Techdirt. Stories about "paramount"

Filmmaker Behind The Pirate Bay Documentary Says Bogus DMCA Takedowns Take Away His Free Speech

Mike Masnick — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:01:43 PDT

We just wrote about how major Hollywood studios had included links to the freely available, Creative Commons-licensed documentary, TPB AFK, in a bunch of bogus DMCA notices to Google, meaning that perfectly legitimate links were likely being removed. The director of that film, Simon Klose, has now responded with an open letter in the form of a video, where he notes that this is a clear violation of his free speech. He points out that there are basically two possibilities. First, that these studios are purposely trying to censor a film about The Pirate Bay, which highlights the civil liberties questions raised by the studios legal pursuit of the founders of the site, and second, that their technology for finding infringing content absolutely sucks. He points out that neither of these situations is a good one. The first one sounds crazy, but, as he notes, not quite as crazy as some of the things that were revealed in the film, such as Warner Bros. hiring the lead investigator in the case while the investigation was still ongoing. But even if it was an accident, that doesn't change the fact that his legitimate content was being blocked from Google, and he considers it a free speech issue.

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Major Hollywood Studios All Sent Bogus DMCA Takedowns Concerning The Pirate Bay Documentary

Mike Masnick — Mon, 20 May 2013 13:13:00 PDT

We see so many bogus DMCA takedowns, and we hear the big copyright holders insisting that it's just an accident each and every time -- and not to worry about the collateral damage and censorship it leads to. So it seems interesting that TorrentFreak has uncovered a series of bogus DMCA takedown notices to Google from four different giant Hollywood players -- Viacom, Paramount (owned by Viacom), Fox and Lionsgate -- that each ask it to remove links to Simon Klose's excellent documentary about The Pirate Bay TPB AFK. As TorrentFreak notes, Fox, via DtecNet (another total failure for the "six strikes" company), asked Google to remove a link to the movie on Mechodownload. Viacom asked for links to be removed to the movie on Mrworldpremiere and Rapidmovies. Lionsgate asked for to remove a link to the movie from The Pirate Bay of all places. Needless to say, all of these were authorized copies that the movie studios were seeking to have hidden.

Beyond the obvious concern about censoring a movie that shows, perhaps, a more sympathetic side of the TPB crew and their legal situation, these kinds of take downs serve another, more nefarious purpose: making sure there is less value for authorized works on these various sites. You hear it all the time from these companies that these sites are "all bad" and must be taken down. Having authorized content really looks bad, so it's nice for them that they can remove it by filing bogus DMCA claims with no real recourse. No wonder the MPAA is so vehement that it shouldn't need to consider fair use before sending bogus takedowns.

Yes, I'm sure these were all just more "accidents" but the impact is very real. For struggling filmmakers like Klose, having authorized copies of his film removed from Google has a serious impact. Copyright maximalists never seem concerned in the slightest about the collateral damage on the people who have actually learned to use these platforms well. They prefer to protect those who fight against new systems of distribution, while harming those who have succeeded in using them.

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Hollywood Accounting Strikes Again: Investors In 29 Paramount Films That Earned $7 Billion Dollars Get No Return

Mike Masnick — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 08:03:44 PST

Ah, Hollywood copyright math. In the past, we've discussed a few instances of how massively profitable films use funny accounting tricks in order to avoid ever having to show an official profit, even as the studios themselves make out nicely. The key trick: the studios set up special subsidiaries just for each film, and then charge those subsidiaries huge sums of money for effectively doing very little. Thus, the studio gets all the money, but the actual "film" is shown as remaining in the red.

The latest example of this in action involves a group of investors who gave $375 million to Paramount Pictures expecting to see some return on blockbusters like Mission: Impossible III, Blades of Glory and the Transformers series. All in all, those $375 million dollars found their way into 29 movies, many of which were massively successful. In total, the collection of films brought in $7 billion dollars worldwide. And... Paramount didn't pay a single dime out to those investors, until they were finally taken to court.

The financiers charged Paramount with understating gross receipts, delaying payments, overstating production and distribution costs and hindering audit rights to verify revenue and costs with the films that Melrose II had funded. The plaintiff also had a bone to pick with how revenue from Melrose II-funded films was being received through Paramount parent Viacom, not Paramount, and how money was flowing. For instance, Paramount allegedly paid sister company MTV as a third-party participant for Nacho Libre and Charlotte's Web.

In reaction to the claims, Paramount initially described the lawsuit as "filled with hyperbole" and claimed that it "ignores the true facts."

Later, Paramount characterized the investors as being impatient. "Based on the performance of the films in which it invested, Melrose II is expected to make a double-digit return on its investment," the studio alleged.

Perhaps hoping to keep the mysteries of Hollywood accounting secret, Paramount has now worked out a "settlement" with the investors, just as hearings were about to begin. It seems likely that Paramount coughed up some money to keep the investors happy... and to keep from having to provide to the court information on how the money flowed, where all of us would have seen some more details of the infamous Hollywood accounting practices.

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Hollywood Studio IP Addresses Sharing Hollywood Movies Via BitTorrent

Mike Masnick — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:54:37 PST

The folks over at TorrentFreak teamed up with BitTorrent monitoring firm Scaneye to look and see if files being shared via BitTorrent happened to be coming from some IP addresses held by the big Hollywood studios... and they found what appears to be tons of Hollywood flicks shared from Hollywood studio IP addresses. Of course, plenty of caveats apply: it's possible that these are super ham-fisted honeypots for copyright trolling, in which they're recording the IP addresses of downloaders. It's possible that the system is wrong. It's possible that the IP address information is wrong. But... it's also possible that some employees at these studios are (whether on purpose or not) using BitTorrent and sharing films -- sometimes films from other studios. For example, they found a Paramount Pictures IP address sharing Happy Feet, which is a Warner Bros. film. In the end, there could be any number of reasons they were able to find these results, but given that when the shoe is on the other foot, the studios and other copyright holders seem to insist that a single IP address is proof positive of liability, doesn't it seem reasonable to question the studios about this bit of evidence as well?

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Budweiser Asks Paramount To Remove Their Beer From The Movie Flight

Timothy Geigner — Thu, 8 Nov 2012 13:21:20 PST

As product placement in television and film becomes more prevalent, it was only a matter of time before intellectual property silliness had to follow. For example, we've seen such wonderful cases of egocentrism as a copyright claim over a painting shown in a movie. Couple that with product placement examples that are awkward for all involved and you've got a recipe for litigious fun not seen since a murder trial involving a former Buffalo Bills running back.

Reader Chris writes in about a story that appears to be a nice crossroads of these two aspects of product placement, in which several alcohol companies are apparently upset that their products are being shown in the movie Flight doing what those products do: get people drunk.

Anheuser-Busch said Monday that it has asked Paramount Pictures Corp. to obscure or remove the Budweiser logo from the film, which at one point shows Washington's character drinking the beer while behind the wheel.

