SAG Meeting Ends, Outcome Uncertain

No Clarity On Strike-Authorization Vote By Film And TV Actors After Failed Attempt To Oust Lead Negotiator

(AP)  The prospects for a strike-authorization vote by film and TV actors were unclear Tuesday after board members of the Screen Actors Guild attempted but apparently failed to fire their lead negotiator in a two-day meeting.

Forces inside the union had sought to have SAG's national executive director, Doug Allen, removed from talks with Hollywood producers as a dispute raged over whether the union should proceed with a strike vote, which Allen supports. A vote was originally announced in December but ultimately postponed until this week.

After a meeting that began Monday and ran into Tuesday afternoon at SAG headquarters, one participant told The Associated Press that the attempt to oust Allen had proven unsuccessful.

The actor spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was supposed to be confidential. A spokeswoman for the 120,000-member guild had no immediate comment.

Coming into the week's meeting, SAG leaders planned to send out strike-authorization ballots as early as Wednesday and count the vote within about three weeks. That would be enough time to disrupt the Academy Awards and give the guild more negotiating power with Hollywood studios.

The actors have been working without a contract since June 30. They have been pressing the major movie studios for a better deal on residual payments for productions made for Internet distribution. They also want to ensure continued benefits during work stoppages, including those that are caused by strikes by other unions.

[vranger]

I''d be enraged at the music companies as a result of brianbwb''s post if there was any reason at all to beleive that it is true.

Unfortunately, I have read brianbwb''s posts for months now and have yet to see him get ANYTHING right, so there is no reason to believe his claims on this either.

In fact, stealing someone else''s intellectual property, or a substitute for their physical property, is wrong both morally and legally.

When songs are illegally downloaded or swapped, it is not just labels and artists who are hurt, it is every employee in the chain of production and distribution who lose their jobs or find them at risk.

The RIAA did not sue "mainly children and teens". In fact, they targeted mainly the largest abusers no matter who they were. Often when investigation uncovered that an illegal downloader was a child, they dropped their action.

Just once, I would like you to get something right, bwb.

Now on this topic, yes artists and other workers owed residuals on TV/film products should be paid when they are shown on the internet. All of those broadcast sites are accompanied by banner ads, so revenue is being generated. However, preview of the product in this manner also generates interest in DVD sets when available, and SAG should keep that in mind.

[brianbwb-2009]

The producers are trying the same game as the music producers, who for years resisted paying residuals for CDs, saying that they were only a small source of income, even long after CDs had replaced vinyl as the main medium of distribution.

The RIAA has sued many people, mainly children and teens, for more than a half billion dollars for "illegal" downloading, but haven''t paid the artists whose money it should rightly have been, so that line about "protecting the interests of the artists" is pure BS.

If a film producer makes large amounts of money selling and reselling the content of the artists and craftspeople who created the content, then they rightly should pay the creators.