> You will have no right to compensation in connection with the exploitation of rights you grant under this Agreement.
So, why would anyone participate in this program, if the best possible outcome is that Amazon uses your idea, makes millions, and does not pay you a cent?
Contracts in this domain are notoriously one-sided in favor of the established producers and studios. I have some writings that occasionally draw the attention of movie/television producers, and on a few occasions these talks have gone far enough that I am presented with a contract. To paraphrase some of the common conditions (where "we/us/our" refers to the producers and "you" refers to the author):
> We do not guarantee you will earn any money on this deal.
> We may cancel or sell our rights to this contract at any time, you may not.
> We can use your name and likeness in any way we deem appropriate.
> You may not make any public statement about us without our prior consent.
> If you decide to sue us for any reason, we can veto your attorney selections.
> Even if we pull some serious shenanigans we are immune from consequence.
And so on. In each case I declined to sign; life's too short to agree to such hostile, one-sided terms. Perhaps one day I'll be approached by some aspirational, non-greedy producers. I'd be happy to sign a fair contract.
Yes indeed! Last time around (about 2 years ago) I uploaded the contract to Google Docs, added comments/suggestions for editing, and shared it with the producers in question. Their response was to schedule a call explaining why the contested terms are all "standard boilerplate" that they cannot change. They wouldn't budge a single word. So we went our separate ways.
Hypothetically, what I gained was a toehold into the film industry, with the possibility of future payment. But considering the perils of Hollywood accounting [1] I wasn't hopeful about ever seeing a penny. I wasn't desperate and their offer wasn't compelling, so I walked away.
It is a contract and is completely legal. A contract does not need to be "fair" to both sides, only "reasonable". There might be some argument that this contract is unconscionable, but that is a difficult battle, especially when one has so willingly given up their rights to their material. The court system was not designed to come running in to save individuals just because they have made a foolish deal.
If you are referring to the first amendment, that protects us from government censorship. There are a number of ways we may agree to censor ourselves when interacting with private entities. I signed a non disclosure agreement with my employer. I agree not to create photos of expos I enter. And so on. It seems excessive, but it's legal to stipulate it.
Just curious, if you discard the legitimacy of private profit, is it ever legitimate to silence employees? I'm skeptical but I'm open to a good argument.
Most of the time the agreements I hear about are basically to guarantee that private corruption will go unpunished.
One reasonable explanation for this clause would be to avoid claims that Amazon stole an idea when in fact they did not. For example:
1. I submit my script to Amazon
2. A year later, Amazon releases a movie with a similar character.
3. I sue Amazon.
It may very well be that Amazon had the idea completely independently, but it would still result in a messy (and expensive) legal battle.
While it is very open to abuse by Amazon, it is a reasonable precaution.
The "rights" in this agreement are those granting Amazon the ability to share and monetize the screenplay itself. In other words it can publish it and monetize the screenplay as a literary work, which is essentially worthless (how much would you pay for the screenplay to Titanic?). It does NOT have the the ability to make a movie or TV show based on the screenplay.
I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice, but I don't believe you're correct.
5.x covers the rights you are granting. They do not seem to be the actual rights to create a film/tv show/etc.
>5.1.1. Review. Your submission will be subject to review by us. You grant us the right to review and consider your Submission and, in connection therewith, share the Submission with our subcontractors engaged in review and, together with our subcontractors, annotate your Submission.
So, in this section, you basically grant them the right to review it within Amazon Studios and any relevant companies they work with to create media.
If you make a public submission, you grant a bit more rights (You do not have to make a public submission):
>5.2.2. Our Rights to Distribute Your Public Submission. You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, non-terminable, sub-licensable, transferable right to copy, transfer, stream, make available for download, add captions and make other distribution-related modifications to your Public Submission as we desire to facilitate such distribution.
So, here, you make it possible for Amazon to make your submission available royalty-free, etc. This seems more likely to apply to concept video submissions.
As best I can tell, at no point does submitting the script or concept video to Amazon give them the right to produce a TV series, Movie, or anything similar based off of it. Presumably, if they were to decide to move forward, there would be a new agreement you have to sign.
The 'Similar Content' bit looks to be the standard 'You can't sue us if you submit something and we make something similar' boilerplate you find when submitting anything of this nature. Those of you that have pitched to VCs or Angels have likely seen something similar. It's basically protection for situations where companies might be working on something that could be viewed as similar. Without it, you could have patent troll type situations - someone could write a bunch of garbage scripts that cover a bunch of random ideas, and then when Amazon or someone else makes something that looks even kind of like one of your ideas, you could sue them.
Again, I'm not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.
And it's not like you're submitting an abstract or broader idea. They're asking for a 85-160 page document.
I could understand if this was a way to catch thousands of concept ideas and quickly review them for any gems, but this is a lot to ask if the return in any case is zero.
> So, why would anyone participate in this program, if the best possible outcome is that Amazon uses your idea, makes millions, and does not pay you a cent?
That is not the way it works. You will be paid money if Amazon decides to produce your script. Nobody is getting ripped off.
Amazon Studios has been doing this for 7+ years. I'm not sure why it's being posted to Hacker News today, since there's nothing new about it. But it's all above aboard.
>So, why would anyone participate in this program, if the best possible outcome is that Amazon uses your idea, makes millions, and does not pay you a cent?
> So, why would anyone participate in this program, if the best possible outcome is that Amazon uses your idea, makes millions, and does not pay you a cent?
This is what happened to the author of Forrest Gump. The reason there was no sequel despite that movie's massive success was that he was too proud to sell the rights for the sequel when he'd gotten screwed on the first one.
However, it seems likely, given the first movie's massive success, that he could have gotten a pretty good price the second time around.
Always be careful with what you think the best case is.
From what I read, Winston Groom (the author) made a deal that specified payment based on the Net profits vs. the Gross profits. That Hollywood accounting makes it so even super-popular films show little-to-no Net profit since they add in marketing expenses and who knows what all else. Long story short: Always go with the Gross profits.
> You will have no right to compensation in connection with the exploitation of rights you grant under this Agreement.
So, why would anyone participate in this program, if the best possible outcome is that Amazon uses your idea, makes millions, and does not pay you a cent?