It's Creativity, Stupid -- Protect It
Hugh Jackman says he is "heartbroken" his new film, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was leaked online a month before its official release. ''It's a serious crime and there's no doubt it's very disappointing - I was heartbroken by it,'' Jackman said. ''Obviously people are seeing an unfinished film. It's like a Ferrari without a paint job." And former Beatle Paul McCartney applauds the decision to send the founders of Pirate Bay (an illegal file sharing site) to prison for copyright infringement. McCartney told reporters that "artists deserved to get paid, and he felt fortunate the Beatles made it big before the popularity of file-sharing networks." McCartney says "Anyone who does something good, particularly if you get really lucky and do a great artistic thing and have a mega hit, I think you should get rewarded for that, and he adds, "particularly for young bands and they've got a young family, I don't want to see them destitute after a couple of years when they were mega. They're going to feed the children on that and if they don't get that money, if they don't see that money, I think it's a bit of a pity. So I think it's fair." (The court ordered sentence)
Jackman and McCartney have joined with millions of others who are starting to "get it"-don't steal my lifetime's work or you will go to jail. Simple concept to grasp, right? Not really. Because we have allowed a whole generation to get away with stealing and done nothing major about it except litigate, and worse, we have created a PR nightmare that makes the pirates look cool and the artists look stodgy. The current piracy issue is fraught with partisan bickering. You have the pirates and their supporters declaring "everything should be free..." and you have major studios and labels suing as their business strategy. One of the quotes that struck me as so out-of-touch was Peter Sunde's (one of the Pirate Bay founders) lawyer describing the Pirate Bay verdict as "a battle between the corporate world and a generation of young people who want to take part in new technology..." That's nonsense. Stealing is not "taking part in new technology." This generation's laissez-faire attitude toward copyright that Sunde's lawyer is referring to is our fault. We have fundamentally failed to educate an entire generation and we are working on the second. And the failure starts here in the US. Intellectual property is one of our biggest exports and yet we fail to teach our children not to steal it on the internet. U.S. intellectual property is worth approximately $5-5.5 trillion dollars per year to the economy- obviously entertainment is only a portion of that figure. I would think in a country where manufacturing has taken a huge hit (witness the auto industry) we might want to put a little effort into teaching our population why music, movies, software and games are not free just because you can find them on a website. We now live in a society where you either wash the car or design the car, but you no longer manufacture it in the US. We should start making a better effort at making sure people understand that this is about jobs and the economy. The bulk of the movie and music industry jobs are good solid middle class jobs.
The impact on middle class workers, present and future, gets lost in a sea of rhetoric. The issue has become polarized and the good guys look bad and the bad guys look cool. These guys are the 21st century version of the Sopranos. They appear to be beyond hip and cool, but the bottom line is they are ignorant, selfish criminals who make money off other peoples work. A perfect example of that is the motley crew of Pirate Bay describe themselves as "heroes" and as they say, "as in all good movies the heroes lose in the beginning, but have an epic victory in the end - that's the only thing Hollywood ever taught us..." If that is the only lesson these "bandits" have taken away from Hollywood, then they clearly have not been paying attention to this industry. It is an industry where artists get paid for creating movies people want to see, games people want to play, music people want to listen to and television people want to watch - and yes as part of this system there are giant corporate conglomerates that make much of the business possible, so they get paid as well.
While I would agree that in order to win over Pirate Bay users, content owners need to loosen up their relationship with technology and stop using litigation as a business strategy. Clearly consumers want to get their content, whether it is TV, movies, music, UGC on the internet- Comscore's Video Metrix data shows that U.S. Internet users viewed 13.1 billion online videos during the month of February alone - that is a lot of online viewing! This data proves that there is a legitimate business to be had in distributing content on the internet - the consumer is there, now we need to teach them that Pirate Bay (and sites like it) should not be their number one choice in entertainment shopping.
