Now A Little Something For Our Nerd Readers
Posted by: tony on 11/29/2007 12:53 AM
Updated by: tony on 11/29/2007 12:58 AM
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Expires: 12/30/2007 12:00 AM
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I am a Linux geek.
There, I said it. I despise Bill Gates and his evil empire. I am sure that his evil reign will not be forever because after all wasn't it Jesus, Himself, who said: "The Gates of hell will not prevail"? :)
Recently I decided to play around with a TV card and install DVR software into my Fedora Core 6 box. This was the MythTV software which is incredible. It is flexible, easy to use but best of all, it's free.
Our family doesn't watch a lot of TV. We have "lifeline" cable service which gets us the top 14 channels in Time-Warner's lineup. However, my wife and I have our favorites. She loves Dancing with the Stars, and Ugly Betty and I like Heroes, Reaper and Supernatural.
The DVR keeps us from having to plan our lives around our favorite shows. We can go on our Monday night "date night" attending RCIA, and our shows are happily being streamed to disk.
Now to sidetrack a bit. Karen Hall from Some Have Hats is a television show writer. Her union is currently on strike looking for royalties which should be paid for television shows that are streamed on the internet. Internet royalties, as they currently stand for the writers, is 0%. That's right, they get nothing, zip, nada.
At first, my attitude was: "If you are an employee, and you write X number of words, and get paid X dollars as you agreed, then you really have no right to dip into other revenue streams that your employer happens to discover." I was applying the intellectual property rules under which a software designer usually labors. I sign an intellectual property agreement giving my employer ownership of my work in return for a weekly (or bi-weekly) paycheck for as many dollars as I'm able to negotiate. The employer is free to use my work any way they desire and reap the fiduciary benefits.
However, this is not the way it works for writers (authors and TV writers). What is being done to the writers is comparable to a publisher of hardcover and soft cover books by Stephen King selling an e-book of one of his novels and not giving Mr. King any money from it. Mr. King has the right to object, and sue the publisher to enforce his rights.
Sure, the publisher could say it wasn't in the contract, but fairness dictates that if Mr. King is paid as a percentage of a certain "thing" (be it hardcover, paperback, audio book, etc.) that same percentage should apply to any new technology that comes out.
It appears that the TV writers are paid that way. I don't know all the details. Maybe it's a buck or so every time the show is aired. Maybe it's a percentage of revenue generated by the show by the advertisers. In any case the TV execs are saying that the internet is new technology, and they don't know how much revenue they are going to produce from it, so they can't offer the writers anything yet.
Bullsh*t.
Last week, my DVR horked up the recording of Heroes. I got half way through, and it started speeding up and going out of sync like the chipmunks. So I went on to NBC.com and watched the show online. During the show there were at least a half dozen small commercials. I don't believe the network was showing those commercials for free, so if the network is making money on the writers' work, and their compensation is based on a percentage of "whatever", they ought to get that percentage every time the show is "aired" (streamed). Maybe they need to find the number of TV watchers of a certain show, and discover the per-viewer royalties and apply them to internet viewings. I'd imagine that a network who can create a TV show viewer where you have to watch the commercials, can embed some sort of accounting scheme to pay the writers what they have coming.
If you believe, like I do, that the TV networks are being unfair, my suggestion for all of us is to keep watching the internet shows, but note the advertisers and let them know that you will not be buying any of their products until the writers are fairly compensated for their work.
It is only just.
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