Some 7,000 French artists have penned an open letter on campaign group Adami’s website, asking streaming services to pay them based on the number of streams their shows get, rather than a flat fee.

‘The torture of Tantalus’

The artists, who include Cannes Film Festival award winner Benoît Magimel and Palme d’Or nominee Valérie Donzelli, described current arrangements with the likes of Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime as being like “the torture of Tantalus, where the law exists, but where it is not applied.”

In Greek mythology, Tantalus was condemned to stand in a shallow pool of water with a fruit tree hanging above him, with the branches just out of reach. The water beneath him would also recede before he could drink it, leaving the means to slake his thirst and satisfy his hunger forever so close, yet so far. 

The tantalizing part for the artists is that they believe a law that has been in place across Europe for five years provides for pay-per-stream royalties already.

In April 2019, the EU passed the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market bill, which they say created a framework that guaranteed proportional remuneration based on how much their work was broadcast and streamed. 

The law was codified in France in 2021, but the country left it up to performers’ union representatives, producers, and platform executives to come to their own agreements over pay.

While country-specific agreements have been reached in other European countries like Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and Spain, nothing has been settled in France.

“All our letters asking them [streaming platforms] to come to the table have gone unanswered,” Adami president Anne Bouvier said after a meeting with the Ministry of Culture, Le Monde reported.

“It’s officially been three years to the day that performers have been waiting for their hopes for justice to become a reality,” the artists wrote. “Three years they have simply hoped that an already late law will actually be applied and allow them, finally, to be remunerated more fairly in the merciless world of streaming.”

Currently, French TV and film artists are not in receipt of royalties for their shows based on how often they are streamed, unlike how music artists are paid by music streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Artists whose soundtracks are used in popular movies and shows have also folded into this debate.

The argument has obvious comparisons with the SAG-AFTRA strike in the U.S., where famous, unionized actors refused to work for nearly four months, shutting down productions, delaying movie releases, and bringing promotional circuits to a halt.

The strikes are estimated to have caused $6 billion in lost wages and other business impacts in the production hubs of California, Georgia and New Mexico.

As part of an agreement to end the strike, a payment pot was set up to remunerate actors based on future viewings of their work on streaming services.

The French actors namechecked the SAG-AFTRA strike in their letter, suggesting they may take a tougher line if they are unable to bring streaming platforms to the table.

“In this situation resembling the torture of Tantalus, where the law exists, but where it is not applied, it is difficult not to think of duplicating the latest demands of the American sector, whose strike in 2023 will have lasted 118 days, and the damage estimated at $6 billion.”

It remains to be seen whether their strongly-worded letter will succeed in bringing the multibillion-dollar corporations to the negotiating table before strike action is deemed necessary.