File sharing won't go away, and frankly, it shouldn't. Consumers want it and demand it and should have it. The entertainment industry needs to address it in a committed fashion. But does the imprisonment of the Pirate Bay owners accomplish anything? Absolutely. Does it decrease piracy, encourage inventors and entrepreneurs not to promote stealing as a business model or does it just increase the partisan sound-bite war? It does a little of both, it educates and reminds everyone it is illegal to steal. And that education ultimately protects jobs in the intellectual property field. I happen to know it has an impact first hand - While I was the VP of Intellectual Property Enforcement at MGM Studios, I found Randy Guthrie illegally selling MGM's prized franchise, boxed sets of James Bond movies online. As a result of my efforts to track him down with law enforcement, Guthrie, an American citizen, spent years in a Chinese prison (that cannot be pleasant) and was extradited to the US to continue a long sentence in a Mississippi prison and pay a huge fine. This story got a tremendous amount of press around the world. And it reminds people that stealing movies is a crime and when you get caught, the penalty is steep. What's the lesson here? It is important to protect creativity - and that just doesn't mean actors and directors. It means struggling writers, make up artists, set designers and assistants. We need to actively pursue these bottom feeders that sell America's creativity for their own benefit while simultaneously educating our young people and challenging them to come up with new business models to match today's technology. That would be heroic.
Our children should understand the relationship between technology and entertainment-they have always been intertwined - (what industry first embraced technology, motion pictures, it is called the camera) and cannot live without each other. While the relationship has been tense at times: the player piano, the television, the VCR - all predicted to "end the business..." and none did, what they did do was create new revenue streams and grow the business like never before. And then along came Napster - and unfortunately the music business' reaction was to ignore and then once the technology was firmly in place, sue the consumer and the creators of the technology. And we all know how that has worked out.
History shows that major innovations create major opportunities. The visionaries benefit, the fearful resist and languish. The key has always been seeing the change and adapting. Something that music has failed to do, and something that the studios need to hasten. There are so many legitimate video and music sites that compensate artists and the studios and labels that support them, using the very same technology that the pirate's use - our job is to make sure the population knows the difference.
Evolve and educate.
Laura Tunberg is a Digital Content Strategist at We Get It Consulting and Former VP of Intellectual Property Enforcement, MGM Studios.
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I give you the example of Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan. Sullivan was considered the foremost Englsih composer of his time, and music snobs deplored that he wasted his time on the G&S operettas. However, the relatively small output of "werious" music by Sullivan was more a result of his inclination to spend his time living the high life. Every so often, however, he ran out of money and wouold have to go back home and link up with Gilbert on another project (See the movie Topsy Turvey for this process working to create the Mikado). The point is that Sullivan made good money on the G&S productions, but if he had made money on the scale of today's performers, he in all probablity would have written half of what he was forced to write by his lavish life style. If you reward creativity too well, you may remove some of the incentive for further creativity by tha individual or group.
Artists, creative support staff, and inventors should get the benefit of their efforts, and when the companies charge extortionate prices for their products, the reward for the creative people should be proportionate to the take, but really we may be reducing creativity by paying too much.
The original "it's the economy stupid" was a note from the (Bill) Clinton campaign to itself, a reminder against doing things they already thought were stupid, i.e. anything that would distract from their key message on the economy. Anyone who thought the campaign ought to be about gays in the military was probably working for the other side; there's no need for the Clinton campaign to consider the opinions of (George H. W.) Bush camp. Even if not, the decision had been made by the boss and their job was to get on with implementing the chosen strategy.
This headline seems to be saying that those of us who disagree with the author are stupid for doing so. Or maybe that we're outsiders whose opinions shouldn't be considered. Or that Disney and RIAA are the bosses of the United States (at least where intellectual "property" law is concerned), and the rest of us need to get on with implementing their chosen policies. None of the possibilities are particularly pleasant.
I read Ms Tunberg's article. Its very good. I agree with her.
But after reading some of the letters and making comments on two of them, I noticed that everyone disagreed with her, that somehow because the studioes make money, its okay to steal from them.
If that is the way the USA is going, God help our country!
"I noticed that everyone disagreed with her, that somehow because the studioes make money, its okay to steal from them."
That is light-years away from what I'm saying, and from what anyone else I've read is saying. (I haven't read all of the postings yet.) Not all rights are property rights: copyright infringement is not theft. It's not about whether it's ok to violate unjust law*: it's that the law ought to be changed. The fact that the studios still make money is relevant, though, because the whole reason for granting copyright is to get more works for the public by letting artists make a living. If the copyright owners still make money despite some level of copying, that shows that there's no need to forbid that copying.
*It sometimes is, but the question is not trivial. On the whole, civil disobedience is not a good approach to copyright law, but some token actions may be warranted.
Actually if you carefully read the comments you will see that most people are not, in fact, claiming that since studios make money, that its ok to steal from them. That is your rhetoric, designed to miscast the legitimate issues that many people have with the current state of copyright law and the entertainment industry.
