He does, he’s just being intentionally obtuse for… reasons.

No real person is this poor at grasping reality.

And they pay dues to who? Who continually collects those dues to keep you 'in the club' (because you have to be, Unions and all) while you do nothing because you either can't find another writing gig in a limited market or you suck at writing and no one wants you? Those that pay the dues get to vote, and the majority voted to Strike.

If you can't find another writing gig, the union doesn't get much in terms of dues, just the minimum flat fee and maybe some residuals, which remember, suck royally for streaming gigs, hence the strike. The union would actually be better off financially if there were fewer members making more money, since it would be the same revenue or more for less overhead. But the union's point isn't to make money, since whatever money they make is largely funneled back to the writers in terms of health insurance and such; the point of the union is to represent all writers to help them get the best pay/benefits they can, when they can find a job.

All the members got to vote, even the ones that didn't have jobs at the moment. And those voted to strike because they know that if they land another job, it better be one that fairly compensates them for their work, or it's not a job worth having.

I don't know who fed you this "unions are evil" garbage, it sounds like Fox News talking points, but it's not remotely true.

So you agree “writing” is now just a gig job? I mean, if these $1000+ a day people can’t find another writing job for several months or ever again, it’s a gig.

It’s always been a gig job. Only you seem confused about it.

Exactly, Gizmo is attacking strawmen.

$1000 a day plus residuals is probably more than you make in a single day and you are actually defending them.

I make more than their average annual pay, so they certainly deserve more pay. If I were trying to work as a film or TV writer, I'd be striking for more pay, especially considering I'd likely be living in NYC or LA.
https://www.distractify.com/p/how-mu...d-writers-make
What's more, you can see how many millions of $ these films and shows can bring in, and I think the writers and actors deserve a bigger cut of that, over the studio and execs that merely provided the upfront funding.

You keep falling back on the same tired lies that have been disputed time and time before. Do you think $69,510/year is extravagant pay? Would you want to live on that amount in NYC or LA?

Most of us here have 9-5, 52-weeks-a-year jobs. Do you know the difference between what you can make in a day vs what you can make in a year?

Maybe we have to take it all the way back to elementary school math to have a discussion with you.

I wish I got a residual every time someone in my company reads a document I wrote years ago.

Or demand a living wage from a part time job you once had.

Nobody is saying that the residuals alone should provide a living wage. But why are people perfectly fine with movie and TV shows profiting off a work for 95 years until the copyright expires, but not fine with the writers, cast, etc. getting just a small part of that revenue? Like, as long as streamers are still charging for access to the work and/or showing ads with it, and the studios are making money off it, it makes sense for at least writers and actors to get some of that money too.

I think it's the "I don't get that, why should they" instead of the "hey that would be cool if I had that too" mindset. There are lots of things we contribute to in jobs other than these that are still being used today but we don't see a dime besides what we got in salary for doing our job. A similar thing happens with tipping, "hey I provide a service, why shouldn't I be tipped." But you have to kind of look at the history of this, understand that the salaries were negotiated with this in mind, not focus on the multi millionaires who make a ton of money and get jealous of that, etc. It's like if you worked in sales, your job depended on bonuses, and they said "well, no more bonuses, too bad" it would cause a disruption.

I think a similar thing happened to pensions...

I don't cut a check to the architect who designed my house or the carpenters who built it every time I enter it or if I choose to sell it in the future.

Physical products are consumed once. A service is consumed once. Stuff like movies, tv shows and music don't physically exist. They are an intellectual property, not something physical that can be held in your hand. They are ideas. Such, the same property can be consumed over and over. A live concert performance or play can only be consumed once. A recording, physical documentation of a performance can be consumed over and over. By consumed, that's a retail sale. A DVD is just a physical representation of an idea. Not the idea itself.

Imagine you work in an assembly plant and get paid piecemeal. You build whatever it is you build and get paid for the one you made. Then the factory hits that item with a matter duplication ray and creates an unlimited number out of thin air. They sell everyone that they duplicated but you only get paid for that one you made. The factory is selling the one you made over and over and over. You only get paid for the one.

Let's make this simpler:

Should the writer of a book make money every time the publisher sells a copy? To put it another way, are people buying the book because of the writer or because of the publisher?

If you know the answer to that, you know what the writers and actors are striking about.

You could argue that there are lots of intellectual property that gets developed as part of someone's job that they get paid once for or as part of their job, though. Patents, inventions, software, etc. Maybe you wrote a piece of code that is duplicated in every release, for instance. To me, the bottom line is that the studios agreed to this pay structure way back when not out of the bottom of their hearts but because there was some incentive for them (surely the base pay was lowered because of this), and thus this payment method was born, and not they're trying to get out of it.

That architect gets a check cut every time that house design is used though.
https://www.archdaily.com/328870/the...ral-copyrights
https://corporate.findlaw.com/intell...he-design.html

And the carpenter gets paid for every house they build. You can't just photocopy the carpenter's work to make a new house, like you can with the architect's work.

