refuse to watch, read, play, or otherwise engage with anything created by an AI.. we just make it a fundamental demand.. we don't want any of that shit..
Actually boycotting ironically hurts in this situation.
Writers and actors are encouraging people to keep watching and taking about shows & movies because that underscores the value they bring and are trying to get recognition for, ultimately bolstering their case.
When are people going to understand that what you know, what you can do, value, truth, integrity and love have absolutely nothing to do with how much you get paid? The world makes much more sense if you stop assuming being a good person makes you rich. The opposite is true, being a psychopath is far more profitable.
If we placed the appropriate value on the people who reduced suffering the most, there would be statues of Edward Jenner everywhere and he would have been the richest person in the world.
The fact that I had to look up who Edward Jenner was, and that I (unfortunately) immediately know who Kylie or Bruce Jenner is (to use the same last name), cynically proves your point.
Nurses and firemen should drive lambos, bankers should eat scraps. But alas, human nature rewards greed, but expects humanity.
There is an inverse relation between the wage a job pays and the contribution to society that the job makes, with a few exceptions like doctors. The highest paying jobs are very often parasites on society. This seems to originate from the Calvinist work ethic where meaningful work is its own reward.
Even then… Elective plastic surgeons make far more than virologists or ER techs. Radiologists can earn more by owning an MRI machine and charging for its use than by billing to interpret the machine’s results. Hospital administrators at big clinics earn more than staff physicians. Insurance company admins can earn more than doctors. Shareholders in medical firms earn most of all.
Most doctors aren’t paid enough either, and the supply of doctors is kept low to keep the price of care high, the cost of becoming a doctor is inflated by, among other things, the amount of residency programs available is limited making them very expensive to get into.
The whole thing is engineered to extract wealth, not functionally deliver a supply of goods and services to those who do work.
I’d heard that the Duchess of Sussex used to be an actress, but I’d never seen her in anything. It was a little strange at first to see her playing a paralegal.
You should always care when labor goes against the plutocrats. And you should support it. That you don’t like the quality of the results is a product of said plutocrats putting chains on them.
Of course. It’s all about the bottom dollar. No gives two shits about how good something is.
Personally I have a music background, I love music and am a capable guitar player, I’ve studied theory and listened to everything (just about) under the sun. From bluegrass to polka. I like it all.
So when I hear the studio release of paparazzi by Lady Gaga I hear mediocre cookie cutter albeit will produced music. However I once saw a YouTube video of Lady Gaga performing the song on piano live and it was absolutely amazing she is a true musician. But that’s not what sells the studio version of the song is what sells. Nobody’s going to buy Lady Gaga playing the piano while singing. At least not at that point in her career.
So if that version of paparazzi sells let’s make 9,000 other paparazzi’s and sell them. That’s what makes money and everybody else can go to screw themselves.
Who owns the rights to Suits, the writers or the company that paid the writers? The creator?
If they were paid for their work they are not entitled to anything more. They should be happy they’re getting any residuals at all. I don’t get residuals for work I did 10 years ago. You think the people that built the roads you drive on get residuals for the rest of their lives from making that road?
While I don’t disagree with the general state, I don’t see how it’s Netflix. They didn’t produce or create Suits, nor were the initial broadcaster, so the contracts were set long before Netflix
How streaming doesn’t count as broadcasting is a tad too convenient for the studio to not be a deliberate loophole. Even when the language is tested in court the lobbyism favors the deep pockets asking to split hairs clearly in bad faith.
This is ignoring the history of how writers traditionally got paid. Residuals made it so that the longer the writer was in the game the more they were supported by the raft of their body of work similar to authors. Residuals were originally fought for by another strike ages past so that a writer was paid a little bit every time an episode was aired as a re-run .
Now re-runs barely exist because of on demand and writers for streaming get paid peanuts. Successful writers have to write like demons and face burning themselves out just to get by. All because the streaming platforms can technically say “it’s not a rerun”. We as a society respect creative IP… Until that creator is on the platform of industry content streaming because a narrow definition of what counts. If it were any other platform like a network it wouldn’t matter who originally contacted it- if you air it a writer gets a share. So Streaming platforms get a massive business advantage over everyone else by screwing over writers.
YouTubers get paid on a more respectable model for the content they produce on these same principles than industry writers.
