What they obtain from us too cheap they esteem too lightly. If we are required to sign over our authorship in a bitter travesty of the truth, we should be fairly compensated for it. We are keenly aware of the daily consolidation and vertical integration of powerful media companies. We all know the inevitability of change in the entertainment industry. But whether what the moguls like to refer to as product or software is distributed on film or digital video, by cable or broadcast or satellite or internet, it is our fundamental work that draws the audience.
Respect earns money, and money earns respect.
The guiding principle is that writers should be fairly compensated whenever their work is used. Throughout the years the companies have created a patchwork quilt of residual structures, each time imploring the Guild not to kill a baby business with excessive demands. Each time we agreed, relying on company promises to make us whole when businesses matured. But payments to writers have never kept pace as businesses grew and grew and new ones increased the worth of each program and film. There has never been a negotiation when companies failed to wail that their business was weak and they were poor.