Budweiser is hardly the only alcoholic beverage shown in "Flight," which earned $25 million in its debut weekend and is likely to remain popular with audiences. Washington's character frequently drinks vodka throughout the film, with several different brands represented. William Grant & Sons, which distributes Stolichnaya in the United States, also said it didn't license its brand for inclusion in the film and wouldn't have given permission if asked.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Why didn't the film get permission to use the products in their film?" The answer is about as complicated as a straight line; they don't have to. Studios are not required to ask for permission to include every little brand in their movies -- even if some companies now think that's the case. True, Denzel Washington's character in the film is a drunk and Budweiser may not be pleased to be associated with that aspect of the story, but the law isn't concerned about Budweiser's pleasure. Trademark law isn't about making sure you're always happy about how your product is displayed.

Even going beyond trademark law, it's not like they were "misrepresenting" anything. I, for one, can assure you that the depiction of beer being able to get a person hammered is spot on accurate, and if you won't take my word for it, I'll give you the phone numbers of some of my neighbors who can relate their experiences living near me on NFL Sundays. The point is that there's a reason these companies didn't give their permission: nobody asked them for it.

Trademark laws "don't exist to give companies the right to control and censor movies and TV shows that might happen to include real-world items," said Daniel Nazer, a resident fellow at Stanford Law School's Fair Use Project. "It is the case that often filmmakers get paid by companies to include their products. I think that's sort of led to a culture where they expect they'll have control. That's not a right the trademark law gives them."

Jay Dougherty, a professor at Loyola Law School, said the use of brands in films has generally been protected by the courts, even when the companies aren't pleased with the portrayals. "It wouldn't have been as effective a film if they used a bunch of non-generic brands," said Dougherty, who is also the director of the school's Entertainment & Media Law Institute. "In a normal situation, if the alcohol were just there as a smaller part of the movie, they might have created an artificial brand for it."

Unfortunately, with the wonderful garden of permission culture that IP laws have fertilized so well for us, companies think they can control...and control...and control. But just because sometimes filmmakers seek out product placement, that doesn't mean that all brand appearances need to first receive approval. Thankfully, thus far, the courts have recognized that they cannot keep their products out of film this way. Now let's all go have a non-generic beer.

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Director Sues Paramount And Universal After Both Deny Knowing Who Holds The Rights To His Film

Mike Masnick — Tue, 29 May 2012 08:38:00 PDT

Rob Hyndman points us to the bizarre story of director William Friedkin, perhaps most well known for directing both The French Connection and The Exorcist in the early 1970s. However, right now he's in a bit of a legal dispute with both Paramount and Universal studios, who co-produced the film that came after both of those films, called Sorcerer. While not a box office success, apparently there's a fair bit of interest in the film these days, and there have been requests for Friedkin to screen it, and for him to appear and talk about it. However, Paramount and Universal both seem confused about who holds what rights -- and while both seem to claim some rights to the film, neither seems to know what those are (and at least Paramount claims it no longer can find a print of the film, though Friedkin says he has his own). Friedkin finally decided to sue to force the companies to clarify who holds what rights. There's also the separate issue that, despite a profit participation deal with the film, neither studio has actually provided him with an accounting statement in 20 years. From the filing, which is embedded below:

Friedkin is the director and producer of the 1977 motion picture Sorcerer.... Friedkin is also a profit participant in the Picture, and owns a print. Although Defendants Paramount... and Universal... have previously had certain rights to exploit the Picture in the United States, each has recently disclaimed rights to exploit the Picture in the United States, and admitted ignorance as to who, if anyone, currently has such rights. Bafflingly, however, defendants persist in denying that Friedkin has any rights to exploit the Picture. Friedkin has filed this action to obtain a declaration as to the parties' respective rights in the Picture.

It does seem fairly crazy that such an issue should end up in court, and it appears the court thinks so too. While the original was filed in California State Court, recently it was removed to federal court by the defendants, and the court immediately directed them to its alternative dispute resolution (ADR) program in the hopes that this gets settled outside of litigation. Either way, it seems like a pretty crazy situation where the studios deny the filmmaker the right to show the film, while at the same time refusing to explain what rights they do have in the film.

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Is Selling Your Ultraviolet Code Copyright Infringement?

Zachary Knight — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 05:05:00 PDT

We have written many times about one of Hollywood's latest attempts at adapting to the modern digital age, Ultraviolet. Unfortunately for Hollywood studios, this service is not well received by people who have tried to use it. So what is someone to do with those unwanted free Ultraviolet codes that come in movie combo packs? You know, the Bluray, DVD and digital box sets that most movies come in. According to the Consumerist, one creative customer took to selling his unwanted digital copies on eBay. Unfortunately for him, eBay flagged his auction as copyright infringement and threatened his account if he listed it again.

This rightly confused him. After all, he was the legal owner of that unwanted, unused Ultraviolet redemption code. How could it be copyright infringement to sell that code to someone else, if you aren't using it? Selling or handing off that code is no different than selling or giving away the DVD copy that you would not use. Additionally, he pointed out many more eBay auctions doing the exact same thing, selling unwanted Ultraviolet codes.

What may make his case unique over the others is that he is selling a code for the recently released Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol. Since the movie has only been out for a few days now, Paramount may be working overtime to make sure that people are only buying the retail packages rather than just the digital version. Even if Paramount's end goal is to promote retail sales of the movie, flagging these sales as copyright infringement is tantamount to copyfraud.

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Paramount Thinks That Louis CK Making $1 Million In 12 Days Means He's Not Monetizing

Mike Masnick — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:15:00 PDT

One of the more annoying things about debates on copyright law, is that when we talk about alternative business models that do not rely on copyright, some people feel the need to insist that this means making less money -- or, even, making no money at all. There is just this assumption that an alternative business model means something along the lines of "give it away and pray," when nothing could be further from the truth. Yet this kind of thinking is so ingrained, that even in stories of artists making a ton of money, some maximalists simply assume that they're not making any money. We saw this recently in the comments to one of our recent posts about Jonathan Coulton which talks about how he made $500k last year -- at which point, someone said that such examples are useless since no one will pay.

It appears that Paramount's "Worldwide VP of Content Protection and Outreach" Al Perry also fits into the same unthinking mode. We've already discussed Perry's recent talk to Brooklyn Law School, but there was one section that caught my eye and deserves a separate post. It comes right at the beginning:

Perry opened by noting that one has to articulate a problem before seeking to solve it, and he refers to the problem as “content theft.” He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations, and that even if people like Louis C.K. decide not to do so, that’s a choice and not a requirement.

Now that seems bizarre and totally unsupportable. Remember, Louis CK made over $1 million in just a few days -- an amount that he admits was much higher than what he would have received just for a straight up performance. In what world does going direct-to-fans, building a good relationship, automatically mean no money made at all? Not the one we're based on.

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Paramount's Post-SOPA 'Outreach' To Law Students About 'Content Theft' Still Shows An Out Of Touch Operation

Mike Masnick — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 12:32:05 PDT

You may remember, in the wake of the SOPA/PIPA fight that Paramount Pictures (a Viacom company) reached out to a bunch of top law schools, asking if it could send its "Worldwide VP of Content Protection and Outreach" (seriously), Albert Perry, to teach the students about the evils of "content theft." It appears that Brooklyn Law School took them up on the offer, and Brooklyn Law school prof Derek Bambauer wrote up some great notes on the session. The law school also had professor Jason Mazzone (author of Copyfraud and this month's Techdirt book club author) provide a "response" to Perry.

