arts

If you can break away, take 10 minutes to watch "Delivery" (a short film by Till Nowak). The animation and music are beautiful, but not so much as the story.

Till is only 24 or 25. My own feeling is that we can expect some great things from this artist.

[via DC Media Girl (no relation)]

The Supreme Court Tuesday is to hear arguments regarding P2P companies and whether they should be held liable for illegal activities done with their devices. The plaintiffs in this case are the copyright owners, who have such small imaginations that they cannot see a glittering new market when it gets their notice through their legal departments. [OutragedModerates have seeded BitTorrents of the briefs on this case]

As a creator of media that has copyright protections, I'm no pollyanna when it comes to this brave new world of file sharing. But it seems to me that these huge conglomerates are being totally disingenuous in their claims that they're really just out to protect the artists.

Red Herring reports:

"We will not welcome theft masquerading as technology," said Dan Glickman, president and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America. "No business, including the movies, can keep its doors open, its employees paid, and its customers satisfied if pirates and thieves are allowed to run ramshackle over this country's basic protection of the right of individuals to the ownership of their creative expressions."

The only problem with this statement is that they are not arguing for individual copyright ownership, but rather their corporate copyright ownership. It may seem like splitting hairs to some, but don't be fooled by "We're protecting the artists" posing.

Mitch Bainwol, chairman and CEO of the RIAA, had equally harsh words. "The Groksters of the world are not innovators. Far from it. They are parasites who hide behind technology as they steal from the artists that create entertainment," he said. "They jeopardize the incentives to create new artistic works for society to enjoy."

Again, more false rhetoric from companies that are all about getting as much as they can out of their talent, while paying them as little as possible. (Do we need to get into the music industry's sad history in exploiting artists, leaving them in debt from touring while the execs made millions and the companies made billions?)

How bad has this really been for the multinational media conglomerates?

Faced with the disruptive nature of file-sharing software, the entertainment industry has been fighting a tough battle. According to research firm InStat, over a quarter of those in the entertainment business say they are losing significant revenue to piracy. However, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) reported last week that U.S. CD shipments rose in 2004 after four years of decreases.

Damn. Those inconvenient facts again.

Sometimes it almost seems like ego. For example, Sony/Epic has refused to release Fiona Apple's third CD Extraordinary Machine, which was completed nearly two years ago now -- which sparked a grassroots movement that, if nothing else, is a fairly strong indication that Sony's beancounters made the wrong call in shelving the recordings. It really seems to fly in the face of common sense, especially after When the Pawn went platinum.

The "official" Sony Fiona Apple website makes no mention of her latest creative work. They own it, but they won't release it.

However, whether Sony wants to be a player or not, the market exists. Extraordinary Machine is available for download here and elsewhere.

[Aside: To my own music tastes, this album gets five stars. Well worth a listen ... or 10.]

Fordham University Professor Doron Ben-Atar notes:

There is no denying that commercial use of copyrighted material is both illegal and immoral. Yet estimates of the cost of piracy are misleading. They don't account for the fact that piracy fuels demand for entertainment products: 2004 was a banner year for pirates; it was even better for the movie industry, where rentals and sales of DVD and VHS movies accounted for nearly $26-billion. When Hollywood cries poverty, as the victim of pilfering teenagers and workers who live on a couple of dollars a day, it is laughable....

Companies that try to suppress the development of P2P software are similar to the early 19th-century English Luddites, weavers who tried to save their jobs by smashing the machines. The plaintiffs' demand for monetary compensation is a ruse. P2P companies don't have the resources to pay the studios should the Supreme Court rule against them. The studios seek to destroy the P2P companies just as they did Napster in its previous incarnation. Our intellectual-property regime is their weapon of choice.....

Unable to go after actual violators of their intellectual property, the studios target P2P developers whose programs, among other things, facilitate some piracy. But it is impossible to contain the abuse of technology without undermining the free flow of knowledge that is the prerequisite for innovation. In order to prevent 12-year-olds from downloading their favorite movie, the plaintiffs and their allies in the Justice Department are threatening our most cherished economic assets -- the public sphere of knowledge and the conditions of intellectual exchange.