Assuming the current all you can watch flat fee model is unsustainable, how do you think a model like videogame (Steam, Epic, etc…) would be perceived? Lower monthly sub. Originals are included. Wanna watch something else? You can watch 2 episodes to start. If you wanna continue buy the season. Sort of like videogames where there are demos.
You said they got 3 billion as if they got 3 billion dollars. In reality Netflix paid for the rights to distribute a show and paid for the infrasture to stream 3 billion minutes of it in hopes that people keep renewing their subscription. It definitely made them a lot of money, but not 3 billion.
If those 3 billion minutes were watched non-stop 24/7 for the paying subscribers it would make at least $486,111.11 for Netflix assuming the subscribers paid for the cheapest subscription at ~$7. That’s still a lot of money, but they also pay for their own upkeep, servers and much more.
I know most people don’t have the cheapest subscription, and also that they don’t watch 24/7. But it puts into perspective that Netflix doesn’t earn that much on one series.
To add: they also make their own shows and productions and they pay to put shows up on their service that are not their own productions. I don’t know what a show like suits will cost to be put on Netflix, since they don’t produce the show, but I’d imagine that’s not cheap. And I guess the writers get a percentage of the money earned on the selling of those rights (depending on the contract they have with the original studio)
And the paying of the writers is in the hands of the studio selling the rights, not Netflix.
Yes, I agree with you. I’m saying assuming. I don’t think they’ll go… You know what? You’re right… We’re gonna start paying more. Something will have to give. I’m saying is there a diff business model?
There’s a lot of corporate shills in the comments, geez. I sincerely hope half of you are at least trolling in a half-assed matter, but if you’re seriously backing corporate interests, then you’ve not been in the shoes of people who’ve provided you the shit you’ve taken advantage of them over through their work. And here you are, demonizing and lecturing them over it.
they are not shill or bootlicker. they’re not backing up anybody but themselves. “if i was paid one time for my job why would they get more” the same mentality with “homeless people should just get a job” and “why would i pay for others Healthcare”. typical selfish american.
No, it’s just ridiculous that these well-off Hollywood writers are demanding special treatment. Practically every other profession works on a salaried basis, in practically every corner of the world.
They aren’t demanding that their colleagues who work behind the scenes like the set crews, editors and support staff get residuals.
No, their motive is entirely selfish and they come off extremely entitled when they place themselves above the rest of the people who are responsible for creating a product.
Well duh, the lower your incomr is compared to others the less of life’s pleasures their able to afford. If everyone else starts doing better then costs increase as demand rises and now I can’t afford shit.
Your work (and mine) could be done in almost the exact same manner by anyone with the same education and training. The work of artists is very specific to the individual. Not that no one else could do it, but if someone else did it, it would be a different product.
I think it has something to do with the nature of creative work. If we didn’t have some system in place to compensate creatives over time then people in creative jobs couldn’t afford to live between employment opportunities.
You are treating a written product the same as a commodity. The success of a creative work isn’t assured and fixed like a commodity is, basically working like fiat. So a piece of writing can either make very little money or a bunch. The initial cost of creating a show would be so much higher if writers were paid based on what the script is “worth”, since there is no real metric for show success and writers would probably just charge up the wazoo to be able to survive long enough till their next gig. This would probably also decrease creative quality, and you’d probably have shittier shows because of this.
As someone who works in the film and TV industry, let me go ahead and say whatever you do in America, whatever industry: you’re undervalued, underpaid, and your wealthy executives are getting fat on your hard work while you starve.
You spelled capitalism wrong. Social market economy makes it a bit better - but yeah earnings through work and capital gains are extremely off balance right now.
Engineer here - we’re undervalued too. We just happen to have more clout in the workplace at the moment, and so more individual bargaining power. That can change on a dime, though.
It’s also just relative scaling. A Starbucks barista might make $40k/year while its CEO Laxman Narasimhan makes $15M/year. Meanwhile, a Google engineer might make $400k/year, but its CEO Sundar Pichai makes $225M/year. So while an engineer will earn way more than a barista, as a fraction of CEO pay, engineers often actually make less. Both are symptoms of worker exploitation. It just so happens that technology companies tend to make a lot more money than coffee companies.
Hahaha, 😅 uhh you most certainly are, buddy! Hate to burst your bubble and bring you back down to reality… I know you hate it when we take the binkiboot out of your mouth to let your breath for a second, but you got to give it up eventually… you’re too old for that now…
🤭 it’s funny because in my history of working in engineering, the guy (rarely gal) with this attitude is consistently the least effective or useful. I presume the same applies here, based on a number of factors you’ve politely lain before us all.
