Posted by
Daniel Crandall on Thursday, January 17, 2008 3:53:46 PM
I am back and forth regarding the writers' strike and have written that in principle I oppose unions, but in practice think that film and television writers
are being taken by the studios.
Orson Scott Card makes some excellent points regarding the current strike. His arguments, which, unfortunately, are not being made by the WGA union big-wigs, make a tremendous amount of sense.
"Here's what we writers should really be fighting for:
"The long copyright that was invented to protect writers should not extend to
corporations. Period.
"If a literary work's copyright belongs to the human being who created it, then
the copyright should last for the writer's lifetime plus ten years -- twenty if he
has minor children at the time of his death.
...
"Most films make almost all their income in the first fifteen years. The studios
have made back their investment by then or they never will. So if they insist
on owning the copyright and treating the writer who created the thing as if he
were a roach in the salad, they can do it -- for a decade and a half.
"If they want to make money from it longer, though, they will not make the
writer sign a work-for-hire contract. On the contrary, they will insist that he
continue to own the copyright and only license the studio to make a movie from
it. It should be illegal for such a license to be perpetual -- it would have to be
renewed.
"If the studio decides not to renew the license by paying the writer again, then
the script reverts to the writer -- he can get the film remade if he can, and if
anyone else wants to reissue the original movie, they not only have to pay the
studio for their work on it, they have to buy the script rights from the writer."
This makes a tremendous amount of sense to me, and should be something anyone of any political stripe should be able to support.
The one point Mr. Card makes, with which I disagree is, "Unions can become too
powerful -- but without unions, the profit motive will inevitably drive
employers to treat their employees unfairly." This strikes me as nothing more than Mr. Card's Democrat politics coming to the fore. I've worked in the construction industry for over 7 years and never have I had to rely on a union contract to be treated fairly. A company that doesn't treat its employees fairly will soon find that it doesn't have good employees and eventually that company will find its profits beginning to dwindle.