In an article in today’s New York Times (Striking Writers Peddle Words, for Outlets Off the Picket Line), Joanne Kaufman neatly sums up what the strike is all about.
“The strike,” she writes, “[is] over whether producers and studios can profit from the writers’ work on the Web without paying them specifically for it to appear there…”
There’s also the increased residuals on DVD sales, but I think the Internet is the real heart of it. Going forward, I think it’s definitely the more important of the two issues on the table. You can probably make a decent argument for or against residuals — I think Mark Evanier makes a pretty convincing argument for the set-up here — but it’s ridiculous to claim that they shouldn’t apply to the internet. It’s disengenous to say that the shows and movies are just “promotions” when they’re downloaded or watched online. And it’s insulting to profit from somebody else’s work and then refuse to share even the tiniest percentage of the profits with them.
Yet somehow, in a lot of people’s minds, it’s the WGA that still comes across as being greedy.
It’s because the WGA is a “union” and “unions” are “bad.” You know, because buisness people are allowed to get together to control a finite resource and set prices and conditions for their goods and services, but actual employees are not, and it’s communism to suggest that skilled workers be allowed to get together and set prices etc.