I don’t really have issues there, either. I actually get in hot water if I don’t take at least 6 weeks of PTO a year, and the maximum is unlimited so long as my work gets done.
Have some sense to not post something like this when you are aware of the plight of the average worker in America even if you are in the minority as a tech worker
I only said people are starving because some are, and it’s avoidable. But everyone in America is grossly underpaid compared to executive pay and corporate wealth.
It’s fucking hyperbole. Obviously not literally everyone is underpaid (such as but not limited to CEOs). Like, if ya make a comment like what I responded to it comes off as a snarky and you will get shit on for it.
Ok but you attacked someone for saying that they personally aren’t suffering, even though they weren’t suggesting they speak for everyone either… unlike the other comment
It’s so absurd that some professions are so devalued, at least in certain timelines in history. Scribes are now considered practically worthless, though in ancient times they held high degrees of respect as scholars.
Now it’s middlemen who writers with projects who take the lion’s share of the money, despite accomplishing little else. They have no inherent skills beyond connecting person A with person B.
It’s because that’s what’s rare. Back in the day being literate was extremely rare and most families couldn’t afford to lose the free child farm labor for them to go to school, let alone pay a full time teacher and build a school house with learning materials. Now with free education and tools like computers that make that kind of work and others such as manufacturing with machines and transportation with cars etc. very cheap and plentiful, the hard and rare thing now is to find people who actually like and excel at socializing and connecting businesses and consumers to make deals. AKA middlemen. I don’t like it either but that’s the fact. If it were so easy, everyone would just become the middlemen. Connecting person A with person B is actually a lot harder than it sounds.
Of course, most of us are neuro divergent introverts on the spectrum. Hence why us lowly workers who stay clammed up while working from home or holed up in our cubicles and barely venture outside to hang out in the break room let alone go out for networking events won’t become those middlemen and watch our negotiating power and salaries falter.
I don’t understand how streaming isn’t just considered syndication. It seems like a dictionary definition of what it was, even if it didn’t exist when syndication agreements were made.
It’s a rerun of a show on a separate channel/platform. And the writers/actors should get the agreed revenue for it the same as if it were on TMC, nick at night or Netflix b
Indeed. an impartial judge wouldn’t let studios split hairs over words like this but as long as they’re appointed by politicians, they will side with whoever has the deeper pockets, because that’s what’s required for a continuing bright career.
I don’t get any money from the systems I setup at work as an IT worker years ago, even if they are used every day in perpetuity and make the company billions.
Where’s my income in perpetuity for creative problem solving?
If investors do 0 work and generate 0 value, why are they included at all?
Writers and actors should cut out investors and make their content independently. If they need money, they could borrow some under the condition that they share the profits if their content makes money. Wait a second…
Ok… but then why would they pay to have it done in the first place?
I’ve solved issues that have saved transit riders hundreds of thousands of hours of time… but so have other people. I don’t know how such an accounting of the return for investment I made would work.
When my solutions stop working as well, due to misc design/need drift, how do we decide how much I lose and the next me gets?.
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work? Your compensation package was different. Did you not have a steady job? Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I think the latent question here is - how were expectations and/or contracts for writers any different from hourly workers who have never expected royalties?
The previous comment did most of the work for you. Writers, actors, crew, and generally everyone involved in the entertainment industry does not have a salary gig like office workers. They aren’t working consistently–which has only gotten worse in the streaming era–and thus rely on royalties as part of their total compensation.
So, in summary, they are completely different situations that cannot be directly compared.
There are freelance/gig workers in other industries. Programming has had a massive freelance market for ages. It’s practically unheard of for them to receive royalties, so it seems like you don’t need to rely on royalties.
And writers do have a salary gig in the vast majority of cases. It’s just usually not a long term position. They are hired for the duration of the project, and then need to find something new.
That’s not unique to writers or Hollywood at all. Many people are hired for the duration of a project, including managers, engineers, construction workers and so on. None of them receive royalties.
I don’t think I’m ignorant of the gig-work nature of these things - I am, by choice, a contractor, but in a different field (engineering services). But my contracts specify that the deliverables are “works for hire” and that the client owns all IP, and I am not entitled to residuals or royalties or any other income from the work I’ve done under such contracts.
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?Because there are plenty of analogous (i.e. IP-generating) jobs that don’t have such arrangements.
