• Mr_Will
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    1 year ago

    Am I not allowed to ask questions as part of my investigations?

    I personally work in two creative fields (photography and software design) and in neither case are royalties a normal thing. If I take photographs of your new product so you can advertise it or build a website to help you sell it then I’m paid for the job I do, not based on the amount of money you make afterwards. The full value of my creations cannot be determined until years afterwards, but that doesn’t change anything.

    The value of labour is not always dependent on the value of the finished product. If it was then a truck driver hauling a load of computer parts would be paid hundreds of times more than one hauling grain.

    There is nothing wrong with choosing to be paid royalties, but there isn’t an automatic entitlement to them on moral grounds. Choosing to sell your labour or creative works for a fixed fee is a perfectly valid option, but if you do you shouldn’t complain when the farmer starts using the barn as a restaurant and starts making ten times more money from it

    • IzyaKatzmann [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      So I’m not really well read at all, but for the sake of learning I’ll try to engage.

      In your point about the barn becoming a restaurant, one thing to consider is the status of the building does not change without additional labour. This is what would be compensated for and at some agreed upon rate. As well, the nature of how a restaurant works is not the same as a creative work I think. If the barn was considered a piece of art and appraisals were being done, I think that would be a different story and you could imagine there would be some contention over whether the builder would be compensated additionally, perhaps through acknowledgment (which could be the causus belli for the builder and may be vehemently opposed) of their work being the at the very least involved in the cause of the thing that is being appraised.

    • horse_called_proletariat [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      1 year ago

      its not about moral grounds. its about class struggle and the bare minimum for a union is defending hard won gains for the working class. your example with the truckers doesn’t translate because no union truckers (that I know of) have had such a battle won that would guarantee residuals on what is being transported. what is not a winnable battle in one sector is a winnable battle in another. the question really is which side of the fight are you on?

      if you are a small business owner you are not in the same position as a worker that is part of a union that has a negotiated contract, so I can see how you think you have no leg to stand on when asking for residuals but what it ultimately comes down to is always leverage and with collective action workers have more leverage than you would on the open market as a freelancer, for example

      that said, though, there are attempts at unionizing platform freelance workers such as people that work through platforms such as fiver or upwork, etc. i haven’t kept up on how well they are going but you could reach out to union organizers where you are located to talk to them about that