French Film Company Somehow Trademarks 'Planet', Goes After Environmental NGOs For Using The Word

from the trademark-the-planet dept

We cover a great many ridiculous and infuriating trademark disputes here, but it's always the disputes around overly broad terms that never should have been trademarked to begin with that are the most frustrating. And that most irritating of those is when we get into geographic terms that never should be locked up by any single company or entity. Examples in the past have included companies fighting over who gets to use the name of their home city of "Detroit", or when grocer Iceland Foods got so aggressive in its own trademark enforcement that the -- checks notes -- nation of Iceland had to seek to revoke the company's EU trademark registration.

While it should be self-evident how antithetical to the purpose of trademark laws are to even approve of these kinds of marks, I will say that I didn't see it coming that a company at some point would attempt to play trademark bully over the "planet."

Powerful French entertainment company Canal Plus trademarked the term in France, but environmental groups are pushing back, saying they should be allowed to use the word “planet” to promote their projects to save it. Multiple cases are under examination by France’s intellectual property regulator INPI, including one coming to a head this week.

Canal Plus argues that the groups' use of the terms “planete” in French, or “planet” in English, for marketing purposes violates its trademarks, registered to protect its Planete TV channels that showcase nature documentaries.

That this dispute is even a thing raises questions. Why in the world (heh) would any trademark office approve a mark solely on the word "planet". Such a registration violates all kinds of rules and norms, explicit and otherwise. Geographic terms are supposed to have a high bar for trademark approval. Single word marks not inherently creative typically do as well. And, when trademarks for either are approved, they are typically done so in very narrow terms. That EUIPO somehow managed to approve a trademark that caused a film company to think it can sue or bully NGOs focused on environmental issues for using the word for the rock we all live on together should ring as absurd to anyone who finds out about it.

Certainly it did to those on the other end of Canal Plus' bullying, as they seemed to think the whole thing was either a joke or attempt at fraud.

The head of environmental group Planete Amazone, Gert-Peter Bruch, thought it was a hoax when he first received a mail from Canal Plus claiming ownership of the planet brand. The group plans to release a documentary in February about the destruction of the Amazon forest and activists’ fight to try to prevent it. Bruch tried to register a trademark for the name of his group before the release of the movie, which is called “Terra Libre” and was made largely by volunteers.

“I honestly thought it was a fake at the beginning. I received an email from Canal Plus and I didn’t dare open the attachment because I thought it was a virus. So I called them to ask them whether their legal affairs department tried to contact me, they said yes,” Bruch told The Associated Press. “I read the letter with astonishment," he said. “They were saying, ‘You don’t have the right to protect this brand (Planete Amazone), we are opposing it.'"

Bruch wasn't the only one. What Canal Plus tends to argue in all of its threat letters is that public confusion could arise since the nature of each entity's goods is similar to Canal Plus'. The company consists of a film and television studio and cable network that has put out movies such as Basic Instinct and The Pianist. What any of that has to do with environmental work is anyone's guess, though perhaps part of the issue is that these NGOs are putting out films about saving the planet, sometimes using that term in titles and marketing. Still, all of that is a far cry from any real concern for customer confusion.

But, as we often note, trademark bullying tends to work. Bruch's organization is hammering out a deal with Canal Plus in an effort to keep using the word "planet." That shouldn't have to occur, but it is. Other groups are waiting on a ruling from the French National Intellectual Property Institute in the hopes that someone somewhere will be sane about all of this.

If not, I guess Canal Plus gets to solely use the word "planet" on its small part of the planet. Again, if that is how this shakes out, it's about as crazy as it gets.

Filed Under: environmental groups, films, france, planet
Companies: canal plus

Movie Company Sues Post-Production Studio For $5 Million For Leaking 'Kickboxer' Film That Grossed $5k Domestically

from the extra-zeroes dept

It is no revelation that film studios have been in a sustained freakout for years over films that leak to the internet before they hit the theaters. While the freakout is somewhat understandable (nobody wants to plan out a film release only to have the product appear in a way outside those well-laid plans), much of the reasoning in the freakouts has to do with claims that the leaks eat into the profits the company would generate at the theater. This reasoning has been debunked many times over, most notably by AAA movies that leak online still making a killing at the box office. What should be immediately apparent is that much of this is driven by emotion and outrage rather than anything resembling facts or clear-thinking.