It’s different with writers, because if their contracts worked like ours did they would have no hope of retiring. So when a fat fish like Suits comes along everyone who has a hand in making it is hoping to swing that either into money or more lucrative work.
That’s the way I’ve come to see it. Actual writers may disagree
This is about who holds the IP. Sometimes, depending on the employer and contract, an engineer will get to share in a patent created in the course of the job. Or might have incentives such as Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) or options.
So it’s not true that the IT folks are exclusively paid salary. Many share in the risk as well as the returns of their firms.
Let’s unpack that.
Yes, there are ‘writers for hire’ in licenced tie-in fiction and comics. These authors get a flat advance BUT they still get royalties based on the number of books or comics sold. That is - base payment and then returns based on success if the product.
Film and television writers are compensated by residuals in addition to salary. The studio owns the IP but the creators have a stake. It’s a risk and return sharing relationship with the studio. That’s the standard arrangement.
How is this different from an ESOP or options as an incentive remuneration?
How would an IT employee feel if a firm licenced the IP and then excluded its value from the calculation of ESOPs and options due, or the dividends on the nonvoting shares issued to employees?
I just genuinely don’t know if writers thought that they should be getting more. And if so, why?
What do you mean by “more”, and relative to what? The main complaint from writers are that in recent years the trend has been them all getting paid significantly less. Not just a few percentage points, more like 1-10% of what they used to get.
So, they want to get paid the same as they used to, which is more than currently but not “more” when looked at from a longer time frame.
Did you not get paid hourly or salary for the work?
Writing as a profession gets this too in many scenarios.
Your compensation package was different.
Almost everyone’s is. It’s all based on what you can convince people to pay you and the real winners are the ones who are friends and family of the ownership and/or executives, always.
Did you not have a steady job?
Can good writers not land steady jobs? Of course they can! Have I always had a steady job? Of course not!
Did you not know you were going in there next week?
I have had many roles in IT that you never know when something can or would happen to terminate employment. I’ve had an entire department let go so they could shift the work to another group. I’ve had acquisitions happen where getting a pitiful severance is commonplace (and severance only ever comes when you give up all rights to sue anyone at all ever who worked for said entity giving you said pittance. You’re paid for your SILENCE.) I’ve seen MANY contract roles where a hiring manager on a whim can choose to terminate employment and you’re left holding the bag. As an employee you NEVER know if you’re going in there next week, you just hope that you are. After all, you are an employee at-will. This is most roles as very few have duration contracts overall.
I wish IT workers would unionize and demand better pay - but then outsourcing would be even more prevalent than it is. Show business isn’t known for meritocracy in high paying roles anyway.
Paying people in perpetuity for doing one role for a small period of time is aligned with permanent ownership and dividends of something. Why writers wouldn’t just ask for stock or buy stock with earnings like everybody else is puzzling. There are so many stories about abuse with contract negotiation by people at all levels of showbusiness that i’d argue the whole thing should be overhauled but any disruption causes some to win and some to lose… and we couldn’t have anyone brought down to the same level of anyone else, could we? Let’s just keep those executive pay and bonus structures the same as they’ve always been too while we’re at it, wouldn’t want to stop their meteoric rise in wage y/y while the rest of us get boned.
This just in: different payment structures are different. Different valuation of output is different. Unfair under-valuations are unfair. What a discovery.
I don’t understand why people are so up in arms around artists and the entertainment industry. Flat payment is commonplace in most industries. These people agreed to the payment they were given.
You basically agree to it with a knife in your back because it is the only deal available and they’re using the money and power against your desire to be heard or seen.
I think I can see where you are coming from here. The difference between your creativity and writers, actors, musicians is that while your work is used by the company you built the system for that company isn’t selling it to someone else. You built infrastructure.
Writers, actors, and musicians work is being sold by the companies they work for as a revenue stream.
The platform that IT Engineers created for netflix is being sold by the companies they work for as a revenue stream.
See what I did there? Your argument is that they are more important but in reality they are replaceable like everyone is. Most of the writers out there aren’t in high paying GRRMartin level roles, they’re writing episodes of sitcoms and reality TV. The quality is all over the place.
so you saying, if a book are publish and sold, a writer only paid for writing the book and all the profit should go to the publisher only?
or song writer should be paid one off for writing a song and all the profit should go to music label only?
and no, netflix not selling the platform. it is like saying Grocery store sold their store everyday. it make no sense. the engineer is a builder, they build a platform. netflix pay them for the platform, netflix sell stuff on said platform.