Honestly, the talking points won't surprise anyone who pays attention to this stuff. Perry argues that Hollywood is suffering massively from "content theft" and that something must be done. Mazzone, thankfully, points out that Perry is being disingenuous in using the word "theft," when it's not theft under the law or in reality. Using the word "theft" unfairly biases the discussion and ignores both the realities of copyright, and the fact that copyright is not absolute. Perry, however, can't let go of the term, apparently. You could sum of Perry's talk by basically saying "well, the big Hollywood studios are suffering, and it's everyone's fault but our own."

He literally admits that there may be more indie films and such, but that those aren't the films that anyone cares about. Instead, you see, culture will be worse off if Hollywood can't produce the next Transformers movie:

While he said he didn’t want to get into copyright math, Perry noted that the number of films released by the six major motion picture studios has dropped from 204 in 2006 to 134 in 2011.... He suggested that online infringement affects ancillary (post-box office) revenues, which isn’t captured in rosy reports of ticket sales. Perry said he doesn’t believe that infringement will wipe out content – rather, it will shift it. We’ll see more small-budget or amateur films, and fewer major studio films. These movies, he suggested, are the iconic ones that people remember and reference, so piracy may have an important cultural impact.

Of course, there are a few problems in these claims. While the big six studios may have made fewer movies, many more movies were made overall in the global economy. Just looking at the US, while the major studios released 204 movies in 2006, indies released 390. His number is off in 2011. It was actually 141 movies released by the major studios... but indies increased their release numbers to 469. So, total movies released actually grew from 2006 until 2011. That certainly suggests that everyone else in the market is figuring out how to adapt. Why should we be concerned about six companies that are unwilling to adapt? And, is that ever condescending and insulting to suggest that indie movies can't possibly have the "cultural impact" of a movie like Jack and Jill.

Perry also praised totally one-sided and misleading "education campaigns" that copyright maximalist organizations like the Copyright Alliance have been able to get into schools, ignoring things like fair use (it was also noted that Perry ignored fair use in his initial statements). It's really silly that schools are accepting industry propaganda like that to teach kids. Thankfully, more accurate alternatives are being created.

The other bit of good news in all of this is that it sounds like the students were mostly skeptical of Perry's claims, and recognize that he's exaggerating -- though it sounded like he couldn't even comprehend where they were coming from:

The discussion was impressively thoughtful and civil. The students evinced skepticism about the movie industry’s good faith and bona fides, particularly given the drafting of SOPA / PROTECT IP, and also given the recording industry’s history of suing its users. Perry pointed out that Paramount is trying hard to make content available widely, cheaply, and easily, and that the only other way of altering the reward calculus to users is to engage in enforcement against end consumers, which no one likes. He was repeatedly puzzled by the attitude of law students that infringement isn’t a big deal (since it’s unlawful), particularly when this attitude is justified by reference to movie industry profits.

In the end, while it was civil, it sounds like the same old story of Hollywood just not understanding. The profits of six organizations is of little concern to the wider social benefit, and Hollywood cannot show that there's any wider harm (because there is no such proof). Thankfully, it appears that the students (and professors) at Brooklyn Law get this important point.

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Hollywood Continues To Kill Innovation, Simply By Hinting At Criminal Prosecution Of Cyberlockers

Mike Masnick — Wed, 4 Apr 2012 09:40:00 PDT

We noted right after the US government shut down Megaupload, that it was creating massive chilling effects on all sorts of online cloud businesses -- leading some to already turn off useful services that consumers and businesses relied on.

It appears that process is continuing. Last week, Paramount's VP of "Content Protection," Alfred Perry, made a ridiculous and childish presentation in which he effectively put criminal targets on the backs of five companies, and suggested that they were all no different than Megaupload, and that the government was coming for them next: I find it amusing, by the way, that they've dropped RapidShare from the list. The company, which does offer the same basic services and gets a ton of traffic, has actually been one of the only cyberlockers who has hit back against Hollywood where it counts: with Washington DC lobbyists. RapidShare, of course, has also been found legal by multiple courts, because it follows the basic precepts of the DMCA and takes down infringing content when it discovers it. But the thing is, many (if not most) of the other sites on this list do the same thing.

The end result, however, is that the five sites on the list have been forced to go on the defensive hoping to avoid criminal prosecution with the federal government twisting everything they do to present it in the worst possible light.

MediaFire fired back at Perry, pointing out that the company is a large legitimate company run by reputable entrepreneurs, and one that has always worked with the MPAA and RIAA to stop the spread of infringing content. Similarly, PutLocker has fired back, telling TorrentFreak that Perry's comments were defamatory:

In any other industry, a person making this type of statement could be sued for libel. Funny how that works,” PutLocker Operations Officer Adrian Petroff told TorrentFreak.

“PutLocker takes a strong stand against copyright infringement and in the past year and a half we have taken down hundreds of thousands of infringing files and blocked the accounts of hundreds of repeat offenders,” adds Petroff. “PutLocker always cooperates with copyright holders and law enforcement agencies at home and abroad to uphold the rights of content producers and distributors alike.”

But the chilling effects here are very, very real. Two of the other five sites on the target list have now effectively made themselves useless for sharing legitimate files worldwide -- one of the key use cases for cyberlockers. FileServe and Wupload have turned themselves into pure backup services, rather than file sharing services, to avoid the risk of criminal prosecution.
Now, critics of these sites will rejoice in these two sites shutting down a useful feature. They'll insist that this proves either that they're "winning" the battle, or that these sites are somehow admitting that they were facilitating infringement. But that's a dangerous misreading of the situation. Were these sites used to infringe? Absolutely. But so was the VCR. So was radio. So were photocopying machines. So were DVRs. So were computers. The fact is that innovation leads to breaking down the old rules by enabling something new and useful.

And that's the real key here. Perry and the rest of the Hollywood legacy "content protection" crew freak out about 41 billion page views. What they ignore is that the reason there were 41 billion page views was because these sites were offering something useful that people wanted. But Perry isn't in the business of recognizing what the market wants. His very job title makes it clear that his job is holding back the tide. It's about "content protection" in a world where content can't be protected. If Paramount were run by execs who actually had vision and understood innovation, they'd see 41 billion pageviews and their eyes would light up at the massive opportunity. Just imagine what you could do with 41 billion pageviews? And, if you were a company like Paramount and could offer your content up legally, you'd have a huge head start over the cyberlockers. If anything is criminal here, it's the incredible shortsightedness of Paramount's execs, to spit in the face of consumers and a massive business opportunity for themselves.

Even worse, they're doing so by simply declaring innovative websites guilty of criminal charges, despite no actual charges being filed, no trial, no evidence and no chance for these companies to make their case. From a legal standpoint, this is despicable. It's standard operating procedures for a flailing, out of touch, anti-visionary company, however. It's just too bad that the world is letting a company like Paramount (and its parent company, Viacom) get away with such practices.