Which brings us to Our House Films, the company that produced Jean-Claude Van Damme's latest opus, Kickboxer: Retaliation. If you weren't aware that Van Damme had actually made another Kickboxer movie in the first place, you're in good company: the film grossed five-thousand whole dollars domestically. If you are aware that this film was made, perhaps you also are aware that it leaked early online. Our House Films blames its post-production partner, Tunnel Inc., for the leak and has filed a copyright lawsuit against Tunnel...for $5 million.

"Tunnel has failed to respond to Plaintiff's requests for substantive information concerning the parties to whom the final cut was disseminated," writes attorney Paul Sorrell in the complaint. He adds that because the film was available illicitly online worldwide prior to the release producers were robbed of all or a substantial portion of its value.

The suit goes on to accuse Tunnel Inc. of willful copyright infringement, but also suggests elsewhere that this might be the result of negligence rather than Tunnel actually distributing the film purposefully. There is nothing, it should be noted, even remotely resembling any reasoning or evidence possessed by Our House Films as to why it believes Tunnel was the source of the leak here. All it states, in fact, is that Tunnel has refused to respond to Our House's demand for an explanation. For its part, Tunnel Inc. has worked on plenty of films, some of them quite high-profile. If the company were just running around leaking client films as a matter of regular practice, it's hard to see how the company would still be in business.

Part of what makes this so absurd is the disparity in the damages requested and how the movie performed publicly. $5k gross domestically results in a $5 million copyright lawsuit? Our House Films may want to argue that disparity is directly explained by the leak, for which it blames Tunnel, but its decidedly average reviews are more likely to blame.

Filed Under: copyright, films, jean-claude van damme, kickboxer, kickboxer: retaliation, leaks
Companies: our house films, tunnel

Cannes Bans Netflix Films From Competition Because The Internet Is Bad (Or Something)

from the get-off-my-lawn dept

Cannes this week declared that the long-running festival would be banning streaming services like Netflix from being able to win the Palme d’Or. That said, festival leaders weren't able to offer a coherent reason why. Festival boss Thierry Fremaux apparently tried to offer something vaguely resembling an explanation to a variety of different news outlets, but wasn't particularly successful. Most of the arguments made by Fremaux to the press had something to do with Netflix being different (gasp) from the traditional film industry production and criticism model:

"The Netflix people loved the red carpet and would like to be present with other films. But they understand that the intransigence of their own model is now the opposite of ours,” Thierry Fremaux said."

The heart of the ban appears to be a fusion of protectionist concerns about how streaming could harm the traditional French film industry and brick-and-mortar theaters (aka: fear of competition). France has a cultural exception law that requires a percentage of all box office, TV and streaming revenues be used to finance homegrown and foreign films. That law also forces a very outdated and obnoxious release window: namely a 36-month delay between theatrical release and streaming availability. Streaming providers' disdain for such artificial and arbitrary restrictions has been ruffling feathers for years.

In other words, this is really just the same old story about people making silly decisions because of fear of something new disrupting legacy business models that may not work as well in the modern era. But because Cannes just can't come out and admit that, we instead got a heavy dose of disdain for the internet in general:

"Fremaux said the while new players like Netflix and Amazon are enabling directors to make big budget films, they are creating “hybrids” that aren’t TV and aren't quite film. “Cinema [still] triumphs everywhere even in this golden age of series,” he said. “The history of cinema and the history of the internet are two different things."

It's 2018 and that's not entirely true anymore but who cares, get off my lawn!

Cannes has previously banned made for TV movies to ensure a certain quality bar in competition. The organization appears to be using that ban to justify banning Netflix, despite the fact that Netflix is now spending billions on producing its in-house, award winning fare. Because many of these films only saw limited runs in theaters (or no run at all) doesn't automatically equate to low quality, and banning streaming services from awards isn't likely to magically save an industry unwilling to evolve.

Of course this disdain for all things new isn't solely a French phenomenon. Stephen Spielberg recently stated that Netflix films shouldn't be allowed to win Oscar awards, though here too you'll notice that the justifications are arguably flimsy, with an attempt to equate "streaming" with inevitably low quality:

"Once you commit to a television format, you’re a TV movie,” he told ITV News. “You certainly, if it’s a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar. I don’t believe films that are just given token qualifications in a couple of theaters for less than a week should qualify for the Academy Award nomination."