How about if one person should make money in perpetuity for doing a job, everyone should?
You want to keep paying the architect, plumbers, electricians, carpenters and all the other construction crew that worked on your house right?
Oh wait… not that…
Maybe payment in perpetuity is a bad idea because it just funnels wealth to the few at the expense of the many… I mean it’s ok to charge people a billion times for something done a single time right?
There’s a huge philosophical discussion here, but instead you want to throw names. Things are the way they are overwhelmingly because of arbitrary bullshit.
Intellectual Property is a construct enabling monopolies and generating billions of dollars off the trivial reproduction of work done by others. All this perpetual money making bullshit is just piggybacking off of something that never should have been.
Intellectual Property is abused by monopolies, sure, but it’s not a construct made by those monopolies. If you write a book you should have rights to how that book is distributed. That’s the idea behind copyright.
If you write a book you should have rights to how that book is distributed. That’s the idea behind copyright.
Copyright is all about preventing anyone else from profiting off of your work by simply copying your work. Thanks to Mickey Mouse that duration is now life+70 years which is absurd.
Distilling the concept down and removing the nuance: As of today if you produce a written work you have monopoly control over that work for life+70 years unless you sign contracts stating otherwise.
Today, copyright as a construct creates monopolies that survive the creator.
In the case of Drug copyright, the duration is 20 years from the invention, which generally ends up being about 10 years after clinical trials to make money before anyone can make a copy. I struggle to see why the rules do not evenly apply, but the rationale behind drugs seems to be that humans benefit from them being available for as cheap as possible. If we had 20 year durations on TV and Movie copyrights it would be better for the masses and would give creators decades to earn profits on their work.
Drug makers try everything possible to extend copyrights on their drugs by doing things like creating medical devices with superior delivery methods in the case of injectable drugs. Since the new delivery method is more effective the old one is generally not used and so generics have to then wait for the delivery method to be out of copyright… This is just one example though. There’s no promises a generic drug ever comes to market if the drug is not widely used. The same shenanigans would be used by the entertainment industry to re-package their content with remastered versions or re-scanned original films like they have done with DVD, Blu-Ray and Streaming versions. Extended editions would also be an option… but the original copy would be free for all to enjoy after 20 years.
Why anyone is able to profit off of the original edition of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings for another hundred years is beyond me, it should just be free and available to everyone imo. The money has been made.
That’s my opinion anyway. Monopolies and income in perpetuity are horrible concepts generally only abused by the few at the detriment of the many. In the real world many just pirate content anyway. If it were up to rights’ holders NO copies even for personal use would be allowed. They would just have us pay per view even for copies we purchased.
I can agree with most of what you wrote. I’m not entirely convinced the life +70 protections for some things is wrong. An artist should have control over their work, but once they pass things need to become public domain. I’ll go one step further and say that no one should be able to own things they didn’t create or commission. The Happy Birthday story is a prime example.
“funnel wealth to few”. this is what happenning now.
the people striking won’t get rich from what they are asking for. they are asking for liveable income. they are only asking for a tiny portion from the collective profit of work that have their name in it. and they not only asking for money, they asking to be treated like a human being at their workplace.
architect are rich as fuck. plumber are very well paid.
“Intellectual Property is a construct enabling monopolies and generating billions of dollars off the trivial reproduction of work done by others. All this perpetual money making bullshit is just piggybacking off of something that never should have been.”. and wtf are you rambling here?
don’t talk shit when you never try working like them.
My argument wasn’t that they are more important. My observation was that the things writers, actors, and musicians produce is being sold over and over and over for other people’s profit.
Apparently my mistake was in thinking that the IT infrastructure created was purely infrastructure in the same vein as electrical, plumbing, or even physical buildings. I didn’t know that the IT systems created to provide streaming services was being sold to other streaming platforms without credit to the designers.
And before anyone thinks I am saying electricians, plumbers, carpenters and the like aren’t creative I am NOT saying that. A family member is a plumber and the stuff he has to dream up to get stuff to work is incredible.
Did you take your job at a rate of pay based on getting paid residuals in perpetuity?
This is like you taking a contract where they continue to pay you a licence fee for each server that they use your product on, then they move the product to a cloud system so they can get the output of 100 servers with only a single server licence.
Wait writers normally get royalties for their work? What the fuck that’s amazing, so Netflix is just in violation of a contract then? Why doesn’t the WGA just sue them?
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