Well, don't get too far ahead of yourselves separating content creators from Hulu. In NBC's case, they ARE Hulu, and in the other cases, the content they're getting has the same restrictions the "Network" itself places on it. That means they demand from producers (usually) ALL worldwide rights, then CBS, NBC, ABC et. al decide how to section up those rights.
On the backend of that, you have music rights that the producer has to pay for, that are often restricted by the deal - meaning that a producer with a limited budget will often buy rights to only broadcast a show with that music in the US - whereas Worldwide rights are just too expensive to obtain.
As a matter of (distribution) fact, music rights are often the nail in the coffin for a lot of distributed media. When I was working with a digital division of a major media player in LA, we spent a full year attempting to assess how many cues in hundreds of hours of shows had to be recleared because of limited rights from the original production, and in the end, expanding those rights to cover digital distribution made putting those shows online, utterly impossible due to cost (we were talking over $60k per episode for a single song, in some cases).
Getting copyright, back to being "right" would be a huge step in the right direction for new content going forward. (Creative Commons? Maybe...)
Going backward, it would take a huge legal change for content creators to be able to simply publish everywhere and sort out royalties on the backend without having to go through hundreds of thousands of music cue sheets and renegotiating deals.
Just don't confuse "content providers" with "content creators."
These organizations, the networks, have massive legacy overhead costs, so their net revenues continue to shrink (think about how many 6 figure salaries are between the content maker and the audience - on an average, cheap show at say, MTV, I've had over a dozen network side 6 figure earners on a show. Know how many the show itself had? One.)
Whoever figures out a workable way to cover production costs upfront, and get rid of the network middleman costs, will be a huge winner. (unfortunately, unlike music production, professional film & television production is really, really damn expensive, even if your above the line isn't making that much. Those "above the line" salaries on series between $5m and $12m or so, usually only make up 10-15% of the actual show costs).
And camera operators, gaffers, grips, set decorators, wardrobe, makeup, all those people - they don't get anything but their daily paycheck if something goes on to do well (critically or commercially). So those people still need to be paid and make a living...and they're not by any means "great" livings....
Norm: First of all, your version of "Harry Potter" would be different from anyone elses. It might be good, it might not be.
There are dozens of stories over the years of boys as magicians, and therefore the "idea' of a boy wizard as a copyrightable thing is ridiculous.
Now, JK Rowling is an excellent writer, and it's not so much her idea, but the (and this is *important*) the execution of her idea and the characters within it that make it a unique and copyrightable work.
We need to get this through our thick heads, there ARE NO ORIGINAL STORIES in the world.
Indeed, if you study writing, you can boil down every story ever told to one of three archetypes (ideas!).
1. Man vs. Man
2. Man vs. Himself
3. Man vs. Nature
There are infinite variations on these ideas, but that's it. So if we take copyright protection as it's going, to it's natural end, and I copyright all stories that are "one guy vs. another guy," then I own that idea, and the rest of you owe me trillions of dollars.
But that's ridiculous, and it deprives society of the very "progress of the arts" that copyright was designed with in mind in the first place.
And to your last issue of semantics - words are not just words, words have meanings. The meanings are different. Ideas and credit are completely different. There are lines in the sand (courts) where I can copy the story of a young wizard, with a different name, place, and characters and that's totally legal. What I can't copy are the details. Harry Potter. Hagrid, Hogwarts, and the whole ilk of the details. Those all belong to Ms. Rowling.
And of course, someone else trying to take credit for an idea, unless the idea was divulged in such details as make it into the final creative work, and can be substantiated in a court, is silly as well.
Ideas, as general ideas can be taken, SHOULD be taken and used. Everyone will use them differently and therein lies the artistic genius.
On the other hand, I also speak with a lot of producers who think that our professional association (the Producers Guild of America) should be fighting tooth and nail to put DRM on every single thing producers put out (a different story... but I'll digress for a moment).
How sad it is that an industry that prides itself on being "creative" can be creative enough to reinvent itself. They're not worried about protecting creativity, they're worried about protecting out-sized paychecks. Period.
IDEAS are not copyrightable. They should not be protectable unless they meet a certain level of detail - and that's where the courts come in.
That's a tough bar to figure out where to set, and as a content creator myself, I'm not even sure where to set it, my peers all have different ideas of where to set it. Many want to make as much $$ as they can off of doing as little as possible. A few actually want to work and create new things all the time and are flattered when someone else "rips them off" (and let's be honest, it's not like someone "rippping me off" has the same dialog, same actors, same character names, same setting, etc.).
Again, take it back to those three ideas (archetypes) above. There are no original ideas, there are only new interpretations of old ideas, and those interpretations and executions are where the art (and copyright), lies.
I've been a part of the film & tv industry for over 10 years, and the innovation and change we've had have always come from outside our business.
Even technical advances like non-linear editing were fought tooth and nail for years (and in some cases, is STILL being fought), and again, were not advances created or moved ahead by business executives.
In terms of using technology to increase worker productivity, it amazes me how far behind and how much change is fought from top to bottom. While we use computers in offices to write things and send emails, we still have very poorly coordinated systems for managing productions and budgets, much less systems that give us new creative tools (and even if we had them, you'd be hard pressed to get people to USE them).
There's a lot of change coming, and it will take a long, long time for it to sink in or be changed from within by the new generations of people creating content with their own rules.
