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Striking Writers Point Out Viacom Hypocrisy; Claiming Online Video Is Worthless While Suing YouTube For $1 Billion
from the wave-or-a-particle? dept
While I tend to agree with Tim Lee's comments about why the Writers Guild strike is misguided (and the guild itself is increasingly obsolete), it is rather amusing to see the hypocrisy of the studio bosses, claiming that they won't pay the writers anything for the use of their content online because there's no money online at the very same time that they're suing YouTube for $1 billion, claiming they need to protect their valuable online content. Boing Boing points us to an amusing video by some of The Daily Show's writers highlighting this contradictory stance:
Of course, while it's easier to feel sympathy for the writers (and very, very, very difficult to feel any for the studios), the studios are correct that the content is promotional (and they're wrong when they sue for $1 billion). Just as most people aren't paid extra every time a product they helped create gets sold, the writers are only asking for trouble if they really do want residuals for every use of the content they write. It's the same thing that's caused the problems the entertainment industry faces in the first place: the ridiculous demand that every time any piece of content is used for any purpose that money must change hands. The writers are paid by the studios to write content. If the studios are making more money by creatively promoting the shows, then they can start to pay the writers more. But setting up a system where every use requires payment is simply perpetuating the problems the industry is facing and will make it harder for the industry to adjust to the rapidly changing market. While we'd all like the writers of shows we like to get paid well, setting up a system that will cripple the overall distribution of the content won't do them any benefit. It will just open up avenues for other, non-TV, content to take their place.
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So it's not every use. It's use that makes money.
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Having said that, I think that one approach is clear: Many established writers are simply leaving the studio system, since the television is no longer the only (or the most profitable) conduit. Most modern TV writers write not for the television, but for the box set, and you don't need access to the airwaves or the cable channel to do that.
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First of all, shut the fuck up -- you get paid to sit on your ass and WRITE SHOWS FOR A LIVING. There are people who would kill to have your job. And while we're on it, I don't have any particular respect or romanticism or sympathy toward "starving artists". You are the one who wasted your college education on an art degree and decided that playing with fingerpaint for a living was more important to you than a real job making real money. If you can't survive painting and drawing pictures, then go get a real degree and do real work. You have to decide what is more important to you -- a half million dollar house or a job that you love to do.
Most importantly -- who cares about your royalties online?! I write software for a living. Very expensive, mission-critical software that hundreds of millions of people around the world use. My company pays me a salary. I don't get paid every time my company sells another copy of this software.
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On the other hand, there are so many coders you couldn't unionize if you wanted to. Live with it, crybaby.
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But the analogy of not being paid for every product sold is not correct. A better analogy would be if your company hired you to design a piece of software and paid you for exclusive US marketing rights to that software, and only the US rights. Then they sold it in Europe without renegotiating the contract with you.
The studios are exacting commercial benefit for uses of the product outside of the original financial contract with the writers - hence the dispute.
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Why not negotiate?
In this day and age, how can you come to a complete stalemate?
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Kimota, your hypothetical hiring people to write for geographical area is way off base. Code written for one project can even be used in libraries for even a different project all together, and still you do not get any royalties.
One more thing against programmers is even their very own ideas are bought off them with no chance of royalties. You can come up with an algorithm that may get patented, and then you can not even use this concept if you are working for a different employer writing new code.
So with these realities in what goes on with the programing world, it makes the TV writer's clam look a bit more over board. Most design jobs there are no royalties.
Heck even rock stars can have worse contracts.
(pardon this is badly written I'm 1/2 falling a sleep as I type)
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The writers strike is remembrance of the steel strikes of the 50s and 60s and will produce the exact results outsourcing.
With virtually free transportation of product and a infinitely smaller fixed facility base and labor cost outsourcing will only translate into internationalization of US culture and the demise of Hollywood.
Considering the low level of morals, ethics, and thought that go into Hollywood productions which are then used to siphon excessive levels of resources from the rest the World’s economy while focusing on a very narrow view of California this transformation is long over due.
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Who needs 'em ... get rid of 'em.
Imagine some of your favorite shows with a Hindu or Muslim twist to the humor. Even better, just import foreign made films and dub them ... I can imagine how much a southern US redneck would enjoy watching a Bollywood classic where the hero and heroine singing, dancing, and chatting in Hindu, ... or maybe a Korean version of Laugh In.
Who knows, perhaps it would even help the xenophobic US to wake up to the fact there is a real world out there ... instead of the fake one they see on TV and in movies.
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Re: Who needs 'em ... get rid of 'em.
