Comments on: Friday Cat Blogging

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:54:49 +0000

New post up on the strike. The negotiations were a fraud, a PR move, not serious negotiations.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:10:47 +0000

As a musician, when I play a job, e.g., a church service, concert, party, etc., and the people or institution I’ve contracted with thinks they might want to broadcast or make a private CD of the performance for later use, there’s no reason to expect that I will be around at the time of the broadcast or the CD or any legal net redistribution. So the union contract at the time of the performance includes all appropriate rebroadcast, recording and distribution rights, and I am duly paid for them at local union scale depending on the kind of job and the nature of redistribution.

That is of course the only fair way it could be done: a creator of content deserves compensation for all the ways in which that content is used or to be used, because the producers receive revenue from all of them. People have no problem with this notion with auto workers and the value of the cars they make: the workers are paid with full recognition that their products will be used to go 50,000 or 100,000 or more miles, and it is built into Detroit’s prices for the cars. Why should it be different for musicians, composers, songwriters… and writers of TV content?

A very high percentage of the work product of American workers today is virtual, i.e., it exists as text, images, audio files or similarly intangible things. That does not make those products one bit less valuable (pun intended), but it does make them far easier to copy, and indeed to copy identically, either locally or somewhere else. There must be no free lunch regarding such copies and their distribution: content creators must be compensated. Period.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 22:15:01 +0000

I haven’t watched TV in a decade, other than brief periods when it’s on at my Mother’s house and the last movie I saw in a theater was Lawrence of Arabia, so it doesn’t affect me directly, but as someone who writes for a living [albeit computer code, not stories] I stand firmly behind people getting paid for their creative work.

By: oldwhitelady

oldwhitelady — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:33:47 +0000

Sox doesn’t look like a happy cat, with those slit eyes. I guess I’m supporting the strike. I’m not watching tv, I’m watching my cats. I would imagine you have plenty of cats to watch, too.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 19:29:50 +0000

Nice site, Catnapping. I deal with ferals and the prohibition against pets a lot of places is an unfortunate source of many ferals when people move.

At least your “pet” helps with the upkeep.

By: catnapping

catnapping — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 18:43:35 +0000

I rent a small room in a flop house. We're not allowed cats...so I feed the crows and the squirrels who congregate on the roof across the alley. I toss them bits of bread and cheese. And budget permitting, I've splurged on bags of roasted (unsalted) peanuts. But after a year of my devotion, they still won't answer when I call them, let alone let me pet them. So I have a new pet. I just brought her home from the Albertson's, so I haven't named her yet.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:55:30 +0000

I think it’s the Hitler mustache that makes him look menacing.

When you have multibillion dollar corporations trying to rip off the people who actually create their products with penny pinching, it gets a little annoying. This is what media consolidation leads to – even Henry Ford understood it wouldn’t work.

By: whaleshaman

whaleshaman — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:00:48 +0000

i’m TERRIFIED!

By: jams o donnell

jams o donnell — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:30:51 +0000

Sox really does look pissed off!

If I were a scab trying to cross a picket line and I saw that face I would turn and run for my life – not that I would ever cross a picket line of course. In solidarity with the WGA strikers I am not watching Dharma and Greg reruns or Fox News (not too difficult since Dharma and Greg was crap and I don’t get Fox News anyway!).

Jams O Donnell, PCS member in good standing

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:10:34 +0000

Not cute at all. Sox is, for one rare time, as ugly and forbidding as the conditions WGA members are being asked to accept in the contract they rejected. Sox is serious; so are the members of WGA.

Not knowing if the strike had been resolved, Stella turned on Jay Leno tonight. The episode was ancient; we abandoned it immediately. I will not support his advertisers, or those of any other show that depends on creative content, until WGA has been fairly treated in the matter of compensation for all distributions of their work. No free lunch: the creators of content must be fairly paid.

- Steve Bates, AFM Local 65-699 member in good standing.