Maybe writers should team up and write something worth seeing that would make a point about something important besides their salaries.

And watch this, too...A World Without Writers

The whole freaking country should go on strike with them.

Mass Shutdown of the country.

Okay, but listen up writers . . . You all need to help get rid of those %*&(@! stupid ass video screens at gas pumps! WTF is next, Dump-o-vision, coming to a public bathroom stall nearest you? F**k!!!

Great video. I hope this doesn't last much longer, but if it has to, I hope the writers win their meager concessions.

WRITERS’ STRIKE SPREADS TO WHITE HOUSE: BUSH RECYCLES ‘IRAQ SCRIPT’ FOR IRAN

I am a Woody Guthrie union supporter; Go writers. Fuck the studios and corporate losers.

They were already paid once, writers should stop being so greedy. Who loses money when writers write shows that BOMB? ...Not the writers.

Well, one good thing coming out of all this is laughing at the writers for Repug outlets that are now crying unfair.

The same people who have supported the corporate agenda all of these years.

LOL! Poor fools...

Lollimom @ 2:

I was a writer for many years for a well known corporation, not in the entertainment field.

I was a web person for a high-tech corporation, and my work is still in use by that corporation.

I don't get residuals for that work.

If somebody can explain to me why the writers on strike are entitled to what amounts to life-long payment for their work/writing, and I'm not, I'll sympathize.

If it's right for them, isn't it also right for me and you? Is anybody else thinking like this?

Haven't you though of this before then, with composers, musicians, and novelists? Photographers and artists? Why should they get residuals too? You do realize that this is a MUCH larger way of doing business than just entertainment writers, don't you?

I think it is because the nature of the work. I hear that writing, and then "shopping" a great screenplay can take years. You don't get any income from that time. Without residuals from the last script (IF you even had a "last script") how is doing business this way possible? I'm sure TV writing is a little different... but I'm guessing that is how the residuals started.

If you feel that your web work is more of a creative nature, than technical, then by all means, perhaps you should push for it. Personally, I think ALL "creative" staff should get residuals on movies. From the writer to lead actors to director to set carpenters. And the suits, distributors, and middlemen should get no residuals -- what do THEY add to a film? Zip, that's what. But the studio heads average $60 million dollars a year, the writers union members average $62,000/year. That's AVERAGE, and in one of the most expensive places on earth to live.

The strike isn't just because they want more, it's because they took a "temporary" pay cut way back in the 80s that is still there, and now the studios want to cut them out all together. If the writers lose, the writing on TV and film will get FAR worse, because honest what family can live in the most expensive part of California on $20,000/year?

Lollimom @ 2:

I was a writer for many years for a well known corporation, not in the entertainment field.

I was a web person for a high-tech corporation, and my work is still in use by that corporation.

I don't get residuals for that work.

If somebody can explain to me why the writers on strike are entitled to what amounts to life-long payment for their work/writing, and I'm not, I'll sympathize.

If it's right for them, isn't it also right for me and you? Is anybody else thinking like this?

A similar situation is those who come up with an invention, and the corporation they work for gets ownership and all royalties, while giving the inventor a few hundred dollars.

There is something wrong with this, folks. But we Americans will passively accept it, and vote in the idiots (like Biden) who support this situation.

babalooey @ 15:

They were already paid once, writers should stop being so greedy. Who loses money when writers write shows that BOMB? ...Not the writers.

Tool...

If all the writing gets outsourced to 3 cents an hour employees in India, China or Mexico then the quality of English will decline in this country.

But then again....perhaps it is time for the USA to start learning more and more Chinese.

the studio heads can pound sand for their greed. They get lavishes bonuses while treating the writers like human cattle

I am not a big TV watcher but I support the writers. How can everybody get paid but the writers? If you think about, it is not just about writers getting a piece of the internet content pie. It is about the future of how all internet revenues will be shared. Power to the writers.

Some of you people on here are really sad and spineless. Why on earth would poor folk like us support corporate middlemen who make 150times the average workers salary in the company. What a bunch of f*cking assholes for even thinking that far. I think we're doomed unless we hang all these greedy, selfish 1%, and I mean that literally, they deserve no less. What a sack of shitty human beings....

