Tim Lee came up with a great post title at Techdirt this morning: Titanic Crew Strikes Over Deck Chair Arrangement. It's a good lead into his blog-centric view of a standardized Hollywood writers contract:

The web is such a diverse and fast-changing medium that it's hard to imagine a contract that could address the diverse needs of all its writers right now, to say nothing of anticipating the future evolution of the industry.

Citing the same NY Times piece, Marc Andreessen points out several challenges faced by the media business:

faced with a massive, once-in-a-lifetime shift in mainstream consumer behavior from traditional mass media, including film and television, to new activities that you do not control: the Internet, social networking, user-generated content, mobile services, video games

He asks the "major media moguls":

Is this really the right time to pick a fight with the writers over royalties from DVD and Internet sales, leading to an industry-wide shutdown and massive economic pain for all sides in the world of traditional scripted film and television content?

Perhaps Marc has different sources? The NY Times article sounded like the other side was "picking a fight":

The sides have been at odds over, among other things, writers’ demands for a large increase in pay for movies and television shows released on DVD, and for a bigger share of the revenue from such work delivered over the Internet.

We report, you decide.