What makes a writer's work different from an architect's?
We're into the third month of the 2007 Writers' Strike, and it's still dragging on. People in the entertainment industry lost their jobs as the strike moved into the holiday season, and the economic impact of the strike is probably going to be felt in the television and film industry for years to come. So what's with the writers, anyway? What makes them so special?
I've been thinking about this a lot - I support the writers. I'm glad the DGA was able to make a deal with the Producers, but the WGA is still struggling with what's on offer. I was trying to think of a "real world" comparison, and it occurred to me that something like a building is an artistic expression of an architect and a lot of artisans, but when the architect sells the design, there's generally no reuse clause, or concerns over intellectual property over the long run like there is with written material.
When Charles Dickens was writing for The Strand , he was paid by the word (which is one reason his prose tends to go on - he needed to put food on the table!). Long-term ownership of written material is a recent development, really, and the copyright law has changed over the past century to safeguard a writer's legacy beyond his life. At one time that wasn't the case. But why is ownership of a writer's work worth preserving in that fashion?
Because we've learned the hard way that nothing stays the same with the written word. Just because it's been published in a magazine doesn't mean that magazine will go digital. Or that written work can't be adapted for radio, television, or film. Or that new methods of distribution won't be developed later that you and I would never have dreamed (okay, those of us who are science fiction fans can dream of a lot of ways, but you get my drift). The written word of only a few years ago had only certain ways it could be distributed - on paper, recorded for radio or tape/CD, on television, on film, and on videotape. Then came DVDs. And then came the self-fulfilling prophecy that is the Internet. ITunes. Unbox. Instant access to everything you'd ever want to watch. Free. But someone's getting paid somewhere - a lot of this "free" content is ad-supported. Which means there is money changing hands in order to provide the material in a new way. So someone is benefitting. Yes, there are costs to consider in providing servers to host and stream media, and there's software to buy to put on those servers, and there are geeks required to keep those servers running.
But, there's apparently enough happening with those live streams that CBS, when they factored iTunes and streaming media usage of Jericho, found that a show whose Nielson ratings were pathetic, had actually grown dramatically in terms of audience through the new media outlets. A lot of these network free video tools require that you watch the shows with the commercials intact. The company whose commercial is playing is paying some kind of fee to have that commercial shown.
But the writer who wrote that show is getting nothing for all those showings. The network is benefitting, the advertiser is benefitting. But the creative folks who actually made the show in the first place aren't seeing any benefit.
But how is that different from an architect designing a building for a client, and not expecting some form of royalty payment for use of the building? A building, while it can be used for many things, cannot be presented as anything other than what it is. It can't be digitized and transmitted to a new location or cloned, so that it can begin a new and separate life as something other than what it is. The uses of a building are known and finite - at least in this dimension - while the product of the written word is currently ever changing.
So I hope that soon the producers and the writers will be able to find common ground, but that common ground has got to recognize that the work of the writers underpins everything, and the brave new world we face today is not going to stop changing any time soon - and rights and royalty agreements need to reflect that, for the writers, the actors, the directors and the creative people who make the shows we love happen.
I've been thinking about this a lot - I support the writers. I'm glad the DGA was able to make a deal with the Producers, but the WGA is still struggling with what's on offer. I was trying to think of a "real world" comparison, and it occurred to me that something like a building is an artistic expression of an architect and a lot of artisans, but when the architect sells the design, there's generally no reuse clause, or concerns over intellectual property over the long run like there is with written material.
When Charles Dickens was writing for The Strand , he was paid by the word (which is one reason his prose tends to go on - he needed to put food on the table!). Long-term ownership of written material is a recent development, really, and the copyright law has changed over the past century to safeguard a writer's legacy beyond his life. At one time that wasn't the case. But why is ownership of a writer's work worth preserving in that fashion?
Because we've learned the hard way that nothing stays the same with the written word. Just because it's been published in a magazine doesn't mean that magazine will go digital. Or that written work can't be adapted for radio, television, or film. Or that new methods of distribution won't be developed later that you and I would never have dreamed (okay, those of us who are science fiction fans can dream of a lot of ways, but you get my drift). The written word of only a few years ago had only certain ways it could be distributed - on paper, recorded for radio or tape/CD, on television, on film, and on videotape. Then came DVDs. And then came the self-fulfilling prophecy that is the Internet. ITunes. Unbox. Instant access to everything you'd ever want to watch. Free. But someone's getting paid somewhere - a lot of this "free" content is ad-supported. Which means there is money changing hands in order to provide the material in a new way. So someone is benefitting. Yes, there are costs to consider in providing servers to host and stream media, and there's software to buy to put on those servers, and there are geeks required to keep those servers running.
But, there's apparently enough happening with those live streams that CBS, when they factored iTunes and streaming media usage of Jericho, found that a show whose Nielson ratings were pathetic, had actually grown dramatically in terms of audience through the new media outlets. A lot of these network free video tools require that you watch the shows with the commercials intact. The company whose commercial is playing is paying some kind of fee to have that commercial shown.
But the writer who wrote that show is getting nothing for all those showings. The network is benefitting, the advertiser is benefitting. But the creative folks who actually made the show in the first place aren't seeing any benefit.
But how is that different from an architect designing a building for a client, and not expecting some form of royalty payment for use of the building? A building, while it can be used for many things, cannot be presented as anything other than what it is. It can't be digitized and transmitted to a new location or cloned, so that it can begin a new and separate life as something other than what it is. The uses of a building are known and finite - at least in this dimension - while the product of the written word is currently ever changing.
So I hope that soon the producers and the writers will be able to find common ground, but that common ground has got to recognize that the work of the writers underpins everything, and the brave new world we face today is not going to stop changing any time soon - and rights and royalty agreements need to reflect that, for the writers, the actors, the directors and the creative people who make the shows we love happen.
posted by Deb Walsh at
9:23 PM
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