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More Details About Paramount's Offer To Law Schools To Teach Them About The Evils Of 'Content Theft'

Mike Masnick — Tue, 7 Feb 2012 19:20:30 PST

On Friday, we wrote about reports of Paramount Pictures sending overnight letters to a variety of universities, asking to come speak to their students about the whole SOPA/PIPA debate, and why they're all "content thieves," before asking for the students' thoughts on what Paramount should do. The whole thing seemed pretty sketchy. Either way, we've been getting more details on the letter, and have now seen three different copies of the letter -- with one copy (with identifying info redacted) embedded below. Separately, we've seen that the letters went to law schools -- and it appears that Paramount only chose to target some of the bigger name law schools. Basically, it looks like Paramount went through the top law school rankings and just sent the letter to an arbitrary number at the top. I'm curious what the reasoning is here. Why pick just law schools? And why just a few of the big names? And, if the real goal is to understand what happened with SOPA/PIPA... why target law schools at all? Those aren't the students who were heavily involved in all of this. It seems like a transparent attempt to try to convince the next generation of lawyers to come help them try to cripple the internet, rather than work towards advancing innovation.

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Paramount Wants To Talk To Students About How They're All Thieves & Then Ask For Ideas On What To Do

Mike Masnick — Fri, 3 Feb 2012 18:34:00 PST

As Hollywood struggles to come up for breath and understand the nature of what hit them last month in the SOPA/PIPA debate, it appears they're still thinking that part of this is an "education" issue -- and if they could just tell young people how evil file sharing is that everything would be good. A whole bunch of folks have been passing on variations on the news that Paramount Pictures (owned by Viacom -- one of the major backers of SOPA/PIPA) wants to go talk to college kids. A bunch of universities received:

"an overnight fedex letter from Paramount expressing the extent to which they are ‘humbled’ and ‘surprised’ by the extent of the public reaction to SOPA/PIPA and asking to come to campus to talk to faculty and students about “content theft, its challenges, and possible ways to address it."

Paramount specifically asks to give a "formal presentation followed by an open discussion period or to participate in a class session." First of all, actually having open discussions would be a good first step, because that's been lacking in this whole debate. But, I'm not sure starting off that conversation by referring to copyright infringement as "content theft" is the best way to kick things off. I know that the industry has chosen "content theft" as its moral panic phrase of the year, after they realized that the people they'd unfairly branded as "pirates" had taken back that phrase and turned it to their own advantage.

Why not hold a truly open discussion in which everyone can participate and talk about ideas as to the true nature of the problem? That discussion is happening every day out there on the "wild west" of the internet, if only the folk at the studios actually wanted to join in. Perhaps if they did so, they wouldn't be so terrified of the internet.

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Harlan Ellison Sues Again; Because No One Could Have Possibly Came Up With The Same SciFi Ideas As He Did

Mike Masnick — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:48:35 PDT

People keep telling me that I might like the books of Harlan Ellison, but I won't go near them, since the man appears to be a total and complete wackjob when it comes to intellectual property. The guy likes to sue everyone, often without much understanding of the law. He famously sued AOL a decade or so ago, after he discovered some random people online had posted some of his content on Usenet. Yes, he sued AOL because of content he found posted on Usenet. But since he found it via AOL, somehow it must be AOL's fault. A judge had initially determined that, as per the DMCA, AOL had no liability, but after another court ruled that AOL lost its DMCA safe harbors for being too slow, AOL decided to simply pay Ellison to drop the suit.

In a video from a few years back that has made the rounds time and time again, and which we've posted before, Ellison discusses how "I don't take a piss without getting paid" and bitches about all those damn amateurs undercutting his rates by giving stuff away for free. A few years ago, Ellison went legal again, suing Paramount over Star Trek. He'd written an episode of the show in 1967, and was upset that some Star Trek book included elements from that show. Oh yeah, also there was a Christmas tree ornament that was sold, and he felt he deserved a cut of the profits. As he said at the time:

It ain't about the 'principle,' friend, its (sic) about the MONEY! Pay Me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie? Hell no! I'm doing it for the 35-year-long disrespect and the money!

So it's not surprising that he's suing again. This time, he's suing 20th Century Fox and trying to stop the release of a new sci-fi movie, In Time, which he claims is a pure copy of one of his most famous works, "Repent, Harlequin! Said The Ticktockman" Of course, as we've discussed plenty of times, copyright is only supposed to cover specific expressions, and not ideas... and the "similarities" he lists certainly sound like ideas, not expressions:

Both works are said to take place in a "dystopian corporate future in which everyone is allotted a specific amount of time to live." In both works, government authorities known as a "Timekeeper" track the precise amount of time each citizen has left.

The complaint goes on to list similarities in the features of the universe as well as the plot surfaces -- the manipulation of time an individual can live, the type of death experienced by those whose time runs out, rebellion by story protagonists, and so forth.

Of course, as Julian Sanchez points out, there are lots of sci-fi stories that have a very similar storyline (perhaps even more similar), including Logan's Run and The Quantum Thief. Maybe Ellison will sue over those too.

Unfortunately, these days, courts have really blurred the line between what's an expression and what's an idea, so perhaps something comes of this. But, once again, this really is just about money... and competition. It turns out that Ellison recently sold the rights to "Repent Harlequin" and another movie is being made. So, Ellison would like to censor this competition. But, really, it's pretty ridiculous for Ellison to think that no one else could have possibly come up with similar ideas on their own. And even if they were built off that bit of an idea from his work, is it really such a problem that people created a different version of it? Does Ellison really believe that none of his work was built off ideas influenced by others?

I jumped over to Ellison's website to see if he'd put up any more colorful statements about the lawsuit (not that he'd want me to use them without paying him), but instead I find a splash page that just says:

"Why do people keep insisting that I join the 21st Century? I *LIVE* in the 21st Century! I just don't want to be bothered by the shitheads on the internet!"

Seems like such a sweet guy.

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Prop Wars: Can Paramount Prevent People From Offering Up Plans To 3D Print Movie Props?

Mike Masnick — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 12:30:56 PDT

It wasn't difficult to predict that this was coming. Late last year, we noted that it was only a matter of time until certain industries started to freak out about 3D printing, and how it would allow people to print physical items that others would claim "infringed" on original works. And, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that it's the entertainment industry that is the first to freak out. We had already noted that Gene Roddenberry's son was claiming that anyone who did a 3D printing of a Star Trek prop was infringing his rights (kinda ironic, given the nature of the Replicator device in the Star Trek universe...).

However, Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of Viacom, has taken this even further. The studio apparently sent a cease-and-desist to Todd Blatt, a mechanical engineer, who has been making 3D printable models of various movie props, sending them off to the popular 3D printing service Shapeways, and offering up the products. In this case, Paramount freaked out that he was offering a 3D printed version of the weird cube-like figure in the movie Super 8. Blatt, not wanting to get into a legal fight, took down the offered object... but the whole thing is raising questions as to whether or not Paramount has a legitimate legal claim here. As Eriq Gardner notes, this is like the Mike Tyson tattoo/Warner Bros. case in reverse.

