ChooseCo Inks Lucrative Deal With Amazon, Possibly Thanks To Netflix's 'Bandersnatch'

from the biting-the-hand dept

When we discussed Chooseco, the company behind the Choose Your Own Adventure series of books from decades past, and its lawsuit against Netflix for having content that allowed watchers to choose paths within the narrative, we focused mostly on how silly the lawsuit was purely from a merit standpoint. The trademark suit rested mostly on a throwaway reference or homage made by a character in the Netflix work, and the claim that Chooseco has licensed its name in the past but lost the opportunity to do so for this work. None of that makes the public at all likely to be confused into thinking that Bandersnatch was somehow a Chooseco product, nor does such a reference somehow cause the work to be trademark infringement.

But there's another angle in all of this. The homage made in Bandersnatch was truly an homage, meaning that it called to mind for many of a certain age the fondness we had for these Choose Your Own Adventure books. Despite the films dark themes, the reference itself is a positive one. And, frankly, it probably caused many to think about the series of books for the first time in a long time, making it something of an advertisement for Chooseco's products.

And that buzz surrounding Bandersnatch certainly coincidentally occurred alongside the more recent announcement that Chooseco has agreed to partner with Amazon to produce Choose Your Own Adventures for the Alexa.

You may remember ChooseCo from its lawsuit with Netflix over the Black Mirror episode. The company claims that Netflix never acquired the proper license to use the “Choose Your Own Adventure” trademark.

But clearly, ChooseCo still aims to benefit from the attention, and from Netflix’s ability to make this storytelling gimmick popular with a younger generation of tech-savvy consumers.

In collaboration with Amazon’s  Audible division, the two companies are together releasing an Alexa skill (properly licensed) that will bring ChooseCo’s Choose Your Own Adventure stories to life on Alexa-powered devices, like Echo smart speakers, which are controlled through voice commands.

Should Chooseco actually have thanked Netflix for its nod in Bandersnatch rather than suing over it? I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem unlikely that the huge amount of buzz surrounding the film contributed to, if not created, the Amazon opportunity for Chooseco.

And that's often the point when we talk about intellectual property lawsuits. There are often other ways to look at what is being sued over, with the relinquishing of a bit of control actually resulting in free promotion, free advertising, and the kind of word of mouth buzz that simply can't be bought as part of a media campaign. It would be immensely interesting to be on the inside at Chooseco, in order to get a sense of the sequence of events in which all of this occurred.

Regardless, it seems Chooseco at least had the option of choosing to be less litigious.

Filed Under: bandersnatch, choose your own adventure, licensing, publicity, trademark
Companies: amazon, chooseco, netflix

White House Begins To Realize It May Have Made A Huge Mistake In Going After Apple Over iPhone Encryption

from the not-the-debate-we-wanted dept

One of the key lines that various supporters of backdooring encryption have repeated in the last year, is that they "just want to have a discussion" about the proper way to... put backdoors into encryption. Over and over again you had the likes of James Comey insisting that he wasn't demanding backdoors, but really just wanted a "national conversation" on the issue (despite the fact we had just such a conversation in the 90s and concluded: backdoors bad, let's move on.):

My goal today isn’t to tell people what to do. My goal is to urge our fellow citizens to participate in a conversation as a country about where we are, and where we want to be, with respect to the authority of law enforcement.

And, yet, now we're having that conversation. Very loudly. And while the conversation really has been going on for almost two years, in the last month it moved from a conversation among tech geeks and policy wonks into the mainstream, thanks to the DOJ's decision to force Apple to write some code that would undermine security features on the work iPhone of Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino attackers. According to some reports, the DOJ and FBI purposely chose this case in the belief that it was a perfect "test" case for its side: one that appeared to involve "domestic terrorists" who murdered 14 people. There were reports claiming that Apple was fine fighting this case under seal, but that the DOJ purposely chose to make this request public.

However, now that this has resulted in just such a "national conversation" on the issue, the DOJ, FBI and others in the White House are suddenly realizing that perhaps the public isn't quite as with them as they had hoped. And now there are reports that some in the White House are regretting the decision to move forward and are experiencing this well known feeling: According to the NY Times:

Officials had hoped the Apple case involving a terrorist’s iPhone would rally the public behind what they see as the need to have some access to information on smartphones. But many in the administration have begun to suspect that the F.B.I. and the Justice Department may have made a major strategic error by pushing the case into the public consciousness.

