Dear Hollywood: Giving Identical Scripts To Congress Reveals That You're Feeding Them Talking Points
from the gotta-keep-track-of-which-congress-person-is-shilling-for-hollywood-today... dept
So we already covered last week's Congressional hearings concerning technology and copyright. As we noted, there was some really great testimony from a variety of individuals who are really working hard to provide great products and services that are enabling much greater creativity (often relying on fair use) and doing so without having to worry about strict intellectual property (in fact, often thriving by ignoring their own intellectual property entirely). Unfortunately, as was expected, some in Congress attacked the speakers using copyright maximalist talking points. At times you could just tell that the Representatives were reading points fed to them by entertainment industry lobbyists. It happens. But usually, they don't make it quite this obvious.That's because whoever fed the "Friends of Hollywood" Congressional Reps their questions last week forgot to make careful notes of who they gave which questions to... leading to a repeat. Congresswomen Judy Chu and Karen Bass both represent different parts of Los Angeles, so it's no surprise that they'd be there to carry water for the legacy entertainment industry. But,having both of them ask identical questions, word-for-word, one right after the other? That kinda reveals that they were fed that question, doesn't it? You can watch the full video here, or to make it easier, I've made a short YouTube video that shows the two questions back to back:
"You express concern about these erroneous takedown notices generated by computers rather than humans, and this is no doubt frustrating to receive. What advice can you offer to small content owners, photographers or songwriters, whose works are infringed hundreds or thousands of times on the Internet but who lack the resources to monitor those infringements, let alone prepare and send DMCA takedown notices to address them?"There's a discussion that goes on for a bit including a really good response from IndieGogo's Danae Ringelmann. Then, the baton is handed to Bass, at 1:24:29 on the full video, who kicks it off by asking:
"You express concerns about takedown notices erroneously generated by computers rather than humans, but I wanted to know what advice you could offer to small content owners, photographers or songwriters, for example, whose work are infringed hundreds or thousands of times?"That is almost word for word the same question. Note to whichever lobbyist was in charge of feeding the Friends of Hollywood on the Committee their questions last week: keep track of whom you gave which questions to. Otherwise, you might just look silly.
As for the question itself, it's a bogus Hollywood talking point question anyway. The reason it's being asked is because Hollywood wants -- desperately -- to pin liability onto third party tech companies, forcing them into being "copyright cops." They're annoyed that they have to send DMCA notices, even though they are the only ones who can accurately determine (and even then, not so accurately) what content is actually infringing. So, one of Hollywood's favorite bogus talking points is that the "small content owners, photographers and songwriters" are now too busy issuing DMCA takedowns. Of course, when we've tried to find out more details about some of these "small" copyright holders to understand why they're spending so much effort on something so useless, rather than looking into alternatives that are proven to be much more effective, suddenly they clam up. Because the details would reveal what they don't want to admit.
Either way, it was a fairly bogus question to ask this particular panel, but the reasonable answer is clear: you tell them to focus on other business models -- like many of those represented by others on that panel. That is, you focus on the positive things you can do: connecting with fans, giving them reasons to support you, rather than on trying to stop things that won't stop and which have no likelihood of increasing your revenue.
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Filed Under: copyright, dmca, hearings, judy chu, karen bass, lobbyists, talking points
Reader Comments
The First Word
“you won't be small much longer
"What advice can you offer to small content owners, photographers or songwriters, for example, whose works are appearing all over the internet?""Umm... rejoice?"
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Typo:
I imagine that's supposed to be 'clam' up.
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Re: Typo:
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This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
SO, MIKE: I'm sure we're ALL interested in your answer:
What advice can you offer to small content owners, photographers or songwriters, whose works are infringed hundreds or thousands of times on the Internet but who lack the resources to monitor those infringements, let alone prepare and send DMCA takedown notices to address them?
Even if Mike is absolutely right about problems, he has no solutions to even suggest.
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Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
Your imaginary friends don't count.
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Re: Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
However... A much more important question, how does an unknown creator sell works if nobody knows about them, or has seen their work?
(Far an answer see my first point).
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Re: Re: Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
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Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
You mean other than the solutions he suggested in this VERY POST which you obviously DIDN'T EVEN READ?
...the reasonable answer is clear: you tell them to focus on other business models -- like many of those represented by others on that panel. That is, you focus on the positive things you can do: connecting with fans, giving them reasons to support you, rather than on trying to stop things that won't stop and which have no likelihood of increasing your revenue.
Thank you for proving that you're nothing but a troll for the 800th time. Fuggin' moron.
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Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
"Explore other business options and provide a better service that is more valuable."
"Don't tell us what to do. If you don't like it, start your own business."
"Fine, I will."
"No, your not allowed to do that, it will disrupt our business model."
"Fine."
"Our business model isn't working, give us a solution!"
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Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
There are also possible approaches by incorporating third party beneficiary provision, procedures and remedies in service provider TOS contracts with its users.
