I would like to clarify a few things here: For one, those not covered by the WGA contract don't get residuals.... for instance writers in practically all animations show. But let us put that aside for the larger context that Jordan's way of expressing the situation leaves out. In this way of putting things he unknowing puts on the glasses of the corporations in order to see things.
Imagine a situation where a novelist writes a book and not only does the publisher profit from all subsequent publications of the book but the novelist does not get paid for subsequent republishing of the book, can't reuse the characters in the book himself, cannot write a sequel to the book, and if the book falls out of print can't try to republish the book somewhere else. This is what would happen if novels in this country were written for hire. (Some in fact are.) The boss would then own the novel and all of the copyright-able materials of that novel. This is something like the situation that holds in the movie and television industry.
So called "intellectual property" is a unique product. As one of the best copyright experts has said intellectual property is not real property. (See Stewart Sterk - _What's In a Name?: The Troublesome Analogies Between Real and Intellectual Property_ http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=575121)
Copyright is a state granted monopoly supposedly for a limited amount of time. But here is the problem: Who actually owns this so-called "intellectual property". In the case of the WGA writers the big corporations that hire them. This situation where fictional property (copyrights) is owned by fictional people (corporations) is the "hidden" fact behind all Hollywood struggles between creators of "product" and the "owners" of that product.
The fact that corporate entities own the copyrights to the work in the first place is a result of many power struggles in that last 200 years. A situation where a novelist writes a book and a publisher pays for it once, or not at all, and then from that point on only the publisher makes money from the work meant that all writers were either well-off or were sponsored by powerful men. In fact this was the situation that existed before copyright was regularized. English copyright began as a censorship program for the King. But in the U.S. copyright was put into the constitution by lawyers and writers precisely to protect the individual writer by granting a monopoly on what that writer published for a limited amount of time. (It was, perhaps, the only kind of monopoly liberals believed in at the time.) We have a hard time imagining the "radicalness" of these copyright laws now, but in fact it was a way of turning upside down the usual situation where writing was licensed and writers were all sponsored by the big men. Of course printing press technology was at the base of this transformation from one form of intellectual production to another.
The crucial power struggles that have effected the movie and television industry are the following:
(1) Allowing corporations to outright own copyrights in the first place. This was not inevitable but a social choice, or rather the result of a lack of vigilance on the part of citizens, and the overwhelming power of the bosses. The default rule for ownership of copyright could have been the individual creator and not the boss who hires the individual or individuals and often produces nothing. In fact this could have been stronger than a default rule. One necessary reform of copyright and intellectual property laws is to make it so that fictional people cannot own fictional property.
(2) From approximately 1930 until 1960 there was a battle about who would own the copyright of scripts. The battle was not only between the old Screen Writers Guild and the Hollywood Studios, it was in fact across all media at the time. Radio writers were in several other unions at the time and it was the radio writers who actually battled the hardest to keep the copyright to their radio-plays. Later television writers joined this battle but by 1960 the writers for radio, television and the movies had finally lost the battle completely. It was a result of strikes in the early 1960s thsat the current residual system began to be standardized in the industry.
The reason I bring up these points in the first place is that it is crucial for everybody to understand, if you are to understand this strike, that the writers in "the industry" for the last 50 years have been fighting a battle that is similar to highly skilled craftsman in the transition to capitalism. The fact is that today, an animation writer for comedy central can develop characters, plots and the whole concept for a series and because that writer is not covered by WGA rules, after initial payment will receive nothing. Absolutely nothing. They don't have a piece of their product at all. In some situations these animation series make billions of dollars and when they are repeated on television or put on DVD and built on to make movies the people who created them get nothing. The so called "producers" get everything.
But this situation has been amplified by Sonny Bono and Mickey Mouse. Because of lobbying by major corporations and a few vested families that have a basic interest in copyright, copyright for a work for hire is now 95 years. (For works created by individuals after 1971 the extension is the life of the author plus 75 years.) You have to stop and think what this means. A work created for a corporation today will not fall out of copyright until 2112 AD. Now none of the masters of corporations know what is going to happen with the transmission media of these copyrighted materials in the next decade much less in the next 75 years. The bosses don't know how work is going to be sold in the next century or where it will be sold or which works will be valuable. What the corporations are fighting for is 100 years worth of material that they consider their "intellectual property" and their property alone.
