Royalties?

Good luck.

Harvey Weinstein's hopes of getting Congress to enact a royalty-based compensation system for movie clips played on the web so far appears to be a long shot.

None of the movie industry trade associations are rushing to champion Weinstein's idea.

"While Harvey's ideas are characteristically interesting and provocative, the topic isn't something that we're able to comment on at this time," said Chris Green, supervisor of communications for the Producers Guild of America.

... Weinstein attacked Silicon Valley for profiting from the work of the movie industry without payment to the creative that created the work.

"Look at 'Chicago.' If you go to YouTube, you can download nine songs. There are 13 songs in the entire movie, pretty much 70 or 80 minutes of it. Nobody is getting paid for that. Neither Rob Marshall who directed, me, nor the studio. Nothing," ...

And there are Disney shorts that play on YouTube. And Disney clips. Also a host of other copyrighted material. But nobody seems to ask why companies should collect a big chunk of the money they are currently losing out on. Why not the people who actually created it?

There's an easy answer, of course. Most of the product comes about via "work for hire," and companies own the copyrights. In the U.S. of A., companies hold the power and they line their wallets. The pockets of authors, artists and the rest remain relatively empty.

But now we're in the age of the internet, and everything is free, free, FREEE! All the looting and pillaging must piss off our fine, entertainment conglomerates something fierce. It certainly pisses off entertainment unions since they have a symbiotic relationship with movie companies: they get paid when the Big Boys get paid.

But let's not kid ourselves. If Disney, Viacom, News Corp. and the rest could figure out a way to keep ALL the cash for themselves, they would do it. In the 21st century, however, the big Hollywood players bump up against the technology giants, which (face it) don't share Old Media's interest in paying for what they now distribute (and profit from) for free.