Why not? Who knows! If the content is awful it will get rejected from such competitions anyway. And trying to fend off streaming at this point is like trying to slow the flow of a river with just your hands. The move is pretty clearly an effort by Fremaux to project a certain standard of excellence (he also announced that selfies would be banned at this year's festival), but the message it's actually sending the world is more of the "I'm a Luddite" variety.

Filed Under: cannes, competition, disruption, films, innovation, movies, protectionism, streaming, thierry fremaux
Companies: cannes film festival, netflix

French Theater Owners Freak Out; Get Netflix Booted From Cannes Film Festival

from the competing-isn't-really-the-French-way dept

Even as Netflix continues to draw top talent to produce original series and movies (while failing to destroy the motion picture industry), it is still being locked out of being considered a "real" filmmaker.

The tentative embrace of streaming services' offerings comes with caveats: films must be released to theaters as well to be considered for major awards. This makes things considerably tougher for Netflix since it's faced heavy resistance from theater owners and others who see a lack of release windows as a threat to their existence.

The latest rejection of Netflix's advances is happening at France's Cannes Film Festival. Netflix has two films up for consideration for this year's awards, but according to festival organizers, it will be its last unless something changes. Here's the festival's official flip-flop, via David Canfield at Slate:

A rumor has recently spread about a possible exclusion of the Official Selection of Noah Baumbach and Bong Joon-Ho whose films have been largely financed by Netflix. The Festival de Cannes does reiterate that, as announced on April 13th, these two films will be presented in Official Selection and in Competition.

The Festival de Cannes is aware of the anxiety aroused by the absence of the release in theaters of those films in France. The Festival de Cannes asked Netflix in vain to accept that these two films could reach the audience of French movie theaters and not only its subscribers. Hence the Festival regrets that no agreement has been reached.

The issue here appears to be French theater owners, although the statement doesn't say that in as many words. Instead, the festival delivers a whole lot of words on a platter of subtext.

The Festival is pleased to welcome a new operator which has decided to invest in cinema but wants to reiterate its support to the traditional mode of exhibition of cinema in France and in the world. Consequently, and after consulting its Members of the Board, the Festival de Cannes has decided to adapt its rules to this unseen situation until now: Any film that wishes to compete in Competition at Cannes will have to commit itself to being distributed in French movie theaters. This new measure will apply from the 2018 edition of the Festival International du Film de Cannes onwards.

To translate this, one needs to look at the events leading up to the festival's sudden reversal. The festival doesn't want to lose local support, so it has allowed itself to be bullied into a hasty invitation retraction. This report from CBC News is the explicit version of the statement's implicit wording.

The [Netflix] selections prompted immediate criticism from French exhibitors. In France, the theatrical experience is passionately defended. Films are prohibited from streaming or appearing on subscription video on demand for three years after playing in theatres.

On Tuesday, France's National Federation of Films Distributors said the Netflix films at Cannes were "endangering a whole ecosystem."

Must be a pretty fragile ecosystem if a streaming service being considered for an award threatens its stability. And -- considering the three-year no-streaming window French citizens are punished with -- it's easy to see why Netflix hasn't reached an agreement with the locals. It's also easy to see Netflix will never be able to reach an agreement with French exhibitors. One side has a whole lot of room for compromise, but if it hasn't done so already during the rise of streaming services, it's unlikely to start making concessions now.

So, there will be no Palme d'Ors in the Netflix trophy case. And this nation's creative industries will continue to prop themselves up on insular, isolationist laws, rather than face the rest of the world head-on.

Filed Under: cannes, films, france, streaming
Companies: netflix

Film Distributor Creates Torrent Site Clone That Gives Away Movie Tickets To Combat Piracy

from the not-bad dept

Much of the way the movie industry looks to combat film piracy will seem familiar to readers of this site. It typically involves shakedown threat letters, games of DMCA whac-a-mole, and a paint-by-numbers approach that mostly amounts to film studios shaking their lawyers' fists at the sky. All that produces the status quo, where piracy is still a thing, films still make gobs of money, and regular observers of it all are left scratching our heads wondering how so much noise could be made over it all.

But I will give credit where credit is due as Costa Rican film distributor Romaly deserves some style and creativity points for its new anti-piracy tactic.

