[Sickboy]

and from John August

* Writers get royalties: for books, for songs, for literary works.
* For legal reasons, studios want to be considered the “author” of a movie. So screenwriters transfer “authorship” to the studios, in exchange for a bunch of rights, and residuals.
* The studios and the WGA disagree about what rate is fair for work distributed over the internet.
* Since internet distribution will eventually replace DVDs, a bad rate would result in a pay cut for writers.
* That’s why there’s a strike.