Obviously, the creator of such a product might run into trouble depending on how the technology is packaged. "Bring home a character from Transformers" might imply a false endorsement. "Look like Angelina Jolie" might constitute a violation of the actress' publicity rights. But copyright? Is a physical re-creation of an object on-screen a derivative?

It definitely seems like a stretch, but if the entertainment industry is good at anything these days, it's stretching the meaning of copyright laws. While nothing more is likely to happen in this case, you can rest assured that this issue isn't going away, and there will almost certainly be court cases in the near future.

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Studios Apparently Would Prefer Searches Only Turn Up Pirated Copies, Rather Than A Legit Option

Mike Masnick — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:26:49 PDT

There have been some stories about how YouTube is preparing to work with a bunch of big movie studios to sell access to movies. It's been offering up some movies for a year or so, though it hasn't really caught on. The hope is that with big Hollywood pictures, people might care more. I'm not convinced it will be that big of a deal -- especially for folks who use Netflix -- but it's an easy enough thing to do. Except... apparently two of the major studios, Fox and Paramount, are balking at the deal, because they don't like that people can find unauthorized copies of their movies via Google's search functionality. This makes no sense. Basically they're saying they'd rather that when people search on their movies, that their only options are unauthorized versions, rather than having a legitimate version at the top of the list. This is not how you "compete" with unauthorized versions.

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Redbox Realizing That Caving To Hollywood On 28-Day Delay Was A Bad Idea

Mike Masnick — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 13:23:00 PST

We were pretty surprised when Redbox caved in to the Hollywood studios, and agreed to annoy its customers with a ridiculous 28-day delay. We had many commenters say that people wouldn't care and it wasn't much of a big deal. However, the company is now admitting that the 28-day delay resulted in much lower holiday rentals than it had expected. Meanwhile, the only studio that has publicly released information about how its experiments with the 28-day delay went, Paramount, has said that such delays are bad for business, as it doesn't increase sales of DVDs, and that allowing Redbox to rent movies sooner actually helped the studio (and Redbox) make more money. So why do we still have those delays?

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Paramount Sends More Bogus DMCA Takedowns On Fans Filming Transformers 3 Shoot

Mike Masnick — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:04:13 PDT

Earlier this year, there was a reasonable bit of fuss over Paramount issuing a bogus DMCA takedown on someone who had videotaped a brief snippet of the filming of the next Transformers movie, which was going on in an alleyway right outside the guy's office. It was difficult to see what sort of "copyright" violation there was here. The guy, Ben Brown, had filmed it himself, and it wasn't like it was a private set or anything. Paramount never made any sort of statement, but the video did go back up a few days later. Apparently, the over aggressive lawyers at Paramount didn't learn their lesson. Apparently, a bunch of videos that people shot themselves of filming of the movie going on in Chicago were all taken down from YouTube under DMCA claims. Again, it's difficult to see how these claims are legit -- and this is especially troubling, seeing as it comes from Paramount, which is owned by Viacom. Viacom, of course is involved in a bit of a legal battle with YouTube -- but, more importantly, in a previous legal battle over bogus Viacom DMCA takedowns, Viacom had agreed to manually review all takedown notices to avoid bogus takedowns like this one.

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A Timeline Of How The Entertainment Industry Made The File Sharing Issue Much Worse For Itself

Mike Masnick — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:14:09 PDT

A bunch of folks have sent over the various stories about how Paramount's COO, Fred Huntsberry, recently started claiming that the "new piracy threat" facing Hollywood is "digital lockers." The whole article is a bit silly in a variety of ways, not the least of which is that it's an implicit admission that Hollywood's own tactics have been a complete failure. The funny thing is that even as they're admitting it, you get the feeling they don't realize it. Let's follow the "path" which many people warned about as soon as Napster was sued:

Napster was a Silicon Valley, venture capital-funded startup that tried to bend over backwards to figure out a way for the industry to embrace it and work with it legitimately. The entertainment industry had every opportunity to work out a reasonable deal, and instead took a hardline position, suing the company effectively out of business (though the brand later lived on).
After Napster, just as many people warned, the file sharing market began to fragment and shifted to slightly more distributed operations, such as Grokster, Kazaa and Morpheus. These were a bit more difficult to work with, but all still involved company entities that had an interest in working with the entertainment industry. Once again, they were sued out of business.
After Grokster, again the market fragmented even more, and a lot of the interest shifted to BitTorrent and tracker sites. These sites were often outside of the US, and not particularly interested in working with the entertainment industry to actually set up any kind of business relationship. And, still, the industry sued to get them shut down (a process that is still ongoing), while also seeking to pass specific laws against them.
So here we are, and the market has fragmented even more and people have been driven even further underground to things like private cyberlocker sites. Hollywood is claiming that many of these sites are run by organized crime groups, though, we've yet to see any evidence to support that.

So look at the progression here. There was really one company initially, which was entirely aboveboard and open to working with the entertainment industry. At every step down the ladder -- each one pushed forward by the entertainment industry's own lawsuits and regulatory efforts -- the market becomes more fragmented and more underground, with less and less of an ability for the entertainment industry to embrace and work with them.

"Sometimes these sites look better than the legitimate sites," Huntsberry said. "That's the irony."

That's not irony, Fred, that's your company and your colleagues failing for over a decade to come up with a way to properly satisfy consumer demand.

All in all, you actually start to wonder if Hollywood has this need to make up some big scary bogeyman to keep pushing its legislative agenda of granting more and more control and taking away more and more user rights. At first it was "file sharing sites." Then those were sued out of existence. So then it was BitTorrent trackers. And now its lockers. In fact, it's amusing that as part of Huntsberry's talk he basically admitted that three strikes laws aren't enough because they don't do anything to stop these file lockers. In other words, "we fought, and are still fighting, for three strikes laws that we know are useless." It's as if the entertainment industry has to just keep pointing out some huge new threat so that the government keeps paying attention to them.

Along those lines, techflaws.org points us to a German publication's coverage of the same Huntsberry talk, and it's interesting that The Hollywood Reporter version of the story appears to have conveniently left out the part where Huntsberry blames Google for all of this (that's a Google translation of the original). In that one, he calls Google the "biggest leech." Of course, the courts recently shot down that claim, but it looks like Viacom and its subsidiaries are sticking to the claim.

What's amazing, of course, is that if the folks at Paramount and other studios and record labels stopped looking for enemies everywhere, they would have realized there were tons of opportunities to adapt and embrace these things a decade ago. But each step of the way they've made things more difficult for themselves. It's a living case study in how not to respond to a disruptive market change.