I think you should reread some of the longer posts in this comment section. You've missed the point. Copyright law is draconian, oppressive to long-term creativity, and written to protect profits of major corporations at the expense of innovation. Just as Republicans use the ruse of "small business owners" to cram tax cuts for the super rich down our throat, so too do giant companies use "the artist/performer/creator" as a ruse to rewrite copyright law to benefit their bottom line.
Boo Hoo! Because people pirated the latest Britney Spears album, she can't buy another multimillion dollar house. She might have to get by with only one Gulfstream jet with a gold encrusted plasma T.V. How do they find the strength to go on? They make plenty of money. I just wish we could find a way to pirate-away some CEO pay while we're at it. I have no sympathy for anyone making more than me. I've never had a house (because I know I could never afford one), a credit card (because I can't afford one), or kids (because I can't afford any). I am responsible with what little I do make, and nothing I did resulted in the worldwide recession. I can only spend what I make, that's my rule. If my employer would pay me more, I'd buy more CDs and see more movies/buy more DVDs. I haven't seen a movie in theaters since 'The Bourne Ultimatum', if that explains anything. I haven't been out to eat or to a bar in about 6 months. How about actors or musicians addressing social inequality that leads to piracy (in America as well as in Somalia), instead of bitching about all the money they aren't making. I buy the CDs of my favorite bands. If a band wants to create average music, they will just have to make up for it with a few more tour dates.
I agree with you, you have nothing as long as you say you don't.
Not everybody that works in the motion picture industry is a Britany Spears. There are lots of artists, musicians, etc. that can barely make it. They get revenue off their movies, DVD's, etc. and it helps to supplment their income. What these "pirates" are doing is illegal. It's stealing as you went out and robbed a bank. Not only should they be tried and put in prison or pay a big fine, they should be ashamed of themselves. They dishonor themselves.
Not everything illegal is stealing.
The copyright holders are raking it in, both by scre wing the little people who work for them and by scre wing the public. Giving them even more power=money wouldn't make them treat their low-tier workers any better.
what an immature and self-serving excuse for piracy...unfortunately it's typical for pirates...
musicians make too much money - very, very, very,very few musicians attain the level of financial success you're describing...and for those who do...who are you to deride their success?
music/movies aren't good enough - who made you the judge of all art...art is subjective...the band that you think is average (or bad) is someone elses favorite band...same for movies...also if you don't like them...why are you stealing them and making them available for others to steal?
Hey Joethepauper,
What do you do for a living? Whatever it is, why should I have to pay for it?
Alienated labor and valuable activity are closer to opposites than synonyms. The most valuable things I've done I've never been paid a dime for; the most valuable things people have done for me can never be paid back, only "paid" forward.
I'm reminded of the story of the young lady who had not yet caught up to her physical development. All the boys were moaning and pleading in the night, and she knew what they wanted, but she just did not understand why.
I would be embarrassed if caught stealing most of the pap that is processed like Velveeta today as movies and music. It's pure plastic taffy, and it is celebrated and prized due exclusively to the marketing muscle of those poor corporations who hire such as Ms Tumberg to present them as Oliver Twists who only want a bit more in the bowl to keep from starving. It's similar to the divas who have publicists who place them where they will be known and then they react to the price of fame against the boys with cameras.
Somebody owes me for a lifetime of admission fees from Fabian to Jerry Lewis clear through to Star Wars. When someone goes to jail for all that, I'll shed a tear for SONY and Time-Warner, bless their plucky little hearts.
While there is merit to the argument that the artist should get paid for his or her work it has no meaning when it comes from the mouth of an industry spokesmodel. Corporations violate the law several times a second in the world we live in. The hide behind lawyers and the corporate veil. They pollute, poison, extort, and steal for a living. The entertainment industry is just one more business in decline because what they produce is crap. It is not because people are file sharing. Now they want to put people in prison for taking something of questionable value. We live in a country that has more people per capita in prison than any other and they propose we lock up more. Who will buy their trash when they have locked everyone up?
God help this country if everybody felt like you do.
ditch your principals because they protect people you don't like. sounds just like a defense of torture. you are now part of of an exclusive group, congrats.
I don't think you get it. Unlike previous generations, my generation doesn't respect intellectual property laws because of how outrageous they are. It's stuff like the effectively unlimited length of copyrights, the effective minimization of fair use, and lawsuits being decided by strong arm litigation and corporate interests rather than the good of the country and its culture. We don't listen to the big entertainment corporations because THEY DON'T LISTEN TO US. The more restrictive the laws become, the more likely people are to disregard it.
