Movie Studios Considering Tightening Release Windows When They Should Be Eliminating Them

from the closer dept

The very idea of major movie studios simultaneously complaining about movie piracy during the initial release of a film and instituting long release windows so that films are only in the theater for legitimate viewing has never made a bit of sense. As study after study has shown, one great way to reduce piracy for a film is to make it available for home viewing as early as possible. The reason for this should be obvious: in this case, piracy of a film is a sort of market study, one which informs the studios that a part of the public really wants to watch the movie at home as opposed to in the theater. Trying to force that part of the market into the theater by delaying home rentals or purchases no longer works, because piracy is an option. Stamping out piracy has never worked, but making the film product available the way the customer wants would, at least to decent percentages.

And it seems this decades long lesson may finally be finding purchase by its students in the film studios, as several major studios are reportedly considering slashing release windows by a third.

According to a Variety report, six of the seven biggest Hollywood studios are considering plans to allow new movies to be delivered via VOD into the living room between 30 and 45 days after launch for around $30. Fox and Warner are said to favor this structure but other plans are also floating around. Universal are reported to be pushing for a VOD release less than three weeks after launch, with Warner Bros. suggesting a shorter 17-day delay but with a larger $50 rental price.

Of course, any move to bring content to the home more quickly could have a profound effect on the many theater chains around the United States and present a serious stumbling block in negotiations. However, a proposal from Warner would see exhibitors receiving a cut of VOD revenues, if they agree to a narrowing of the theatrical release window.

Getting the theaters on board will indeed face headwinds and it's important to note that these plans are reportedly very early on in the negotiating process. Still, this only makes sense. The job of moviemakers is to give the public movies the way they want them. The job of theaters is to create an experience that makes people want to go to the theater. It can't only be the movie itself. The movie is the studio's job. It has to be the theater attracting viewers. If it isn't, that's on the theater companies, not the studios.

Still, it's frustrating that even these baby steps are facing so much pushback, because what the studios should actually do is much more severe than a 33% cut in the windows. There's a joke in atheist circles that goes like this: first there was polytheism, then there was monotheism, and they're getting closer to the right number all the time. This joke ports nicely to the case of release windows, where the best number available is zero windows at all. With that kind of innovation being too much to hope for from entrenched industries, let's at least hope that some of the more forward-thinking studios can convince the one studio that you already know is against this whole idea.

While the rest of the major studios are keen to move forward, Disney is reported to be against the proposal. For a company that came up with the artificial restrictions embodied in the Disney Vault, for example, that probably won’t come as too much of a surprise.

In which case I would kindly ask Disney to stop bitching about piracy. The other studios are at least trying something new instead of pushing the same doomsday talking points.

Filed Under: hollywood, movie windows, movies, piracy, theaters

First Amendment Lawyer Apparently Surprised That The First Amendment Covers Everyone

from the that's-how-it-works dept

The Wrap, a Hollywood-focused online publication, has a somewhat bizarre article by First Amendment/entertainment lawyer Susan Seager. It's officially about California's anti-SLAPP law (which we've written plenty about) and how it's popped up in a bunch of cases in Hollywood over the past few years, protecting a number of people and companies from having to go through questionable lawsuits based on their speech. This is exactly what the law is supposed to do. But Seager, for some reason, seems to imply that the law should only be used for "small-town citizens" and shouldn't be used by larger players. The article goes through a number of example cases, and then notes:

The statute was not originally enacted to protect the entertainment industry. The California Legislature enacted the SLAPP statute in 1992 to protect mostly small-town citizens from expensive lawsuits brought by large developers and companies to chill the citizens’ protests and testimony against development in their neighborhoods.

The purpose of California's anti-SLAPP law (and many other state anti-SLAPP laws, not to mention the proposed federal anti-SLAPP law) is to get cases quickly tossed out of court when the cases pretty clearly are designed to stifle expression. And, yes, many early cases involved people protesting/speaking out against companies, but the principles of stopping speech-stifling go beyond that, and it's pretty clear that California (and other states) passed laws for this very reason. They're aware that being a defendant in a lawsuit -- even a highly questionable one -- can create massive chilling effects and can be a huge drain on time and resources. And thus, we've got Caliofrnia's anti-SLAPP law, designed to do two things: quickly get those cases dismissed before they get too onerous and to deter such lawsuits by including fee-shifting, making the plaintiff pay.