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Paramount Says 28 Day Delay On Redbox Makes No Sense; Doesn't Cannibalize DVD Sales

Mike Masnick — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:53:07 PDT

While some of the Big 6 studios have been incredibly anti-Redbox, Viacom's Paramount has always been the most reasonable towards the DVD-rental kiosk provider. So it really comes as little surprise that Paramount has announced that, after testing delayed movie releases through Redbox it sees absolutely no reason to keep delaying such releases and instead will offer new release movies on Redbox at the same time the DVD goes on sale:

"There were two conclusions we came to," said Dennis Maguire, president of Paramount Home Entertainment. "There hasn't been a cannibalization of DVD sales from Redbox, and Redbox was allowing us to expand our business and ultimately make more money" than if the studio held back its DVDs to Redbox for a period of time.

Of course, this is exactly what many people said when studios like Warner Bros., Universal and Fox demanded the 28 day release, but it's nice to at least see Paramount actually looking at the data and realizing that Redbox isn't the evil destroyer of Hollywood that some of its competitors have made it out to be.

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Viacom Still Not Getting It -- Files Bogus Takedown And Kills Some Free Transformers Buzz

Dennis Yang — Fri, 14 May 2010 07:34:33 PDT

Ben Brown and Micki Krimmel stumbled upon the filming of Transformers 3, and from their office window, watched as cars were thrown across the air for one of the scenes. That's not something you see every day, so they broke out their cameras and filmed what they were watching. Not surprisingly, they posted their videos to YouTube to share what they had seen. Brown's blog post about witnessing the filming was filled with exuberant excitement, including the YouTube video. Except, now if you click play on that video, you get this:

Yes, it appears Paramount promptly filed a DMCA takedown -- which seems like a fantastic way to kill excitement for the movie. According to the takedown, Brown's video "matched third party content," which, of course, is impossible since Transformers 3 has yet to be finished (let alone released) and obviously Brown took the video himself. The filming took place in a public alley, so anyone around is totally free to take pictures or video and share them.

Now, not only is it ridiculous to claim that these videos are covered under Paramount's copyright, it's hard to fathom why Paramount would want to bother quashing these videos at all. After Brown and Krimmel posted their videos, entertainment blogs picked the story up and started to build buzz about the movie. Isn't that a good thing? Personally, I really disliked the last Transformers movie, and this latest round of DMCA shenanigans isn't doing a very good job of convincing me to give the next installment another look.

On top of that, this is Paramount we're talking about -- which is a subsidiary of Viacom. Viacom, of course, is in the middle of a big lawsuit with YouTube, where one of the things Viacom has been claiming is that Google should just know what content is infringing and which is not -- and yet, here, again, Viacom is falsely claiming that videos infringe. This was actually a big problem in the lawsuit, where Viacom had to withdraw clips from the lawsuit, after it was determined that Viacom had uploaded them on purpose. Also, after being sued for bogus takedowns earlier, Viacom came to an agreement with the EFF that it would carefully review content before issuing takedowns. So, with all of that combined, you would think that Viacom would be a bit more careful than to take down videos taken by others of something happening in public.

In the meantime, to make things even more confusing, while Paramount issued a takedown on Brown's video, it apparently left Krimmel's up... for now, despite being basically the same thing. You can see that one (while it lasts) here:

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OK, Hollywood Learns A Scary Lesson From 'Paranormal Activity'

Michael Ho — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 04:35:16 PST

A few weeks back, I noted that the low-budget (but highly-profitable) Paranormal Activity movie might teach Paramount a thing or two about how the business of making movies could succeed without spending millions on big stars and overly-expensive sets. However, it doesn't look like that was the lesson learned here. Paramount's CEO Philippe Dauman was recently interviewed about the success of the movie and talked about plans to make a sequel that he said would require the right marketing to ensure a benefit to Paramount. There's also the following insight into Dauman's strategy:

Asked by an analyst if the "Paranormal" model of a low-cost, high-box office film could be easily replicated with other releases, he said no, pointing to how much time passed between similar surprise hit "The Blair Witch Project" and "Paranormal."

So apparently, the decade that passed between Blair Witch and Paranormal makes for some kind of justification that low-budget movies can't be made profitably at will. Um. But couldn't that decade also be interpreted to mean that a studio should want to try more low-budget productions, more frequently? I can certainly understand that Paramount might not want to adopt a "throw everything at the wall to see what sticks" kind of business model for its movies. However, the existence of two huge box office hits that were produced for a pittance sounds more like proof that such a business model could work -- not a "lightning sometimes strikes twice" argument against making low-cost movies. But on the other hand, looking at the returns from the $15 million sequel Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, that release grossed almost $48 million worldwide... and there's talk of another sequel for Blair Witch on the way. The scary ending to this story appears to be an endless cycle of horror movie sequels.

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Lawyers Discussing Business Models

Mike Masnick — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:50:00 PDT

Doug Lichtman's latest "IP Colloquium" podcast is on the question of whether or not "content can survive online." Specifically, it's a discussion about "online content business models." Oddly, though, rather than having business model experts, it's a conversation with four lawyers, starting with Doug, and including Brad Smith, General Counsel, Microsoft; Scott Martin, Executive Vice President, Intellectual Property, Paramount Pictures; and Dan Cooper, Vice President, Legal & Business Affairs, MySpace. Lichtman starts it off, oddly, by stating -- as if fact -- that talking about business models online is depressing because there's just not much in the way of business models online for content. I think that's damning things a bit early in the process -- something that comes up again later.

While I realize that the podcast is a legal podcast, it still strikes me as odd to bring together four lawyers to have them discuss business models, when their expertise is not in business at all, but in the law.

The podcast starts out with a discussion on the Google Book search and settlement, but oddly no one even seems to give any credit to the fair use question. But, again, since these are lawyers we're talking about, there really isn't much of a discussion on business models around Google Book Search, but on legal questions -- including a hope that Congress steps in to solve it. Amusingly, Microsoft's Smith early on suggests that it's a question Congress could solve "if the industry got behind it; if copyright holders got behind it." Striking, huh? He basically admits how copyright law works in this country. It's not about what's best for the overall society or economy. It's not about the politicians fixing things where they see a problem. It's not about consumers. It'll happen if the industry gets behind it. Welcome to the way things work in DC. The rest of this part of the discussion is interesting -- and it's one (rare) case where I mostly agree with Lichtman, that as a resource, Google's Book search is incredibly useful, and we should figure out some way for it to happen.

From there, the discussion moves on to other business models, and quickly seems to head off in directions that I don't think are accurate from a business model standpoint. It starts off with two premises set forth by Lichtman, each of which I think is suspect. First, he claims that piracy is a problem because "you can't compete with free." Frankly, I'm sick of this argument because it makes no sense economically or from a business standpoint. Economically, saying that you "can't compete with free" is the same thing as saying you can't compete -- period. It assumes, falsely, that the only way to compete is on price, but the history of the economy shows that's not true. You compete on price or you compete on benefits, and competing on price is often a losing battle anyway. Saying "you can't compete with free" just means you only know how to compete on price. If that's the case, you shouldn't be in business.

And, to make that point clear, tons of companies compete on benefits, and allow other companies to offer lower priced offerings. The popular example, of course, is "water," whereby it's free (or near free) to drink out of the tap, but the bottled water business is a multi-billion dollar business. Why? It tries to compete on other factors -- such as convenience, quality or safety (though, there are arguments that many of these benefits are perceived rather than real). But it's true in just about any other business as well. In the automobile business, a BMW costs more than an entry level Ford, and that's because BMW is seen to have a lot more scarce value. Ford could "copy" BMW, but BMW has its reputation and some amount of prestige that Ford simply can't copy.

