RE: Writers and pay: similar perspectives from writers at different ends of the spectrum

TELEVISION WRITERS

From RTTNews
Tensions Rise As Writers Issue Federal Complaint
[12/14/2007]

The writer strike has escalated to a federal level, as the Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed a labor complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Thursday, in an attempt to force the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) back to the negotiation table.

The complaint is the latest move in an increasingly bitter battle between writers and producers. The strike, which began on November 5, has impacted all major networks, forcing re-runs, and has begun to seep into the film industry.

The guild stated that it expects the labor board to assign an investigator and have an inquiry completed within a month. Should the board side with the writers, it can order a hearing resulting in an order to resume bargaining in good faith or face financial consequences.

The latest set of talks ended abruptly on December 7, with each side placing blame on the other. The issue at the heart of the strike is a tough one to resolve. Writers have been asking for higher residual payments for movies and TV series sold on DVDs. They have also demanded pay schedules for programming shown on new media, including the Internet and cell phones.

The WGA complaint filed with the NLRB charge the AMPTP with “refusal to bargain in good faith” with the WGA. "We are in the midst of the holiday season, with thousands of our members and the membership of other unions out of work. It is the height of irresponsibility and intransigence for the AMPTP to refuse to negotiate a fair agreement with the WGA," the complaint said.

The producers shot back, saying the "baseless, desperate NLRB complaint is just the latest indication that the WGA's negotiating strategy has achieved nothing for working writers.”

"When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When the law is on your side, argue the law. And when you don't have either the law or the facts on your side, you pound the table. The WGA has now been reduced to pounding the table," the AMPTP said in a statement.

This strike is the first walkout in nearly two decades. A 1988 strike cost the industry $500 million and had effects far beyond re-runs. The strike set the stage for the rise of reality television, and shows like “Cops” and MTV's “The Real World” were formulated to protect networks from another strike.

Back in 2001, a Milken Institute study looked at potential job losses resulting from a writer's strike in the LA area. The worst case scenario examined by the study was a five-month strike, which would have cost the city an estimated $6.9 billion in lost income and 54,600 lost jobs. Adjusting for inflation, that number climbs to $8.12 billion.


POETS

From the Guardian:
You like my poems? So pay for them Wendy Cope is outraged to find her work all over the internet
[12/08/2007]

One summer's day, strolling through a cemetery, my partner and I had a conversation about what we would like on our gravestones. He suggested that mine should read: "Wendy Cope. All Rights Reserved."

He knows all too well that I am obsessed with copyright. A poem is very easy to copy, whereas nobody is going to photocopy or download a whole novel or work of non-fiction. Poets are thus especially at risk if people do not know and respect copyright law.

The authors of short, funny poems are especially vulnerable. Such poems have a tendency to run off on their own and detach themselves from the names of their authors. There's a well-known poem I've liked since I was quite small. "The rain it raineth every day/ Upon the just and unjust fella/ But mostly on the just because/ The unjust hath the just's umbrella." For decades I thought of it as anonymous.

Then, when I was compiling an anthology of poems for children, I found it in the British Library with an author's name on it: Baron Charles Bowen. I was happy to reunite poem and author in the anthology. I've seen a poem by Ogden Nash in white paint on a beam in a pub with no mention of the author's name. I've seen one of mine in an anthology, attributed to Dorothy Parker. I could mention numerous other examples.

But this isn't just about short poems. There's a problem for the authors of all poems, unless they're really long, like Paradise Lost

A few years ago one of my step-sisters asked me about Jenny Joseph's poem Warning - the one that begins: "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple." My step-sister spends a lot of time in the USA and had heard about the Red Hat Society, a women's organisation inspired by Jenny's poem. As Warning is included in an anthology I edited, I offered to send her a copy. "No," she said. "Don't bother. I'll get it off the internet." That was when it dawned on me that nowadays, if you want a copy of a particular poem, you don't have to buy a book.

My poems are all over the internet. I've managed to get them removed from one or two sites that were major offenders, but there are dozens, if not hundreds of sites displaying poems without permission. If I Google the title of one of my poems, it is almost always there somewhere, and I can download it and print it out. I'm sure that this must affect sales of my books. I've tried Googling some of Seamus Heaney's poems, and those of one or two other well-known poets, and it's the same. Authors' organisations - The Society of Authors, The Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) - are concerned about this problem. Publishers aren't happy either because they, too, are being robbed. But everyone agrees that internet piracy is extremely difficult to fight.

Often the offending websites are the responsibility of well-meaning enthusiasts, who have no idea that they are breaking the law. Neither do the people I meet every now and then who say: "I liked your poem so much that I sent copies of it to all my friends." I'm supposed to be pleased. I've learned to smile and say thank you and point out very politely that, strictly speaking, they shouldn't have done that. They should have told their friends to buy the book. Or bought it for them.

In an attempt to do something about widespread ignorance of copyright law, the ALCS and the Poetry Society commissioned me, some years ago, to write a poem on the subject. It is called The Law of Copyright and the form is borrowed from Kipling's poem The Law of the Jungle. Too long to reproduce here, the poem points out that "This is the law: the creator has rights that you can't overlook./ It isn't OK to make copies - you have to fork out for the book".

Another beef concerns literary festivals. These days they often invite actors or anthologists to come along and present a programme of other people's poems. I'd like to be sure that they have cleared permission to read the work to a paying audience, and I know that in many cases they haven't. So the people who wrote the work are getting no benefit from the event. For most poets, fees for doing readings of their own work are an important part of their income. So, if festivals invite actors or anthologists instead, and the poets are not paid for the use of their work, poets have cause for complaint.

One argument that often comes up in relation to all this is "But it's free publicity". Well, it's true that there are poets who are happy to see their work anywhere and everywhere, just for the sake of the attention. But for those of us who make a little bit of money from royalties and permission fees, and depend on that income, it's different. Free publicity has no value if all that happens is that even more people download your poems from the internet without paying for them.

In the long run - if our poems survive into the long run - we'll be in no position to benefit from royalties or permission fees. All poets hope that their work will outlive them. I'm no exception. Even so, I sometimes feel a bit annoyed by the prospect of people making money out of my poems when I'm too dead to spend it.

And I feel sad for other poets. One day I came across some postcards in a gift shop featuring poems by AE Housman, who died in 1936. I bought a postcard and, on the back of it, wrote the following lines. When I hear them in my head, they are sung to the tune of the hymn The Church's One Foundation:

POSTCARD POEM

Will they do this, I wonder
With verse of mine or yours
When we are six feet under
And deaf to all applause?

We bring home little bacon
En route for that long night
And when the profit's taken
We're out of copyright.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Why is it so common for writers to go unpaid? Why are writers so willing to give away their work for free? What will it take for writers in the US, regardless their chosen medium, to be worth a living wage? When will we figure out that corporate conglomerates are spoiling the pot of creative stew out there and that, without the creatives to flavor it, we'll be left with nothing but gruel?