However, Seager seems surprised that California's anti-SLAPP law has been construed to apply to situations other than those "small-town citizens."

But in recent years the courts have interpreted the “public interest” requirement so broadly that it now applies to any lawsuit that targets speech about “any issue in which the public is interested,” according to a California appellate court.

“In other words,” the court said in Nygard v. Uusi-Kerttula, “the issue need not be ‘significant’ to be protected by the anti-SLAPP statute — it is enough that it is one in which the public takes an interest.”

These decisions mean that the SLAPP law covers pretty much anything created by Hollywood that is followed by a large number of people, whether in tabloids, social media, websites, or other sources of information.

I'm trying to figure out why this is a problem. I'm hardly going to be considered an apologist for Hollywood (have you seen what I've written about Hollywood?) but why shouldn't Hollywood also be protected by California's anti-SLAPP law? We should all be concerned about lawsuits designed to stifle anyone's speech without any legitimate basis. And while I frequently point out how Hollywood seems to have no problem stifling speech through over-aggressive use of copyright, that doesn't mean I won't stand up and argue it deserves just as much protection under the 1st Amendment as anyone else -- and that's why, of course, California's anti-SLAPP law should apply to them -- and it does.

On top of that, while I think that Hollywood has strayed quite far from its roots, historically, Hollywood and the MPAA were strong defenders of free speech, and owe much of their business to a strong First Amendment. It's unfortunate that they've since become very opportunistic about it, choosing to only defend free speech principals when it directly impacts their bottom line, while being quite happy to whittle away free speech rights with stronger copyright or other tools of control. But, given most of what Hollywood does is expressive, there's no reason why anti-SLAPP laws shouldn't apply fully to them, just as they apply to everyone else.

Filed Under: anti-slapp, california, first amendment, free speech, hollywood, susan seager

The Reason The Copyright Office Misrepresented Copyright Law To The FCC: Hollywood Told It To

from the so-now-we-know dept

There was some oddity over the summer, when the Copyright Office flat out misrepresented copyright law to Congress and the FCC with regard to the impact on copyright of the FCC's (now dead) proposal to create competition among set top box providers. As we've explained over and over again, there were no copyright implications with the FCC's proposal. All it said was that if an authorized user wanted to access authorized content via a third party device, that authorized user should be able to do so. And yet, the Copyright Office, incorrectly, seemed to make up an entirely new exclusivity in copyright law (one that would outlaw DVRs) that basically said not only could a content provider license content to a cable TV provider, but it could also limit the devices on which end users could view that content.

Simply put: that's wrong. That's not how copyright law works, and we've known that since the Supreme Court's ruling in the Betamax case decades ago.

But why would the Copyright Office so misrepresent copyright law? That was the perplexing part. Even with a bunch of copyright professors explaining how wrong the Copyright Office was, the Office still went ahead with its letter. Of course, as with so many policy issues, it really seemed like the Copyright Office was just acting like a lobbying arm of Hollywood.

And that's because it was.

The EFF filed a FOIA request on the Copyright Office's emails and meetings concerning the set top box issue, and -- surprise surprise -- they basically coordinated directly with the MPAA and related lobbyists. The most stunning part? When both the MPAA and the FCC asked to meet with the Copyright Office about this, the Copyright Office quickly scheduled a meeting with... the MPAA. And pushed off the FCC meeting. And they lied to the FCC in the process. Then Copyright Office General Counsel Jacqueline Charlesworth's assistant told the FCC that she was not available to meet... on the very same week that she met with the MPAA over this issue. As EFF notes:

After the FCC announced its intention to break up the set-top box monopoly in February of this year, MPAA quickly called on the Copyright Office to meet on the matter. The documents indicate that the first meeting the Copyright Office held on the set-top box issue was not with the FCC but rather the MPAA. Although both the FCC and MPAA reached out to the Copyright Office in late March, Copyright Office officials met with MPAA on April 11 while postponing and meeting with the FCC a week later. Throughout the spring and summer of this year, the Copyright Office alternated between meetings with the FCC, MPAA, and other major content companies such as Comcast and Viacom. On May 31, just hours after holding a conference call with MPAA, the general counsel of Copyright Office emailed her counterpart at the FCC saying “the proposed rule may in fact implicate some rather serious copyright concerns.”

