Can someone at Tapas please address this? (Revenue share cancelled for completed season)

[Cavechan]

I'm surprised I haven't seen anything about this on the forums yet. I assume, hope, it's been brought up in the discord, so if it has please let me know since I don't plan on joining.

This artist is saying that not only has their series been cancelled but also their REVENUE SHARE is being cancelled?

This is simply unacceptable and us artists and comic creators need to stand up against this. I get that they should have read their contract more carefully, but it should NOT have even been an option to begin with.

I was already planning on not posting my next comic to Webtoon for various reasons and only to Tapas and Global Comix. Now I am reconsidering Tapas entirely. It doesn't seem safe for me as a serious artist to post a comic here I hope to make money off of if there is a chance it would be stolen from me in the future. This is my livelihood, my work and my income and I just can't take a chance like this.

[BlairFujin]

Just did a quick check and see no mention on the discord, I'm not surprised though, my experience with the bonus ink from inktober thing, any serious criticism/discussion is discouraged there (partially because discord server format for a huge group discourages it in itself...)

To be honest, I doubt this will be addressed...

[darthmongoose]

I can't help but feel like this situation is more complicated...

The creator in question wasn't the sole creator of this whole comic, just the writer. The art was by Scarlozet and a studio called Kisai Entertainment. So I assume they either pitched the project to Tapas to be a Tapas Original... or even just applied to be a writer on the Originals program and were assigned to this title? (Can't find any info).

If you pitch a story to be a title for a big publisher like Tapas, Marvel, DC... you don't own it. That's pretty standard. The company owns it. It sucks, yeah, but it's really normal, and I don't know why this writer didn't read the contract before signing it. I don't get royalties off the books I work on as part of a team at my day job, and if I leave my dayjob, I won't have the rights to the books I worked on with them, or even any ideas I came up with for their books, and won't get royalties, because they were made as part of a team under a contract I knowingly signed that puts the ownership of everything I do at that company under my boss and her company. The creator of The Vampire Diaries, similarly doesn't own the rights, or any right to get revenue from that series after having been replaced as the writer, and doesn't get revenue from the TV series either... that's the sad reality of contracts like this.

If you don't want a corporation to own your IP... don't sign onto a contract where you're making an IP for a corporation that'll own your IP. You can't sign a contract like that and then just hope they'll be nice and give you the royalties anyway. Companies aren't nice. They're not your friends. No matter how friendly they are, or how you might have a rapport with some of the staff working for them.

I dunno... I don't know how much the creator earned from the contract, like was there a salary, or an advance? Was the revenue share the only income made? If it really was an unfair scenario, I do feel bad for the writer... but we all surely remember that Bayonetta fiasco a couple of months ago, where the actor made it sound like the contract was a lot more unfair by leaving out and distorting details, so now I'm wary of just immediately trusting posts like this.

The post mentions other creators who have had similar things happen. Have any of them come forward?

[Katzalcoatl]

I agree with @darthmongoose we are missing information regarding the situation. As far as I know tapas lets you keep all the rights except when you sign an exlusive contract.

From the sound of the post it seems this author did sign one as they can't work on that particular series elsewhere.

If you want a stable income signing a contract for a set salary is the norm but you lose all rights to royalties.
If you sign a contract in which you keep the royalties for your story then you won't get a stable income and instead will depend on people visiting/reading your story.
And if you don't make the view counts you probably won't have enough money to eat.

From what I read of the message that author pretty much signed an exclusive contract for tapas.
I am also pretty sure they are breaking another part of their contract by defaming tapas and encouraging others to pirate the webpage.

[Kelheor]

Exclusive contracts aren't always the same.
If they went out on Twitter to talk about it, they have nothing more to lose from this contract.

[Katzalcoatl]

They can still get sued for encouraging piracy in a particular site. So I wouldn't recommend it. Seen people get sued for less. But hey it depends on the state they file the case in. So I can't say if it would be a valid case or not.

In some states they have crazy laws that can get you arrested for saying some lets say "strong things" in a videogame. Basically an anti bully law over videogames.

[darthmongoose]

Yeah, as somebody with a contract with Tapas, there's no clause forbidding me from openly criticising the company, or even encouraging people to pirate works on the site. They just...er.... assume I know that if I did the consequences would potentially be really bad if I wanted a future working with them, and that it could potentially harm my whole reputation as a creator in the industry.
Other companies wouldn't want to work with me if they saw from my posts that I was the kind of person who, if I signed a contract and then regretted it, would go and publicly tell everyone they're a horrible company, and you should pirate their products.

