Woman Sues The RIAA

[Darth Wong]

You're forgetting that the companies handling the distribution usually pay for its production. The director, musician, or writer actually create the material, but movies, music, and books cost a lot of money to make. There's no way a movie studio, record company, or book publisher pays to produce material that any jerkoff can legally copy and distribute.

I believe that a lot of the production costs of an album or even its associated music video often comes out of the advance paid to the band by the studio, which is why some bands actually lose money or barely break even on their record deals.

[TheDarkling]

You're forgetting that the companies handling the distribution usually pay for its production. The director, musician, or writer actually create the material, but movies, music, and books cost a lot of money to make. There's no way a movie studio, record company, or book publisher pays to produce material that any jerkoff can legally copy and distribute.

They would still have to pay the owner of the copyright (in this case the distributor i.e. Fox) a set fee and a % of the cost, and using fair competition they would endeavour to maximise profits instead of engaging in price gouging (not to mention not taking advantage of new distribution methods such as the internet) but it also means they movies that are self financed could get a limited distribution going without having to deal with a distributor that isn’t really interested (as is often seen when a big company picks up he rights to distribute a British or Canadian film – no matter what the indications are that it did well in another country they will give it very little support and a limited release).

If they really wouldn't give money to a production company/band/whatever then they go out of business and are replaced by somebody who is willing to compete on an open playing filed.