Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton vs. The Internet | Sony Insider

 Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton vs. The Internet | Sony Insider

Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton vs. The Internet

Posted by Christopher MacManus on May 26th, 2009 Comments Printer-Friendly

 

The CEO of Sony Pictures, Michael Lynton, has really been the target of some intense Internet discussion lately. It all started when he attended a panel regarding the future of film making and oddly stated that he “doesn’t see anything good having come from the Internet. Period.” He complained the Internet has “created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day. They feel entitled. They say, ‘Give it to me now,’ and if you don’t give it to them for free, they’ll steal it.” These comments circulated quickly amongst blogs and news websites, and even Sony Insider was left wondering what the real deal is. How could someone from Sony say that?

I won’t be ignorant here and say that he’s wrong; Lynton is right in a certain sense. There is immense value in the Internet, but he speaks the truth about being able to steal content. I can use a file sharing program such as uTorrent and download any modern software I want, crack it, and use it very quickly. Using the same program, I can also download just about any song, album, or movie released in the last ten to twenty years with relative ease. Some older, more obscure content is a little harder to come by but just about everything is out there. However, Lynton stating that there isn’t “anything good having come from the Internet” is simply inescapable and will probably haunt him till the end of his career. People have attacked him incessantly regarding this statement since it was revealed last week, and with such intense scrutiny he offered further explanation at the Internet-only publication Huffington News.

While Lynton’s 10+ paragraph rebuttal is too long for us to repost, we seriously recommend you read it to understand the mindset of a person who runs one of the largest movie companies in the entire world. While there are several great points, I got this notion halfway through that Lynton is standing up for the way things used to be, before the Internet, before file sharing, before everything was nearly free. However, you can’t send society back in a time machine and forget what we have now. Lynton implies the Internet needs guardrails. There have been plenty of guardrails that have tried to curb illegal piracy - services, such as the first version of Napster, Morpheus, Kazaa have been shut down only to be replaced by the more efficient BitTorrent. Until the Internet is somehow turned off, people will find new ways to distribute content and the system to do so will become stronger and more efficient than before.

I would guess that all of the people who already are singing, writing, and filming creative content with little or nothing in the way of monetary compensation will keep on doing it. Small-budget films that were never about making a living in the first place will keep popping up - and keep being clever, creative, and redefine their genre. What may become untenable is the multi-million dollar special effects blockbuster, which makes up a huge chunk of film as an industry but often falls flat in terms of the creativity that the Lynton’s point would defend. That also applies to fiction, poetry, and music.

The pricing of the product was mostly due to the delivery medium, which is becoming irrelevant. People are stealing because its too expensive for most people to enjoy new content. I gained this perspective very quickly while on vacation visiting my father near Tallahassee (Wakulla County, Florida USA). The second edition of Wakulla News 2009 deliquent tax list is printed in a font size that is probably about 9, and is 24 pages long. These economic woes are probably a common situation in many counties in the United States. It will take time for the industry to realize that the pay scales in the entertainment business is going to be corrected by the Internet. Those millions to the actors will reduce invariably, and the profits will have to come down to accommodate customers.

The internet will not be changed by copyright, although certain countries may blast their legal minds out before they learn the lesson, copyright will change for the technology. The rational for the imposition of monopoly copyright was capital intensive industrial copy technology. With the internet, the rational has fallen, and simply asserting, as Lynton’s post does in a round about way, that copyright is a natural right or that it is responsible itself for artistic expression or that artistic expression is stymied if “other owners of copyrights” lose their monopolies, is exactly like saying the audience won’t like talkies.

It would be a great mistake to believe that the death of an industry necessarily heralds the death of an art. Will piracy mean there’s going to be less? Certainly, to some extent, but it’s not going to kill jam poets, writers’ circles, or local bands - it’s going to mean less Rambo and Britney Spears to go around, and that’s honestly kind of okay with us.

Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton vs. The Internet | Sony Insider

How much did piracy hurt 'Wolverine' boxoffice?--THR, Esq. Entertainment & Media Law Blog

 How much did piracy hurt 'Wolverine' boxoffice?--THR, Esq. Entertainment & Media Law Blog

How much did piracy hurt 'Wolverine' boxoffice?

