are moved to company B, then someone at company A is committing fraud.
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Re:The creators of This is Spinal Tap have been paid almost ... by TheOtherHobbes on Sunday April 23, 2017 @12:57PM (#14178973)
Which reminds me of a thing that a niche but big-name-in-that-niche fiction publisher did a few years ago.

They channeled ebook sales through a foreign subsidiary and claimed it wasn't really a publisher but a distributor. This gave them an excuse to pay authors 30c for ebook sales, when they should have been getting $2.

Obviously Niche Publisher pocketed the difference.

There was a class action suit and eventually the publisher settled out of court for $4m. A quarter of that went to the lawyers.

BigCo content companies are staffed by thieves and parasites. Being creative isn't the worst job in the world, but it's unusually good at attracting thieves, fraudsters, and other vampires.

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