A PS. on my thoughts on the Writers' Stike

I came across this great analogy on Craig Mazin's blog, The Artful Writer. It specifically addresses residuals, which is a fundamental reason why the writers are striking. It really helped me visualize why intellectual properties deserve to be compensated.

I hear this complaint quite a bit these days: “I don’t have to pay the architect every time I walk into a building” or “I don’t have to pay my plumber every time I use the sink he fixed.”

That’s right.

You don’t.

But authors of movies (and I consider the authors to be the screenwriters and directors) create something quite different than “blueprints for a single building” or “fixed sink.”

Imagine two guys. One guy writes terrific recipes. The other guy is a fantastic baker. Together, they create a magic cake.

Bear with me.

What’s special about the cake is that you can cut a slice from it, and a new slice will just grow back in its place.

You keep cutting it and serving it, and you never run out of that cake.

Wal-Mart decides to start selling slices of this cake.

They pay the two guys a good amount for the cake, as far as that sort of thing goes. Maybe a hundred bucks.

But Wal-Mart sells each slice for three bucks, and they keep selling them and selling them.

Over and over.

Millions of slices of the same damned single cake.

Shouldn’t the two guys get some small amount of money back on each sale? Maybe four cents?

Maybe eight?

But definitely something?

Movies are a special class of intellectual property. Like music or novels, they can be endlessly reproduced and sold in millions of multiples. One movie can be sold and resold and repackaged and redistributed and rebroadcast and redownloaded and reprojected over and over and over…

If the seller can endlessly exploit this single, unique product, shouldn’t the true authors of that work share in each endless exploitation?

A plumber can only fix your sink once.

An architect’s building is built once.

But not a movie. Not a television show.

So if someone asks you why we deserve to get paid each time someone buys a copy of a movie, tell them about the magic cake.