Techdirt. Stories about "creativeamerica" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories about "creativeamerica"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Wed, 1 Feb 2012 13:08:00 PST CreativeAmerica Literally Resorts To Buying Signatures Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120131/23275917606/creativeamerica-literally-resorts-to-buying-signatures.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120131/23275917606/creativeamerica-literally-resorts-to-buying-signatures.shtml funded by the major studios, staffed by former MPAA employees, and has had all the major studios directly pushing employees and partners to sign up for the program -- even to the point of threatening to take away business if they don't sign.

This is also the group that was caught copying an anti-SOPA activism letter, and using the exact same words as if it was written by themselves (I guess they're fine with plagiarism). It's also been caught using funny math to pump up its tiny number of supporters.

In December, we joked that CreativeAmerica had resorted to buying support, after it released a big (and expensive) advertising campaign all over TV and on some big screens in Times Square. Not exactly a "grass roots" operation.

Either way, it appears the group has gone more direct now: to the point that it's literally paying people for signatures. I've received very credible evidence, that a consulting firm hired by CreativeAmerica is now offering to pay people to get signatures on CreativeAmerica's petition. The following email was forwarded to me, with some details redacted to protect privacy:
the organization I am doing work for is Creative America, which is a grassroots organization that is working to stop foreign rogue websites from illegally distributing American content such as books, music, films, etc.... These specific websites costs the U.S. and the 2.2 million middle class industry workers $5.5 billion in wages and hundreds of thousands of jobs. Your job would be just collecting signatures from whoever is interested in signing up for updates. A newsletter may come once a month and anyone can unsubscribe if they don’t want it. We don’t care if they do; all I care about is getting initial signups.

The hours are flexible and we will pay you $1/signature, so if you collect 100 signatures a week, we would pay you $100/week. We will also pay for you to go to local film festivals in the area (SXSW, Austin Film Festival, etc.). We are also taking as many people as possible, so if you have some friends who are interested in doing it we can take them as well. Let me know your thoughts....
This raises even more questions about the already anemic number of people supporting CreativeAmerica and its pro-SOPA, pro-PIPA, MPAA-driven agenda. As the email makes clear, they're willing to pay as many people as possible to get signatures to make the group look larger than it is. That's pretty crazy. I think we can be pretty sure that the millions of people who spoke out against SOPA/PIPA did so without someone paying them $1 per call or email.

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]]> grassroots! http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120131/23275917606 Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:28:06 PST Hollywood Astroturf Group Releases Ad Saying It Needs SOPA To Shut Down Megaupload... Five Days After Megaupload Is Shut Down Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120125/03500717535/hollywood-astroturf-group-releases-ad-saying-it-needs-sopa-to-shut-down-megaupload-five-days-after-megaupload-is-shut-down.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120125/03500717535/hollywood-astroturf-group-releases-ad-saying-it-needs-sopa-to-shut-down-megaupload-five-days-after-megaupload-is-shut-down.shtml astroturfing group that pretends it's a "grassroots" operation -- but which is funded by the major Hollywood studios and run by former studio/MPAA execs -- is amazingly inept at communicating with the public, especially considering these guys are supposed to be communications experts. Remember, this is the same group who, while fighting for stronger laws against copying, flat out copied the email of anti-SOPA activists, and changed a few words to push their own pro-SOPA message.

Their latest move is even more bizarre. The group is touting its latest slickly produced propaganda film, insisting that SOPA/PIPA are needed for a variety of reasons -- almost none of which are true. It throws out the bogus claim of jobs being at risk, even though the evidence shows otherwise. But where it gets totally ridiculous is that the video focuses mostly on Megaupload and Kim Dotcom/Schmitz. The point of focusing on Megaupload? To claim that it can't be reached under existing law. Seriously. It talks about Megaupload for a while (claiming that it brings in $300 million per year -- which turns out to be 10x the actual number, by the way) and then says:
US law enforcement is only permitted to shut down US-based IP addresses. Overseas sites, like Megaupload and Megavideo, and the Swedish-based Pirate Bay, are out of reach.
Yes. And they're releasing this video five whole days after the US government showed that existing laws actually do allow them to reach Megaupload and shut it down. So, um, why do we need these new laws again?

Seriously, the video shows the level of lies that CreativeAmerica and the MPAA will spread to try to pass new, even broader laws. What's stunning is how blatant they are about it, releasing this video even after events from a week ago already proved it wrong.