My version of copyright reform include:
registration of copyrights
limitation of copyright to 10 years with an option to extend for another 10
provisions for orphan works
clear and explicit fair use rights
limitations on corporate copyrights, such as limiting corporations from owning rights to creative works created by less than 25 people (like books and albums, but not stuff like big budget films)
and when you get that...you'll still continue to steal the entertainment you want...b/c you don't care about the artist that took time to create it...you just care about you...and what you want...and want for FREE...
For your information, I have spent more money on music, movies and computer games in the last year than in any of the three proceeding years. I have chosen to spend the vast majority on entertainment from sources that are not abusive about their copyrights (i.e. non-corporate media)
Nah. Most of the music I listen to is either Creative Commons licensed or over 10 years old. Thanks to region coding, most of the DVDs I want to add to my library aren't playable in the US anyway.
We need a paradigm shift in the way artists are paid.
Want to sell the CD? Make owning the original more valuable than a copy. Other media manage to do it--you can, too.
Want to be paid by filesharing? Figure out a way to do it.
Artists are not the only ones who are creative. We need creative business people, too.
And maybe, just maybe, if the arts are seen as important in this country, people will respect the artists. Look on any comments section in articles about the arts, where people whine about the arts being a "luxury" and you'll see why people don't have a problem stealing from artists--because art is not considered necessary. Once art is important, artists will be important, and their works will be respected.
I’m all for paying artists for their work – I lived on that as a child.
After my father died, the rights to his percentage of the royalties – usually quite a small percentage - passed to his widow (my mother). She still gets this money.
When she dies, no royalties from the music he wrote will come to my brother or myself, his next heirs. HOWEVER, THE PUBLISHERS WILL CONTINUE TO COLLECT MONEY for sales and performances.
They get that for printing the music and sending it out, very little else. Yet he was the one who spent weeks or months of his time creating it.
Copyright should be held and controlled only by the originators of the work: this is almost never the case.
Current copyright laws allow publishers and CD producers to make millions or even billions on someone else’s work, for decades. They stop people using ideas and material that should be in the public domain – for example, no folk song should ever be copyrighted, yet I hear a company recently filed a lawsuit claiming copyright.
I am a music aficionado and own a large collection of music, much of which I have paid for at least three times.
Every time the format changes (LP's, cassettes, CD's, MP3's (low to high res) the same company makes me buy it again.
If I have paid for the artist's right once, why should I pay for it again?
Don't you think us "consumers" feel like we get ripped off?
Exactly! When Cds first came out, there were people talking about how they were "indestructable". If you breathe on a CD wrong, it skips. Phonographs, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, digital audio tape, DVDs, and Blue Ray. Next year there will be another format that we will have to buy new hardware for. That hardware will be manufactured so as to ensure that something breaks and it will have to be replaced three or four times. I read recently that CDs and DVDs only have like a three to five year life span. So, are they still as indestructable as when they first came out? Can't we just get a lasting technology? I don't mean 10 years or 50 years.......I want an album or movie that archaeologists in the distant future can dig out of an ancient burial chamber, dust-off, and enjoy. Embed the information with lasers in resin or quartz crystals, so they can't be scratched and tape can't get eaten by the player. And make the player out of something other than plastic. Stainless steel would be more expensive, but probably not more expensive than buying three or four plastic ones.
It's hilarious to me that some oldster like you, Laura, can rant on about "lack of education" when you seem to be unaware of the fact that there have been many different models for the distribution of creative efforts over the course of human history, appropriate to the information and communication technology available at the time, and that the current capitalist model of distribution of creative "property" is only one of such, based on an outdated format for distributing music.
Your young people are at this very moment coming up with a new approach to that problem, but don't be shocked or dismayed when you figure out that it's not going to involve you or your ideas about how it should be done.
Don't be surprised when you find yourself sharing a cell with someone named Bubbah.
Last time I checked having a basic understanding of human history and cultural development wasn't a crime.
One more time: THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF ARTISTS. It's about protecting corporate control of all creative content. That's why everytime an alternative stream based on creativity rather than profit (e.g. mp3.com) gets started, somebody like Viacom buys it and destroys it. It's no different from the way pharmaceutical companies use billions in P.R. and legal fees to control the conversation and the policy on what we are allowed to put in our bodies. On what planet does the writer live that she expects us to believe that powerful actors have the interests of un-powerful people at heart? If she believes it, she is naive.