Ah, but that is precisely the point of these suits. What's really at stake here is not what kind of real damages these companies are experiencing. No, this is about ownership and who controls the media out there. P2P threatens their stranglehold on music and media distribution. The multinational media conglomerates arguments against illegal file sharing are really just the back door to their real agenda. You see, the fact that the software can be used to share files legally is precisely the point. That is what they're most afraid of. That is what they want to stop. If we're legally prohibited from sharing with each other, and if companies are legally prohibited from creating and distributing P2P file sharing software, then we have to turn to them, the big boys, the Media Dons.

Which means they get to decide what we experience. And how much we pay for it.

On the other hand, P2P distribution would allow artists to distribute themselves. Marketing would be viral. Smart mobs would pick the bestsellers. Individual consumers would choose their own playlists.

And suddenly all those MBAs in marketing and distribution and management -- and let's not forget the lawyers, they need to be paid, too -- don't have anything to do to justify their jobs. --That is, assuming they are doing something to justify their existences now.

As for arguments that this would be bad for the United States, well, these media conglomerates are multinationals, not uniquely or strictly American.

Mark Morford sums it up well:

This, then, is the bottom line. The rules are changing fast. Great songs want to be free. Fiona Apple is singing anew, despite the corporate crackdown and the RIAA sneers, and it's all just more proof positive that you can't really contain or restrain raw human talent, can't kill the need for true creative prowess, and that goddamn flower is gonna crack through that corporate concrete no matter how much weed killer they pour on it. The commercial dictatorship is crumbling. New songs are being sung, in spite of the old rules. Really, really good songs. Sung by a goddess.

The question now will be whether this Supreme Court is going to get back into the corporate protection racket and be the goons for the multinational Media Dons.

You've probably heard of Bill Gates' remarks about free culture advocates and Communism:

No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.

He has a point. But is he really even addressing what copyright reform advocates have been saying?

Creative Commons Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown responds:

Well, since I know he can't be talking about Creative Commons, I'd be interested to know whom Gates is talking about, exactly. Is he calling The Economist magazine communist for arguing that copyright terms should last only a few decades, which they did just last year? Does he think that IBM, which makes more than a few bucks from selling Linux-based servers, should be re-nicknamed "Big Red"? Is he saying that economists like Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase, who support limited copyright terms, are the new Marx and Engels?

Copyright reform advocate Lawrence Lessig is virtually speechless:

It's one thing to read this sort of thing from a studio exec, or head of a record label -- surrounded as they are by the sort that surround them. But the people I've met at Microsoft are miles beyond this sort of silliness. Does Mr. Gates not even talk to them?

Ah, but Mr. Gates wanted to clarify is remarks. And so we get Part 4 of Gizmodo's interview with Bill Gates:

Gates: No, I've said it exactly. We have your interests totally in mind, but that includes having... if there's content that can only be there if it's rights protected, we want to be able to have that content available to you. And so all we're doing... in no sense are we hurting you, because if they're willing to make the content available openly, believe me, that's always the most wonderful thing. It's the simplest.

Take, like, putting soundtracks onto movies using our movie editor thing. If you have unprotected music you can take slideshows, put music to it, encapsulate it in the file, mail it around—it works perfectly. If you have rights management, it's actually painful because the people you're mailing it to don't have the certificate and it's kind of painful. But because the artists... some things are only licensed to be in that form, it's hard to put the track on Movie Maker. But hey, we want you, instead of not having that content, to have that content. And in the case that the authors decided it's rights managed, you can decide to stay away from it or to use it. That, again, is your choice.

We're the guys of empowerment. We want these things to be out there everywhere. But it wouldn't serve anyone's interests to go out there and say, 'Hey, by the way, there's no way to remind anyone at any time about any rights boundaries.'

Take medical records: is it your position that rights management for medical records is evil?

Gizmodo: 'Evil' is maybe strong. Do you mean in the sense that medical records shouldn't have any rights management at all?

Gates: Right. We remind people that, like if there's a medical record that has somebody's AIDS status in it, we have software—which is identical software—that says, 'Hey, if you're trying to forward to someone,' that, 'No, this is restricted. You can't forward this to someone. They don't have the right to see this.' It's the notion of 'should there be confidential information?'

Gizmodo: I think that's a different question.

Gates: It's not different. It's identical technology. It's the same bits!

