Comment by rurp
11 hours ago
That's kind of already happened though. Nate and Galen have both launched Substack's covering much of what they did at 538. I've also seen at least 4-5 others working elsewhere doing the similar polling/politics/sports work.
Maybe that was the logic on ABC's part but it's ridiculously wrong given how much clear market demand there is for the 538 people and content.
> That's kind of already happened though.
It's a world of difference to the political standing of the ABC Vice President between "Nate Silver launched something and made a gazillion dollars" vs "Nate Silver bought FiveThirtyEight back for a song and made a gazillion dollars" even if Nate Silver did the exact same thing. In the second case, the ABC Vice President gets fired because he signed off on the purchase.
This is why long copyright is such a terrible idea. With long copyright, there is every incentive to sit on IP and do nothing with it because of political losses. With short copyright, the incentive is to do something quick because the copyright will expire otherwise.
You have a cutely naive view of what gets vice presidents fired.