The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.
Warning: unpopular opinion here.
From the article:
That means that despite the show being a resurgent hit, there were no big secondary payouts.
So, I am an engineer/scientist. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by billions of people. Most likely you, the reader of this comment are using it right now, because some of the products I worked on are telecom products, that are widely used to transfer information.
The amount of secondary payouts I receive is EXACTLY ZERO.
My honest question is, why those writers should be any different? They should be paid when they make their products, according to the contract they signed. But why many think they entitled to something more?
And no, I do not think that argument “but it is difficult work, it is not constant” works here. There are lots of difficult, non-constant, seasonal, whatever jobs there that pay even less.
Crab in a bucket mentality.
“I don’t receive residuals, so why should these writers? The executives are entitled to all the profit.”
If all us engineers got paid every time our code was used, the Internet as it exists would be absurdly expensive. Really, it couldn’t exist. Thank god engineers don’t have the same “I need to be paid every time something I created is used by anybody” mentality. You’re building on the work of millions of people before you, you owe it to others to contribute (and make a living in the process).
Of course, the industries are different in important ways. But you should be able to explain the differences, not just wave them away with “ur just jelly lol”
IMHO, copyright and IP law is ridiculously protective. People should get a few years to benefit from their creations, then they should be public domain. This lifetime-plus-70-years bullshit is stupid. Companies are exploiting those stupid laws to milk us on every platform for decades with each media artifact, and artists and writers just want to get a cut of the action. IMHO, it’s the wrong fight, and I can’t really support them in it: “give writers a share of the rent you milk from us” is not a cause I wanna get behind.
But the sales and marketing morons deserve to be paid for everything, of course!
I guess it depends right? If a show or movie or other piece of art continues to bring income in, where does that money go? Particularly when the team that created it have effected disbanded and therefore aren’t technically on the same payroll that income is arriving on. I would argue it should not solely go to the owners of that production house.
Residuals makes sense in a way that doesn’t really apply to engineering because typically engineers will remain at a company and their continued employment is how they continue to gain income from their work.
You could maybe say an actual equivalent would be engineers getting shares in their company, which would function the same as residuals. I think that is a more apt comparison.
Why shouldn’t we, as engineers, be entitled to a small percentage of the profits that are generated by our code? Why are the shareholders entitled to it instead?
I worked in Hollywood before becoming a programmer, and even as a low level worker, IATSE still got residuals from union shows that went to our healthcare and pension funds. My healthcare was 100% covered by that fund for a top-of-the-line plan, and I got contributions to both a pension AND a 401K that were ON TOP of my base pay rather than deducted from it.
Lastly, we were paid hourly, which means overtime, but also had a weekly minimum. Mine was 50 hours. So if I was asked to work at all during a week I was entitled to 50 hours of pay unless I chose to take days off myself.
Unions fucking rock and software engineers work in a field that is making historic profits off of our labor. We deserve a piece of that.
I work in machining. The amount of drawing I’ve received from engineers that could not be machined makes me question the intelligence required to become an engineer.
Ooh boy you’re gonna get the “anyone rich is evil give me free stuff because you have more” mob all animated.
But you’re right. They have a contracted rate to do a job (good or bad, fair or not). It makes for a flashy headline to say “look what the downstream revenue was”.
Only 14% of SAG members made enough money this year to get health insurance. Similar is true for the WGA. The low income economy that industry is fueled by only ever worked because of the residual system.
Okay you weren’t picked for any shows the past three months but that’s okay because your residuals cover rent and health insurance.
Not anymore, because the streamers refuse to pay residuals.
You couldn’t make a less informed comment about this affair if you tried, really. There was an existing system, companies took advantage of a loophole in that system to profit more and give execs massive pay days whilst giving the people who did all the work nothing, and now the people who did all the work are refusing to work until they get paid again.
I don’t know what people like you are hoping to achieve here other than demonstrate a profound level of dumbassary.
I am not that guy, but this is not how science work. Science and engineering are the product, and scientists and engineers do it as writers do it…
They are absolutely comparable
I’m an engineer too.
You’re an idiot, we should get paid more, the money goes to the moron marketing druids, not the ones who actually make/patent things like us.