By Matthew Belloni

The opening weekend numbers are in, and the hottest question in the anti-piracy community has been answered...sort of..OK, not really.

As THR's Carl DiOrio reports, Fox's "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" pulled in an estimated $87 million domestically this weekend, making it a solid hit. Now the query that was first raised when the unfinished workprint of the film leaked on March 30th is center stage: what could have been?

The answer is unknowable, of course, and the file-sharing community will no doubt point to the big total as proof that piracy doesn't really hurt the studios, at least not when it comes to theatrical boxoffice. But a close look at the numbers suggest the leak indeed might have cost Fox. How much? Tons of variables are at work here; everything from mixed reviews to swine flu. But here are a couple purely speculative piracy loss scenarios:

$7.18 milllion -- Reports following the leak suggested that about 1 million people viewed at least part of the workprint. That number seemed low to us, given the publicity, the Web savvy of the film's core audience and how easy it is now to access torrent sites via Google. But accepting that number and multiplying it by $7.18, which is the average North American movie ticket price, the early availability might have shaved about $7.18 million off the opening weekend numbers. Caveats: Sure, many of those who cared enough to look at the leaked version no doubt donned their muttonchops and plastic claws to see the finished film on opening night. And plenty of lookie-loos never would have seen the film anyways. (Plus, the 1 million presumably refers to views worldwide, not just North America.) But the leak also contributed to some negative buzz about the film, which--like with Universal's leaked "Hulk" in 2003--reverberated beyond the pirate community ("Wolverine's" RottenTomato rating ended up at a splattering 38%).      

$15.75 million -- That's the difference between the opening weekend domestic gross of "Wolverine" and "X-Men: The Last Stand." Brett Ratner's 2006 contribution to the series opened to a more impressive $102.75. Granted, that benchmark seems unfair because "X-3" opened over the Memorial Day weekend (its 4-day total was $122.9 million) and was riding high on fan support of Bryan Singer's well-received "X-2: X-Men United." But an argument could be made that a prequel about the series' most popular character, released as the summer kickoff in a year of recession-supercharged boxoffice, would have reached $100 million without piracy.

$14.1 million -- A better comparison for "Wolverine" might be the $102.1 that "Iron Man" pulled in over the same weekend last year. That comic book adaptation launched without the built-in franchise power that "Wolverine" has and without the recession boost but still managed to outgross it by an estimated 14.1 million. (Good reviews helped the Jon Favreau pic, but these movies are review-proof, aren't they?)

$00 -- What if the copyleft is right and piracy doesn't really impact opening weekends at all? Maybe the unfinished print acted as a massive tease for the final cut, something that primed the core audience and served as free publicity for everyone else. Or maybe audiences separate the experience of watching pirated movies online from the fun of seeing a big summer movie in the theater. We doubt it (and we never believed those rumors that Fox actually leaked the film itself to stoke buzz or create an excuse if the film fizzled). But look for the pirates to point to "Wolverine" and say the studios are crying, um, wolf, when they beat their drums about leaks hurting the bottom line.

As we said, this is all just speculation. That's the frustrating part about rampant piracy: there's no way to know how sharp "Wolverine's" boxoffice claws might have been.    

RELATED: THR's Steven Zeitchik looks at the "mutating force" of piracy over at the Risky Business blog.

POST UPDATED WITH LINKS

How much did piracy hurt 'Wolverine' boxoffice?--THR, Esq. Entertainment & Media Law Blog

Documentarians, DVDs and the MPAA | Technology | Los Angeles Times

 

Documentarians, DVDs and the MPAA

You would think that the movie industry, which celebrates documentarians every year at its awards ceremonies, would want to help those same filmmakers overcome the hurdles posed by changing technology. But Hollywood's copyright holders don't see things quite that way. In fact, they're trying to make it harder for documentarians to practice their craft, opposing the latter's bid for the freedom to extract short clips directly from DVDs.