Furthermore, almost everything else in that sentence is wrong, beyond just the idea that Megaupload was supposedly out of reach of US law enforcement. Current law enforcement can seize US domains, which are different from IP addresses. And, even more ridiculously, in the video, right before they claim that US law enforcement can't reach foreign sites... they show a clip of TVShack.net -- a UK-based site that the government seized and shut down (and is now trying to extradite its founder, student Richard O'Dwyer).

Why must CreativeAmerica lie? Perhaps because the facts just aren't on its side.

The video has a number of other problems. It relies heavily on Erik Barnett, Deputy Director for ICE, regularly seen in various press releases about ICE's program of illegally censoring websites. It really makes you wonder why a government official is appearing in a video for a lobbying group trying to pass new laws. Perhaps it's not illegal, but it certainly raises serious questions about the cozy relationship between ICE and the MPAA. Barnett has a history of being less than truthful about ICE activities. Last summer, you may remember, he flat out lied, in claiming that none of the sites seized by ICE were challenging the seizures, when he knew that a bunch of sites had already brought up challenges.

Now Barnett is claiming that this program of seizing domains without any due process is a huge success because they seized "the nine most popular content theft sites out there." Even ignoring the misuse of the word "theft" (shouldn't law enforcement know how to use the word properly?), this is laughable. I mean, elsewhere in the video, they claim that TPB and Megaupload are the two most popular, but they weren't seized when the video was made. Instead, what ICE seized was a bunch of hip hop blogs (that weren't even that big), including one that it held for a year before the Justice Department was forced to effectively admit that ICE totally screwed up and the domain had to be returned. Other domains are still being held in this manner as well. The fact that Barnett would flat out lie and pretend that this program of blatant censorship is some sort of big success... in an industry propaganda film, certainly raises some significant questions about ICE and how it's run these days.

The video has some other laughable moments... such as talking to Bruce Leddy, the writer/director of the film Wedding Weekend (originally called "Sing Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace" or "Shut Up And Sing"), who freaks out over the fact that his movie was available online, and is decrying all of the "losses." A couple problems with this. Wedding Weekend was apparently a terrible movie. The movie made a grand total of $15,998 on its opening weekend on 11 screens, and was out of theaters a week later, grossing a grand total of $20,903. And it wasn't because of infringement. It was because most people thought it was awful. Most of the professional reviews make it sound pretty bad, using words and phrases like "uneven," "less tolerable," "clunky narration," "one-trait characterizations," "the title is the least of the film's problems," etc. User reviews are more harsh. Over at Rotten Tomatoes one user notes:
This film is horrible. It has no redeeming features what so ever. I could criticise every single aspect of this film but I can't be bothered, it would be quicker for me to tell you about what is good about it. So here it goes, the only good thing about this film is that it has damaged the careers of everyone who worked on it. Hopefully. Never have I wanted to punch every single person on screen....
Somehow, I get the feeling that its availability online was the least of its problems. I'd be surprised if it actually got that many downloads at all. Meanwhile, we keep hearing stories of smart filmmakers embracing the internet, and giving people reasons to buy (starting with a better quality movie). He claims, "there's no recourse," but that's ridiculous. One only needs to look at the experiences of Louis CK to know that, even if your videos end up on torrent sites, if you handle it properly, you can still cash in. Leddy's failure to make a good movie and his subsequent failure to put in place a good business model is no excuse for passing a bad law with massive unintended consequences.

Still, this really shows the incredible desperation of the MPAA, though. The astroturf group it has created is really reaching in its efforts to come up with some sort of justification for SOPA/PIPA...

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]]> you-guys-make-me-laugh http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120125/03500717535 Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:41:07 PST Creative America Restocks... Hires Former DHS/ICE Spokesperson Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120121/01515617498/creative-america-restocks-hires-former-dhsice-spokesperson.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120121/01515617498/creative-america-restocks-hires-former-dhsice-spokesperson.shtml astroturf group that keeps pretending that it's a "grassroots" group. It was setup mainly to push for SOPA/PIPA in an attempt to pretend that "normal people" rather than just Hollywood fatcats supports SOPA/PIPA. Just one problem: it was so obviously run by Hollywood fatcats that no one ever took it seriously. It was slickly produced, was backed by the big studios, and all the big movie studios promoted it directly as well. Its executive director, Mike Nugent, came directly from Disney, where he was the company's Senior VP of anti-piracy. Meanwhile, its "communications director," Craig Hoffman came straight from... you guessed it... the MPAA. And before that he worked at Warner Bros. Grassroots!

