Dear Hollywood: Giving Identical Scripts To Congress Reveals That You're Feeding Them Talking Points

from the gotta-keep-track-of-which-congress-person-is-shilling-for-hollywood-today... dept

So we already covered last week's Congressional hearings concerning technology and copyright. As we noted, there was some really great testimony from a variety of individuals who are really working hard to provide great products and services that are enabling much greater creativity (often relying on fair use) and doing so without having to worry about strict intellectual property (in fact, often thriving by ignoring their own intellectual property entirely). Unfortunately, as was expected, some in Congress attacked the speakers using copyright maximalist talking points. At times you could just tell that the Representatives were reading points fed to them by entertainment industry lobbyists. It happens. But usually, they don't make it quite this obvious.

That's because whoever fed the "Friends of Hollywood" Congressional Reps their questions last week forgot to make careful notes of who they gave which questions to... leading to a repeat. Congresswomen Judy Chu and Karen Bass both represent different parts of Los Angeles, so it's no surprise that they'd be there to carry water for the legacy entertainment industry. But,having both of them ask identical questions, word-for-word, one right after the other? That kinda reveals that they were fed that question, doesn't it? You can watch the full video here, or to make it easier, I've made a short YouTube video that shows the two questions back to back: In case you can't watch it, at 1:11:40, Chu asks:

"You express concern about these erroneous takedown notices generated by computers rather than humans, and this is no doubt frustrating to receive. What advice can you offer to small content owners, photographers or songwriters, whose works are infringed hundreds or thousands of times on the Internet but who lack the resources to monitor those infringements, let alone prepare and send DMCA takedown notices to address them?"

There's a discussion that goes on for a bit including a really good response from IndieGogo's Danae Ringelmann. Then, the baton is handed to Bass, at 1:24:29 on the full video, who kicks it off by asking:

"You express concerns about takedown notices erroneously generated by computers rather than humans, but I wanted to know what advice you could offer to small content owners, photographers or songwriters, for example, whose work are infringed hundreds or thousands of times?"

That is almost word for word the same question. Note to whichever lobbyist was in charge of feeding the Friends of Hollywood on the Committee their questions last week: keep track of whom you gave which questions to. Otherwise, you might just look silly.

As for the question itself, it's a bogus Hollywood talking point question anyway. The reason it's being asked is because Hollywood wants -- desperately -- to pin liability onto third party tech companies, forcing them into being "copyright cops." They're annoyed that they have to send DMCA notices, even though they are the only ones who can accurately determine (and even then, not so accurately) what content is actually infringing. So, one of Hollywood's favorite bogus talking points is that the "small content owners, photographers and songwriters" are now too busy issuing DMCA takedowns. Of course, when we've tried to find out more details about some of these "small" copyright holders to understand why they're spending so much effort on something so useless, rather than looking into alternatives that are proven to be much more effective, suddenly they clam up. Because the details would reveal what they don't want to admit.

Either way, it was a fairly bogus question to ask this particular panel, but the reasonable answer is clear: you tell them to focus on other business models -- like many of those represented by others on that panel. That is, you focus on the positive things you can do: connecting with fans, giving them reasons to support you, rather than on trying to stop things that won't stop and which have no likelihood of increasing your revenue.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, hearings, judy chu, karen bass, lobbyists, talking points