Romaly has employed an extremely creative tactic to reach out to would-be pirates. Their work can be seen over at LegalTorrents.net, a site that has clearly been modeled on one of the most famous torrent indexes ever. As the screenshot below shows, it is a semi-convincing KickassTorrents clone with a similar logo, color scheme and word cloud.

Here's how nice a job Romaly did in dressing the site up to look like KAT.

And the torrents on the site are actually real, except they aren't torrents for the actual movies in question. Instead, the downloads play trailers for those movies along with messaging about how piracy has a negative impact on the film industry. But the coup de grace is the inclusion of an email address where the downloader can request two free movie tickets for the film they attempted to pirate.

The cloning of a torrent site feels a little shady, but it also feels somewhat innocuous. The attempt to educate pirates that piracy is bad is also rather "meh", as that's been tried before. But attempting to build up some goodwill in the form of getting downloaders to the theaters is actually pretty smart, relying on positive actions rather than threats and tales of doom and gloom.

“With the creation of our own torrent download page we seek to approach all those who try to carry out this type of illegal action and create awareness on the subject through positive reinforcement,” says Alonso Solís, marketing manager of Romaly.

“By providing tickets we want you to remember that cinema is an experience that goes beyond a computer. In the cinema, people enjoy an entertainment space that allows them to get rid of their occupations and dedicate one or two hours to themselves.”

That's the kind of thing we've been saying for years, in fact, and it's something the movie industry should be pushing on even harder. Now, it's worth noting that the folks at TorrentFreak attempted to put this whole concept through its paces and found a lot left to be desired. It seems the seeds on these torrents are limited, resulting in failed downloads all over the place. That sort of defeats the purpose of the educational information and the free tickets.

Still, points for the effort, and for trying to forge a connection with downloaders rather than relying on the mere shaking of legal fists.

Filed Under: copyright, fake torrents, films, free tickets, piracy
Companies: romaly

Kenya Pushes New Copyright Law Which Will Blame ISPs For Not Magically Stopping Piracy

from the that's-not-the-dmca-you're-copying dept

Update: Quick update on the story below, again alerted by Mitch Stoltz, a copy of the actual text of the law has been released and it does appear to more closely track with the safe harbor protections for ISPs. That is, the claims made by the copyright bureaucrat above that it's about making ISPs liable was misleading... The rest of the post stands however.

Via Mitch Stoltz, we learn of a new proposed copyright law in Kenya that not only would be a disaster for the internet in that country, but where the people pushing it don't even seem to understand what they're talking about. The key element: forcing ISPs to be copyright cops and putting liability on them if they somehow fail to magically stop piracy:

The Government is now turning it’s sights on ISPs in a move to curb piracy, which erodes revenues for the country’s film industry.

“We are proposing to introduce an amendment in the Copyright Act that will place the onus of responsibility for Kenyan content illegally downloaded, squarely on local internet service providers,” said Head of the Kenya Copyright Board (Kecobo) Edward Sigei.

Bizarrely, Sigei argues that he's just copying the DMCA in the US:

“We are borrowing from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of America and others that have come after it and we have designed an amendment where the ISP will be liable under certain circumstances for infringements that happen through their channels.”

Except, that's the exact opposite approach of the DMCA, whose safe harbors protect ISPs from liability, by noting that the responsibility should be on the actual people infringing, rather than the service providers in the middle. It's this safe harbor protection that allows the internet to function as it does, encouraging platforms for communication, sharing and content creation and hosting. Making ISPs liable puts tremendous liability on those ISPs, meaning they're much less likely to offer such services at all.

Is Kenya really looking to shut down useful internet services in that country?

Even more bizarre is that Kenya claims it's doing this in order to catch up with countries like Nigeria, whose movies have become huge throughout Africa:

This is part of a push to have Kenyan local content earn a larger foothold on Kenya’s airwaves currently dominated by Nigerian and Latin American programming.

Except, if you actually look at why the Nigeraian film business became so successful, it was actually because of a lack of copyright enforcement that helped create informal distribution and promotional channels across Africa. As the Economist explained years ago:

The merchants curse the pirates, but in a way they are a blessing. Pirate gangs were probably Nollywood's first exporters. They knew how to cross tricky borders and distribute goods across a disparate continent where vast tracts of land are inaccessible. Sometimes they filled empty bags with films when returning from an arms delivery. Often they used films to bribe bored guards at remote borders. The pirates created the pan-African market Mr Akudinobi now feeds.