Many senior officials say an open conflict between Silicon Valley and Washington is exactly what they have been trying to avoid, especially when the Pentagon and intelligence agencies are trying to woo technology companies to come back into the government’s fold, and join the fight against the Islamic State. But it appears it is too late to confine the discussion to the back rooms in Washington or Silicon Valley.

While the various public polling on the issue has led to very mixed results, it's pretty clear that the public did not universally swing to the government's position on this. In fact, it appears that the more accurately the situation is described to the public, the more likely they are to side with Apple over the FBI. Given that, John Oliver's recent video on the subject certainly isn't good news for the DOJ.

Either way, the DOJ and FBI insisted they wanted a conversation on this, and now they're getting it. Perhaps they should have been more careful what they wished for.

Filed Under: discussion, encryption, fbi, going dark, iphone, national conversation, national debate, public conversation, publicity, white house
Companies: apple

IRS Drops Forfeiture Case, Returns $107,000 Taken In Bogus 'Structuring' Prosecution

from the teaching-old-thieves-new-tricks dept

The streak continues. A highly-dubious IRS asset forfeiture case receives some media attention, closely followed by the agency dropping the case.

Federal prosecutors have dropped an attempt to seize $107,000 from a North Carolina small business owner using asset forfeiture laws following several weeks of media scrutiny.

According to the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department moved Wednesday to voluntarily dismiss their case against Lyndon McLellan.

McLellan's case was raised (as a "hypothetical") by Rep. George Holding during IRS testimony in front of the House Ways and Means Committee. Holding asked IRS Commissioner John Koskinen why the agency was continuing to pursue a questionable "structuring" case against McLellan, considering both the IRS and the DOJ had issued policy revisions stating the government would not do this unless there was evidence the deposited money originated from criminal activity.

Koskinen agreed that McLellan's case should be dropped and promised to look into it. Meanwhile, the prosecutor overseeing McLellan's case contacted the Institute for Justice, claiming that its release of case details to House members would not only not help McLellan's case but could actually make it worse for him -- citing the vaguely-threatening "ratcheting" of "feelings" within the IRS by this public disclosure. He then offered McLellan a "final offer" of half his money back.

McLellan didn't take the offer. Now, he's getting all of his money back -- which he'll need, considering he's already racked up plenty of expenses fighting the IRS and DOJ.

McLellan still had to pay for a lawyer, not to mention $19,000 to have his business audited. The government also refuses to pay for interest earned on money after it has been seized.

While the IRS may be curbing its dubious forfeitures, there are still problems that need to be addressed within the DOJ itself.

Last week, the Justice Department said it would investigate two other prosecutors after one business owner whose assets were seized said he had been punished more harshly after publicizing his case and another said he had been threatened with a felony charge if he did not agree to give up some of his money.

Kind of dispels the notion that asset forfeiture has anything to do with "justice." As these programs continue to suffer from mainstream exposure, those heading up prosecutions seem unwilling to scale back their efforts accordingly. They can see the revenue stream drying up and they're getting desperate. There will be more than a few forfeiture victims whose cases will stay off the radar. Unfortunately for them, these "zealous" prosecutors appear willing to do whatever they can to ensure funds seized with no evidence of criminal intent or origin remain inaccessible to those who actually earned them.

Filed Under: asset forfeiture, irs, lyndon mclellan, publicity, stealing

Lena Dunham Once Again Threatens Lawsuit Over An Interpretation Of Her Book That She Doesn't Like

from the not-how-it-works... dept

We've only written about Lena Dunham once before, and it was in the context of her threatening a lawsuit against Gawker for daring to publish her book proposal and comment on it, mocking Dunham. At the time, as noted, I'd never even heard of Dunham. I've still never seen her show, but I have seen/heard her interviewed a few times, and I don't quite understand why there's so much hate directed at her some of the time. She seems to have an interesting perspective on life and has turned it into a very successful TV show. Good for her. Still, this is now the second time we've felt the need to write about Dunham and, once again, it's about an apparent legal threat from her, based on her book. This time it's not about the book proposal, but the book itself, now that it's out.

The key issue? Some news sites out there interpreted part of her book to be her admitting to sexually abusing her little sister as a baby. These claims appear to be rather overblown. Various experts appear to agree that nothing Dunham did comes close to actual sexual abuse.