There was also a bizarre situation, in which a copyright maximalist Congressional Rep reached out to the Copyright Office, claiming that he'd heard from (recently fired) Copyright Office boss, Maria Pallante, basically asking him to officially request the Copyright Office's opinion on the FCC's plans. Others at the Copyright Office -- including Charlesworth -- note that they had been working under the impressiong that the Copyright Office was not seeking an official request from Congress to weigh in. The whole thing is quite bizarre.

But the really telling thing is that the Copyright Office basically spent all its time hearing from one side -- the MPAA and assorted studios, who disliked this idea not for any copyright reasons, but because they just wanted more control -- and totally ignored any other viewpoint (and certainly did not seek it out).

It seems that despite holding itself out as a neutral expert agency on copyright matters, the Copyright Office regularly engaged in discussions with only one set of parties as it formed its opinion. Not once did the agency reach out to the copyright scholars who explained to the FCC that no copyright interests were harmed by the set-top box proposal. Nor did the agency rethink its position when these same parties made clear that what they want is for the FCC to create new legal rights for them that have nothing to do with copyright law. The Copyright Office did eventually meet with a group of companies who are seeking to build competitive set-top boxes that consumers can buy, but that meeting happened on August 2, just one day before the Office issued its public statement. And that statement gives short shrift to the technology companies’ concerns.

When the U.S. Copyright Office waded into the debate, it could have brought an end to the misleading hand-wringing over copyright. Instead, it did the opposite by echoing the MPAA and cable companies, claiming that if cable operators were required to allow customers to use the devices of their choice to view the programs they pay for, the studios’ copyrights would somehow be violated. They even went so far as to say the current copyright law landscape is insufficient and therefore the FCC must do more to protect rightsholders.

An agency that listens only to the views of some industry groups without seeking out additional opinions cannot be a reliably neutral expert for Congress or the FCC. We hope that the FCC will weigh the Copyright Office’s comments appropriately, and resist efforts to derail the agency's work to end the set-top box monopoly.

If you read through the document the differences here are quite stark. There are many, many meetings with Hollywood, and many of the emails are jokey and informal (my favorite is when long term NBC Universal lobbyist Alec French tries to joke around with Jacqueline Charlesworth by calling her Jacqui, and then realizes he may have insulted her). The emails for the small group of set top box companies are much more detailed and formal. This is yet another example of how the Copyright Office is captured by Hollywood.

Filed Under: competition, copyright, copyright office, fcc, hollywood, jacqueline charlesworth, lobbying, maria pallante, set top boxes
Companies: mpaa

New California Law Attempts To Fight Hollywood Ageism By Censoring Third-Party Websites

from the way-to-solve-the-problem,-jackasses dept

Actress Junie Hoang may have lost her legal battle against IMDb for revealing her age, but the California Assembly is ensuring she'll win the war. Hoang sued IMDb for $1 million, claiming the publication of facts without her permission had resulted in her being a victim of Hollywood ageism. IMDb won the lawsuit, but Governor Jerry Brown has just signed a bill into law that will prevent sites like IMDb from publishing actors' ages.

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed legislation that requires certain entertainment sites, such as IMDb, to remove – or not post in the first place – an actor’s age or birthday upon request.

The law, which becomes effective January 1, applies to database sites that allow paid subscribers to post resumes, headshots or other information for prospective employers. Only a paying subscriber can make a removal or non-publication request. Although the legislation may be most critical for actors, it applies to all entertainment job categories.

Quotes from actors' guild representatives and "industry leaders" present this as a positive change. Supposedly the removal of this information will result in fewer actors and actresses from being passed over for roles because they're "too old." Ageism may be an industry-wide problem but the correct solution would be to change Hollywood culture, not tap dance across the First Amendment.

“We are disappointed that AB 1687 was signed into law today,” said Internet Association spokesman Noah Theran. “We remain concerned with the bill and the precedent it will set of suppressing factual information on the internet.”

Michael Beckerman, the association’s president and CEO, also wrote in August for THR, about his opposition to the law.

“Requiring the removal of factually accurate age information across websites suppresses free speech,” Beckerman wrote. “This is not a question of preventing salacious rumors; rather it is about the right to present basic facts that live in the public domain. Displaying such information isn’t a form of discrimination, and internet companies should not be punished for how people use public data.”