You don’t seem smart enough to be a very good engineer, but then again you typed this almost certainly using tech I worked on.
Like others have said, this is the wrong mentality. Instead of asking “why should they get it when I don’t?”, You should simply be asking “why don’t I get it?”
Turning us against each other is how the ruling elite stay in power. 💪
What’s he’s saying is those ruling class shouldn’t be getting it either because it’s a silly concept lol.
Road crews don’t get paid from tolls. Power plants don’t get paid beaucoup. Etc. Etc.
The root issue is the company profiting endlessly or simply not paying appropriate wages. IP law absolutely needs to change.
Melancholy Elephants is a great Hugo Award winning short story about this train of thought.
Bcs taking someone’s work & capitalize on it just because the original worker didn’t have the means to do so … some people might see as immoral in a lot of cases.
One of the cornerstones of capitalism tho.
Also note the huge difference scales, bcs it matters a lot: if you sell a peace of tech, or business, or property at fair price (like dcf or whatever), then you already got compensated justly or as close to that as possible with the information available at the time. But if you were forced to sell at an arbitrary fixed rate bcs the buyer forced you into it from their position of power over you (and made a huge profit in a short amount of time from that) … you might feel different about the situation.
Like, even your, if you would be able to get secondly payouts, would you not collect them?
Also, if the negotiations & payout would be fair, the strike would not make financial sense for any party, or have an effect on the business.
Well what jobs are you thinking about?
- farmhand fits your description, but they pay less because they don’t need skilled workers, anybody with a working body can do it. Can’t just drag in a random guy to do your writing, acting, or VFX.
So, I am an engineer/scientist. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by billions of people. Most likely you, the reader of this comment are using it right now, because some of the products I worked on are telecom products, that are widely used to transfer information.
You’re an employee, actors are (generally) independent contractors so the comparison breaks down. Most people who don’t understand the situation have been making this comparison.
The closer analogy for you would be if you, as an independent engineer, created a library that Oracle licensed instead of bought. Something they are bundling into their latest database server.
Should you, as a developer, take less per unit because Oracle starts selling through a new channel? Say the Windows app store instead of through their website directly?
I mean, it’s ok if you feel like that’s ok but I don’t think most people would agree with you when they really understand what’s going on.
The unions gave the studios a sweetheart deal in the infancy of streaming so that it wouldn’t smother in the crib. Now that it’s profitable, don’t the artists and writers deserve the same level of compensation for streaming as they get through other channels? Not more, just the same.
Another counter argument:
Residuals are analogous to equity in the tech industry.
You almost certainly received part of your compensation as stock or stock options. You can hold onto your shares and receive dividends long after you have left the company you contributed to.
Residuals are like equity in a movie or film, rather than a company.
You get what you demand, and what you bargain for, which is why they are now on strike. You valued your knowledge, experience, and expertise in telcom, in different ways, and less over the long term, than workers in the entertainment industry, who, for the majority of the entertainment industry’s existence, have been taken advantage of by the producers of that entertainment. You decided to work for a salary and benefits, and got yours upfront, their industry works a different way as a result of historically predatory entertainment industry practices.
I think you’re missing a detail here, which is that before streaming was a thing writers would make significant amounts of their money by getting a show syndicated on a network, that was the whole deal. Streaming is being treated differently, effectively resulting in then receiving a very large pay cut because even if they make a successful show the payout doesn’t come.
And it’s true they could structure things so that they don’t receive a secondary payout, but their base salary was negotiated with that later payout in mind. You and I don’t receive secondary payouts for our work, but our salary is also adjusted to recognize that.
My honest question is, why those writers should be any different?
So I am also an engineer. Products that I have developed/contributed to development are used by millions of people. (I’m being a bit cheeky here by copying you, but this is true of me too.)
The compensation packages of engineers are wildly different than that of writers because our jobs are steady.
The compensation structure of writers is designed to carry them between shows when they are not making any money. They also need excess cash to fund retirement savings, insurance, and other benefits because they are unemployed for long and unpredictable stretches.
The residuals system was designed to address this very specific structure of the writing profession. As engineers, we don’t have these wildly unsteady employment schedules, so the residuals system is not warranted in our profession.
