The wild thing about the whole “we’ll pay you for one day’s work to scan you and use your likeness in anything we want forever” is that they aren’t even offering the same licensing expectation you would give to a font.
(via @Coelasquid on Twitter)
This is now happening to writers as well. Publishing companies are now adding a clause to their contracts that will allow them to sign one book, and then scan it into AI to reproduce similar books with no compensation to the author.
This isn’t the future. It’s here now. And if we don’t stop it, it will continue.
Is there a comprehensive list of the publishers engaging in this activity?
No, I think because contract negotiations are happening right now it's all very sensitive. But Maureen Johnson said that she new a Very Famous Author who is as we speak arguing about it because they don't want to sign a contract with that in it.
She says she will say more when she can, but can't yet. See thread starting here:
ALTThe implication though is that major publishers are doing this, and if a Very Famous Author can't say no to it, the rest of us will be screwed.
See also the actors who did not even have being scanned in their contracts, but we're forced to do it anyway. I don't have the tweets saved, but one extra said she only got out of it by feigning illness, and one member of crew admitted he was charged with rounding up actors and forcing them to go to the scanning booth.
Things are alextremely underhanded and bad.
I hope the naming and shaming of said publisher (or publishers) can happen sooner than not, because that’s extremely disconcerting.
So I have absolutely zero inside intel. This is a guess. A semi-educated guess, but no more.
I would be willing to bet cash the author is either Stephen King or Mercedes Lackey.
Both have large back catalogues spanning several decades (fifty for King—yes really—and three and a half for Lackey, although she writes like a woman possessed and has released over 140 titles). Both are cornerstones in their genres—horror for King, fantasy for Lackey. Both have spoken positively of fanfiction (including King indicating he’s written it, pointing out that he’s written stuff directly set within the Cthulhu mythos), which is definitely a hill where this battle is going to be fought.
And both are elderly.
King is 76. Lackey is 73. And King has the physical damage one might expect of someone who spent several decades as an alcoholic and chain-smoker who also did coke, and then like a decade after getting off all the junk got hit by a car. Both are pretty well-to-do and can afford the best of medical care, but how long do you think they both have left? Ten years? Fifteen? Maybe twenty, for Lackey (I’d love to believe Steve has it in him, but I don’t see him reaching 96). How much of that time will they be writing?
And once they’re gone…no new books. No new “by bestselling author Stephen King,” no more “by Damon Knight Grand Master Mercedes Lackey.” The golden geese, so to speak, will be dead.
I kind of hope it’s King. Because holy shit, when he’s finally free to speak, the fur will FLY.