That's the problem with this law: it shoots the messenger rather than addresses the underlying problem. The government as a whole has passed many laws aimed at reducing discrimination, but in this case, the California assembly decided the onus should be on data aggregators that have absolutely nothing to do with the process of casting films.

It's unlikely this law will survive a Constitutional challenge, seeing as it prohibits the publication of facts. While any website can voluntarily choose to withhold this information, adding the government into the equation makes it a form of censorship.

The crafters of this law are claiming this speech suppression will benefit the little guy (and girl) the most:

[California Assemblyman Ian] Calderon said the law was more for actors and actresses not as well known as big stars.

“While age information for Hollywood’s biggest stars is readily available from other online sources, this bill is aimed at protecting lesser known actors and actresses competing for smaller roles,” Calderon said in the release. “These actors should not be excluded from auditioning simply based on their age.”

Calderon is correct. Actors should not be excluded simply because of their age. But that's a problem studios need to solve. And if they can't and legislators like himself still feel compelled to step in, the law should target discriminatory hiring practices, not IMDb and other sites like it.

Filed Under: ageism, ages, california, discrimination, facts, first amendment, free speech, hollywood, ian calderon, imdb, internet, junie huang, movies
Companies: amazon, imdb

Hollywood Keeps Insisting Tech Is Easy, Yet Can't Secure Its Own Screeners

from the nerd-harder,-nerds dept

We keep getting back to the whole "nerd harder" aspect of those who don't understand technology insisting that technology can accomplish just about anything, if those darn techies would just put their minds to it. We've seen it a lot in the encryption fight, but it's also been a big part of the copyright fights as well -- with Hollywood in particular repeatedly insisting that if these darn techies are so bright, why can't they just create technology that stops infringement. Of course, it doesn't work that way, but the industry still never seems to get it. A good reminder that technology isn't easy should come from this TorrentFreak story, noting that the "secure" system that Hollywood now uses to send out "screener" copies of movies had some pretty serious vulnerabilities, as found by Chris Vickery.

Late August, TorrentFreak was contacted by security researcher Chris Vickery of MacKeeper.com who told us that while conducting tests, he’d discovered an exposed MongoDB database that appeared to be an integral part of Awards-Screeners.com.

“The database was running with no authentication required for access. No username. No password. Just entirely exposed to the open internet,” Vickery told TF.

The researcher’s discovery was significant as the database contained more than 1,200 user logins. Vickery did not share the full database with TF but he did provide details of a handful of the accounts it contained. Embarrassingly, many belong to senior executives

While some will just look at this and mock Hollywood for bad security practices, it does raise more serious questions: if Hollywood can't figure out its own (basic) technology issues, why does it think that the tech industry should solve all its problems for it? If it doesn't even understand the basics, how can it insist that those in Silicon Valley can fix the things that it doesn't understand itself?

We're already seeing this with the MPAA's ridiculous and misguided freakout over the FCC's plan to have cable companies offer up app versions so that authorized subscribers can access authorized, licensed content. The MPAA and its think tank friends keep falsely insisting that the FCC's recommendation requires the cable companies to ship the actual content to third parties. But the plan has never said that. It only required that third-party devices be able to access the content -- such as by passing through credentials so that the content could flow from the (licensed) cable service to the end user.

The fact that these guys don't seem to understand the basics of how the technology works comes through not just in the fact that they failed to secure their screener system, but also in the policy proposals that they keep making. It's becoming increasingly difficult to take those policies seriously when they seem to be based on a fundamental ignorance of how technology actually works.

Filed Under: chris vikcery, hollywood, nerd harder, screeners, security

The Copyright Office Acts As Hollywood's Lobbying Arm... Because That's Basically How It's Been Designed

from the regulatory-capture dept

Last month, we wrote about a blog post by Public Knowledge questioning why the Copyright Office kept acting like a lobbying firm for Hollywood, often stepping into issues where it has no business and almost always pushing the Hollywood viewpoint. It turns out that was just a sneak peak of a much larger report that PK has now released on The Consequences of Regulatory Capture at the Copyright Office. The full 50-page report is worth a thorough read.

