ACTRA strike and the Net
p2pnet.net news view:- Reading the press release from the Canadian Film and Television Production Association (CFTPA) and a Canadian Press article, I see a familiar situation.
When many different types of creators and intermediaries, and multiple distribution channels (traditional TV, Internet, etc), are involved in some final form of creativity, how does all the money get carved up?
The core of the dispute seems to be: actors want new media to be treated identically to traditional film and TV work. While I don’t know the details of the dispute, I tend to disagree with those who think all media are identical. They’re not. The business models of traditional movie production, distribution and funding, and of television, aren’t going to be the same for new media.
The Internet is not a new type of “pipe” (past heritage minister Copps) or “tube” (US senator Ted Stevens) onto which you feed the same content as old media. This is a different type of media which enables a much wider range of production, distribution and funding options. Any attempt to start a conversation from a misunderstanding that all media is the same is going to end up in major disagreements.
We also need to move people away from discussing “minimum wage” and other such issues, which are different from discussions of how to carve up royalties or other rewards for exclusive rights granted to creators. These two issues are entirely separate, and only if we are talking about “work for hire” where no exclusive rights are granted to the worker are “wages” relevant. Where there are exclusive rights, the rightsholder can express them in a variety of different ways, but they are not (and never were) a type of a “wage”. Copyright and labour issues must remain understood as separate issues.
Russell McOrmond – p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons). He's also the CLUE policy coordinator.]
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January 11th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
You have a good point about the media being different, and having different rules than film/TV. But if ACTRA is correct with their comments that the Producers want their work on the internet etc. for free, that’s not right either. The logical choice would seem to be going the route of thinking about it in terms of royalties or percentages. I can only imagine what a rat’s nest that could be with the multiple ways of media being put out on the net. — On the other hand, I bet the Producers are finding a way to get their cut!
January 11th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
You have a good point about the media being different, and having different rules than film/TV. But if ACTRA is correct with their comments that the Producers want their work on the internet etc. for free, that’s not right either. The logical choice would seem to be going the route of thinking about it in terms of royalties or percentages. I can only imagine what a rat’s nest that could be with the multiple ways of media being put out on the net. — On the other hand, I bet the Producers are finding a way to get their cut!