Fans back writers in week 4 of strike

The strike started because producers and networks refused to negotiate satisfactory methods to pay writers for material that ends up on the Internet.

Writers are part of a volatile industry. Without job security, they depend on residual payments — which is what payment for material used on the Internet would be — to handle financial needs ranging from health care to children’s school expenses.

The media moguls have claimed that high-tech methods they use to market writers’ work are too new for them to be able to come up with satisfactory compensation structures.

“That’s exactly what big companies told workers at the beginning of the last century,” Rocco Fazzolari told the World.

Fazzolari, a former extra on “The Sopranos,” was at the Washington Square rally in another double role — as a member of the Screen Actors Guild and as business manager of Local 122 of the United Industrial and Service Employees Union.