Note that the author doesn't work for the artists: she works for the studios. Intellectual "property" is about making money for big corporations, not about rewarding artists, nor about the constitutionally acceptable purpose which is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts".
Of course, her position is just as wrong when it's stated by artists. Artists have no constitutionally-recognized interest that would have to be balanced against the interests of the public. Only the interests of the public are involved. We have to balance the interests of the public in being able to freely innovate and express, with the interests of the public in having works that will be produced only if people can make money doing so.
I must say, I'm particularly unpersuaded by Sir Paul McCartney, net worth almost 1/2 billion dollars.
Yes, he's talented and I've enjoyed his music. But his career took place during that tiny slice of human history when a very few of the very many talented musicians on the planet amassed huge fortunes thanks to the recording industry. That's not the way it ever was before, and it's not how things will be in the future.
I'd be much more interested in the views of someone like Russ Nasset ( http://www.myspace.com/russnassetandtherevelators ) - a talented, working musician who is not a multi-millionaire.
But his music blows.
At least McCartney has the excuse of being British: the Statute of Anne (1710) regarded both the authors and the public as having interests to be protected. (Not that I have any background knowledge of British law, but the link from wikipedia looks credible.)
It's ridiculous to claim that just because you did not 'steal' the original physical object that it cannot be called theft! An artist's copyright (the EXCLUSIVE right to reproduce, publish & sell their work) is much more valuble than the original physical work. His fees from licensing his popular works enable the artist to create future works, it allows him to take chances and grow. Your so-called 'clones' are not always exact - I have seen the world flooded with cheap, poor quality, off-color prints- it destroyed the artist. Galleries would no longer carry his work, unwilling to compete with low cost copies, his hard-earned reputation for high quality & attention to detail destroyed. The lack of respect is absolutely soul crushing, so please stop claiming that you are doing the artist a 'favor' by depriving him of his rights, and his ability to make a living from work he has dedicated a lifetime to. It is THEFT!
No it is not theft. The word has an actual legal definition.
You can claim that violating the copyright debases an artist's ability to live on and profit from their work and I'd agree with you. But these are two different arguments.
"It's ridiculous to claim that just because you did not 'steal' the original physical object that it cannot be called theft!"
Oh, you can call it theft. You can call it a one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple-people eater if you want to. But it isn't a purple people eater no matter what you call it, and it isn't theft. That doesn't mean it's ok. It is a violation of legal rights duly granted by Congress. (At least in the case of recent works it is: the current policy of extending copyright forever is unconstitutional.) To the extent that Congress is legitimate, we should obey the laws, all else equal. But it's a bad law and should be changed, and the penalties should be uniformly applied rather than choosing a few violators at random to make an example of.
"An artist's copyright (the EXCLUSIVE right to reproduce, publish & sell their work) is much more valuable than the original physical work."
But when you copy without permission you don't gain possession of that right, which is what would have to have happened for you to have stolen it.
You're kidding, right? A whole generation who grew up learning to get others work for free. And which generation would that be? I'd say everybody alive today. In my generation we grew up getting TV and radio for free - always. There was no cable, no satellite radio. No monthly bill to watch shows that consist of 50% commercials and little in the way of artistic content. You could listen to music all day long and never pay a dime other than for the electricity to run your radio. Come to think of it, I've gotten an awful lot of books from the library over the years that I paid nothing for (well, sometimes a small fine if they were late.) Now I listen to music on the computer - same as the generations that have come after me. And still get books out of the library. And don't have cable - I watch PBS mostly and do donate a few times a year. I just read your blog and didn't pay for it. Am I a thief?
Your ears and eyes were sold to the advertiser by the broadcaster. You paid with your time.
your tv...radio and library...and this blog were not FREE...they were paid for by advertising and in the case of the library, taxes...it was not free...
as far as reading the blog...you are not a thief...you read the blog as presented by the writer and publisher and it was paid for by advertising...
if you took the blog and made copies digital or otherwise and posted them all over the web or made them available for download with no compensation going to the writer or the publisher...then yes, you would be a thief.
Actually, I was thinking that it was a shame that music companies didn't pair up with libraries in the recent years, to help solidify a stream of revenue. My local library does carry CDs but it's a nearly worthless selection. My library has a pretty decent DVD selection now. They've started buying quite a few new movies and tv series. I haven't had to go to Blockbuster for a few months.
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