To shamelessly quote my own journal (forgive me Doug):
"The wish of the current corporate moguls is to treat today's cohort of writers in the same way that the old blues artists were treated -- buy a bunch of songs today for $20 and hope that tomorrow they will be worth something. In the meantime the "owners" take all the credit leaving nothing for the artist.
"The important point is that in the emerging "intellectual property" regime this is the fate of all creators of work, whether they are computer programmers, comic book artists, or workers in the Hollywood industry. If the major corporations in the AMPTP are intransigent it is because they realize what they are fighting for, i.e. "properties" that will be their exclusive monopoly for almost a century. The fight over new media is not the fight over new media alone, it is in fact a fight for control and ownership of all new "properties." It is a fight that every single corporation involved in making "intellectual property" "for hire" has an interest in winning. The owners and bosses of these corporations believe that the creative work of others is their property alone, and any limits imposed on the fee simple of ownership is a "socialistic" encroachment on their property rights. This last point cannot be emphasized too much; the Hollywood model of the division between "creativity" and "ownership" has become the model for all sectors of the economy dominated by corporations." (See "The Social Economy of a Hollywood Strike" http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/77096.html )
But this contrast between coal miners and writers does bring up an important point, and it is in regard to Jordan's well stated skepticism that I again quote myself:
"Given the above discussion of the crucial division between the creators of "intellectual property" and the owners of that property it is necessary to bring up an impolite criticism of the Hollywood unions, and especially of the "creative unions." The very divide between "creative unions" and "below the line" unions is artificial. Most of the workers in Hollywood are "creative" in one way or another and deserve to be considered so. They also deserve "creative" ownership of the collective work of movies and television shows, etc. This notion of creative ownership needs to go beyond the simple funneling of residuals into the health and pension funds of below the line workers. Such a battle for the expansion of creative ownership to "below the line" workers cannot be won with this strike but all of the "creative" unions should take up this fight. As a practical matter it is necessary to unite all Hollywood unions in order to deal with the massive multinational corporations who own the entertainment industry. The rank and file of IATSE and other below the line unions must be won over to the fights of the creative unions, and vice-versa, or else any gains in this battle will always be under threat. Ultimately, the aim should be to create an industry wide union containing everyone from the great stars to the maintenance workers. The so-called "creative" unions must take some of the first steps to spread the idea that creative ownership is shared by all who work on a movie or show.
"I come to the conclusion about the artificiality of the divide between creative and below the line workers after studying the history of set designers and their attempts to unionize in the old Congress of Studio Unions. When the set designers were most powerful in their union -- roughly during the period of World War II -- they asserted real creative influence over the movies they were involved in and could be considered one part of a "collective of authors." (I have written about these subjects at length at my weblog. In short the "auteur theory" is mostly a description of the result of an historical struggle which acknowledged the "managerial" cult of the director-as-unit-foreman instead of investigating how collective authorship could be credited to all creative workers.) In other words, if copyright exists in creative works produced by the entertainment industry, then all workers should share in the continuing benefits of those copyrights during the whole life and in all the uses of that copyright Jerry Monaco
On 1/12/08, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> Mike Ballard writes:
>
> > You know what's REALLY interesting about this strike? It's that
> > the writers are asking for a share of the product of their labour.
>
> Well, not just a share, but an increase in the residual share of the
> *re*-production of their labor.
>
> > Imagine a industry-wide strike in say mining, in which the
> > workers demanded a share of the profits from the ore that
> > they collectively got mined and marketed.
>
> I think that's already how coal miners get paid. The difference is that
> once the coal company sells the coal, it's gone. We can quibble about
> what is a 'fair' share of the proceeds of the sale of coal (and Dog
> Knows, it's never been a great share), but I think we can agree that it
> is a model that's based on a 'share' ...
>
> In this case however, the writers have been paid their 'share' for the
> episode, or whatever ... plus they earn a share of the 'residual'
> revenue, like many in the entertainment industry on the 'creative' side.
> It's just not how much of a share that they'd like.
>
> In fact, reading the WGA's current position, I don't see anything 'new'
> here: it's really just a change in percentages that they are asking for.
>
> http://www.wga.org/subpage_member.aspx?id=2485
>
> /jordan
>
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>
-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/
His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/
Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/