It details the obvious bits concerning the revolving door between copyright maximalists and the Copyright Office, with much of top management coming from jobs in the entertainment industries, and then many former top Copyright Office folks going right back into that industry upon leaving. But the more interesting part of the report is looking at how frequently the Copyright Office appears to blatantly misinterpret copyright law in an attempt to expand what the law actually covers.

From safe harbor provisions to statutory licenses, the Copyright Office has, for decades, misapplied, ignored, or “creatively interpreted” statutory and common law. It assumed a strained and flatly unfeasible reading of safe harbor provisions in order to strip websites of statutory legal protections when they are sued by certain sound recording rightsholders; concluded against the force of common and statutory law that a broad “making available” right existed where it does not; and mischaracterized key aspects of copyright law with regard to proceedings at the Federal Communications Commission, all in support of the position of rightsholders against other industries and the public

That seems like it should be a pretty big concern, no?

There are some eye-opening examples of problems as well. For example, the time when the Copyright Office provided a memo in a lawsuit the record labels had filed against Launch Media. It originally included a footnote saying that Launch Media was likely a "non-interactive service" (which has many, many fewer restrictions than an interactive one). Magically, the footnote was then updated to say it wasn't a non-interactive service, but an interactive one. What changed?

In a memorandum from Kenneth L. Steinthal, attorney for Launch, admitted into evidence at trial, Steinthal stated that he spoke with the individual in the Copyright Office who drafted the footnote. Steinthal stated that according to that individual, someone from the RIAA had called the Copyright Office and as a result, the substance of the footnote was changed.

Yup. Apparently the RIAA can just make a phone call, and the Copyright Office is willing to switch positions overnight.

The report also notes how the Copyright Office keeps expanding its own mandate, and keeps getting smacked around for it. The examples of courts looking skeptically at the Copyright Office is fairly telling:

Courts have repeatedly taken a dim view of the Copyright Office’s analysis of larger questions—and, on occasion, even of their judgment in their core function of issuing registrations. The Second Circuit in Vimeo took the Office to task, slamming its analysis of safe harbors in the Pre-1972 Sound Recordings report as “arbitrary and without legal foundation,” “incompatible with a literal and natural reading of the text,” and “based in major part on a misreading of the statute.” The Court also commented that the Office’s position was “[a]t the very least, a strained interpretation—one that could be justified only by concluding that Congress must have meant something different from what it said.”

The conclusion is that we need to rethink the Copyright Office and how it's set up:

The Copyright Office, isolated from effective mechanisms of governmental accountability, has become deeply and troublingly captured by major entertainment industries and other rightsholder interests. As a result, it has regularly disregarded the concerns of other stakeholders, such as libraries, archives, and the public at large. It has frequently aligned itself with the agendas of industry trade groups, pushed for expansion of copyright at the expense of consumers’ established rights, and published reports that embrace extreme interpretations that rise above and beyond the scope of settled law.

Of course, it's not too difficult to see how this came about. If you're not deep in the weeds of copyright issues, it's actually fairly natural to assume that the people who best understand copyright law are those in companies who use copyright law to their own advantage. Of course, that ignores that the very purpose of copyright law is not to benefit copyright holders, but the public (this is also something that the Copyright Office has, consistently, gotten wrong). But, that's like saying that the best banking regulators should be former bankers (oh wait...) and the best FCC commissioners should be ex-telco lawyers (oops). In the end, what we're seeing is pure regulatory capture, but it's especially troubling in the copyright context, given that copyright is explicitly designed with the benefits of the public in mind, and it's only over time (thanks to this kind of regulatory capture) that the mission has been warped and twisted to the false belief that maximizing copyright is important, rather than maximizing the public's benefit.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright office, hollywood, regulatory capture, revolving door
Companies: public knowledge

MPAA Boss: Actually Being Good To Consumers Would Be Horrible For Hollywood

from the how-is-this-person-in-charge? dept

MPAA boss Chris Dodd has apparently decided to take the fairly insane stance that what's good for the public is clearly bad for Hollywood. That's the only conclusion that can come from the news that he's actively campaigning against the EU ending geoblocking rules:

In a keynote address at the CineEurope convention this week, MPAA Chairman and CEO Chris Dodd described the unblocking goals as a threat to the movie industry. Encouraging participants to reach out to their representatives, Dodd described the concerns as “real, very real.”