Anyone who's in business recognizes that you don't just compete on price. So why is it that so many seem to assume that the only way to compete in the content market is on price?

Lichtman's second premise is that online business models don't work. He says that Hulu hasn't been a success because it doesn't make as much as TV, and that if Hulu displaces TV we "won't have the money to pay for" expensive TV show production. He claims that even if Hulu is really successful, it'll never make enough money to pay for the production of a show like Battlestar Galactica. First off, huh? How does he know that? If Hulu is successful, it absolutely could pay for such production. Already, we're seeing that some of the online ad rates are higher than TV ad rates. Hulu's barely been around for two years at this point. I'd be willing to bet that Hulu's revenue today greatly exceeds the revenue of television two years after it was invented. Give it time, Doug!

He then jumps on Redbox -- sarcastically saying "we're renting movies at a dollar per day?" Suggesting that this will never sustain the development of movies. Really? I always find it amusing when people insist that problems in the DVD market will mean the death of Hollywood. It really was just 25 years ago that Hollywood insisted that the VCR would kill the industry (Boston Strangler, anyone?). Now they finally get their "original" wish, and find that putting movies on recordable media is going away, and it's the worst thing in the world?

Either way, the economic fallacy that Doug seems to be relying on here is twofold. First, he assumes that early business model experiments are set in place and no further innovation will occur that allows them to flourish. He assumes that the markets won't grow, and some of these experiments won't click and get much bigger. Second, he seems to assume that the old revenue numbers for these industries need to be sustained. He doesn't consider that the old revenue numbers may have been a result of monopoly rents, limited competition or technological limits. Markets change all the time, and usually what comes out in the end is much better (subjective, I know, but I'm a believer that the world is a better place today than it was 25 years ago -- and that it will be even better 25 years from now).

But, of course, no one challenges him on this. Scott Martin at Paramount, of course, worries quite a bit about piracy of movies. While he admits (finally!) that he's just the lawyer, rather than the business guy, he discusses it in the terms of adding more windows to movie releases, rather than any discussion of adding more value to the product, or giving people reasons to buy beyond just the content. Then Martin repeats the myth that you can't compete with free, but leads in with a different myth -- claiming that the "copyleft" people say that piracy would go away if they just priced their movies better. That's a strawman argument. Perhaps someone out there made that argument, but it's hardly common. Then he says that "the idea that if we charged $2 a download instead of $10 a download, we'd get rid of piracy is a myth." Sure, it's a myth, but no one said that. You can't get rid of piracy. No one thinks you can get rid of piracy. No one suggested anything you do would "get rid of piracy." What many of us are suggesting is that you can build business models where that piracy isn't a problem. Even the people suggesting you just charge $2 instead of $10 aren't saying it would "get rid of piracy," but that at $2, enough people would pay for it that it would increase profits beyond what the $10 DRM'd version gets you.

Anyway, the discussion goes on from there, including a discussion of the DMCA that again doesn't make much sense to me, but the business/economic analysis throughout doesn't strike me as accurate at all. It's still an interesting discussion, but frustrating because I wish there were at least someone on the panel who would challenge a lot of the "accepted wisdom," put forth by everyone, that doesn't seem to be accurate. Brad Smith, at one point, does point out that this is all a "revenue" problem, and does a pretty good job describing the revenue problem... but then falls into the trap of saying the law needs to "fix the piracy problem" because without that, business models can't be built up.

The last analysis I'll talk about that is again faulty from an economics standpoint again comes from Scott Martin at Paramount, where he tries to defend the importance of DRM, noting that if he flies into JFK he has various price options on transportation: he can buy a car, rent a car, take a cab or take a train. So there are price differentials. He says that without DRM, content is like saying his only option is to buy a car. That is, if he had DRM, they could offer different "rental options" for content, with "one day pricing or one week pricing." But that's totally wrong again. There's a reason for the differential pricing in the transportation options: it's related to the marginal cost of each option and the competitiveness of the market. That's what sets the prices. But with content, the marginal costs are zero, so what he's doing is trying to set up an artificial barrier to pretend the markets are the same.

While I like listening to these discussions, I just find the economic fallacies frustrating.

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Will 'Paranormal Activity' Teach The Movie Industry A Lesson?

Michael Ho — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:40:12 PDT

I have to admit I don't usually like scary movies, and I didn't like the Blair Witch Project at all. But I can't help but be impressed that the Blair Witch movie cost just $60,000 and pulled in a cool $140 million back in 1999. That kind of return makes me wonder why more movies aren't filmed on really small budgets. So it's somewhat surprising to see that it took about a decade for another Blair Witch-like film to get promoted by a major studio... and that a perfect candidate was almost missed. The movie Paranormal Activity was apparently filmed for just $11,000 over 7 days, and it was bought by DreamWorks/Paramount -- which originally planned to shelve the low-budget flick and re-make it with bigger stars and a much higher budget.

Goodman also admitted that DreamWorks, formerly a leg of Paramount co-headed by Steven Spielberg, had swooped in and pocketed 'Paranormal Activity' with every intention of leaving it on the shelf and remaking it with a big budget and marquee stars. Then they wised up.

They wised up indeed, and they also started promoting this movie in an interesting way, too -- by getting potential fans to demand it be shown in their neighborhoods and nationwide. Paramount promised to distribute the movie nationwide if a million requests for the movie were logged via Eventful. And it looks like they've already reached that goal.

As I said, I didn't like Blair Witch very much, and I'm not exactly looking forward to this movie, either. But from a pure business angle, it seems a bit shocking that movie studios wouldn't be trying to find/create more low-budget films that would appeal to moviegoers. Promoting the distribution of films in a way that actually target fans is a smart move, too. So with this example, there are about a million customers (or at least thousands, if you don't believe the Eventful numbers) willing to pay to see this movie that was made for (much) less than a $1 per fan -- and the movie studio's first gut-instinct was to try to re-make the film and drive their own costs up? It's a strange industry where insiders are always asking "how can we make a $200 million movie?" rather than how can they make good, but profitable movies, no matter what the cost. The industry seems so focused on what movies cost, that it so rarely seems to consider spending money more intelligently. Creating quality works for less, and targeting your best customers is a plan that's foreign to Hollywood, but perhaps it's about time they start exploring that plotline.

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Paramount COO Shows FCC How To File Share, Blames Tech Companies, Has FCC Hide Its Presentation

Mike Masnick — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:30:00 PDT

Last week, the FCC held what was ostensibly a panel discussion about the National Broadband Plan, but which was actually focused on copyright issues. How, exactly, is copyright an issue for broadband? Well, mainly because the entertainment industry has been trying for years to get ISPs to act as copyright cops... and apparently the FCC felt the need to hear them out. While the deck was mostly stacked in favor of the entertainment industry in terms of speakers, thankfully the FCC allowed Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge to take part as well -- and she questioned whether the FCC even had any mandate over such issues and wondered why the hearing was even being held. However, beyond stacking the deck of speakers, it appears the FCC gave significant other beneficial treatment to entertainment industry speakers.