I am certain that with a bit of effort others can rather quickly come up with other possible approaches.
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Re: Re: This quibble lets you dodge discussing the answers!
Um. We did answer the question. Why is it every time you comment here you seem to make blatantly false statements designed to attack me? Are you that desperate?
One response to the question is that Congress should take a look at the "red flag" provision of the DMCA and put back the teeth in the provision that the courts have removed down to the gum line.
Red flag knowledge has not been defanged at all. The courts have just been clear that -- as makes perfect sense -- it needs to be red flags about *specific* infringement, because "general knowledge" of infringement doesn't make any sense, because there's no indication over what needs to be taken down.
Furthermore if you bulk up red flag knowledge standard you're almost guaranteeing two bad outcomes: one much greater censorship as companies takedown all sorts of legitimate content "just in case" and a massive slowdown in innovation in important communications services, as only companies who can afford to proactive monitor will be in the business. It may help Google keep out competition, but it's bad for innovation and the public.
What a terrible idea.
Of course, such a response would never emanate here since it would require service providers to assume some measure of responsibility.
No, it wouldn't be suggested here because we know it's a really really stupid idea destined to cause a lot more harm than good.
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The Lone Stranger
First question is, how will they know given Hollywood accounting?
Second question is, has anybody here seen the movie? Why not?
Third question is, how long will it take to blame infringing downloads?
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Re: The Lone Stranger
I have not. It looked interesting, then pretty much everyone was slamming it when it came out, so I passed on seeing it.
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But, if that's what they're going with, I wonder how they explain films like Grown Ups 2, which got far worse reviews (7% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. 28%) but was very successful, or Pacific Rim, which had largely positive reviews (71%) but got disappointing domestic box office (though it looks like a great success internationally and via word of mouth, so hopefully good DVD sales and a sequel).
It's almost as if they have an overpriced white elephant in the room that's put people off with bad marketing (Depp has a bird on his head? Depp is a native American?) in a genre that's not known to make ridiculous amounts of money, and are trying to palm blame off onto somebody else... Oh well, at least we're not hearing wailing about "pirates" this time.
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Re: The Lone Stranger
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Re: The Lone Stranger
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Re: The Lone Stranger
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lone_ranger/
At a rating of 28% rotten, why would I go?
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Re: Re: The Lone Stranger
Some studios seem to delude themselves into thinking their product is the only one that matter or is so compelling that they have no real competition. Reality states that there's a lot of movies out there, a trip to the cinema is more expensive than it's ever been - especially for families - and most people will make careful decisions about what to see on the big screen.
Of course, if they'd have spent $100 million instead of $225 million on their movie, it would still be a moderate success on worldwide gross. They might need to start addressing their costs rather than whining that people don't want the end product.
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Re: The Lone Stranger
I saw it via free screening through the week before it officially came out.
Considering the pacing was bad, nothing really happened until the third act, and the fact that the movie focused more on Johnny Depp than the actual main character, I'm not surprised it flopped.
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Re: The Lone Stranger
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Maybe they should just stop trying to crowbar pointless CGI crap trying to make their westerns into "blockbusters" and work on making real films that people want to see?
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Experience teaches me it is virtually impossible to know in advance what "sells" and what doesn't, so criticism such as here misses the mark.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The Lone Stranger
Nowhere did I say "don't make westerns". Nowhere did I say "don't make westerns with sci-fi elements". If I did, your comment would make some sort of sense. In fact, your comment is rather silly, since I was merely pointing out that westerns DO make money without blowing a small country's GDP on special effects - and that most that have done so have failed.
It's becoming increasingly obvious that just throwing effects at the screen isn't a guaranteed moneymaker in this day and age. There has to be something else to get the audience into theatres. True Grit and Django Unchained offered that something else. Apparently, Johnny Depp recreating a 60 year old TV show with a bird on his head for $225 million isn't it.
Let's work on the script next time, hmmm, or maybe keep the budget under control so that a film has a change of recouping it? Or, keep attacking that strawman and pretend I'm saying something I'm not, whichever makes you feel better.
"Experience teaches me it is virtually impossible to know in advance what "sells" and what doesn't"
There's ways to tell. Even if you miss those, stop whining because your $225 million gamble didn't pay off, while your competitors are raking in the cash, often with a fraction of the outlay. The fact is that the project was risky, and looking through a list of crossover westerns in recent years (Cowboys vs. Aliens, Jonah Hex, The Warrior's Way) shows you a string of flops. Audience reaction to this project's initial announcement seemed to range from "why are they making this" to "why the hell is Depp playing Tonto?", while the outlay required it to outgross every western ever made to recoup its budget. The film's release date was surrounded by much better, much more saleable movies. True, you can't always gauge things accurately this way, but it seemed pretty obvious that this wasn't going to be a success.
