When I’ve been on strike, the first thing the employer did was stop paying me (obvious).
Does this mean that residuals will not be paid during the strike?

That’s not really how contracts work.  Residuals are payments for revenue derived from work that has already been performed, as guaranteed in the contracts signed when that work was done.

When you were on strike, they didn’t pay you for the work you were currently not doing.  The striking writers aren’t turning in any new work, so they’re not getting paid for these nonscripts while they strike.

This isn’t actually very complicated.

If people are going to make jokes about hunting down and killing someone specific on their site, then maybe they shouldn’t be too surprised when those specific people turn around and say something about it.

You want my address, Chris?

He already said he didn’t want it.  Or were you just advertising your IMDB forum manliness?

Reading comprehension: it’s not just for nerds anymore.

I’m a militant atheist and an egalitarian socialist so I’ve got a lot of practice asserting and defending unpopular opinions. And for the record, I may disagree with you on your Spider-Man interpretation and the general consensus of the Thing as a character and I’m sorry but Garth Ennis is highly overrated, but I am with you 100% on this issue. What was it again?

I loved Sneckie.

You’re on your own with Giffen, though.

No I’m sure spirited debate is more than welcome, I just love the fact that the only time I ever de-cloak and post anywhere it’s to be the one guy in the thread defending Keith Giffen or Projectra-as-a-big-snake or something.

Anyhoo.

The painting itself is a static, individual work, though. A better analogy in this case would be prints of the painting. If I own the painting (and thus the rights to the work), do I not deserve a share of the revenue garnered by sales of prints of the painting? Or if I choose to let it be viewed, do I not have a right to demand payment by the museum showcasing it? (This happens frequently, after all.)

To which I would say “maybe”. That’s the tricky thing. I can think of lots of situations where shares of additional revenue is deserved, and lots where it isn’t.

But just as most dollars earned by screenwriters go to guys doing it part-time and grinding out small paycheques, most dollars spent by producers flow out of the big seven, and that fact dictates how the writers’ collective agreement will be written, one way or the other.

But that’s the disconnect. Perhaps the most *dollars* come out of the studios, but they aren’t (by a long shot) hiring the majority of the Writers. The majority of television series are produced by independents who re-sell (or pre-sell or desperately hope to sell) to the networks, and by the same token far more WGA writers are hired to develop scripts for the collected worlwide independants than through the studios directly. But because they have the majority of the dollars (and the vertical integration) they’re probably the only ones who could survive in a royalty required world, since they could control both the creation and distribution, while producers by definition just focus on creation.

I doubt you’d see the entire production sector close up shop, but I guarantee there’d be a lot less people developing work on spec.

As for the independent producer – well, a writer can waive his residual rights as he chooses. No, that’s not the greatest option available, but it’s something.

The problem with CBA’s is that generally the parties don’t have the ability to waive rights in the collective agreement without the unions blessing and the union’s best interest are not allowing exceptions to hard-fought gains. That doesn’t mean I, as a producer, wouldn’t try – but I can count the concessions I’ve ever seen negotiated on a CBA with any union on one hand.

If I can be so bold as to summarize someone elses beliefs: I think the majority of WGA membership feels they got a raw deal on DVD revenue sharing because of the huge cash-cow DVD’s have become to the studios. Back in the 80s this was probably true, but no one saw the value in the direct market. They don’t want the same thing to happen in a world that they (correctly) percieve as moving to more on-line delivery systems, so they want to factor hard royalties for any on-line useage into their agreement.

The problem with this is there’s no hard-and-fast “on-line” system that you can apply all royalties to without either stifling technology, or allowing enough loopholes that distributors will see to it that neither producers nor writers ever see a cent of “profit” (although this happens to some extent already).

I have no problem with negotiating extensive revenue sharing, copyright splitting, AND internet royalties for a project if that project can survive with those encumbrances – but if you make them mandatory you’re just making it impossible for independent producers to work with WGA writers.

To some extent this has already happened with actors on ultra low-budget (>$500,000) films in Canada. ACTRA has a mandatory royalty system for low-budget films which allows producers to hire ACTRA talent at reduced rates, but so encumbers the film with mandatory royalties there is no way any distributor would ever buy it. As such producers have the unenviable choice of either making a film with the best possible talent, but never be able to sell it anywhere, or work with non-union actors.

I just don’t understand why “fair compensation” is synonymous with “mandatory royalty” as it envisions a future of digital distribution that’s a lot more micropayment based than the one I’d ideally like to see.

In the second place I must confess that it is horrible of me that my first thought, upon reading your comment, was “maybe he wants to read my screenplay!”

But in the third place:

I don’t want to “exploit” anyone, or get rich off the hard work of talented artists who have worked long and hard to hone their craft, but I don’t understand why “royalties” are a requisite to “fair compensation”. In all kinds of creative businesses you come up with a fair price to be paid outright for a creative work, add in performance bonuses, or gross revenue sharing as appropriate and go from them. Painters don’t get “royalties” if their paintings are re-sold for more money.

The painting itself is a static, individual work, though. A better analogy in this case would be prints of the painting. If I own the painting (and thus the rights to the work), do I not deserve a share of the revenue garnered by sales of prints of the painting? Or if I choose to let it be viewed, do I not have a right to demand payment by the museum showcasing it? (This happens frequently, after all.)

Don’t get me wrong – I know the cliche of the greedy moneybags producer to be (mostly) false, and I’ve worked with lots of talented, dedicated producers. But just as most dollars earned by screenwriters go to guys doing it part-time and grinding out small paycheques, most dollars spent by producers flow out of the big seven, and that fact dictates how the writers’ collective agreement will be written, one way or the other.

As for the independent producer – well, a writer can waive his residual rights as he chooses. No, that’s not the greatest option available, but it’s something.