Copyright usually pertains to things that can take a lot of work to make the initial copy, but can be copied easily and cheaply. It originally pertained only to books, shortly after the invention of movable type, but it's progressed to other creative works as the ability to easily and cheaply copy those works became available. Movies and TV shows are among those things where it's trivial to make more copies to sell/rent to people, but the upfront work can be a lot. Copyright is the compromise we've come up for allowing compensation over a period of time by limiting who has the right to copy the works.

These most recent arguments are largely an argument against how compensation for copyrighted work functions. If one wants to have that conversation, sure, but the writers and actors are not being unreasonable for continuing to get paid for work they did that studios and streamers continue to make money off of decades later.

All that is "work for hire," so typically the "owner" of the patent or copyright is the company. This is technically how it works for most TV shows and movies as well, which is why there's a residual system in place.

There have been companies that pay royalties, residuals, or at least bonuses to people who developed something patented or copyrighted. It has to be negotiated in the contract though.

Yeah, one could see the residual as a deferment on the upfront pay, especially since the studios don't necessarily know if a movie/show is going to be successful, so it keeps upfront costs low.

Isn't that how Edison can his workshops?

Bottom line is two parties are negotiating a contract. If you don't like it, don't agree to it. Once you agree to a contract, whether you like it or not, you're not getting screwed over as long as the other party lives up to the letter of the contract. It all comes down to leverage, who needs who the most. Either party can walk away at any time. The only way to get what you want is to dig in and refuse anything less. If you do give in, and agree to terms you don't like, you're not getting screwed as long as you get what everybody agreed to. You may not like it but you agreed to it. It's like American Pickers. You ask for more than you want. You offer less than what you're willing to pay. You meet in the middle. There's a happy medium somewhere. If the other side has an unfair advantage, you either walk away for good and don't look back, or take what they offer.

Disney offers Harrison Ford $200M to star in a Disney+ Han Solo TV series. Ford says he doesn't need $200, but $300M would come in handy. Disney decides they need that extra $100M more than they need a Han Solo TV show. Show never gets made. Equal leverage. Neither side wins. Neither side loses.
It all comes down to who has the leverage. Which side owes the mob the most in gambling debts and is going to get whacked first if income doesn't start rolling in to pay those debts.

Here's one big counterexample: mathematical formulas.

It took a herculean upfront effort for Sir Isaac Newton to come up with calculus and the laws of motion, or Einstein to come up with relativity (E = m c^2).

Other than the articles + books they published (ie. principia mathematica, etc ...), I would be somewhat surprised if their respective estates can even collect royalties / residuals on the use of Newton's laws of motion or Einstein's relativity (ie. nuclear bombs, etc ...).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philos...ia_Mathematica

I disagree with this. There's plenty of stories of people agreeing to bad contracts. You have Prince's dispute with his record label and such. Hell, Taylor Swift is so upset about her original record contract that she's re-recording her original albums. There can definitely be an imbalance of power. See all the EULAs that about on the web, and the companies trying to push all disputes into arbitration to try and circumvent class action lawsuits. There can be an imbalance of power when "negotiating" a contract, such as EULAs or websites terms of service which are "take it or leave it," and one side can be a bad actor even while working within the "letter of the contract."

Take this WGA dispute and the new demand for minimum staffing for writers rooms, and mandating some stay on through production. Previously, that was just what was done, it wasn't specified in the contract, because it was understood by both sides to be a good practice. But with streaming, the studios and streamers were looking to cut corners everywhere, and drastically scaled back writers rooms and stop paying them as soon as the scripts are done. Technically, they're within the letter of the contract, because the WGA never considered that they needed to spell that out before. So the studios are screwing the writers over by breaking tradition and not giving them the pay and experience they got before, even if the studios were technically staying within the letter of the previous contract.

Even if both parties enter in the agreement with good intentions, circumstances can change in a way that wasn't anticipated that benefits one side more than the other. It's partly why these union contracts only last a limited amount of time, so both sides can reassess and change demands based on current conditions. Even if you don't want to say that the studios weren't deliberately screwing over writers and actors, I think it's fair to say that based on the shift in viewing towards streaming and such, writers and actors were no longer receiving as fair a deal as they used to.

Those are explicitly excluded from US copyright law, as part of the Idea–expression distinction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea%E...on_distinction

More specifically:
https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ31.pdf
Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica would've been considered copyrightable expression, but the ideas inside not.

We've refined over the years what's afforded copyright protection, and what isn't. Newton and Einstein were compensated for their contributions to humanity in other ways, mostly due to gaining positions at prestigious institutions. But there are some things we've determined are too valuable to society and/or too difficult to restrict copying of, to grant copyright to. Movies and TV shows are not among those things. Being unable to freely copy a TV show doesn't hamper scientific advancement.

Keep in mind though that the government sometimes does try to restrict the free distribution of new scientific discoveries, like the top secret development of the nuclear bomb and the subsequent attempts to keep the particulars secret.

Id prefer $1000 a day for 8 weeks instead. Thank you.

can I have 10 months off and the same pay? Please.