For a business driven by lots of folks who consider themselves "visionaries" it's amazing how short-sighted much of Hollywood really is.
On the post: Is It Impossible For Hulu To Survive?
Content Creators are Hulu
On the backend of that, you have music rights that the producer has to pay for, that are often restricted by the deal - meaning that a producer with a limited budget will often buy rights to only broadcast a show with that music in the US - whereas Worldwide rights are just too expensive to obtain.
As a matter of (distribution) fact, music rights are often the nail in the coffin for a lot of distributed media. When I was working with a digital division of a major media player in LA, we spent a full year attempting to assess how many cues in hundreds of hours of shows had to be recleared because of limited rights from the original production, and in the end, expanding those rights to cover digital distribution made putting those shows online, utterly impossible due to cost (we were talking over $60k per episode for a single song, in some cases).
Getting copyright, back to being "right" would be a huge step in the right direction for new content going forward. (Creative Commons? Maybe...)
Going backward, it would take a huge legal change for content creators to be able to simply publish everywhere and sort out royalties on the backend without having to go through hundreds of thousands of music cue sheets and renegotiating deals.
On the post: Cable Companies Negotiating To Control What TV Shows You Can Watch Online
RE: Paying for "content'
These organizations, the networks, have massive legacy overhead costs, so their net revenues continue to shrink (think about how many 6 figure salaries are between the content maker and the audience - on an average, cheap show at say, MTV, I've had over a dozen network side 6 figure earners on a show. Know how many the show itself had? One.)
Whoever figures out a workable way to cover production costs upfront, and get rid of the network middleman costs, will be a huge winner. (unfortunately, unlike music production, professional film & television production is really, really damn expensive, even if your above the line isn't making that much. Those "above the line" salaries on series between $5m and $12m or so, usually only make up 10-15% of the actual show costs).
And camera operators, gaffers, grips, set decorators, wardrobe, makeup, all those people - they don't get anything but their daily paycheck if something goes on to do well (critically or commercially). So those people still need to be paid and make a living...and they're not by any means "great" livings....
On the post: Directors Admit They 'Steal' Ideas... But Most People Recognize That As Inspiration
Idea Stealing
There are dozens of stories over the years of boys as magicians, and therefore the "idea' of a boy wizard as a copyrightable thing is ridiculous.
Now, JK Rowling is an excellent writer, and it's not so much her idea, but the (and this is *important*) the execution of her idea and the characters within it that make it a unique and copyrightable work.
We need to get this through our thick heads, there ARE NO ORIGINAL STORIES in the world.
Indeed, if you study writing, you can boil down every story ever told to one of three archetypes (ideas!).
1. Man vs. Man
2. Man vs. Himself
3. Man vs. Nature
There are infinite variations on these ideas, but that's it. So if we take copyright protection as it's going, to it's natural end, and I copyright all stories that are "one guy vs. another guy," then I own that idea, and the rest of you owe me trillions of dollars.
But that's ridiculous, and it deprives society of the very "progress of the arts" that copyright was designed with in mind in the first place.
And to your last issue of semantics - words are not just words, words have meanings. The meanings are different. Ideas and credit are completely different. There are lines in the sand (courts) where I can copy the story of a young wizard, with a different name, place, and characters and that's totally legal. What I can't copy are the details. Harry Potter. Hagrid, Hogwarts, and the whole ilk of the details. Those all belong to Ms. Rowling.
And of course, someone else trying to take credit for an idea, unless the idea was divulged in such details as make it into the final creative work, and can be substantiated in a court, is silly as well.
Ideas, as general ideas can be taken, SHOULD be taken and used. Everyone will use them differently and therein lies the artistic genius.
On the other hand, I also speak with a lot of producers who think that our professional association (the Producers Guild of America) should be fighting tooth and nail to put DRM on every single thing producers put out (a different story... but I'll digress for a moment).
How sad it is that an industry that prides itself on being "creative" can be creative enough to reinvent itself. They're not worried about protecting creativity, they're worried about protecting out-sized paychecks. Period.
IDEAS are not copyrightable. They should not be protectable unless they meet a certain level of detail - and that's where the courts come in.
That's a tough bar to figure out where to set, and as a content creator myself, I'm not even sure where to set it, my peers all have different ideas of where to set it. Many want to make as much $$ as they can off of doing as little as possible. A few actually want to work and create new things all the time and are flattered when someone else "rips them off" (and let's be honest, it's not like someone "rippping me off" has the same dialog, same actors, same character names, same setting, etc.).
Again, take it back to those three ideas (archetypes) above. There are no original ideas, there are only new interpretations of old ideas, and those interpretations and executions are where the art (and copyright), lies.
On the post: Entertainment Industry Again Says Everyone Else Must Protect Its Business Model
Never has been an industry of innovation
Even technical advances like non-linear editing were fought tooth and nail for years (and in some cases, is STILL being fought), and again, were not advances created or moved ahead by business executives.
In terms of using technology to increase worker productivity, it amazes me how far behind and how much change is fought from top to bottom. While we use computers in offices to write things and send emails, we still have very poorly coordinated systems for managing productions and budgets, much less systems that give us new creative tools (and even if we had them, you'd be hard pressed to get people to USE them).
There's a lot of change coming, and it will take a long, long time for it to sink in or be changed from within by the new generations of people creating content with their own rules.
For a business driven by lots of folks who consider themselves "visionaries" it's amazing how short-sighted much of Hollywood really is.
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