Slashdot Mirror
Deleted Screenplay Fails To Make Money
mytrip writes to mention the confusing case of screenwriter Nicholas Boyd, who tried to strike it rich by suing SBC, and got more than he bargained for. When an SBC technician accidentally deleted the aspiring screenwriter's work, he brought a lawsuit against the company claiming that a million dollar deal was in the works. Reality disagrees somewhat with his assertions. From the article: "The jury apparently didn't believe the German witness' testimony that a $2.7 million deal was in the works. Jurors found that Boyd could recover out-of-pocket damages of only $60,000 and said that he was responsible for 55 percent of the fault resulting in the deletion of the screenplays ... Both SBC and Boyd appealed. The California state appeals court (second district) eliminated the punitive damages, upheld the compensatory damages--but said Boyd must pay for SBC's legal fees for the appeal, which could easily be in the range of his $27,000 compensatory damages award."
Just goes to show that verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on.
Shh.
Was it by chance Uwe Boll?
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Today, I did not clean the dust out of my power supply. Nor did I unplug my computer during an electrical storm. I'm livin' La Vida Loca!!!
Honestly, some guy doesn't run a back-up and it gets on Slashdot? Must be a really slow news day...
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I thought you were supposed to upload your important stuff on ftp, and let the world mirror it.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
It actually does say in the article that he did eventually get a forensic recovery of the data. But he didn't set aside the hard drive and the files were overwritten by Napster and other data.
Does this mean that the entertainment industry can say that it lost another $2.7m to napster?
I thought the first rule of screenwriting was to not talk about screenwriting....
If you also lose your screenplay, you can still make tons of $$$:
;(
Keep pressing key '4' while holding down Shift
______________
Just couldn't resist
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
[blockquote]Which you would need to do anyway to register it with the WGA.
[...]
Seems like a no brainer if you're a screenwriter.[/blockquote]
I don't know if I'd want to register my screenplay with Windows Genuine Advantage. It might decide that my screenplay is not my own and delete it from their records...
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I thought that the first rule of screenwriting was, "Never talk about screenwriting." Actually, empirical evidence suggests that the first rule of screenwriting is ... always talk about screenwriting. To everyone. All the time. Incessently. But that's beside the point (and probably mispelled).
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
i've already backed up my screenplay on the intarweb using a patented methodology i call "astroturf steganography":
;-)
1. i broke my screenplay up into paragraph fragments
2. i used a script to comment spam these fragments into random blogs with a unique identifying string, namely "I'm making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NY [griefmovie.com]"
3. when i want to recover, i simply do a google search on "I'm making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NY [griefmovie.com]"
voila: instant backup
oops... i've just given my script away for free to anyone who reads this comment
dang
well, maybe i can sue you under DRM for breaching my cryptographic techniques to access copyrighted material
for reading this comment, you owe me $3,500
awesome!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
People have to want to mirror it.
http://outcampaign.org/
It shouldn't take him more than a a day or two to rewrite it. Once you know your story and characters, and have worked on the screenplay in your head for a number of years it shouldn't take you more than a couple of days.
[...]
God I have like 20 copies of several screenplays from college just lieing around in a box in my closet.
If you ever wondered why they're in a closet and not on the screen, that's why.
but at least it's not the music business.
Yeah, in the music business you can at least try busking to pay for your cigarettes.
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