Actors seek royalties for net-distributed work

For young actors such as 23-year-old Lisa Gerber, being paid for work distributed on the Internet is a key career concern--and should be a key focus of Screen Actors Guild contract talks.

"I think it's extraordinarily important," she said. "It should be as important as television or radio. It's another medium."

Although the Internet is still an unproven way of distributing films and TV programs and creating new shows, the tentative agreement reached Friday between Hollywood writers and producers includes the first provisions to pay writers for work distributed on the Internet.
Actors also are expected to seek payment for work that appears on the Internet or on planned interactive services known as "video on demand."

"It's pretty historic," said Rob LaZebnick, a co-producer of the "The Simpsons" and a co-founder of the Internet animation site Icebox. "It's looking at the Internet and taking it seriously as a content distributor."

Actors will soon deliver a streamlined set of bargaining proposals to the studios. No details have been released, but a broad memo was distributed to members of the Screen Actors Guild earlier this year. SAG and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists negotiate a joint contract.

"SAG and AFTRA's contracts cover the work of their members in all moving pictures, no matter how or where they are distributed," said part of the document, posted on SAG's Web site. "Both unions believe this extends to product made for the Internet."

SAG and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers could discuss a date for starting negotiations Monday.

Entertainment companies are planning to offer hit movies and library titles either to computer users or over high-speed Internet lines to TV set-top boxes.

Sony Pictures is preparing to launch its MovieFly service, which would offer movies over the Web. Walt Disney has said it will soon offer movies on its Movies.com Web site.

Other companies, such as Blockbuster and Intertainer, are testing systems that would make movies, concerts and other programs available for viewing on TV sets.

As part of Friday's tentative agreement with the Writers Guild of America, studios agreed to pay writers 1.2 percent of their income from showing movies or TV shows over the Internet. The payments apply to all programs created after July 1, 1971.

Studios also agreed to make separate payments to writers when a program created for the Internet later becomes the basis of a motion picture or TV show.

The payments apply when shows are offered on a one-time or limited-use basis. Both sides have agreed to continue talking about payments to be made when viewers are allowed to download a show and watch it an unlimited number of times.

"The residuals issue is tricky," said Icebox's LaZebnick. "A lot of the shows can potentially exist forever online. You can click on them 100,000 times. I suppose it's comparable to DVDs and videos."

The SAG-AFTRA list of bargaining proposals is said to be about half of the 50 to 60 demands that have been presented in the past to the alliance. The demands are expected to parallel those of the Writers Guild, including increased cable and foreign TV and Internet residuals.

SAG executives, including President William Daniels and chief negotiator Brian Walton, have been playing down the threat of a strike, calling it unnecessary hysteria. But SAG and AFTRA did stage a rancorous, six-month commercial actors' strike last year. And a SAG shake-up in 1999 that ousted Richard Masur as president was seen as evidence of a more militant attitude among some members.