The Lone Ranger failed, for reasons that will probably be discussed constantly for the next year. Try listening this time before the next costly white elephant.
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Re: The Lone Stranger
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Totally corrupt process producing corrupt laws in this particular area and many others.
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Yours sincerely,
Old McDonnald (posted from 69.172.201.20*)
*http://ip-lookup.net/
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Re:
http://blog.creativeamerica.org/2012/content-theft-the-big-picture/#comment-13
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Clearly the correct response from the tech companies is to ban all content from big media, and show them that obscurity is far worse than piracy.
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Oh yes, the screams and panic would be delightful...
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I think this is why the "master list" idea has been proffered; to provide a list of works that are not in the public domain and should not be available on a website for free. Similar to the 'Do No Call' list, users opt in to protect themselves, and must regularly keep the database updated themselves in order to receive protection.
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Re:
1. What's to stop someone from claiming the rights to something that isn't theirs? If you can have a company believing that they own the rights to birdsong, you can bet that plenty of companies will be claiming rights to things that they never owned as well, and a master list just makes that problem net-wide, rather than individual cases.
2. Depending on how it's used, and who it's used by, something can be definitely infringing, possibly infringing, or not infringing, subtly that a master list would be useless for.
3. Using a master list to check what is and is not allowed to be posted on a site might work for very small sites, with only a handful of users, but for a site like youtube, that gets massive amounts of content posted every second and every minute, it would essentially destroy it or bring it to a grinding halt.
Checking such massive amounts of submissions against a list would be flat out impossible without thousands of people working around the clock, and even then it would still be insanely slow due to how much there is, and how much gets posted. Couldn't be handled by computer either, as #2 points out above something could be legal to post, or illegal, entirely due to how it's being used/presented, something computers cannot catch.
4. And finally, a 'master list' idea once more shifts the burden onto everyone but the sole party that should be responsible: the copyright holders. Why should it be a website owner's responsibility to preemptively check to make sure something isn't violating copyright? There's already a system in place where they can handle violations once informed of them, and it's not their job to defend someone else' business or product, so why should they be forced to act as the copyright cops for the content owners?
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I agree. That copyright was changed to automatic without the registration requirement is one of the major reasons why copyright is unmanageable by anybody, including the copyright holders.
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Along with a periodic (yearly) property tax/tax on sales to help manage the system, I'm good with this. The property/sales tax would prevent copyright works with little or no commercial value from being locked up indefinitely because the owner is too much of a moron to properly sell the work. We can even offer them a reasonable amount of time, tax free, like say 17 years, before they have to start paying. Considering the average work disappears from the market in less than 17 years, that seems pretty reasonable.
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In addition to the problems That One Guy gave, there are even more fundamental problems with this idea.
1. That same content can have multiple filenames, MD5 hashes, or file formats. Even if that content is found and taken down, it is trivial for users to create another form of the same content that won't be spotted.
2. Content that seems like it should be on that list, might not be. For example, the comments above discussed "The Lone Ranger." Even if the filename matches, how is a content provider supposed to know what version of The Lone Ranger is on their servers?
3. The above problems rear their head even with wholesale duplication of entire pieces of content. It doesn't even address content that is only part of an infringing work (a scene from a movie, say).
4. Even if that content is found to unequivocally be on the list, that still doesn't make it infringing. It could still be fair use, or covered under any of the other legal exemptions to copyright infringement.
Only the copyright holder can tell if it is her work being infringed upon; only the copyright holder can tell if the work is not authorized; and even the copyright holder herself cannot tell if unauthorized reproduction is actually copyright infringement.
Taking these decisions out of the copyright holder's hands, and putting them into the hands of service providers, is a horrible idea.
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PS. This latter may not be a bad outcome as it would also preserve a record of that culture, something which the publishers are loath to do.
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you won't be small much longer
"Umm... rejoice?"
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Re: you won't be small much longer
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won't work
Worse the 'master list' would need to somehow handle 15 people having permission to post something and nobody else having permission. What if I change my domain name? How does it now become 'approved' when it no longer matches the 'master list'?
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Re: won't work
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Kathy Wolfe - Followup
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Perfect Example
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I've gotten to where I hate the big screen experience. Highway robbery over ticket prices, concessions, poor house keeping, volume turned up way to high, idiots going through the isles while the movie is showing looking for hidden cameras, people talking, cell phones going off, commercials on my dime; the whole experience is dwarfed by the fact if I ever do want to watch one of these duds I can do it at home where I have the controls, and can even pause it while I go to the bathroom and pick right back up where I left off.
They're not even worth the band width it takes to pirate it.
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sleeping on the job
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Having to issue your own DMCA takedown notices is so unfair
South - 30,000 acres
NE - 5-10,000 acres
NW 10-20,000 acres
Yeah, I need some DMCA relief! But I'm not in the Big Leagues and don't expect that anyone will be interested in keeping MY costs down.
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Hollywood also steals ideas
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