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.

Finke points out that both the Green Lantern fan trailer and the Technotise fan trailer are for Warner Bros. movies, which would otherwise be nothing more than mere coincidence.  However, Pitts openly admits that he cut the Technotise trailer at the behest of “Hollywood producers”.  From the video’s description on YouTube:

This is a trailer I made for some producers in hollywood who are making this into a live action. Its based on a great anime film from last year, Technotise.

He even goes on to post a link to a website, http://www.technotise-remake.com/, with a link to an email address for a guy named Scott Glassgold.  One can only assume that this website, which prominently features Pitts’ trailer, is something of an “official” endeavor on the part of the producers of this remake film.

Now, like I already alluded to and I constantly espouse – I really don’t have anything against the appropriation, co-option, or commodification of previously copyright-protected material, as that process helps create new cultural products, new narratological approaches, and, inherently, new speech.  Memesis naturally causes user-agents to create new forms from old, to tell new stories and convey new meanings.  We do live in a participatory culture, and fan fiction is a part of the dialogue that exists between content producers and their audiences.  The Information Commons and the concept of social production have changed the way we use and value creative works.  Infringement, like it or not, is the norm in today’s social media landscape.

So, all of that makes this fan trailer otherwise fairly insignificant, aside from it being expertly produced and interesting to watch. However, what does make this truly interesting is the fact Pitts has either been commissioned or otherwise encouraged to produce it by the actual Technotise filmmakers.  While Finke merely passes this off as another WB marketing gimmick, what she fails to recognize is that this Technotise trailer is loaded with intellectual property from rival studios.  In essence, the producers of the Technotise remake and/or Warner Bros are not only getting a free, soon to be viral slice of marketing material, something to track and test, helping them to gauge how well the real film may do, how they should target it, and a million other points of useful data, but they’re getting it off the backs of their competitors, too.  And they’re effectively getting away with stealing content from their competitors (if it wasn’t for Pitts’ admission) by laundering it through a “fan”.  That, to me, is truly remarkable – clever, no less.

Anyway, I think it’s fascinating to think about how appropriation and user-generated content is impacting marketing strategy for large media corporations.  On the one hand, they slap the hands of users who attempt to steal their content, yet they rely on those same users to spread word-of-mouth and help build buzz for their films.  Why do these companies “bite the hand that feeds” like that?  Moreover, it’s clear that the rule of thumb is “it’s only infringement when it happens to us”.  Well, it will be interesting to see how fan-made videos like this are utilized in marketing strategy down the line.

Where da money at?

Answer: Place-shifting, time-shifting, and format-shifting.

Any kind of shifting.  CONVENIENCE is what people want and will pay for.  Content providers are so concerned about out-dated license structures.  They’re scared of the margin, that the 1337 kiddies will pwn them the way the music industry got pwnt by file-sharing (which was their own fault, not Napster).  Providers are perpetually in bed with technology manufacturers making sure innovation is curtailed and that new technology is defective by design.  Stop plugging the analog holes of the world, stop making devices counter-intuitive, and stop making the masses do the innovating for you by looking for the next workaround.  Ditch your DRM and proprietary formats, unlock your devices, your iPhones and cable boxes and XBOXes and every kind of box, so that they’ll never need jail-broken and do what they are REALLY capable of doing.  Empower people.  And stop trying to control your content.  Just like the web always smacks brands in the face every time they try to control their messages, the web will slap content providers in the face when they try to control their content, too.  If it’s easy, it’s fast, and it just works, people will pay for it.  iTunes is infinitely more convenient than the surviving, illegal methods.  And when the file I download works on a litany of devices, I’m happy.  You’ve given the customer what they want.  Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?

I look forward to the day I can turn on my TV and in a few button-pushes have the movie, TV show, or inane trampoline video I want, downloaded DRM-free to my set-top superbox, a file that I now can do whatever I want with and copy to any format I choose, accessible at any time or in any place (yo, mobile, hook me up!) that I’d like.  I can stick it on my iPod, my laptop, a DVD, a thumb drive, a smartphone…  CONTENT PROVIDERS: Set your content free and people will pay for it, because they will pay for the highest quality iteration of it at the most convenient distribution point (my TV would be nice), especially if it happens FAST and isn’t complicated (see iTunes).  Content providers need to make better deals with the Comcasts and AT&Ts of the world so that this simple world of distribution can finally happen.

And that, my friends, is where the money is at.  Makes sense to me.

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.

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.

Research Question: Mitigation between infringing parties

Clay Shirky, in his book Here Comes Everybody, explains that in the realm of social media, wherein the aforementioned social production of appropriated content takes place (e.g. the mashups and remixes of commoditized and commodified copyrighted material), “social capital”, rather than financial gain, rules the day (2008).  A culture of folk art and media based on or comprised of previously copyrighted material is being exchanged.  Because social capital is so important in today’s cultural production sector, re-appropriations of material, such as stealing and republishing that which was already stolen, is rampant and often unwittingly encouraged.  Most interestingly, infringing parties dispute with one another over material that neither has legal right to in the first place!  My research question is thus:  How does this mitigation take place, or how do the locals lay down the law in the new wild west?  But, more importantly, what are the actual legal implications – how does this copyright infringing social production change actual policy and impact regulation?

Potential Areas of Exploration

I hope to look at several cases where infringing parties dispute with one another over how each lays claim to “authorship” of mashups and other appropriations when one venue or user steals from another.  Two particular websites of note will be eBaum’s World and YTMND.  Additionally, I will draw upon the writings of Benkler, Shirky, Lawrence Lessig, and potentially others to help craft some answers, as well as course materials.

References and Potential Sources

Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lessig, L. (2006). Code : Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books.

Shirky, C. (2008). Here comes everybody : The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press.

Prepared for COM 558, Prof. Kraig Baker, Spring Quarter 2009, University of Washington MCDM Program.

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.

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.

In an ensuing episode, Colbert actually talks about it and shows us one of the remixes of the Lessig/Colbert interview:

You gotta love it! Lessig is spot on about copyright laws being outdated. They stultify, marginalize, and criminalize consumers who want to engage intellectual material on their own terms – which NEVER implicitly means they don’t want to pay fair value for what they’ve recieved (but the media conglomerates hardly believe that!). Plus, there’s really no such thing as control; we’ve learned in Kathy Gill’s course this quarter (Evolutions and Trends in Digital Media) directly from Lessig’s book “Code” that cyberspace is a medium where regulation doesn’t work very well. Perhaps the very conceit behind traditional copyright itself is no longer viable in the age of social media. Creative Commons and the EFF are working to change things in this regard. Anyway, at the end of the day does all this copytheft mean that The Colbert Report is going to lose viewers and disappear from the airwaves? Hardly. If anything, this kind of commoditization, encouraged by a production that understands the importance of cultivating a relationship with its viewers, will keep more eyeballs on the Colbert franchise.  Maybe the old guard could learn a lesson or two from that.

Kudos to Tim Jones and the Deeplinks blog at EFF.org for helping me find some of the material above.