If you create a product because of your own imagination and creativity, and you package it, promote it, and sell it, you fully expect to be compensated for it, right? It’s your intellectual property.

What happens when someone else takes that product and sells it on your behalf in a different country? What about if they don’t pay you for those “copies”, but they do receive revenue from sales and advertising placements that they’ve placed on those copies?

This is currently what is happening with the WGA. The writers in this guild, who are family members with regular bills to pay, just like you and me, depend on their writing ability to pay for their needs (medical bills, rent, mortgages, childcare, education).

The issue at stake is that the writers are not being compensated for their ideas, which are being ‘repackaged’ and sold over the internet, which is like a different country with no clear roadmaps. Downloaded videos are growing so quickly, there aren’t currently guidelines on how to pay the creative talent behind the screen.

Seven million copies of an episode of “The Office” were sold via iTunes, and NBC makes full length episodes available, with ads, on their website. “Don’t run ads in this and then not pay us for it,” was the general sentiment of Mindy Kaling, an actress, writer, and producer on the show (she was talking about the Youtube video where you can see her link to The Office is Closed but the principle applies to website downloads).

The average member of the Guild earns $5k each year, so don’t believe big media hype: the guild is made of working people who rely on their skills in screenwriting to pay for their groceries.

The future of the entertainment industry is on the internet and in other media like social networking sites, wireless, gaming, and user-generated content. Currently, writers are striking because they and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers were unable to come to agreement on payments for internet-related broadcasts.

At core is the issue of who ultimately profits: is it big corporations or is it the workers who actually do the work? If the two sides don’t see eye-to-eye, a strike is inevitable as a way to claim rights and set the stage for future labor relations.

Joss Whedon, writer for Firefly, says “This IS a union issue, one that will affect not just artists but every member of a community that could find itself at the mercy of a machine that absolutely and unhesitatingly would dismantle every union, remove every benefit, turn every worker into a cowed wage-slave in the singular pursuit of profit. (There is a machine. Its program is ‘profit.’ This is not a myth.) This is about a fair wage for our work. No different than any other union. The teamsters have recognized the importance of this strike, for which I’m deeply grateful.”

There’s a live blog going on at www.unitedhollywood.com. Learn more about the strike at www.wga.org. If you’re in Los Angeles, they appreciate your support on the picket line.

There is an active video blog team covering pickets and getting the writers side of the story to the people. “Why We Fight” is must viewing! Send it to every human you’ve ever met. There’s also an official WGA YouTube page.

Got pictures from pickets? Post them to Flickr and tag them with WGA and Strike.

Got lots of Facebook friends? Invite them to join the new United Hollywood Facebook Group

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