Dear Hollywood: The 'Stakeholders' For Copyright Policy Don't Fit In A Room

from the that's-one-big-room dept

Last week, we wrote about Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel first demanding a magic stop piracy button from Google, followed by his request to sit down and meet with "the government" and representatives of "Silicon Valley" in a room. As we responded, that meeting is going on already, and it's happening online with the public -- the more important stakeholder, whom Emanuel has totally left out of the equation.

Ali Sternburg points us to a tweet from Nate Otto, in which he basically makes the same point, but much more concisely:

I'm tired of Hollywooders thinking IP policy "stakeholders" fit in a room & don't include the public.

It's such a simple and important point that I wanted to repost it here. It needs to be repeated over and over again.

Ever since Hollywood lost the SOPA/PIPA fight, they keep claiming, over and over again, that Silicon Valley needs to get in a room with them. Chris Dodd has done it a bunch of times -- and each time we've asked why he doesn't actually go online and talk to the public. Now Ari Emanuel has done it too, and we need to repeat a paraphrase on Nate's tweet above.

Copyright's stakeholders don't fit in a room and must include the public, by definition

Any time we hear a demand for a company to do some sort of backroom deal on copyright, we need to remember and remind people:

Copyright's stakeholders don't fit in a room and must include the public, by definition

I doubt it will sink it, but perhaps if we remind them enough, they'll finally start to realize it.

Filed Under: ari emanuel, chris dodd, hollywood, nate otto, pipa, silicon valley, sopa

Dear Ari Emanuel: We're All Meeting On The Internet, Come Join Us

from the and-living-and-working-here-too dept

We recently posted about Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel's ridiculous demands that Google somehow find the magic "stop piracy" button. That story is turning into something much more interesting. The next day, at the same conference, a Google exec, Susan Wojcicki, pointed out the obvious: that Emanuel doesn't know what he's talking about (she used a more diplomatic phrase, noting that he was "misinformed").

Emanuel has since shot back that he's not at all misinformed about the need for the geeks in Northern California to solve his problems:

I am misinformed about a lot — just ask my wife — but I’m not misinformed about this: One of our last remaining dominant American exports is our creativity, no matter how you define it, either as a story or as an algorithm. There is equal genius behind companies like Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google as there is behind artists who create stories that resonate around the world. We need to protect America’s intellectual property and Hollywood can’t do it on its own. I understand that the onus is not entirely Google’s, but let’s stop talking at each other and get in a room with all parties to figure this out. To be clear, I don’t want to rehash SOPA as we can all agree that was a reflection of Southern California’s arrogance, and let’s also not pretend that we’re working together on this issue because we have Youtube channels together. This is a larger conversation. It’s time for Hollywood, our government and Silicon Valley to step up and collectively resolve this problem. Let me know where and when and I’ll be there.

Ari

The problem, of course, is that his very premise is wrong. He's taking the position that we need to "protect" first, rather than just fix our business models. This is a very mercantilist viewpoint: where protectionism beats innovation. But we've got centuries of economic proof that that's not how you evolve and it's not how you innovate and compete. What you do is you figure out ways to add value and to embrace new business models. Any effort that starts from the default position that what we need is more "protection" rather than greater innovation is doomed to fail -- because that innovation is an unstoppable train, and the "protection" aspect doesn't work. So if you don't focus on the innovation, then someone else will, and you'll have wasted all your time, effort and money on a "solution" that simply drives your business somewhere else. To the place that has focused on innovation.

But, even worse, is his arrogance in thinking that this is a problem that requires "Hollywood, our government and Silicon Valley to step up and collectively resolve this problem." This is the same thing we've been hearing for months out of Chris Dodd and the Hollywood crew: it's time to get back into the backroom and craft "a deal." That's how they think, but it completely misses the point. This isn't about crafting a backroom deal, it's about recognizing the power of the internet, and the importance of the internet to people.

Every time a Chris Dodd or an Ari Emaneuel suggests a backroom deal between Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the government, he leaves out the people who actually matter: all of us, out here, on the internet.

And, to that point, if he wants to know "where" this larger conversation is happening: it's right here. On the internet. It's on news sites and social media sites. It's on Reddit and Twitter and Facebook. It's here on Techdirt and lots of other blogs. We live on the internet and this conversation has been happening for a decade. Ari and his buddies have always been welcome to join, so it's a bit disingenuous for him to suggest that he'll "be there" when we tell him where "the meeting" is. It's here. It's going on all around you and you've always been welcome to join. But you don't. And, no, I won't even get into the irony of him demanding a "meeting" when Hollywood did absolutely everything to keep the rest of the world out of the backroom meetings that led to SOPA.

