Would be interesting to see a good write-up of just how much publishers ripped off other peoples work in these early days.

I think the early french film - A Trip to the Moon - was pirated by edison and others in the united states and the original filmmakers didn't make any money

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon

specifically:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Trip_to_the_Moon#Release

Very common, many such cases. The reason Hollywood is on the west coast is because it was outside the effective reach of Edison's patents.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=Sl4gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JmUF...