“While the stated goals of these proposals are laudable – offering greater choice to European consumers and strengthening cultural diversity – in reality, these ideas could actually cause great harm to Europe’s film industries and its consumers,” Dodd said.

Opening up more markets and more users, while having less overall friction will be bad for the film industry? Only if it's run by complete idiots who don't know how to take advantage of a larger market. But, I guess that's the MPAA way!

Of course, it's not hard to understand what Dodd is really talking about. For years, Hollywood has been able to squeeze extra money out of a convoluted and corrupt manner of territorial licensing -- a system that may have made sense in a pre-modern world, but which hasn't made any sense at all in decades. But because the Hollywood studios abuse that system for profit, often making it impossible for people to see the content they want to see (and are willing to pay for), it doesn't want to change that system.

But, because it's Hollywood, they have a mythical fairy tale to try to make it all make sense:

“The European Union is made up of 28 different nations with different cultures, different languages, and different tastes. Forcing every film to be marketed and released the same way everywhere, at the same time, is a recipe for failure,” Dodd said.

“The ability of filmmakers and distributors to market and release their films where, how, and when they think best gives them the greatest chance to succeed,” he added.

Of course, this is the EU where (at least while the EU lasts... as may now suddenly be in doubt...) people are able to travel freely across borders. Which means that the country you live in may not be the country you grew up in, nor match the same cultural sensibilities. And, these days, it's entirely possible to market films through the internet to find their intended audiences. The idea that by getting rid of geoblocking you suddenly change any of the above points makes no sense. The films that are targeted in one geography can still be proactively marketed in those geographies -- it's just that they will also be available to people from those regions who now live elsewhere (again, making it accessible to a wider audience).

But, again, this is the MPAA that is so focused on locking things down and limiting consumers, it still doesn't realize that treating its customers badly is why the MPAA is so hated.

Filed Under: chris dodd, consumers, digital single market, geoblocking, hollywood, movies
Companies: mpaa

The Three Industries That Love The TPP: Hollywood, Big Pharma & Wall St.

from the also:-three-big-funders-of-politicians dept

Tons of people seem (quite rightly) concerned about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. As we pointed out last week after the final text was finally, released, the agreement has a lot of really big problems. But if you want to understand just how bad the agreement is, perhaps you should just look at the industries that like it. Vox notes that Big Pharma and Hollywood love the agreement while The Intercept notes that Wall Street loves it.

It should be noted that, actually, Big Pharma is apparently a bit disappointed that the TPP doesn't go far enough in locking up exclusivity for biologics.

That said, talk about three of the most hated industries around: Hollywood, Big Pharma and Wall Street. But, more importantly, talk about three of the most protectionist, anti-free trade industries around. We've been repeating over and over again that the TPP is not a free trade deal and this should be more confirmation. Hollywood, Big Pharma and Wall Street are probably three of the biggest industries to rely heavily on government regulations as a way to limit competition, limit innovation and to use that exclusivity to artificially increase prices at the expense of the public.

And they like the deal.

That's because it's not a free trade deal at all. It's not about "taking away" barriers to trade, it's about building bigger barriers in the form of protectionism to protect big, legacy industries from innovation and competition. Of course, it's no surprise that Hollywood, Big Pharma and Wall Street are also three of the most powerful lobbying industries in Washington DC, because when you can no longer innovate, and you rely on government protectionism, you focus your efforts on "political entrepreneurship" -- better known as getting the government to protect you from real entrepreneurship. So, no wonder the USTR went this direction. They only hear from these kinds of industries, and the end result is a fake free trade agreement that is designed to do the exact opposite. It's designed to build up barriers to protect old, stodgy industries who have relied on protection from competition from decades, and don't want to see that dissolve against foreign competition.

Filed Under: big pharma, free trade, hollywood, protectionism, tpp, trade, ustr, wall street

Hollywood Keeps Breaking Box Office Records... While Still Insisting That The Internet Is Killing Movies

from the because-if-the-story-sounds-good,-why-bother-with-the-facts dept

Hollywood is still 100% focused on trying to blame the internet for any of its woes, mostly with bogus attacks on internet companies it doesn't like. And yet... it seems to keep on setting box office records. The latest is that Universal Pictures has broken a new record in bringing in $2 billion in box office revenue faster than any other studio in history, pushed over the top by the successful opening weekend of "Straight Outta Compton" (a movie that seems to have some big fans in Silicon Valley).