A detailed academic research paper a few years later made it clear that it was piracy, not regulations that helped establish Nigerian film as a dominant player across Africa and further noted that this lack of copyright enforcement actually massively helped the economy.

Notably, although many countries have sought to incentivize particular types of film production through direct government funding, subsidies, or film protection schemes involving film quotas, many of these industries have not been commercially viable in the absence of subsidies or other support schemes. In contrast, Nollywood has created significant volume of local video film content with virtually no government involvement or subsidies. The success of Nollywood may in many respects be attributable to a lack of government involvement and its decentralized nature, which has permitted Nollywood participants to be highly entrepreneurial, adaptive and innovative. Nollywood now may employ as many as 200,000 people directly, with estimates of indirect employment as high as 1 million. The market-driven Nollywood approach is less costly than existing models of film production and distribution and may offer a new model for developing countries that wish to develop domestic film industries.

And yet, Kenya insists that it's trying to copy Nigeria, but it's doing the exact opposite? And it's going to do so by "copying" the DMCA, by apparently doing the exact opposite of the DMCA? It really makes you wonder what officials in Kenya are actually thinking in pushing this forward. Given the nature of the proposal, it looks much more like the wishes of foreign film interests, such as those from Hollywood, looking for yet another beachhead from which to push bogus rules to make ISPs copyright cops, rather than fixing their own business models.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, dmca, edward sigei, films, kenya, liability, nigeria

Indian Film Industry To Punish Pirates Paying Customers With 3-Month Film Release Boycott

from the baby,-bathwater dept

As we've noted countless times, diminishing the impact of piracy isn't exactly rocket science. Give consumers what they want at a reasonable price, and more often than not you'll be able to minimize piracy's impact on your business model. But as we've seen just as often, that logic is a bridge too far for many entertainment industry executives, who've relentlessly instituted all manner of more "creative" solutions to try and retain legacy power in shifting markets. Why give consumers what they want when you can insult, cajole, sue and otherwise harass your paying customers, then blame everything but your own rigid thinking?

The latest ingenious solution comes courtesy of India's Tamil Film Producer's Council (TFPC), which is considering a plan to stop releasing movies entirely in the misguided belief that this is going to somehow stop people from pirating. Apparently, the logic goes, if you stop releasing films for three months, the lack of things to pirate (ignoring a century of previous content, of course) will magically stop piracy forever! Ingenious!:

"Piracy will automatically stop when there's no content. When we stop film releases, say for three months, the movie pirates will go out of business. We are looking into this option because film producers have suffered heavily in the last 24 months," (said) Kalaipuli S Thanu, TFPC president."

One, there's just a blistering amount of hubris involved in believing that you can turn an entire culture's art creation on and off like some kind of spigot. Like they were scolding a kitten, you'll recall the RIAA often used to state that if people didn't stop pirating content, creators would just stop making music -- as if the business side of the equation could simply wipe all art creation from the face of the earth. That some still think they can unilaterally stop art creation as a "punishment" for piracy perfectly exemplifies the distorted thinking responsible for the global entertainment industry's ongoing struggles.

Two, the report notes that just a three-month ban on film production would impact the release of some 36 Indian films, which would then be harmed by the fact that they'd be shoveled in a more crowded release window. In addition to harming content creators, TFPC can't apparently understand that stopping the release of all films hurts its paying customers. Local filmmaker "Cheran" has a different suggested course of action, involving crazy concepts like modifying release windows and (gasp) lowering prices:

"If original DVD of a new film is available for Rs.50, why would anyone think of buying a pirated copy?" (asked Indian Filmmaker Cheran. "We all know the quality of pirated prints. I've sold nearly Rs.10 lakh (or around $16,800) DVDs of my film in the first two days," he said."I don't mind if one person buys and shows it to his entire family. As long as people don't watch pirated version of any film, I'm happy to release my films on DVD. Most households today have access to digital TV, so new films can be released via direct-to-home medium as well," he added."

Hopefully somebody at the TFPC hears Cheran's outlandish suggestions above the din of indignant entitlement.