Your experience as an engineer/scientist is valid, but you have to understand how wildly different writing is as a career path, and how compensation packages are different out of necessity.
And no, I do not think that argument “but it is difficult work, it is not constant” works here. There are lots of difficult, non-constant, seasonal, whatever jobs there that pay even less.
Sure, industries like retail, tourism, and food service have similar weaknesses, but those industries are unskilled. Writing is highly skilled labor. WGA members are responsible for writing the most valuable media on the planet, American film and television.
The distinction between writing and these other industries can be measured in dollars.
Sure, industries like retail, tourism, and food service have similar weaknesses, but those industries are unskilled.
I understand what you are trying to say, but no they really aren’t. They require a very different skill set than being an engineer or a doctor, but I guarantee that you do not have the skills that I do with knives, playing with fire, and making knives. I know this because an engineer doesn’t have the time to spend 20 years working as a cook/chef, and 2 as an apprentice blacksmith. That being said, I’m useless if you hand me math above pre-calculus. I can remember algebra and pre-calc, but I don’t remember calculus any more.
There’s no job that is “easy.” In all actuality the lower the pay, the harder the job is to do. There are very few exceptions to this rule.
I took hard jobs because I’m a pyromaniac and so I made that work for me. Cooking and blacksmithing are just playing with fire.
Smithing is definitely skilled labor. It’s the classic example of an artisan.
But work in most of the food service industry (front and back) is unskilled. And by “most” I mean things like fast food, cafeterias, diners, chain restaurants etc. In all of these cases, you can hire Joe Shmoe off the street to wait tables.
Fine dining is a special case. Obviously you need significant skill/training to be the chef at a Michelin star restaurant, for example.
And I’m not saying that unskilled labor is easy. It’s not. I spent a decade in food service as an unskilled laborer (mostly fast food and cafeterias). It’s exhausting and difficult. And I’m not saying that unskilled labor is undeserving of a living wage. What I am saying is that the labor pool for unskilled work is much much larger, so it’s near impossible for that kind of worker to demand residuals or equity in the same way as an engineer or screen writer.
As the other poster stated, you get what you negotiate for. If you don’t negotiate for those secondary payments then you don’t get them. It’s right to argue when it’s “right or wrong” for those payments but you can argue whether it’s fair.
The corporations take on the risk but when it pays the payout isn’t fairly distributed. It unfairly goes to the top players who didn’t take any risk on because they are seperate from the corporation.
Also just because you don’t get any doesn’t mean nobody else should. You can try and negotiate that with your employer if you want. If you keep that mentality then you’re only bringing everyone else down to your level. We should be elevating each other. That mentality is just jealousy and it will keep you where you are.
Sure, but when the risks the capital takes are so low & long-term as in showbusiness (everything got consolidated af), and the payouts so huge compared to cost (especially excluding like top 5 most payed ppl on the project) … you might think that the negotiations weren’t made fairly on equal grounds.
Otherwise, if there were meaningful risks, the corps would have no problem sharing (=lowering) that risk at least with immediate stakeholders/workers. I bet most writers would take minimal or no pay to get in on the profits (that can last decades). Most writers work on several projects a year so so if business risks would be actually important, lowering them via lower initial costs for shared uncertain future profits would be a win-win scenario.
I don’t have an answer but I don’t necessarily agree either. However I updooted because it’s interesting discussion and you were nice about it.
If all content (all content) was paid for by tax dollars, it would not only be ad free, but there wouldn’t be huge companies standing in-between the artist and the consumer as far as getting the artists paid. And it wouldn’t cost that much. Like less than what you pay for having all streaming services simultaneously.
Government funded art has a tendency of being loyal to their patrons, i.e. the government, which stifles the very essence of the art itself. All content is not for every body, due to taste, and interest. You’re also talking about doing away with advertising, hahahahahahahaha.
You need to watch the film Cradle Will Rock if that’s what you think.
You should watch it anyway because it’s a great movie, but it’s also based on a true story about people getting government funding and using it to put on a socialist musical, which made the government freak out and shut the show down. That is what would stifle art- not artists being loyal, artists not being allowed to dissent.
