The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
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?
It should be in your bank account instead of the pockets of investors that do 0 work and generate 0 value
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?.
This just in: different payment structures are different. Different valuation of output is different. Unfair under-valuations are unfair. What a discovery.
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.
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.
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.
If they have a contract to receive payment perpetually why are they striking instead of litigating?
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.
you are dumb
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.
Honestly.
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.