Fantastic. And Miss Kitty, that video was priceless!

Lollimom @ 2:

I was a writer for many years for a well known corporation, not in the entertainment field.

I was a web person for a high-tech corporation, and my work is still in use by that corporation.

I don't get residuals for that work.

If somebody can explain to me why the writers on strike are entitled to what amounts to life-long payment for their work/writing, and I'm not, I'll sympathize.

If it's right for them, isn't it also right for me and you? Is anybody else thinking like this?

You haven't described the writing you did as an employee of a high-tech corporation, but I doubt it was comparable in any way to the creative content - that is to say, the original narrative work that screenwriters do that enables film companies to produce a movie or TV show.

As an employee of a corporation, you did your work on company time, probably on a company computer. There was likely a clear understanding that your work, for which you were paid a regular (or contracted) salary, was owned outright by the corporation from the moment you wrote it, and that you enjoyed no ongoing right to it. Nor was there any reason why such a right, if it even existed, had any lasting value - if your work product was anything along the lines of marketing, documentation, programming, website code, etc, then what you produced was simply part of your employer's ongoing product support. It had, and continues to have, no existence or relevance separate from the business activities of the corporation. Given this reality, why should you be paid ongoing residuals?

Creative content is fundamentally different. It isn't product support (such as advertising copy, html code, an instruction manual, etc), it IS the product. When a screenwriter creates a film script, or a comedy writer writes a joke, the stories they invent are original expressions of their talent and imagination. These ideas and narratives are the basis of everything that comes after - production, casting, distribution and redistribution in different markets and media. They are valuable assets of the production companies and corporations that own them, and they can generate revenue for years after they were created, sometimes decades after.

Why should writers get residuals?

Because they can. Because they're capitalists. Because the entertainment industry can't function without creative content. Because the value and originality of the work writers do gives them the power to stand up and say: My work has value, it generates ongoing wealth, and it is fair that I share in the ongoing success of what I created.

There is no reason why corporations should pay the creator of the content a pittance, and keep all the revenue for themselves. This is senseless and unrealistic. Payment of residuals has been standard operating procedure in the entertainment industry for at least 50 years. During that time, the big entertainment corporations have generated ever-greater profits, they have merged, integrated, found new international markets, and invented many new streams of revenue. They are richer and more powerful than ever in spite of technological change. Residuals are a token payment out of this flow of wealth.

mostest @ 29:

I am not a big TV watcher but I support the writers. How can everybody get paid but the writers? If you think about, it is not just about writers getting a piece of the internet content pie. It is about the future of how all internet revenues will be shared. Power to the writers.

i agree 100%. It's is the writers who create the show. Even buffoons like Wolf Blitzer and Bill O'Liely have writers.

Barbara @ 20:

Yes, Lollimom. You should be paid. Should the writers suffer because you passively accept your fate, while they stand up and fight? Get a spine.

Get a spine? That simply doesn't make sense, but I'll respond anyway.

My point is that EVERY worker in the United States should be entitled to life-long royalties for their work. The people who work in the entertainment field (writers, musicians, actors, all of them) have copyright entitlements that nobody else int he world has or could have.

Did I mention I was a contractor? Did I mention there were no benefits while I was working my butt off?

I still don't understand why entertainment industry workers are entitled to royalties forever, why the people here support those entitlements without question, and why the rest of the world--ALL people who are not in the entertainment industry--should not get royalties forever for their work, including YOU.

The last time this subject came up, I got the same icy reception for my opinion.

I'm thinking this one out just fine, thank you, and I keep coming back to the fact that if ALL of us got the same entitlements, there would be economic gridlock: nobody could afford to do anything.

And as for artists who own their work and are not doing it for somebody else, even at a reduced wage scale, they can charge whatever they want and make any demand they want. Writers for TV shows, however? Not the same thing.

babalooey @ 15:

They were already paid once, writers should stop being so greedy. Who loses money when writers write shows that BOMB? ...Not the writers.

Maybe you should give the writers a stake in the success of their films then. If you don't pay them residuals, all the writer has to worry about is selling it to some corporate schmo who controls the funding. Giving them residuals will make them worry about how their writing will play out with actual audiences.