Still, it appears that Dunham has at least threatened one site, TruthRevolt, for writing just such a story. She demanded a retraction and a (pre-written) apology. TruthRevolt, wisely, refused. Instead, it just reprinted the text from Dunham's own book that highlights the basis for the site's original post. Ken "Popehat" White has the excellent explanation of the legal ridiculousness of Dunham's lawyers' threats:

If Ms. Dunham is alleging that the original Truth Revolt article about her is defamatory, she is wrong — unless it has deliberately and extensively misquoted her book. Truth Revolt has admitted that the article originally and incorrectly said that she was 17, not 7, when one of the incidents described took place. But absent proof that Truth Revolt made that misstatement intentionally, that's incompetence, not the actual malice required to prove up defamation of a public figure like Ms. Dunham.

Truth Revolt's characterization of Ms. Dunham's memoir is not defamation. It's classic opinion based on specific disclosed facts. You might think that Truth Revolt's interpretation of Dunham's stories of her conduct with her sister is irrational, or unfair, or politically biased, or cruel. That doesn't make it defamatory. If I linked to one of Ben Shapiro's articles and said "this article proves that Ben Shapiro is a secret lizard person sent by Obama to discredit conservatives," that wouldn't be defamation either. It might be crazy, but it's my statement of opinion based on Shapiro's own words. If Truth Revolt had said "people have told me that Lena Dunham molested her sister" or "I have reviewed documents that suggest to me that Lena Dunham molested her sister," that would be different — that would be a statement of fact, or a statement of opinion based on undisclosed facts.

Of course, White has an alternative theory as to why all of this is happening as well:

Her threat, and her reaction to the coverage, are likely to trigger the Streisand Effect, driving orders of magnitude more eyes to the characterizations of her memoir. She's media-savvy enough that I can't help but wonder whether that's her intention in the first place. It will sell books.

Given that this is the second time she's appeared in these pages, and both times it's about threatening some random blog for highlighting her own words and mocking them... that theory is seems to have a fair bit of support.

Filed Under: book, defamation, lena dunham, publicity, streisand effect, threats

Hell Freezing Over? Disney Realizing That Fans Celebrating 'Frozen' By Infringement May Be A Good Thing

from the and-that-day-disney's-heart-grew-one-size-bigger dept

Disney is a name that is often associated with copyright maximalism for pretty good reasons. Despite the fact that many of its early successes depended heavily on either direct infringement or making use of the public domain, the company was a very aggressive enforcer of its own copyrights. And, of course, it was also a primary lobbyist for expanding copyright protections, and extending copyright term every time Mickey Mouse approached the public domain.

However, in the past few years, it's seemed as though Disney has been a bit quieter than in the past about copyright issues, allowing some other companies to take the lead on that. And, in some cases, it seems to even be recognizing (*gasp*) that some infringement can actually be a good thing. Andrew Leonard, over at Salon, has the story of how Disney has finally joined the 21st century in realizing that having fans create derivative works around the movie Frozen, has actually been useful and free promotion for the original (and massively successful) movie.

Disney’s expertise in nurturing, co-opting and, most of all, not cracking down on the many ways fans have embraced “Frozen” online is a template for how to thrive in a digital, copy-promiscuous, consumer-empowered environment. Disney, long one of the fiercest and most powerful defenders of strict intellectual property control, has learned how to let copyright go.

The article includes a bunch of examples of people who have built up huge audiences (and even careers) themselves, almost entirely built off of Disney's works -- without Disney getting involved at all. Disney isn't asking for money and it's not shutting them down. It's just letting them do their thing, even if they're making money from doing so. Why? Because it appears that even Disney is recognizing that even when these "infringers" are making money, Disney itself likely makes even more money from it:

Disney did not respond to my queries as to where they draw the line or how they are engaging with non-authorized use of Disney characters. But there’s anecdotal evidence that the company has realized that the same people who are buying soundtracks and merchandise and DVDs are the same people who are making and sharing YouTube videos. Although Disney once viewed YouTube with alarm, the company now seems to realize that fan-created content — even in cases where that content is generating revenue that is not captured by Disney — is cross-promotional marketing that money can’t buy.

For all the times we see copyright defenders insist that anyone "making money" from someone else's work is "obviously" a problem, it's nice to see Disney understand how non-zero-sum markets work, and the fact that just because someone is making some money, it doesn't automatically mean that money is coming out of Disney's bank account.

So... within a very short time it appears we've seen both the Supreme Court officially admit that infringement can be beneficial, and Disney implicitly admit the same thing. It feels like hell may be freezing over.

