Archive for the ‘copyright’ Category

Content laundering: Technotise, Green Lantern, and user-generated marketing

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

I’m a regular reader of Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily.  I think her blog is a pretty decent way of keeping tabs on all things business of Hollywood.  Sure, she has some detractors, and “TOLDJA” (which she is trying to trademark) gets pretty annoying, but she tends to have really great items on a daily basis.

So, this little item from yesterday about how she’s been getting bombarded by folks with links to YouTube user Jaron Pitts‘s superbly fan-made Green Lantern and Technotise movie trailers caught my eye for a particularly noteworthy reason, in terms of copyright and infringement issues.  Before I dive in to that, though, first, the Technotise trailer he cut so you know what I’m talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPu-PRHtCWE

Basically, Pitts has assembled a trailer almost entirely out of infringing content from all kinds of sources (just as he did for the Green Lantern fake).  Sure, he’s doing it as a fan and we could get in to issues of participatory culture and the work of Henry Jenkins and why this isn’t necessarily a bad thing (and we all know I’d be a hypocrite to call him out for it myself… ahem) but what is REALLY interesting isn’t so much that Pitts is doing the infringing, but rather for WHOM Pitts is doing it.  More after the jump.

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Where da money at?

Friday, August 14th, 2009

For my final blog post in Drew Keller’s Web Storytelling course this summer in the MCDM, I am going to diverge just a little from the exact question Drew posed for us with this entry, which was: Bill Wasik at Big Think believes shorter content on-line will always be free; do I agree or disagree?  Wasik, in this video, takes new media to task, discussing things like the beauty of what the longtail provides us,  the detriments of endless online distractions, and what people are willing to pay for on the web.  I’m less concerned about whether people will pay for content based on duration or production value, or what they will or will not pay for in terms of any type of content at all.  I’m satisfied with the current status quo – I love that the web evens the playing field for cultural commodities, that for a few bucks Spider-Man 3 on Netflix can be streamed one minute, or without any money changing hands a clip of a teenager brutally injuring himself on a trampoline at YouTube can be shared the next, and, also for free, I can finish with a live satellite feed from CNN of a breaking news event in India while engaging fellow Facebook users about what’s happening, all of it right here online and on my lappy at the coffee shop.  Obviously people are willing to pay for access to the infrastructure that provides all of this content – the DSL, the cable Internet, the FiOS and so forth.  And they’ll pay for that Netflix download and other certain things, too.  But it seems that web culture was FOREVER decided that digital = free, so content providers have to generally rely on meager revenue streams from embedded adverts and banner ads and interstitials and the like so I can still watch the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” any time of day.  But I guess that’s just not enough for content producers and providers.  They keep asking – everyone keeps asking:

Where da money at? (more…)

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Posted in convergence, copyright, entertainment, monetization, web video | View Comments

Embrace Infringement

Friday, June 12th, 2009

This is my final project for Kraig Baker’s Digital Media Law & Policy course at the University of Washington Master of Communication in Digital Media program, Spring Quarter 2009.

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Should you stop suing your customers?

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
Should you stop suing potential customers?

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Stealing the already stolen: When copyright infringers clash!

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Final Project Proposal for my Law Class in the MCDM

Topic: Stealing the stolen

Seemingly innumerable amounts of copyrighted materials are published and shared by millions on-line today.  Much of these cultural artifacts are distributed by copyright owners through approved channels.  However, a great deal of this IP is being distributed illegally, be it through file-sharing, torrents, mashups, remixes, piracy, or other means.  Just as ‘return on investment’ is difficult to measure when copyright owners license or otherwise publish their content on-line, it is not unreasonable to assume that the lasting impact of user appropriation or piracy of material published is equally difficult to measure.  Nevertheless, measuring this potential impact is critical to copyright owners; the subject itself is rife with problems, and finding solutions to this new world of stealing and appropriating IP is of major importance.  The cultural production sector, as Benkler would call it in his seminal work, The Wealth of Networks, is a sector built on social production (2006).  IP finds its way on-line, and thereafter is commoditized and commodified by the masses for their own social production.  Once IP reaches the web, it is no longer controllable – it is stolen and re-stolen time and time again.  This arena of lawlessness is where I wish to center my research.

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Two words for Walter Isaacson

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Walter Isaacson of the Aspen Institute appeared on The Daily Show Monday, February 9th, to discuss his recent cover article in Time Magazine about ways to save the dying newspaper industry. During his interview with Jon Stewart, he talks about how he’d like to see on-line versions of newspapers charge for articles in a manner similar to the way iTunes charges for songs. While I don’t condone piracy or copytheft of any kind, I do have two words for Mr. Isaacson: COPY, PASTE

Anyway, here’s the video:

Walter Isaacson on the Daily Show

Why do I feel like he’s dug up a dead horse? Barriers to entry for illegal filesharing are minimal at best these days; but circumventing news subscription services is an absolute piece of cake! I can’t think of a single time I have come across an article hiding behind a subscription service, usually mentioned in a forum at a news aggregator like Digg or Fark, where someone didn’t simply copy and paste the content to the forum or other venue for everyone else to see.

Stewart astutely posits the idea of news aggregators, like HuffPo or Drudge Report, giving portions of their ad revenue to sites that they link to, akin to a cable TV model. This seems a much more practical idea than returning to subscription models, but getting aggregators to play ball will be no easy feat. If major aggregators cave, others will crop up that don’t play, and the model will eventually fail.

Maybe journos should follow their broadcast journalism and cinema studies friends, ditch their keyboards, grab a camera and go find some news to shoot. As mentioned, video isn’t much for copypasta. And that’s the sort of thing the UW MCDM is preaching.

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Posted in copyright, old media | View Comments

Lawrence Lessig and the Colbert Remix

Friday, January 30th, 2009

Yes, this is a little late in coming, but I wanted to blog about it for my friends and colleagues in the MCDM community anyways.  It seemed especially fitting to send this out to the gang because not only does the subject cover a multitude of issues we’ve discussed and continue to study relative to the Digital Media program, but it’s got Stephen Colbert, too.  And as far as I’m concerned, anything with Stephen Colbert is required viewing.

So, a couple of weeks ago Lawrence Lessig from Stanford appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss how copyright law is complicating things for everybody in the digital era, especially for kids, who are, unfortunately, being turned into criminals by institutions like the RIAA.  Here’s the interview:

Of course, near the end Colbert pretty much invites the world to take his material, even this interview, and “remix” it however they want.  Three cheers for encouraging the Colbert Nation to steal Viacom’s intellectual property!  And, of course, it was only a matter of time before the Interwebs would be all over this challenge.

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Posted in copyright, social media | View Comments

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