Holly Goldberg Sloan: My thoughts on the Writers Guild and the AMPTP - Entertainment on The Huffington Post

I recall being in the New York Public Library just before it was to close for remodeling the Main Reading Room, perhaps one of the more cerebral places in New York City, redone by the Rose family donors. I read the then recent statement of someone writing for the WGA, as I was researching the written histories of a whole block in the South Street Seaport Historic District, still a parking lot, though once to be "condemned" by the then Mayor Dinkins administration to bring much needed water from the new tunnel being dug underground up to the surface (there or One Police Plaza). I was surprised by the article, which stated how copy machines are regulated in other countries to protect authors and how the sport of baseball was determined by the Supreme Court to be a "national past-time" and therefore not subject to the US laws of monopoly when it came to authors. The first point was easy to understand the second, harder. I've watched a sports-bar named the "Brooklyn Dodgers" sued by the Los Angeles "Dodgers" franchise, however, over the name. Brooklyn, NY is where the "Dodgers" first played at Ebbets Field. I understand the second point now. I also understand how hard it is to be a member of the WGA and some of the problems it faces and hope the management comes to a quick settlement with its "players" and late-night television doesn't turn into an insomniac's "terrorist hide-out" where I'm sure the newsies will have to entertain us with what's on "the wires".