Joshua Topolsky, the editor in chief of The Verge -- who challenged Emanuel, and was rudely told to "go sit down" and had Emanuel ask "where do you work?" -- has written his own response, in which he tells Emanuel he works on the internet:

What Ari seems to forget, and what maybe politicians and the film and TV industry seem to forget is the last time piracy was a flashpoint between the entertainment and tech industries, the problem was not solved by sledgehammer legislation. Or takedowns. Or yelling. It was solved by the music industry accepting that their old model was broken, and technologists figuring out a new way to do business. And that gets to the core of this problem for Ari. We didn't go back to the way things were after the RIAA sued college students — the industry changed.

He doesn't want to change his business model, and he will do anything he can to protect it — including altering the basic functionality of the internet. Pirating and Apple's resulting rise in the music business changed that business forever... and diminished its financial footprint. Entrenched companies that owned every part of the food chain suddenly discovered they were just another cog in a big wheel.

Ari doesn't want that anymore than the music industry wanted it, or traditional media wanted it. Ned Ludd and his machine wreckers didn't like change either.

But there is one simple truth that I really believe in, in life or in business: adapt or die.

You want to know where I work Ari? I work on the internet. Welcome aboard.

I'd argue it goes even further than that. We don't just work on the internet. We live and breathe the internet. It is our identity. Emanuel looks at the internet, and he doesn't get it. To him, it's just a version of television that doesn't pay as well, so that's not interesting. In his talk, he repeatedly demanded a business model that pays as well as TV. That's not how this works. Disruptive innovation doesn't wait until you go back and provide the legacy players with a business model that pays just as well as the old business model. That's not disruption. Disruption works because the legacy players are too shortsighted to see the trend lines, and so infatuated with their fat profits that they don't recognize the potential of the new mediums, and only seek to regulate against them becoming too pesky. The train companies pushed for legislation requiring all automobiles be preceded by a person walking on the road waving red flags.

Emanuel is asking for everyone to come up with the next version of red flag laws for the internet. That's not how this works.

If he wanted a real conversation, it wouldn't be focused on the parameters of how do we set up protectionist, mercantilist barriers. It would be on how do we create more value and then monetize that value. And those conversations are happening all the time, all over the internet. He's welcome to join. He's always been welcome to join. But it requires doing a little actual working and living on the internet.

Filed Under: ari emanuel, copyright, innovation, internet, piracy, protection
Companies: google, william morris

Hollywood Super Agent Ari Emanuel Mystified That Google Doesn't Just Invent A Magic Stop Piracy Button

from the this-isn't-the-movies,-ari dept

Famed Hollywood super agent Ari Emanuel (the model for Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage, and the brother of Chicago mayor/former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel) doesn't have a particularly good history when it comes to his understanding of how technology and policy will develop. Two years ago, he insisted that he was talking to President Obama about getting a three strikes law in place in the US. Last year, of course, he was excited about new laws like SOPA/PIPA. That was at the AllThingsD conference, in which he chided a reporter at one point by saying that the reporter needs a history lesson and "the business of the movie business is DVDs."

This year, at the very same conference, he's changed his tune, but not his attitude or ignorance of technology. This year, he told the crowd that "the DVD business is gone" and everything was about TV, TV, TV. Except, once again, he appears to be ignorant or (more likely) in complete denial:

Emanuel: Cord-cutting's not happening.

Walt: But cord-never is happening.

Emanuel: I don’t think so. I think when people get to a certain age, they pay. Somebody’s got to pay for this, or you’re not going to get premium content, and I think that’s more valuable than "two dogs doing whatever they’re doing on a couch."

Some of this appears to be just plain old wishful thinking and some of it is ignorance. The actual numbers show that cord cutting is very, very real. Also, I'm getting pretty sick of the condescending ridiculousness where people insist that either we stick with the old model or all we have left are amateur animal videos (usually cat videos, but Ari went to the dogs). That's not just elitist. It's wrong. There's plenty of quality content that get produced outside of the traditional model, and the amount is growing. And, of course, the "somebody's got to pay for this" argument is a complete tangent. First of all, no, no one has to pay for anything, but more importantly, there are all sorts of interesting business models developing that don't require people paying for a jacked up cable subscription. Second, just because you want someone "to pay" for the content which pays your hefty salary, that has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of cord cutting. It's like the CEO of a horse buggy manufacturer insisting that no one's buying automobiles because "someone's got to pay" for all those horse buggies.