Paramount's COO, Frederick Huntsberry, not only was given twice the amount of time to speak as the rest of the speakers had (10 minutes, instead of five, as Gigi was told), but also was able to convince the FCC that his talk was "owned" by Paramount, and should not be placed online -- as the FCC has done with all its other hearings. Wow. Yes, this was a public government hearing. Thankfully, the folks at Public Knowledge went through a low quality video of the whole proceeding and pulled out Huntsberry's part, where he not only demonstrates how file sharing works for the FCC, but goes on to implicate plenty of companies as aiding in the process, including Google, Yahoo, eBay, Boxee and others: In the video, he demonstrates using Mininova and Drop.io (which is an amazingly useful site for many things that have absolutely nothing to do with unauthorized file sharing -- and is now being unfairly tarred by Paramount). There isn't really anything surprising in the video. He basically shows what everyone knows: it's easy to share files these days. But he seems to miss the point of that. That is, he wants the gov't to come in and try to stop this (an impossibility), rather than recognizing that it's time for him to shift his business model. Yes, distribution is cheap and easy these days. In most businesses when distribution becomes cheaper and easier, that's a good thing. Why is it that Hollywood top execs still can't figure out how to take advantage of it?

Mehan Jayasuriya points out the many problems with the way the FCC handled this whole event:

Any presentation delivered at a public government hearing should be made available to the general public in a convenient format. Not everyone is able to travel to Washington D.C. for hearings and those who cannot should not be excluded--rather, they should be encouraged to participate in the debate. The mission statement on the Commission's new Broadband.gov site seems to agree: "A great way to create a connected America is to involve all Americans in the development of a National Broadband Plan. The FCC welcomes civic participation, and we look forward to more interaction through this website." If Paramount was concerned that its video would encourage "piracy," then the company should not have presented it at a public hearing. It's as simple as that.

All of the other presentation materials for all of the other workshops are available on the FCC's website, so that citizens can download, read, comment on, reference and critique them. Why should Paramount's statement be treated any differently?

During the presentation, Huntsberry seems to suggest that a number of legitimate technology companies, including Drop.io, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple, Boxee, Sony, LG, Yahoo!, PayPal and Rapidshare, are arguably acting to enable or encourage unlawful filesharing. These companies and the users of their products should have an opportunity to respond to this allegation.

In the beginning of the clip, Huntsberry walks us through a timeline of when various camcorded copies of Star Trek were leaked to the Internet. This timeline provides a great example of how widespread the problem of camcording is, though it's worth noting that camcording is already illegal in most U.S. States and has little relevance in the context of this workshop (it's also worth noting that Star Trek made over $200 million at the box office regardless of the fact that camcorded copies were available within hours of its theatrical release). This evidence that films are commonly pirated while still in theaters undermines many of the arguments made by the studios in the FCC's Selectable Output Control proceeding (i.e. "We need to be granted the power to shut off outputs on the back of your A/V gear, otherwise you will unlawfully copy the films that we broadcast via cable").

Not only did the FCC treat Paramount's presentation with kid gloves, the agency also treated the Hollywood execs preferentially throughout the course of the workshop. Upon entering the room where the workshop was held, attendees were greeted by a massive vinyl banner--presumably belonging to Paramount--on which the aforementioned Star Trek timeline was printed. While I appreciate the fact that a visual aid can be helpful, I can't help but feel like a PDF file submitted to the record would have sufficed.

But that's not all. Though these workshops were technically less procedural in nature than a formal hearing would be, MPAA Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman was repeatedly allowed to call his technical expert, MovieLabs CEO Steve Weinstein, up to the stand to chime in with additional comments--even though nothing he said was actually technical in nature. The Commission allowed Glickman to do this so many times that Weinstein also started calling others from the audience up to the stand, including Disney Executive Vice President Preston Padden and Disney Vice President Troy D. Dow. Perhaps I'm being overly cynical but I doubt that the Commission would have allowed any of the other panelists to engage in this kind of behavior.

And, again, uh.... what does copyright have to do with broadband policy in the first place? And where is it in the FCC's mandate that it has any say in copyright policy?

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Harlan Ellison Sues Again

Mike Masnick — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:34:00 PDT

Harlan Ellison may be a well-respected writer, but he's got something of a history of threatening and/or suing anyone who he believes is unfairly profiting off of "his" works. You may recall a while back that he mistakenly sued AOL when he discovered that fans of his (not that he'd call them fans) had posted some of his writings to Usenet. Yes, to Usenet. Not to any AOL property, but to Usenet. However, since he'd discovered it via AOL, somehow they were to blame... so he sued. And a court quickly explained to Mr. Ellison the DMCA's safe harbors and the fact that Usenet isn't AOL. Ellison appealed... and, amazingly, AOL eventually settled just to make him go away, knowing that even though the courts would reject such cases under DMCA safe harbors (and common sense), it was cheaper to just pay up.

This wasn't just a one-off misunderstanding. Ellison has a long history of being economically and technologically illiterate about these sorts of things, as was made clear in this video that made the rounds a few years back: In the video, he talks about how he doesn't take a piss without getting paid, and screams about Warner Bros. Studios asking if they can use a video interview he did in the DVD for Babylon 5, which he worked on -- and he demanded payment for it. When the woman pointed out that everyone else was doing it for free, he called them all assholes and then went on a rant about people doing stuff for free, talking about how he doesn't do anything for free. Apparently, he missed the fact that the video was already recorded, so it wouldn't be about any "work for free" because he wouldn't be doing any work. The work was already done. Also, depending on who shot the video, it's unlikely that WB actually needed to get his permission (or to pay him) to use the video, because he probably doesn't own the rights to it, but that's a separate point.

Either way, that's all prologue to the news that Ellison is suing yet again. This time, he's suing Paramount Pictures and the Writers Guild because he wrote an episode of Star Trek that aired in 1967, and Paramount hasn't paid him for certain Star Trek books that include elements from that show or other merchandise like a (not making this up) talking Christmas tree ornament. He's suing the Writers Guild because it apparently told him that he was nuts and they weren't going to take on Paramount over this issue (he's accusing the Guild of too narrowly interpreting its contract).

And, in classic Ellison fashion, his statement on the matter is all about the money:

It ain't about the 'principle,' friend, its (sic) about the MONEY! Pay Me! Am I doing this for other writers, for Mom (still dead), and apple pie? Hell no! I'm doing it for the 35-year-long disrespect and the money!

Given these antics and ridiculousness, you have to wonder just how many folks won't be hiring Ellison in the future, knowing he's likely to blow up and potentially sue them, as well. You also should wonder how much "money" he's missing out on from folks like me who will never buy any of his works. If it's "all about the money" perhaps someone who writes sci-fi like Ellison can think about the future a little bit, and how many opportunities he kills off by demanding every penny today at the expense of dollars tomorrow.

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