Lol. Lmao even. Have you never heard what happens to government funded research papers?
But imagine the controversy a government would receive broadcasting various kinds of content. People deride the BBC as a mouthpiece of whichever party is in power despite immense work making it as impartial as possible
I think having all art that can find an audience funded this way would help this issue more than hurt it.
And then we get into the weeds of how do we decide who gets grants? I’m a fairly enthusiastic watcher of Linus Tech Tips, and he discusses that the entertainment tax grants the Canadian Government gives out are so complex that only the largest companies (the ones who do not need the grants) can hire people to navigate the bureaucracy for the tax breaks. Is choosing artists going to be an America’s Got Talent competition? A random draw? What source do we get viewer/listener numbers from?
I would love to resume the federal government’s artist programs like under the New Deal, but the reality is that our culture is more niche and divided than ever. Rather than swing and jazz being unquestionably dominant for music in the days of yore, now we’d have to check and verify every SoundCloud rapper, YouTube artist, and pop-megastar.
Some years ago the BBC itself ordered a study by Nottingham University which did show that the BBC consistently was pro-whatever-party-was-in-Government, so not being pro a specific party but switching from one of the parties of the power duopoly in Britain to the other as they alternated in Government (funnilly enough giving very little airtime to the smaller leftwing-ecologist party and tons of airtime to smaller far-right parties like UKIP).
However that’s about the News, not the rest.
Mind you the BBC also does in it’s contents invariably beautify the view about certain slices of British Society and British History but that’s the same as the 100% private content producers in the US also do, so it doesn’t seem to be an explicitly “Public TV” thing.
I’m unfortunately not very familiar with the BBC other than Top Gear and some of their fabulous documentaries. Thank you for the insight!
Jesus Christ, if my tax dollars were going to the absolute garbage content that’s being currently produced I would personally run for office to repeal that legislation.
And if the quality is so low when billions are on the line, I am terrified of what we would get when it’s government funded. Even now, you don’t need to look far to see how poorly our taxes are spent. Look into how construction companies take advantage of government contacts.
Didn’t the writers get paid a salary during the production?
yes, they sure did, but not enough, because at the time they accepted their last labor agreement, they were being paid when the studios and producers were selling their work on in other distribution avenues covered by that agreement, and now they studios are selling them on in other avenues of distribution which weren’t covered by that agreement, and aren’t compensating them for it.
It’s really not that difficult of a concept. It’s all in the employment agreement you work under.
I can get behind fair wages, but I don’t understand residuals. You were paid to do a job, but you also expect a cut of whatever future revenue it might achieve?
You were paid to do a job, but you also expect a cut of whatever future revenue it might achieve?
If it’s in the contract then yes.
If you’re wondering why it’s in the contract, this is very common in lots of different business types.
Up front, there may not be a desire to make a huge investment. What if isn’t a success? So you tell whoever is making , “hey, we’ll pay you measely dollars now to make it, and pay you percent of money that comes in for it down the road.” This way you can invest a smaller amount up front ensuring the thing gets made, but everyone involved gets a cut based on the future success.
Since the success/amount made isn’t determined in a one-time deal, you pay out the shares of the success over time: aka residuals.
Sounds like there just needs to be a part of the agreement that states that any new future avenue pay x amount or renegotiate. Doesn’t seem that hard.
Well hell! What’s the strike all about when this person figured it all out?
What’s that, you say? Greedy capitalists are greedy?
I get why this is something that comes to mind but the idea is changing the way things are done to pay the labour more of the value of the product they produce.
Everyone’s paid shit these days it seems. I feel like teachers/healthcare workers/IT people need more raises too. Idk why we’re so focused on just writers…plenty more important people out there getting shit pay… especially teachers in America who have to deal with so much bullshit.
The writers are on strike at the moment. It’s really weird that you don’t think that’s of interest.
Because I put things in tiers of importance in my head and theres jobs that rank wayyyyy above writers that need our rally cry way more in my opinion.
De-valuaing others de-values yourself. Divided we beg for pittances from employers and the owners.
Seeing how writing absolutely nosedived after 2-3 seasons, I find it hard to sympathize with them for ruining one of my favorite shows.