A little tidbit from history: it was the guy who left the horse & buggy business and went on to found both GM and Chevrolet (despite being fearful of those "dangerous" machines) who ended up being successful. Not the guys who clung to selling horse and buggies.

Emanuel pays some lip service to technology innovation (he even seems to like the idea of crowdfunding), and talks about how involved he is in digital projects. But he still comes at it from the perspective of "how can these new technologies protect my old way of doing business?" And there, apparently, every problem is Google's fault, because they haven't created the magic "stop piracy" button. He repeatedly mentioned Google, and how they had to "stop helping people steal my clients' content." When asked how, he admitted he has no idea. When asked if he wants them to censor search results, he responded:

I don’t want them to censor results, but they have a bunch of smart guys there that can figure this stuff out.

You see? Magic "stop piracy" button.

Josh Topolsky, from The Verge, apparently challenged him on this point, asking: "Aren’t you saying that the road is responsible for the fact that someone drove on it before they robbed my house?" Emanuel didn't like this analogy:

That’s a stupid example. Look, Google can filter and does filter for child pornography. They do that already. So stealing is a bad thing, and child pornography is a bad thing.

Of course, this once again displays his ignorance. Child porn is easily identifiable by anyone who sees it. There is no "legal" child porn. There is no "authorized" child porn. There is no "fair use" child porn. There is no condition under which that content is legal and there are no legal questions to be answered in filtering it. Copyright is entirely different. You can't just "know" if the content is infringing. As we saw in the Viacom case, companies upload authorized stuff all the time, and it's often impossible to distinguish from unauthorized content. Separately, you can't create an algorithm that detects fair use. Or the public domain. Point being: it's not that easy and it's silly to claim otherwise.

Emanuel, like many people, also seems to have a blindness for how the situation he's in is no different than the situation others have faced. He talks about how the music industry should have embraced Napster when it came along -- but when he's asked about embracing similar platforms for TV, he immediately says that's ridiculous, because "these things cost lots of money." Again, we're in "wishful thinking" land, where because the producers of content do little to keep down costs, old and obsolete business models must stay in place, and new and innovative platforms must be censored.

The comment that really sums up his worldview is when he's asked about changing market behavior, whereby people mutlitask while watching TV. He says:

“I’m okay with a little bit of disruption, and let’s see what happens. I dunno. I’m good with it.”

This is the common viewpoint of the legacy player about to be disrupted in a big, bad way. They always insist that they're okay with disruption -- but in moderation. There are two really funny things about this quote. The first is the idea that disruption comes in bite-sized increments. That's not how it works. Disruption comes in massive waves that are unstoppable. And that leads to the second funny thing: he seems to think that his opinion on disruption and whether or not he's "good with it" matters to whether or not it will actually happen.

The disruption is already underway. And, for now, it looks like Emanuel's still hanging on to his cash-cow horse buggy business, while insisting that the road pavers really need to "do something" about those dangerous "automobile" things.

Filed Under: ari emanuel, censorship, cord cutting, crowdfunding, disruption, hollywood
Companies: chevrolet, gm, google, viacom

Barry Diller Tries To Explain To Ari Emanuel That He's Wrong About 'Piracy' Being A Problem For Movies

from the get-past-it dept

Ari Emanuel -- famous for being either the Hollywood agent that Jeremy Piven's Entourage character is based on or being the brother of former White House chief of staff, now Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel -- has been banging the drum about the "evils" of file sharing in movies for a few years now. Multiple times he's made it clear that he was using his connections in DC to tell the federal government it needed to pass strict new anti-piracy laws that would make everyone else responsible.

So, it's little surprise that he trotted out the same tired, uninformed line at a recent conference. What was a bit surprising was to see Barry Diller push back on this. Diller -- the same guy who insisted that "free content is a myth" -- apparently told Emanuel that file sharing was no big deal, and that it wasn't a "threat" to the industry. Diller seemed more "concerned" about Netflix, which seems pretty silly (yet another example of the entertainment industry hating on those who actually innovate).

However, the two of them had a little debate with Emanuel insisting "the government has to get involved":

Piracy “is going to happen,” said Diller. “They’re making films available for streaming. As we go, you will see more distribution digitally. Piracy is a risk, but it’s small.”

The chairman of WME countered with Hollywood's party line:

“You can’t say piracy is not an issue,” he said. “I don’t believe it’s going away, it’s a big issue. The government has to get involved.”