Well, it seems they knew they were missing out on one key ingredient to prove just how "grassroots" they were... so they went over the law enforcement side of things, snapping up one Chris Ortman from Homeland Security. Yes, the same Homeland Security responsible for abusing copyright laws to illegally seize and censor websites for over a year under no legal basis.

Yes, that's right folks, the group that is pretending to be grassroots, but is really an astroturf organization -- which has bent over backwards to insist that SOPA/PIPA were not about censorship at all -- has hired someone from the very US government agency that has been using similar copyright laws to seize and censor websites. Perhaps his nickname is "grassroots"?

And the group wonders why actual artists aren't buying what they're selling. Perhaps rather than staffing it with former studio execs, MPAA lackeys and law enforcement censors... why not try actual content creators next time? Oh, perhaps it's because lots of actual content creators know that SOPA/PIPA are bad ideas.

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]]> joe-grassroots? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120121/01515617498 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:52:05 PST CreativeAmerica Denies Copying; Inadvertently Shows Why SOPA/PIPA Are Dangerous Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120111/17552517380/creativeamerica-denies-copying-inadvertently-shows-why-sopapipa-are-dangerous.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120111/17552517380/creativeamerica-denies-copying-inadvertently-shows-why-sopapipa-are-dangerous.shtml copied an anti-PIPA organizing email from Public Knowledge, and "remixed" it to make it a pro-PIPA organizing email from this MPAA-set up astroturf group. It was obviously directly copied text. The style and the text were so close, there was no way that it was developed independently. And yet... CreativeAmerica is now insisting it did it on its own and is pretending that people are complaining about the idea of the email:
But that's not the case, said Craig Hoffman, a Creative America spokesman. He said Creative America did not copy Public Knowledge's email but was just encouraging supporters to get in touch with their senators, a common strategy.

"It's a standard organizing technique," Hoffman said.
Either Hoffman didn't understand what happened or he's being purposely misleading (neither of which makes CreativeAmerica look very competent). No one is complaining about them sending out an email urging supporters to contact Senators. What they're complaining about is that the text is almost identical, and uses the same three bullet points that folks at Public Knowledge admit they "over-edited" internally, including a long discussion that turned what had formerly been a paragraph into three separate bullet points.

But, ironically, Creative America's insistence that it didn't copy the email demonstrates one of the many problems with SOPA and PIPA. It's that reasonable people might disagree over whether or not something is infringing. I'm pretty damn sure that CreativeAmerica copied PK's email. But they say they didn't. Now, under SOPA/PIPA, with its "shoot first, admit you shot the wrong dead guy later" approach to censorship... that would be a problem for CreativeAmerica. Isn't it a better situation when you guarantee that everyone gets to make their case before we cut sites off...

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]]> private-right-of-action? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120111/17552517380 Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:06:17 PST CreativeAmerica Copies Content To Support Anti-Copying Bills Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120110/10592617366/creativeamerica-copies-content-to-support-anti-copying-bills.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120110/10592617366/creativeamerica-copies-content-to-support-anti-copying-bills.shtml astroturf group that the big Hollywood studios set up, pretending that it was a "grassroots" campaign (even though its grassroots efforts aren't turning up many supporters). For a group that positions itself as being really strongly pro-stronger, more draconian copyright, you would think that it would be careful to, you know, not copy others, right? But, really, what's a little copying among people lobbying over bills about the evils of copying?

Yes, it appears that the good folks at CreativeAmerica just happened to notice that the large and growing anti-SOPA/PIPA forces have mobilized the public to go out to various town hall meetings for Senators to protest PIPA... and they decided, "Hey, we should do that!" But, rather than creating their own campaign, and doing the legwork (and, trust me, there's a lot of legwork involved) to actually compile the list of townhalls and then to craft an email to supporters... it seems that CreativeAmerica thought it would be easier to just copy someone else's... and... um... "remix" it.

You can see the email that Public Knowledge sent to people protesting PIPA here. And, here is the email that CreativeAmerica just sent to people urging them to go to the same town hall meetings in support of PIPA. You... may notice some similarities. Here are the two emails side by side. Yes, they made some changes.... er... remixes... but it's pretty obvious that CreativeAmerica just took PK's email and made a few edits. It's especially obvious when you look at the 3 point list of instructions... which is almost word-for-word.

click for larger version
As for the two meetup groups... you can see Public Knowledge's town hall meetup here and you can see CreativeAmerica's here. It seems pretty clear that CreativeAmerica simply scraped and copied PK's. So creative!