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You'd Think
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Pay now vs. Pay later tradeoff
Most people aren't paid extra every time a product they helped create gets sold because they usually are paid fairly upfront.
The reason the residual system exists, is to let the studios avoid paying the full cost up front for services rendered. (This is all work-for-hire stuff.) The same way you don't pay your plumber or electrician upfront for the whole job. There's nothing unfair about that, is there?
Why percentages, instead of straight up cash? Because it's cheaper in the long run, given that most movies are flops. Why pay loads of money for every script up front, when you can work it to only pay for the big successes? The lowest possible percentages are still in the studio's best interests.
You said "If the studios are making more money by creatively promoting the shows, then they can start to pay the writers more." You've heard of Hollywood accounting? Making money, as in net profit? Never happens. So how do you objectively measure when a residual gets paid? Well, by taking a percent of the gross of the project wherever it gets used.
Your main point, that tracking each individual use of content is hard, and then paying residuals on it still stands. P2P distribution of anything makes counting viewers really difficult. I don't think that's the kind of definitional problem the writers are striking about, though.
For a fairly detailed, snarky description of the economics of residuals, etc, told by a writer, see Kung Fu Monkey's blog here:
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/11/albatross.html
and here:
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-strike-ii.html
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Re: You'd Think
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Profits
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Forget John Stewart...
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Re: You'd Think
The writers are striking. The union won't allow them to write clever slogans!
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From a Writer's POV
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Re: Profits
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Re: Re: You'd Think
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IT-Writer
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Re: Writer's POV
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Re ... well all of it
Yes, greed has never produced anything beneficial to anyone. Except, well, almost everything, at some point.
The living relatives of DaVinci don't get royalties when people look at the Mona Lisa, but when reproductions are sold for profit, then the owner/producer of artwork gets paid for as long as copyright stands. (Personally I'm anti-copyright, and all my private work is released CC, but the law's the law) In the same way, your rant that writers would attack libraries because they provide free use of DVD's and CD's is insane. Those DVD's and CD's were legally purchased, and therefore our residual (or royalty, in the songwriter's case) was paid at that time -- exactly like the author receiving his royalty when the library legally purchased his book. Unless you have a problem with authors getting paid royalties for their work ...
Part of the mistaken debate -- and why is it almost always coders? -- is a fundamental misunderstanding of the WGA terms of "work-for-hire." Screenwriters are, under copyright law, the "authors" of the script, which entails many messy problems with a large company paying millions of dollars to shoot it,sell it abroad, etc. Basically, in order for modern entertainment industry to function, we need to assign authorship to the company. But we do so under very specific conditions -- that we get "residual" payments for reuse of our authorship. This is a system, by the way, that's worked very very well up to this point.
So we're not "asking" for payment. This is payment due for reuse of authorship in various media, which the studios are OBLIGATED to pay us. In particular, we're not asking for any payment unless the companies themselves make a profit -- so free promotional material ("worse to be unknown than pirated" etc) is specifically exempt.
The problem is, the contracts were written by non-geeks twenty years ago who didn't think to anticipate new media. So currently, the internet isn't covered. The studios are taking advantage of this loophole and not paying the writers, claiming -- well, claiming about nine things, but essentially "We don't know if the internet will EVER make money" and "but an entire episode shown with commercials, exactly like a rerun on TV, is promotional!" kind of sum it up.
In short, they expect us to be morons.
We asked to renegotiate the contract, hoping to up our residual payments from .3% (yes, that's a decimal point) to maybe .6%-ish. The studios told us to go pound sand. Seriously, not even a legitimate counter-offer. QED, strike.
I hope that clears things up.
Oh, and Anonymous Coward -- you're right there are people who would kill to have this job. Tens of thousands try with absolutely no guarantee of success, and only a small percentage after ten or fifteen years of "starving artist" lifestyle, make a living. The rest do indeed go home and get regular jobs, usually without bitching resentfully about how somebody else has it so much better. But they at least took the risk, and those very few who succeeded have received a reward commensurate to that risk. You have to decide what is more important to you -- a nice safe coding job, or a job that you love to do.
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How much to the writers make now?
Why have we not heard real dollar figures yet? What kind of money are these people making? I'm thinking that sympathy for them will wane when people find out these facts.
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From AMPTP website:
"According to WGAw, 4,434 of its working film and television members earned a combined $905.8 million in 2006. The average member earned $204,295 and over half earned at least $104,750. The WGA noted that these numbers are based on earnings reported for dues purposes and thus do not fully reflect above-scale payments. According to studies, workers in the media business earned on average just under $70,000 per year and the average Angeleno earned just over $46,000."
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