As someone on the receiving end of this, it may not pan out for you. I was verbally told I was getting a raise, then my paychecks showed I got a larger raise. I thought nothing of it and enjoyed the extra money, thinking of myself as a hard worker who was worth the extra.

Months later, someone noticed the discrepancy. Queue the company informing me that the overpayment will be taken in one lump sum from my next paycheck, which would have made me unable to make rent. I convinced them to spread the repayment across as many checks as they had overpaid, but that was a pretty miserable experience to say the least.

That’s not the point. Does Jerry Seinfeld deserve $40-60 million for the last 3 years since he made one TV Special in 2020? No. But does he deserve a cut of the profits for the wildly successful content he made earlier in his career that is in syndication? Yes. Streaming platforms are trying to get out of equitably sharing the profits on content they host. That’s my (layman’s) understanding of the issue here.