Of course, we have no problem with this general kind of building on the works of others. We consider such remixing and building on the works of others a true form of creativity. We just find it a wee bit (well, actually, more than that) hypocritical for an organization set up by the big movie studios for the express purpose of pushing for heftier punishment for those who copy... to then go and copy stuff themselves. Paraphrasing the critics in our own comments: What's wrong, CreativeAmerica, can't you create your own works here? Why do you have to "steal" the work of other people who actually did the work?

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]]> please,-we-prefer-remix http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120110/10592617366 Thu, 8 Dec 2011 16:07:36 PST Entertainment Industry Still Can't Get Grassroots Support For SOPA/PIPA, Resorts To Trying To Buy Support Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/03011717005/entertainment-industry-still-cant-get-grassroots-support-sopapipa-resorts-to-trying-to-buy-support.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111208/03011717005/entertainment-industry-still-cant-get-grassroots-support-sopapipa-resorts-to-trying-to-buy-support.shtml astroturfing operation set up by the major Hollywood studios, pretending to be "grassroots." Of course, as we've noted, they can't seem to find very many supporters at all. In the entire month of November, when there was a ton of news about these issues, it appears that a grand total of 161 new people signed up for its letter-to-Congress offering. In contrast to that, folks protesting SOPA were able to get over a million emails sent to Congress and over 87,000 phone calls in just one day. And how did that happen? Because those of us opposed to SOPA and PROTECT IP just asked our communities, and they did so.

The major Hollywood Studios do the same... and they get 161 new supporters over an entire month. It's kinda pitiful, but it really shows how little the public supports Hollywood in this campaign to censor the internet.

Either way, it appears that Hollywood is now trying to do what it does best: buy support. Since its efforts to just rally the troops directly has failed miserably, it's kicking off a big ad campaign, buying TV commercial spots on both broadcast and cable TV. The commercial itself is incredibly misleading and repeats a bunch of the standard myths:
It also goes with the standard scare tactics of "evil content theft." It's amazing that the industry bigwigs still haven't figured out that no one believes that claim (well, other than some folks in Congress). Either way, it's yet another example of the stark contrast in how the public views this bill. Those in favor have to buy their support, while those opposed just talk to people and tons of people speak out. One of these days, perhaps folks in Congress will realize that these people vote.

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]]> buying-support-is-all-they-know http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111208/03011717005 Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:28:04 PST NBC Universal Threatens Partners That They Need To Sign 'Grassroots' Support Of SOPA/PIPA Or It Might Have To Drop Them Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111128/10175516914/nbc-universal-threatens-partners-that-they-need-to-sign-grassroots-support-sopapipa-it-might-have-to-drop-them.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111128/10175516914/nbc-universal-threatens-partners-that-they-need-to-sign-grassroots-support-sopapipa-it-might-have-to-drop-them.shtml astroturfing group set up by the major Hollywood studios, pretending to be a "grassroots effort" in favor of SOPA & PIPA. A month ago, we challenged the group's claim that it had "sent 100,000 letters to Congress." Turns out that wasn't true. They had sent 4,191, and then about 33,000 people had "signed a petition" that the group had set up. The math by CreativeAmerica is that each thing sent out three letters: one to your Congressional Representative and one to each of your two Senators. Of course, petitions are mostly ignored. Letters have only slightly more weight -- and based on Creative America's own math, they really only had about 1,400 people sign their letter.

Either way, it seemed somewhat amusing to discover that some of the top execs at NBC Universal have been threatening all NBC Universal suppliers to sign the letter that CreativeAmerica put together or NBC might no longer be able to do business with them:
We are writing to ask you for help on an issue that is one our top business priorities – content theft on the Internet, which is a major threat to the strength of our business. Our major guilds and unions are joining us in the fight to keep our businesses strong so that the tidal wave of content theft does not kill jobs. But if the current trend continues, it’s not too strong to say that this threat could adversely affect our business relationship with you.
Grassroots effort? When NBC Universal's General Counsel, Rick Cotton -- who famously once claimed that piracy was destroying the lowly corn farmer, since people who watch pirated movies don't eat popcorn (or something) -- is threatening suppliers who don't sign on? That's not grassroots. That's just insane. Now, it's true that Cotton wrote this carefully such that you can read it to suggest it means that if this law doesn't pass, NBC Universal's business will be in so much trouble that it has to shut down or cut off deals with suppliers. But it seems pretty clear that the obvious implication is: sign this or we may no longer do business with you.