Filed Under: copyright, creativity, fans, frozen, infringement, publicity
Companies: disney

Blogger Offers To Pimp Restaurants If They Feed Her And Her Family Food And Drinks

from the gratuity-included? dept

As the online world continues to mature, and often push out previous dead-tree players, reputation is going to be of paramount importance. I recently discussed one aspect of this with regards to some companies that try to pay online reporters and bloggers to include links to their client companies. This type of thing should be viewed as an obviously unethical practice. But perhaps you thought that story was a tad too complicated. Perhaps you'd like this kind of behavior boiled down to its most scummy, dishonest, and greedy base.

Meet Sarah Lockard. Sarah runs the site www.aroundmainline.com, which covers the Philidelphia area. According to their website, this is their mission:

AML is privileged to welcome you to a reliable, socially responsible and culturally rich online magazine that speaks to the Philadelphia region. That's right, we don't believe in wasting paper and your valuable money to bring you the best of Philadelphia's Main Line region, the surrounding areas and vibrant western suburbs. So, we are publishing our magazine digitally respective of the earth's resources and your valuable resources. We consider each and every visitor to AroundMainLine.com a new member of our family and an equal participant in the AML experience.

Awww, how cute, Sarah! We're all your family? Does that get us included in this email you sent around to Philidelphia restaurants?

Good Evening!!!

Every Christmas Eve my family enjoys an amazing night dining out and this year I am offering you the exciting opportunity to be our restaurant that hosts us! The host restaurant will receive approximately $1,000 in PR with AML:

1) 2 Facebook posts on AML’s Facebook page promoting the respective restaurant as the restaurant of choice for AML’s family for Christmas Eve

2) 5 instagram photos during the dining experience

3) 2 AML enewsletter ads in Jan and Feb 2014 (reaches over 3,000 unique individuals)

4) listed in our Christmas Eve dining guide published Dec 10th, 2013 on AML.

We are asking for the following in turn: Dinner for 5 drinks and food compensated, we will tip according to the value to the server. This is a VERY innovative and effective way to promote your restaurant on this very competitive evening and reach tens of thousands of local foodies through AML’s channels. Please note this is first come, first serve.

Your friend,

Sarah

Interesting. Now, if I'm reading this correctly, and I can't see how I'm not, if a local Philly food joint that calls itself Bob's Maggots And Stale Waffles is the first to agree to this gifted holiday dinner for your family, they'll be pimped in your digital magazine, blog, and related social media sites to your trusting readers who you consider parts of your family? Congrats, Sarah, that's the most fully distilled bucket of scumbag I've seen to date.

And now that this story is spreading, how valuable is all of that paid-by-food PR fluff and advertising in your online rag going to be now that any member of the public who knows about this wouldn't trust your writing and recommendations any further than they could throw a 600 pound gorilla with an unpleasant disposition? You've zeroed out your credibility for the chance, the chance, at a free meal. You've nuked yourself. One can only hope that next you try to suppress these types of stories, because all I know is that a self-torpedo is a dish best served Streisand.

Filed Under: around mainline, publicity, sarah lockard

GTA V Launch Gimmick Goes Sideways When Heavily Armed Cops Show Up

from the blurring-the-lines dept

It's incredibly easy to do sales/launch promotions horribly wrong. My favorite example is still when Nestle thought that putting tracking devices in their candy wrappers and then hunting people down to give them crap was a good idea. Those with less in the department of good intentions can take things from funny to creepy, such as a pizzeria trading free pie for boob-flash-ery. The point is that you have to make sure you cover all your bases and don't do anything stupid, otherwise you can expect someone to game the system, mock a flaw, take your promotion the wrong way, or send the cops to shoot you. Wait, what?

Must have been a Dunkin Donuts promotion, huh? Hey-ohhhh!
Image source: CC BY 2.0

No, it wasn't pastries involved in this raid, it was video games. More specifically, Grand Theft Auto 5, because of course it was. In any case, apparently a retailer in France thought it would be a fun stunt to have their staff dressed up like criminals, thugs, and gang-bangers for the game's launch. The costumes, of course, required replica handguns. Humor, of course, required that passersby immediately call the cops, which resulted in 15 officers descending on the store and scaring the hell out of everyone.

Apparently the retailer forgot the key step of informing local authorities that they were going to be brandishing fake weapons while committing public commerce. You kind of can't do that, unless you want your business on display in all the wrong ways.