Filed Under: boycott, films, india, piracy
Companies: tamil film producer's council, tfpc

Steven Soderbergh Fought To Make Re-Editing Films Illegal; Now He's Re-Editing Famous Films

from the the-rules-don't-apply-to-me dept

First off, I should say that I absolutely love the idea of people (especially experts) taking a classic movie and re-editing it. In the past, we've written about actor Topher Grace's apparently legendary re-edit of Episodes I, II and III of Star Wars into a single film. Only a few people have seen it, at private showings held by Grace. I find it unfortunate that we'll never really be able to see it, because Grace realizes that it would likely get taken down quickly by Disney/Lucasfilm. Indeed, when some amateurs tried to do the same thing, it disappeared quickly.

Thus, it's interesting and amazing that famed filmmaker Steven Soderbergh has apparently been re-editing classic movies and posting them online. Last year, he re-edited Psycho, Heaven's Gate and Raiders of the Lost Ark. For whatever reason this hasn't gotten too much attention until yesterday, when he also released his re-edit of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I think this is wonderful -- and a great way to show off some creative editing ideas (and also just how much editing truly makes a movie).

But here's the weird bit: Steven Soderbergh, as much as I admire him as a filmmaker, is a bit of a copyright maximalist, who has fought for stricter copyright laws, greater punishment and (get this) against the right of anyone but the director to make edits of films.

In 2009, Soderbergh, representing the Director's Guild of America, testified before Congress that piracy was killing Hollywood and stricter punishment was needed. He was pushing (strongly) for the "three strikes" model that was just showing up in France (only to be abandoned a few years later as a complete and utter failure). In his testimony, Soderbergh pushed the idea of kicking people off the internet entirely for a year if they get three strikes:

Well, when you go into Target and shoplift, there is a security guy from Target that catches you, and then they make a decision, whether or not they are going to take you to the police and prosecute you. At the very least, you are not allowed to go into Target anymore. And I just feel like we are in a similar situation, that there aren’t enough police officers in the world to sit at Target and Wal-Mart, and all the places where crimes are being committed. It wouldn’t be very difficult for us, if we were given, you know, this ability to identify the people who are making it easiest to transmit this copyrighted material, and if we had some sort of, you know, graduated mechanism along the lines of the French model.

First, they are contacted through the Internet. Then they are contacted through the mail. Then the third time they get pulled for a year.

Later in his testimony, he more or less admitted that he didn't really understand what was going on in France, even though his main message was we should do the same thing here (so it sounds like the DGA just told him to go and "say this"... but, still...). Of course, he also jokes about having decoy files so that when people download them it "wreaks havoc" on downloaders' computers (but rightly notes that "a very, very bright Dutch teenager... would figure out how to break that encryption.")

But the even crazier issue is that Soderbergh was the leading name in the lawsuit against CleanFlicks, a company that tried to re-edit movies to make them more palatable to "religious" audiences (i.e., taking out any scenes or dialog CleanFlicks believed to be offensive or blasphemous. The way it worked was you first had to buy the movie yourself (so valid purchase was made), and then you sent it to CleanFlicks which would send you back an edited version. In that lawsuit, CleanFlicks lost. The judge in that case noted directly that he did not believe that fair use applied to re-editing films. The lawsuit is basically CleanFlicks against filmmakers, with Soderbergh at the top: CleanFlicks was going to appeal that ruling, but basically ran out of money and just gave up. Either way, Soderbergh's name is on a ruling that argues that re-editing flicks is not fair use and is clearly copyright infringement.

Huh.

In that ruling, the judge argued that re-edits were not truly transformative, but more important, rejected the argument that these edits did not impact the market for the video, saying:

The argument has superficial appeal but it ignores the intrinsic value of the right to control the content of the copyrighted work which is the essence of the law of copyright. Whether these films should be edited in a manner that would make them acceptable to more of the public playing them on DVD in a home environment is more than merely a matter of marketing; it is a question of what audience the copyright owner wants to reach.

Frankly, I think the judge got this very, very wrong, but it's fascinating in this context. Because this appears to be a case where the judge (ruling in favor of Soderbergh) is clearly saying what Soderbergh is doing now is very much copyright infringement.

With the edit of Raiders, Soderbergh noted, "This posting is for educational purposes only." While we can argue over whether or not that impacts the fair use analysis, the whole thing does seem bizarre.

Once again, we see a case of a copyright maximalist, who argues for stronger penalties for infringement, who then ignores all of that when he wants to make use of others' content himself. This seems to happen quite frequently.