Gizmodo: No, no, no. I think in calling that evil as opposed to whatever, I think that still basically comes down to, 'Do you feel like things should be able to have passwords on them or not?' And of course the answer is 'yes.' I do think that's reasonable. So I don't think anybody is trying to say 'DRM is evil.' [link added -mg] I think what people are trying to say is that DRM, as sanctioned by the big players, may be holding back culture as a whole.

Gates: The DRM we put into these systems is used to protect medical records, and it's used to protect things people want to protect. And so it's hard for me to say, 'No, because it might be used for media for a way in some people don't like, I won't put it in there for medical records.' This is a platform that people can use in any way that they choose.

Gizmodo: I think that's a little close to, 'Think of the children.' I understand what you're saying, but just because, 'medical records, it's good to have a password on them' doesn't necessarily mean that when it comes to music or the things that I purchase that that's also a good thing. I think it all comes down to what it is you're actually paying for.

Gates: All we're doing is putting it in the platform. So I'm just saying, can you criticize us for having a platform that allows bits—bits, just bits; not music, not movies, not medical records, not tech things—to have any usage restriction for bits. Are we doing a disfavor to the world at large by saying some of our users, when they choose to—maybe for medical records—they can limit the accessibility of those bits?

Gizmodo: I think setting up the platform? No, it's not inherently bad. But I think it does depend on what it is that you're protecting. But I think we just disagree.

Gates: No, I actually don't think we disagree.

....huh?

The interview is fascinating in how someone so smart can be so blind. [Part 1; Part 2; Part 3] It's clear he's living in a different reality. How can one equate a Gwen Sefani song with private medical records? I think I'm beginning to understand why, after some 20 years, Windows still does not communicate with other computers very well.

veridicus puts it into perspective:

He ignores the fact that DRM is mostly pushed by content owners and not the artists themselves. In the world of artists there is a miniscule amount who speak loud of rights management software. Microsoft's backers are the RIAA, MPAA, and others who own the content but don't create it. They're looking out for their own corporate and selfish interests, not that of any artists.

"All we're doing is putting it in the platform. So I'm just saying, can you criticize us for having a platform that allows bits—bits, just bits; not music, not movies, not medical records, not tech things—to have any usage restriction for bits." Of course their not responsible. They're simply letting others control the information on your own computer.

As a very fine example of this, we jump back to Gizmodo's take on the iPod Shuffle:

I'm certainly a big fan of Apple's iTunes software, but I have almost completely stopped buying music from iTunes. I'm in the minority—with 230 million iTunes downloads since the stores have opened, it's clear most people just don't care about the crippling effects of DRM. So to the news that the version of iTunes (4.7.1) that came down with the announcement of the iPod Shuffle disables songs purchased from Real's Harmony store or stripped with Hymn I say: whatever.

Yes, the Windows may be fogged, but the Apple has worms.

A Wired article today tells of a new PAC that's a David to Hollywood's Goliath when it comes to copyright issues.

With ludicrious demands from Hollywood like forcing people to watch commercials and HBO's getting nervous about people videotaping their latest greatest series, it's refreshing to find an organization that is for a reasonable solution to protecting copyrights without undercutting the rights of free expression.

"Copyright is supposed to be a balance in the Constitution," said David Alpert, president of IPac, which launched about a month before the 2004 election. "The government should not be in the business of preventing technology changes just because some companies are afraid it might hurt their existing business models."

A lot of this got stirred up recently over the nasty legal threats over Woodie Guthrie's This Land is Your Land -- which was quite ironic, really, given the sentiments of the song. Where do you think Guthrie would be siding today?

As a copyright holder who wants to see the creators of intellectual property protected, it seems to me that Hollywood has been behaving like a gaggle of dragons, eager to burn anyone who draws their ire. Or, as an IPac blog entry draws from a Washington Post piece, "It's all about hating your customers.":

The movie industry is following the path paved by the music business, filing hundreds of lawsuits against consumers who enjoy their products so much that they want to share them with friends. Instead of adapting to the new rules of the road, these companies wield a legal sledgehammer to bash their best potential customers. (Interestingly, book publishers don't sue public libraries. They learned long ago that their challenge was to make the paid product more attractive and convenient than the free one.)

IPac there is quoting The Washington Post (emphasis added).