The sorry state of streaming residuals shows why SAG and the WGA are striking.

  • yiliu@informis.land
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    1 year ago

    If all us engineers got paid every time our code was used, the Internet as it exists would be absurdly expensive. Really, it couldn’t exist. Thank god engineers don’t have the same “I need to be paid every time something I created is used by anybody” mentality. You’re building on the work of millions of people before you, you owe it to others to contribute (and make a living in the process).

    Of course, the industries are different in important ways. But you should be able to explain the differences, not just wave them away with “ur just jelly lol”

    IMHO, copyright and IP law is ridiculously protective. People should get a few years to benefit from their creations, then they should be public domain. This lifetime-plus-70-years bullshit is stupid. Companies are exploiting those stupid laws to milk us on every platform for decades with each media artifact, and artists and writers just want to get a cut of the action. IMHO, it’s the wrong fight, and I can’t really support them in it: “give writers a share of the rent you milk from us” is not a cause I wanna get behind.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Copyright law is ridiculously protective. You can thank Disney, the corporation, for that. The original law said 30 years. That was enough for the creator to make a career being creative. Micky would look a whole lot different by this point.

    • Zalack@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Why shouldn’t we, as engineers, be entitled to a small percentage of the profits that are generated by our code? Why are the shareholders entitled to it instead?

      I worked in Hollywood before becoming a programmer, and even as a low level worker, IATSE still got residuals from union shows that went to our healthcare and pension funds. My healthcare was 100% covered by that fund for a top-of-the-line plan, and I got contributions to both a pension AND a 401K that were ON TOP of my base pay rather than deducted from it.

      Lastly, we were paid hourly, which means overtime, but also had a weekly minimum. Mine was 50 hours. So if I was asked to work at all during a week I was entitled to 50 hours of pay unless I chose to take days off myself.

      Unions fucking rock and software engineers work in a field that is making historic profits off of our labor. We deserve a piece of that.

    • Ready! Player 31@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I guess it depends right? If a show or movie or other piece of art continues to bring income in, where does that money go? Particularly when the team that created it have effected disbanded and therefore aren’t technically on the same payroll that income is arriving on. I would argue it should not solely go to the owners of that production house.

      Residuals makes sense in a way that doesn’t really apply to engineering because typically engineers will remain at a company and their continued employment is how they continue to gain income from their work.

      You could maybe say an actual equivalent would be engineers getting shares in their company, which would function the same as residuals. I think that is a more apt comparison.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        I think the shares in a company thing is a good comparison, because I went to university at a place that churns out a lot of grads who found or work for startups. It’s a minefield because often the reason early employees get paid in partly in shares is because they couldn’t afford to pay them the “true amount” upfront.