Again, I think it's great that Soderbergh is making these edits and posting them for everyone to see (and also discussing some of his thinking). That's awesome. I think he should be allowed to do so. I just find it strange (and somewhat hypocritical) that this is coming from the very same Steven Soderbergh who has fought for greater punishment for copyright infringers and whose name sits atop a court ruling that directly says re-editing films the way you'd like to see them is infringing.

Filed Under: copyright, editing, fair use, films, re-edits, steven soderbergh

DailyDirt: Categorizing Everything

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People just keep creating stuff -- books, movies, music, you name it... so it's (more than) a full-time job to keep up with all the cool new stuff. How do we classify music into hip-hop, heavy metal or Krautrock? What can we learn from mapping all these seemingly separate media genres? People and machines are working together to cobble together categorization systems that try to keep up with the flood of new content. Here are just a few examples.

• Netflix hired a bunch of people to try to categorize every movie, and it has 76,897 separate sub-genres for films like "romantic comedies" and "Violent Action Thrillers Starring Bruce Willis". You'd probably never guess which actor crosses into the most movie sub-genres (it's not Kevin Bacon).... It's Raymond Burr. [url]
• A brief history of music genre origins tells us that categories of music are often named after popular bands or lyrics. For example, bluegrass music is named after "the Blue Grass Boys"... and guess what lyrics inspired "Doo-wop" music? [url]
• Melvil Dewey came up with the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system in 1873. The DDC system is now published by OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. which owns all the copyright rights and manages the licensing of this method of organizing general knowledge. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: archives, books, categorization, ddc, dewey decimal, films, genres, libraries, movies, music, oclc, recommendation systems, sky is rising
Companies: netflix

Kenyan Filmmaker Who's Planning To Distribute His Documentary Via 'Pirates' Posts First Hour Of New Film On Youtube

from the staying-connected-and-spreading-the-word dept

A couple months back we covered the story of Patrick Mureithi, a Kenyan filmmaker who was raising money for a documentary on post-election violence in his home country. He was asking for $5,000 to cover travel expenses and some related costs and was hoping that Kenya's thriving "piracy industry" would handle the distribution end of the business, spreading his message of hope throughout his homeland.

The good news is Murethi's Indiegogo campaign met its goal and he is back in Kenya setting up viewings of his documentary and shooting more footage to add to it. It's still in its "first draft" stage according to Murethi, but he sent a message our way informing us that he's uploaded the first hour of the still-unfinished documentary to Youtube.

@techdirt Here's the film. Please share it widely: youtube.com/watch?v=Ze6tG5…Peace, p

— Patrick Mureithi (@MureithiPatrick) January 6, 2013

He's also blogging about his experiences returning to Kenya (he currently lives in Missouri), including this "fun" little shakedown at the hands of customs at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport:

Custom's dude @ the airport: Hello? What do you have in those bags?
Me: Some clothes and my camera equipment.
Dude: What are you doing with this equipment?
Me: I'm working on a documentary about healing from trauma after post-election violence.
Dude: Are you a press-man?
Me: No.
Dude: Where is your filming permit?
Me: I don't have one
Dude: Then we have to keep your equipment until you get a permit
Me: I find it hard to leave this equipment here after all the sacrifice it took to get it
Dude: Go talk to that lady (presumably his superior)

- - -

Lady: What are you using this equipment for?
(I explain what I did to dude)
Lady: But this happened five years ago!
Me: Yes, but the trauma has not gone away, and will not go away with time
Lady: How will it go away then?
Me: Through education about trauma and teaching various ways that we can heal
Lady: This is a very controversial film. You need a permit, and you need to leave your equipment with us until you get one.
Me: Please, madam, this is not agreeable with me
Lady: Go see that man in that office

- - -

Man in office: Where is your permit?
(The Dance repeats itself. 45 minutes in total)
Man: We'll let you go with your equipment, but you have to pay 1% of the equipment's cost, non-refundable

I pay, and scurry off to meet my father who has been patiently waiting, sipping coffee through a straw.

Karibu Kenya.

Apparently only non-controversial films are allowed to roam permit-free, unless you're willing to pay a non-refundable "deposit" on equipment you own. A bit of a rough start to be sure, but more recent posts seem a bit more upbeat.

Hopefully, Murethi will keep us posted on any new developments, including the implementation of his scofflaw distribution system once the film is completed.

Filed Under: documentary, election, films, kenya, patrick mureithi, violence