EDIT: I should also add, that I have worked on contracts in the past where there WAS a clause that said I couldn't criticise the employer, and that I could not only not tell people what the pay was (Tapas has this bit) but couldn't even express opinions about how I felt about the amount I was paid (Tapas thankfully doesn't have this bit).

[BlairFujin]

They haven't from what I've seen, it's other people sharing a screenshot of their tapas announcement on twitter

[Kelheor]

Ah, yes, now that you said it. Well, they still went public with the announcement for all the subscribers. I hope they won't get in more trouble.

[darthmongoose]

It could get them kicked off Tapas, because encouraging people to pirate Tapas content could actually get any of us kicked off Tapas. We all signed up to the following clause in the site T&Cs:

"Users, who violate these Terms of Service, tamper with the operation of any program, or engage in any conduct that is detrimental or unfair to Tapas Media, the program or any other users (in each case as determined by Tapas Media's sole discretion) are subject to suspension or cancellation of their user account(s) along with their ability to submit requests for payment."

Tapas would be completely within their rights to suspend the user's account. It might not be a good idea though, since it'd potentially cause the Streisand Effect and make whole incident to blow up, drawing more attention to a post that will likely otherwise just blow over.

I doubt it'll get them in bigger legal trouble...unless the post is misrepresenting the truth in some way in which case... libel would be a possibility. It could be bad for their career though even without legal complications, if they want more writing work in the future and searching them online brings up all this contract drama where they admit to not having read the contract properly but then complain about it and encourage piracy.

[VibrantFox]

i get that there's really only so much to be done since a contract was already signed even if it's clauses weren't noticed till later but i'm still miffed considering the person here is someone who's contributed a lot to tapas outside of their created works (the tapasfans search tool and the novel paster plugin) so like outside the legal stuff it just feels like a burn to a member of the community from a company that once seemed at least relatively caring about it

[rajillustration]

Sounds like they're already done with tapas, so they don't care about it making it blow up online. But like as far as predatory contracts go: they're predatory. I'm of the mind that we need to put all of these predatory behaviors in the freakin past. Like sure DC or Marvel do it, too, but also they're not the gold standard for treating your artists and writers with respect. Overall, a huge shame on Tapas legal team for somehow duping this girl to signing away all of her revenue. Even on S1, after S1 was over? Huge shame on the legal team for this one, and it's enough of a yikes that I wouldn't sign with them right now. That's like...hugely predatory.

Also I was talking to someone about tapasfans.com like 3 days ago and they were like "huh, wonder why the site hasn't updated" and well...didn't love finding out why this way.

[Freemints30]

Im saying that contract was preditory. Period. Honestly thou and honestly kinda why tapas and other webcomic sites trying trying to attract abd cultivate a younger and younger user and creator base disturbs me more than anything.

Cus younger people will sign into that kind of contracts (or even worse contracts). if all you tell them that they will make it big. Kinda why shady sites like webnovel still gets exlusive cobtracts being signed. Its very predatory and shouldnt have happened.

They already noted they refuse to work with tapas and good on them. Lets not try to dissmiss that

[rajillustration]

yeah, the age of a lot of these people under contract always gets me, too. Like there was a trust between the author and who they worked with. Otherwise they wouldn't have had hopes that Tapas would undo that contract under a good faith error. They were thoroughly taken advantage of. Dunno the age of this person though, I got the gist they were a little older.

[Katzalcoatl]

At least over the age of 18 (both the writer and the artist). If you aren't you can't participate in said programs in tapas. Just answering in case that was your doubt.

[rajillustration]

Oh yeah, they're definately 18 at least, or they can't get ad revenue. But also, that's really freakin young. Mind you, I'm over 30 so I see anyone under that age of 25 as "that's a good age to make some MISTAKES"

[bronte448]

This burns me up

[Iris-Grimoire]

Yeah, there's probably more to the story than this - but also, guys, read your contracts. Yeah legalese is boring, but you want to know that stuff at least at a passing glance. Could be the difference between avoiding a shady contract and signing away your image rights in every medium for eternity. (wish this was an exaggeration, but there were "art contests" that were in fact NFT farming operations)

Were Tapas (or maybe in this case Kakao) right in having a clause in the first place to "cancel" completed work? No, there should probably at least be some sort of return for the creator if they weren't given advance warning. But it takes two to get into a predatory contract.

[Cavechan]

I get that they should have read their contract more carefully, but it should NOT have even been an option to begin with.

I just want to bring up this part again since it seems to have been missed.

It would be nice to hear from someone at Tapas to ensure this is not part of a contract ever again.

[joannekwan]

I think the chances of someone from Tapas proper directly addressing this are slim. They have hundreds of contracts of varying levels between artists, writers, and independent creators that depend on their involvement with each individual IP. I doubt the set standard they use for one carries across to others.