Actors take to the internet to show their residual checks, some in the negative

Re:Actors take to the internet to show their residual checks... by legitster on Saturday July 29, 2023 @04:02PM (#36923969)

It's hard not to see this as some sort of niche Los Angeles fight. I don't think the average American tracks on the issue of getting free money for your personhood rights.

> SAG-AFTRA also asked for revenue sharing, which means actors would get a fixed residual and also a separate residual tied to the amount of money a show brought in once it hit streaming platforms.

The numbers are just not going to line up here the way people expect. These shows are only on streaming because the rights are cheap. And hollywood has been pumping out low quality shows in such excess that they are essentially commoditized. If it comes to pay or pull, these streaming services are going to start pulling a lot more shows. Shows that never even made it to physical media.

I think we are seeing a collapse of an era. Even if SAG pulls together a deal, the industry is just not going to carry on in the same way it has.

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Re:Actors take to the internet to show their residual checks... by gochi on Saturday July 29, 2023 @04:09PM (#36924034)

That doesn't really make sense. The shows aren't only on streaming because the rights are cheap, because what's the point of buying them at that point when you can spend that money on your own IP? Streaming buys licenses because they are valuable, this value is only transferring between the service and the network.

Further, I don't think they're really against the real numbers being shown so they can more accurately get a sense of what's happening. Keeping numbers a secret here only benefits two groups: networks and streaming services.

Even the music industry is more transparent.

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Re:Actors take to the internet to show their residual checks... by scarface_74 on Saturday July 29, 2023 @09:06PM (#36926609)

> Streaming buys licenses because they are valuable, this value is only transferring between the service and the network.

When I had my house built for $335K in 2016, I paid the builders for building my house and the labor involved. They have no right to any of the value I’ve derived from my house by renting it out when we moved or when I sell it for hopefully twice the price. When I paid them for my house, my business with them was done.

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Re:Actors take to the internet to show their residual checks... by eesmith on Sunday July 30, 2023 @02:44AM (#36928522)

Your analysis is incomplete. The value you've derived from your house is a subset of total value derived from the process of constructing your house.

Did you have an architect design the house?

If so, who owns the copyright for the design: you or the architect? For example, AIA Document B105TM – 2017 "Standard Short Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect" says "The Architect shall retain all common law, statutory and other reserved rights, including the copyright".

This means the architect could make a new house which is a copy of your house, or (more importantly) re-use architectural elements in other houses.

If you negotiated that you own the copyright, how much more did you pay the architect? Did the architect still got a royalty-free, non-exclusive, worldwide license to use parts of the plans elsewhere?

Even if you didn't have an architect, you must surely realize that others do hire architects to design their house.

By narrowing the analogy to just the builders and the rental of a single physical structure, your analysis necessarily excludes copyright issues which are much more directly relevant to the current negotiation.

The set caterers aren't negotiating for residuals either.

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