Of course, that ignores that the government has been involved. And it's been involved in a big bad way... and it's had almost no impact. Even more amusing is that Emanuel mocked a new Hollywood Reporter person who was on the panel saying:

“I don’t want to give you a lesson here, but the business of the movie business is DVDs.”

That's amusing, because if Emanuel had his way a few decades back, when the movie industry insisted that VCRs were simply pirate devices, there would be no DVD market. It was out of an "infringement device" that a massive new opportunity was created, which Hollywood fought tooth and nail until it finally realized it could profit (and profit massively) from it. Yet, now, with absolutely no basis, Emanuel wants to repeat the same claims all over again.. and even more ridiculously use the DVD to support his position? Ari may be able to negotiate great deals for his clients, but he doesn't know what he's talking about on this subject.

Filed Under: ari emanuel, barry diller, movies, piracy

James Murdoch Is Very, Very Confused About Copyright Infringement (And So Is His Dad, Rupert)

from the good-luck-to-you dept

TorrentFreak has an article about how Ari Emanuel, brother of Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and the "inspiration" for Jeremy Piven's "Ari Gold" character in the show Entourage, is claiming that he's talking to President Obama about implementing a three strikes law in the US. While I'm sure he's talking, I'm at least somewhat confident he's not getting very far. Almost everyone I've spoken to on various sides of this debate agree that a blatant three strikes law in the US is unlikely to get very far. Now, something like ACTA might put pressure on ISPs to adopt a three strikes rule, and Emanuel's buddies in Hollywood still think that they can convince ISPs to voluntarily put in place such rules -- but very few people seem to think that a full on three strikes law in the US is in the cards. Hopefully that's the case.

What may be more interesting, however, is what Rupert Murdoch's son, James Murdoch was saying at the very same event. He didn't just echo his father's blatantly incorrect notions of copyright, he went way beyond them. The younger Murdoch, who apparently is the current heir apparent to the Rupert Murdoch throne at the top of News Corp., made a bunch of statements about copyright infringement that sound like the typical comments of someone who has just entered this debate and has never thought about the actual issues. That is, he trots out the ridiculously wrong line that infringement is the same as "theft":

"We need enforcement mechanisms and we need governments to play ball... There is no difference with going into a store and stealing Pringles or a handbag and taking this stuff. It's a basic condition for investment and economic growth and there should be the same level of property rights whether it's a house or a movie.... The idea that there's a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly when they're stealing stuff. No. There should be the same level of sanctity as there is around property. Content is no different. They're not crazy kids. No. Punish them."

Where to begin? First of all, yes, there's a very big difference between going into a store and stealing Pringles (why Pringles?!?) or a handbag. If you do that, the Pringles or the handbags are now missing, gone, kaput. If you make a copy of a digital file, the original is still there. You've just created a new one. And, no, it's not "a basic condition for investment," that there needs to be the same property rights in a house or a movie. The two things have never had the same property rights. A house never goes into the public domain after a certain period of time. There is no fair use of a house (though, to be fair, the Murdoch family seems to think that fair use doesn't exist either, despite relying on it heavily in some of their companies). And there's a reason that there are those significant differences, and it has to do with basic, fundamental economics, and the difference between scarcity and abundance.

Honestly, seeing James Murdoch's words immediately call to mind Larry Lessig's recent talk where he discusses how the current media bosses at companies like Viacom are dinosaurs, with the younger generation waiting in the wings to take over, claiming that they don't hold these same draconian notions on copyright. Except, in this case, James is the younger generation which is supposed to get this stuff.

Perhaps he should take some notes from his (slightly older) sister Elisabeth, who recently made comments that appear to be the exact opposite of what her brother and father are saying:

"Fans remain the best salesmen of our content, even if that behavior is on the borderline of piracy. Danger of the new world is that we must concede that we'll lose some control."

I wonder if James' "the idea that there's a new consumer class and you have to be consumer-friendly" line was directed at his big sis. Of course, in that recent NY Mag profile of Rupert, it notes that many people expect Elisabeth to come back into the News Corp. fold at some point (she left to start her own -- successful -- TV production house). Either way, if James really does get control over News Corp., it sounds like it'll be more of the same: more misunderstanding about how copyright law works, more misunderstanding of the economics of content and more mistakes designed to hold a company in the past, rather than embracing the future.

Filed Under: ari emanuel, copyright, elisabeth murdoch, james murdoch, rupert murdoch, three strikes
Companies: news corp.