UPC in court: 'Writer is assembly line worker in peanut butter factory'

The noble art of cable pulling is one of the most profitable activities in Dutch media land. This was evident on Tuesday 15 April in the Amsterdam court. There, Dutch writers, represented by Lira, versus the major cable companies and producers, represented by some very expensive lawyers, from the office towers on Amsterdam's nearby Zuidas.

The cable companies consider themselves the grandees of the Dutch media market. Their lawyer stated that during this case, which is about 13 cents per cable connection in the Netherlands. In that metaphor, the cable companies, which make a total profit of one and a half billion euros a year, see broadcasters and television producers as food factories. They are happy to do business with them, against a share of the monster profits, before they disappear across the border, into the pockets of the US mega-company Liberty Global, which owns almost all cables in the Netherlands.

At the very bottom of the pecking order, according to the cable companies, are the writers. They are thus the assembly line workers of the food industry, the seamstresses in crowded Bengali atelier, the coolies on the coffee plantation. It is not appropriate, the cable lawyer claimed in court, for those underdoors to drop by the final seller to claim a share of the profits. However small that share may be.

This metaphor aroused the ire of the nearly 100 writers seated in the room. Writers of series like Penoza and Flikken Maastricht, but especially also the people who write for youth programmes like Het Klokhuis and Sesamstraat. In fact, these writers, who do a bit more than just grind peanuts, have been paid little by broadcasters and producers for years. They sometimes deliver a skit, which in the case of Het Klokhuis, for instance, is reused hundreds of times. For that, until 2012, they were compensated through so-called 'cable fees': a tiny part of the extra profit the cable companies made by offering products over and over again. They paid for 27 years, until one day they stopped, the very day they struck a deal with broadcasters and producers, leaving the writers out in the cold. Youth writers in particular now sometimes miss out on a quarter of their already not-so-high income.

[Tweet "In fact, only the middleman now earns from television offerings."]

The case has been going on for a couple of years, and each time judges seem to think that writers and producers should come to a mutual agreement. But time and again, it also turns out that those producers, together with the cable companies, have no interest at all in sharing any of that extra income with the people who not only squeeze the proverbial peanuts, but also sow them, educate them, and even invent and refine them. In fact, only the middlemen now earn from the television offer. The viewer pays, the creator receives a pittance.

So even the writers of series like Max Havelaar and "How expensive was the sugar?" are empty-handed.

Fair Trade? The court will rule on 28 May.