Filed Under: france, gta v, police, publicity

New Zealand Censors Horror Film, Making It Extra Popular With Downloaders

from the well,-duh dept

This should go without saying at this point, but as government continually try to censor stuff, the internet just kind of mocks them. New Zealand censors have apparently decided that the horror flick Maniac -- a Cannes Film Festival selection that is starring Elijah Wood -- is just too damn scary for New Zealand sensibilities, and banned it. However, as TorrentFreak notes, banning the film seems to have only resulted in it getting downloaded a ridiculous amount in New Zealand. Of course, if New Zealand censors hadn't been so squeamish and actually allowed the movie to play in the country, the filmmakers would actually be making money. Instead, they get none of it. Of course, you also have to wonder how much extra publicity New Zealand censors gave to this movie by declaring that it was too scary for Kiwis to watch.

Filed Under: attention, censorship, downloading, horror films, maniac, movies, publicity

DailyDirt: Ads Gone Wrong

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Commercials are always trying to get people's attention -- sometimes by being controversial and sometimes by being shocking. But even when a company tries to broadcast only sensitive and feel-good messages, there will always be some folks pointing out that companies don't really care about people as much as profits. Here are just a few advertisements that might have just missed getting their message across.

• Why is it that car companies seem to have a hard time NOT making offensive ads? Ford India recently apologized for some terrible ads depicting bound and gagged women in the spacious hatchback trunk of a Ford Figo. But Ford wasn't the only example, Hyundai and GM also had some horrible commercials to retract recently. [url]
• Dr Pepper posted an ad on Facebook with a common geeky joke, showing the evolution of humans -- starting with a chimp-like ancestor and ending with a modern upright person holding a can of his favorite beverage. Poking the beehive of anti-evolution religious folks might be a fairly safe way of creating some controversy, but it probably doesn't sell that much more sugar water. [url]
• The Economist once ran an ad for itself, asking "Why should women read The Economist?" Maybe publications written by -- and read by -- mostly men should be a bit more careful when trying to step away from being a "Maxim for nerds"..? [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: ads, advertising, commercials, economist, failures, jokes, publicity
Companies: dove, dr pepper, ford, gm, hyundai

Film Distributor Convinced Oscar Nominees To Take Down Their Own Short Films, Because No Real Film Would Be Online

from the wtf dept

While the Oscars already happened this past weekend, we missed this one bit of insanity in the lead up. Apparently, Carter Pilcher, CEO of distributor Shorts International, made the rounds last week telling all of the nominees for "best animated short film" that they needed to take their films down from any online site. Why? Because, apparently, online stuff is too lowbrow, and no serious filmmaker would ever promote their films online. From the letter:

The fact that all the films were put online is perplexing as Academy voters have other and better means of viewing the films, including through the Academy-provided DVDs of all the Live Action and Animated short film nominees sent to all voting members. Making the films available online creates no competitive advantage.

Unlike Webbies or Ani's, the Academy Award is designed to award excellence in the making of motion pictures that receive a cinematic release, not an online release. Since 2006, we have built theater audiences significantly and created widespread interest in the films themselves and their place in the movie theater. This release of the films on the Internet threatens to destroy 8 years of audience growth and the notion that these film gems are indeed movies--no feature length film would consider a free online release as a marketing tool!

First off, that last statement is pure hogwash. A large and growing number of feature length films have been released online for free as a marketing tool. There's a whole company called Vodo.net that has helped filmmakers do that. All the way back in 2008, we wrote about director Wayne Wang (who has directed movies like The Joy Luck Club, Smoke and Maid in Manhattan) releasing his latest feature length film... free and online. Another success story involved a relatively unknown indie filmmaker who got his film on Hulu (for free), where it became the most watched thing on Hulu for a while. And, of course, Nina Paley famously released Sita Sings the Blues for free online. The idea that no maker of a feature length film would ever use the internet to release it for free is simply untrue.

And, in many ways, it seems even dumber to remove these short animated films from the internet. As many people have noted, obscurity is a much bigger threat to most content creators than anything else, and one way to guarantee further obscurity is to make sure your work cannot be found or seen easily. Somehow, I doubt that any of these animated short filmmakers are seeing that much money from whatever limited theatrical release Pilcher is able to give them. And yet, by taking their works offline, they may be missing out on building a much bigger and more loyal fanbase, which can help support future projects (Kickstarter, anyone?). The idea that no real filmmaker would promote their films online is something that comes from the viewpoint of an obsolete industry, not someone who is looking out for today's filmmakers' best interests.

Filed Under: animated short feature, internet, marketing, oscars, publicity, short films
Companies: shorts international