But, given that "the big guns" at NBC Universal are pushing all their suppliers to directly sign (or else!) the letter found at CreativeAmerica's site, you might think that a lot more people would have signed on. Especially over the last month, with SOPA making so much news. So we went and checked.
It appears that 4,673 letters have been sent. A month ago it was 4,191. That's a grand total of 482 new letters sent since we last checked almost a month ago. That means in a month, with this story making major news every which way... and the major studios putting a lot of marketing muscle behind it and even threatening partners to sign on, they only rustled up 482 more signatures. And, since CreativeAmerica claims that each person who signs really sends 3 letters, we should divide that by three.

That gives us 161 new signatures (actually 160.666666 etc -- which makes me wonder what happened to that extra third of a person). 161. In a month.

Meanwhile, a real grassroots campaign turned out one million emails to Congress and 87,834 calls in one day. It should be clear at this point that the public clearly does not support SOPA/PIPA, and no amount of "faking it" is driving any public support.

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]]> this-is-getting-sad http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111128/10175516914 Wed, 2 Nov 2011 08:17:15 PDT Hollywood Front Group Rounds Up 4,000 Letters Sent To Congress, Pretending It's 100,000 Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111101/22565216586/hollywood-front-group-rounds-up-4000-letters-sent-to-congress-pretending-its-100000.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111101/22565216586/hollywood-front-group-rounds-up-4000-letters-sent-to-congress-pretending-its-100000.shtml highly questionable accounting practices, and apparently that carries over into their attempts to show "support" for censoring the internet via PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE. A few weeks ago, we wrote about the totally bogus group CreativeAmerica, which is an astroturfing group set up by the major Hollywood studios, pretending to be a "grassroots" group. Dig a little, and you'll find that CreativeAmerica was actually set up by Disney, Warnber Bros., NBC Universal, Viacom, Fox and Sony Pictures. "Grassroots" that is not. It's made even more obvious by the fact that the folks at CreativeAmerica don't even hide it. If this were really an upstart grassroots campaign, would NBC Universal hand out its mugs to employees, and if it were really an upstarts grassroots campaign, would 20th Century Fox put up a giant banner on its studio lot for the group?

The answer is no. Anyone who takes a few seconds to investigate recognizes that this is a slick studio-run operation... from the same studios that use creative math to never pay royalties to actors in even some of the most successful movies of all time.

So is it really any surprise that they're playing fast and loose with the facts when it comes to puffing up their support. Yesterday, CreativeAmerica (and the MPAA) hyped up on Twitter that members had sent over 100,000 letters to Congress in support of PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE. Of course, if you actually went to CreativeAmerica's website, where the letter generator existed (and, again, unlike all of the letter generators for those against these bills, on CreativeAmerica's site, no creativity is allowed -- you can only send their exact message) you see the following:
I'm pretty sure I can count. And, um, 4,191 appears to be just a bit short of 100,000. Well, it actually appears to be 95,809 short. And while it might be okay to round up if you were actually getting close, I don't think rounding up from 4,000 to 100,000 is particularly honest. Two of our regular contributors challenged the studio-run CreativeAmerica on this, and they were both told that CreativeAmerica was also counting the people who signed a Change.org petition. First of all, a petition is not a letter. They're two separate things. So that seems a bit misleading. But, okay, in the spirit of giving Hollywood a fighting chance here, even if we grant them the petition signatures, a look at the actual petition shows the following:
Okay, that's 33,000 more signatures. Even if we take all of these at face value, we're at just about 37,500 signatures. Again, even at that point you can't round up to 100,000. Well, I mean, you can, but it makes you a blatantly intellectually dishonest liar. CreativeAmerica: creative about numbers, apparently.

Oh, and let's just take a look at the "reasons why people signed" the petition that CreativeAmerica is so proud of. It looks like almost half of the people who chose to leave a message are asking how to "unsign" the petition, because they didn't realize that the group was an astroturf group looking to go against the best interests of actual artists. Here are a few examples:




So, it seems like a bunch of the folks who "signed" the petition are now asking to back out. Just for the sake of comparison, I spoke to the folks at Demand Progress to find out how many letters they had sent... and the answer is 100,000 in the last week alone, and they have the stats to prove it. On top of that, the Fight for the Future guys have been able to get over 80,000 people to sign petitions. So if we just look at that (and note that the CreativeAmerica campaign has been going on for much more than a week), it seems like CreativeAmerica is taking after its corporate masters on PROTECT IP/E-PARASITE: ignore what the data actually says and lie, lie, lie... all the way up to Capitol Hill.

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]]> hollywood-math http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111101/22565216586