Thanks to the overperformance of N.W.A biopic “Straight Outta Compton,” Universal Pictures is tracking to cross the $2 billion mark at the domestic box office on Saturday, setting a new speed record in doing so.

Universal’s historic climb will break Warner Bros.’ previous record of reaching $2 billion by December 25, 2009. The studio is also extremely likely to break the record for all-time domestic box office high, which was set by WB in 2009 with $2.1 billion.

That does not sound like an industry that is having a problem getting people into the theaters, even if the movies are available via infringement. But, people will argue, these services are actually harming the "home video" revenue stream. But that's questionable as well. First off, it was Hollywood that angrily fought against ever allowing a home video market in the first place (remember that?). And, more to the point, we've seen over and over again that when the industry actually adapts and offers content in a reasonable format at a reasonable fee, people will pay at home, just like they do in theaters.

But, of course, due to continued Hollywood confusion and jealousy, it's still holding back lots of movies from Netflix streaming -- one successful service that has shown that it's totally possible to "compete" with infringing content.

So, again, it's confusing as to what Hollywood's real complaint is. It's shown that if it makes good films, people will go out to the theaters to see them, rather than just watch them online. And if it offers them in a reasonable manner for a reasonable price online, people will pay for that as well. And yet, it doesn't do a very good job of this and then blames the internet for its own failures to adapt. Seems like a weird strategy. If I were an investor in those companies, I'd wonder why they've spent the better part of two decades so focused on "stopping piracy" rather than doing a better job delivering what the public wants.

Filed Under: adapting, box office, business models, hollywood, internet, movies, records
Companies: netflix, universal pictures

Now That USTR Has Fast Track, Hollywood Ramps Up Demands While USTR Brushes Off Public Interest Group Concerns

from the because-of-course dept

You had to know this was going to happen. Now that the US Trade Rep (USTR) has fast track authority after Congress caved in and passed the Trade Promotion Authority bill, efforts have ramped up to complete the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement with meetings in Hawaii this week. Of course, with fast track in hand, the USTR doesn't need to concern itself at all with things like the "public interest" anymore and can focus on the real agenda: big corporate interests. Reports from the negotiations include one from the legal policy adviser from Doctors Without Borders, noting that the USTR organized a briefing for "US stakeholders," but only invited industry representatives. Oh, and the US Chamber of Commerce (the main lobbyists for SOPA) was allowed to book a room next to the negotiating room and got a private briefing from the USTR. Meanwhile, James Love from KEI notes that in a USTR briefing, USTR staffers are deliberately ignoring anyone representing the public interest.

You know who they are listening to, however? You guessed it: Hollywood. Politico notes that now that fast track is in hand and the USTR has more or less free rein in completing the negotiations, Hollywood has jumped in with a bunch of demands to expand copyright laws via TPP:

We've seen the Hollywood versus tech copyright fight play out over everything from SOPA to the Library of Congress. Now the major movie studios are pushing for key items on their wish list as negotiators hammer out the final details of an Asia-Pacific trade agreement. The studios hope the 12 countries working on the pact will agree to copyright protections that, in many cases, last longer than what’s currently in place, Pro Trade’s Doug Palmer reports.

The movie studios also want stricter penalties on piracy, especially as Internet access expands throughout the region.

And, because the USTR almost always gives in to Hollywood (it helps that the MPAA hired the top USTR negotiator on IP last year, so the current negotiators recognize that their next jobs are on the line with this agreement), it appears that the US has convinced a bunch of other countries -- who should know better -- to agree to lock in a life + 70-year copyright term, even as the US Copyright Office has suggested that current copyright terms are too long and should be scaled back.

There is no way to explain this as anything but selling out the public interest to appease corporate interests of Hollywood. It's a fairly disgusting display of the kind of "dealmaking" that the USTR has been pushing for more quietly for years, but now that it has fast track, it knows it can play hardball to help its friends in Hollywood. Fuck the public domain, Hollywood wants to keep getting paid for works from decades ago.

Filed Under: copyright term, copyright term extension, fast track, hollywood, life plus 70, tpp, ustr
Companies: mpaa, us chamber of commerce