Rebels with a cause.

DON'T you love it when the tables are turned on the highfalutin?

Hollywood routinely depicts business people as evil and regularly calls for more regulation of business, but Hollywood types recently found themselves on the receiving end of a proposed regulation to clean up business. And they didn't like the turned tables one teeny bit.

At issue is a proposed regulation that seeks to bring greater clarity to executive compensation. Each publicly traded company now is required to disclose the pay and perks for its five top executives, but the proposed change would force public companies to disclose the pay of up to three non-executive employees if their pay exceeds that of the execs. (Read more about the issue in the Media column on Page 16.)

That means, for example, that the company that's warmly applauded for paying its chief executive peanuts would suddenly have to fess up that it is paying the chief executive's brother $20 million to work in the mail room.

But it also means that other exceedingly high paid stars--whether they're Katie Couric or top investment bankers or movie actors--could see their pay disclosed publicly.

Technically, the actors and other non-executive workers would not be named, but since their pay packages would be revealed, most people could kind of figure out who was getting the big bucks.

Media giants lined up to oppose the proposal. Among those objecting was producer Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation in Glendale, which was recently acquired by Viacom, which is publicly traded and therefore subject to the proposal.

In his letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 6, he wrote that the proposal would "invade the privacy of employees; reveal confidential and proprietary information to the company's competitors and thus jeopardize the company's ability to retain key employees; cause significant employee morale issues, and provide investors with information of limited value."

Well, sure it would. Most regulations do. Welcome to corporate America, Jeffrey.

To be honest and fair, Katzenberg has a sound argument. The spirit and idea behind disclosing executive pay is to make sure that the ones who run the company--the ones who determine pay rates--are not looting the company. Forcing companies to reveal the pay of Katie Couric and other stars who don't set policy would be of small benefit. Just imagine the tantrum thrown by the pampered star who suddenly discovers she is not the highest paid after all.

Beyond that, the new regulation could cause the highly paid to gravitate away from public companies and toward private companies so their pay would be kept mum.

I'm with Hollywood on this one. Still, it's fun to watch Hollywood types squirm because of the hoist-by-their-own-petard aspect of it all. After all, moviemakers and television producers have made untold millions by openly reviling executives. One study done in the late '90s showed that executives not only are rarely portrayed on television as honest but are caricatured as evil more than any other group.

Of course, the demonization of executives is typically accompanied by a call, a campaign, really, for greater and deeper regulation.

Some regulation is good, of course, but executives long ago discovered what Katzenberg apparently is now discovering. Too much regulation is invasive, demoralizing and often has little value.

Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [e-mail].