As instructed by Congress in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Copyright Office considers requests every three years to create or renew exemptions to the DMCA's ban on circumventing the electronic locks on copyrighted material. Such "technical protection measures" include the encryption on DVDs. In one of the rare exemptions granted by the Copyright Office, film professors have been permitted to copy short clips from DVDs for the purpose of creating video compilations for their classes. Of course, the DMCA makes it illegal for anyone to make or sell a tool that professors could use to extract these clips from discs; luckily for them, it's easy to find (illegal) software online that can do the trick.

Anyway, the Copyright Office held hearings last week on the latest requests for exemptions, including one from a group of documentary filmmakers. Led by Kartemquin Educational Films (the producers of "Hoop Dreams") and joined by well-known filmmakers such as Kirby Dick ("This Film Is Not Yet Rated") and Morgan Spurlock ("Super Size Me"), the group seeks permission to copy short segments from DVDsfor their work. The group (whose papers were prepared by a team from USC's Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic and Beverly Hills attorney Michael C. Donaldson) notes that VHS production has all but ceased, meaning that DVD is the de facto medium for video. And without the ability to make fair use of material on DVDs, the group contends, documentaries that cast their subjects in a negative or mocking light may not be possible....

It points to such works as "This Film Is Not Yet Rated," "Smoke and Mirrors: A History of Denial" and "Bigger Stronger Faster" as examples of filmmakers relying on the fair use doctrine for the clips they needed instead of obtaining the copyright holders' consent. According to comments filed by the group:

Each of these films plays an important role in society through its critique, commentary or exposé of some aspect of our culture, but without fair use, none of them could even have been made. Documentary film has faced this reality since the form was developed, and it is why documentary film is an exemplar of the type of activity for which the fair use doctrine was developed.

The MPAA opposed the request, along with a broader one by the Electronic Frontier Foundation that sought permission to take short clips from DVDs for any noncommercial, non-infringing video. "These proposals fail to establish that content desired for non-infringing uses is not available from sources other than DVDs, or that the desired non-infringing uses cannot be made by means that do not require circumvention of technical measures, such as screen shots," the association argued in its comments. But the problem with copying clips from other sources, the documentarians responded, is that it introduces image and sound problems that render the video unacceptable to broadcasters, cable networks and other outlets for their work.

The reaction by the MPAA and other copyright holders to the documentarians' appeal typified their response to all the requests for exemptions, which ranged from the narrow and common-sensical (such as allowing circumvention by people who had purchased software, music or movies protected by DRM systems that were later abandoned by the retailer), to the broad and, well, quixotic (such as allowing phone resellers to circumvent the locks on mobile phones).

Any new or expanded request drew a uniform "no" from the copyright holders, who contended that expanding the (extremely limited) exemptions would weaken the anti-circumvention regime, "confuse consumers" and "spawn an undergound marketplace for circumvention services" (as if that didn't already exist). The trump card in the copyright holders' arsenal: if the anti-circumvention provisions grow weak, content providers will lose faith in their ability to protect content and make it less available. Of course, the copy protection on DVDs was cracked not long after the discs were introduced, yet the studios continued to sell them and sales exploded anyway.

In the documentarians' case, Hollywood's Katy-bar-the-door approach doesn't just strain credulity; it's more than a little anti-competitive. The copyright holders argue that "the most salient alternative method" for documentary filmmakers is to "obtain footage directly from the copyright owners." That's another way of saying, "Let us retain control of the clips." The fair use doctrine, though, holds that copyright holders don't control all uses of the material they create. It's one of the ways that the courts and Congress have tried to balance the Constitution's protection for "authors and inventors" with the First Amendment rights. The copyright owners correctly observed that fair use is a fuzzy notion, with the courts as the ultimate arbiters. Yet the Copyright Office won't affect what is and isn't a fair use by granting the documentarians an exemption; copyright owners can still sue for infringement if they don't like what a filmmaker does with their work. They could also accuse a filmmaker of illegal circumvention if they prove their infringement claim; after all, the exemption would only apply to non-infringing clips (i.e., fair uses). The only real effect if the exemption is granted is that documentarians would have easier access to video clips as they're making their films, which would increase their productivity and, potentially, help them compete against the studio's releases. The MPAA's members should be willing to meet the documentarians in the marketplace, rather than trying to hold them back in the Copyright Office.

Documentarians, DVDs and the MPAA | Technology | Los Angeles Times

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

 Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

I'm told that the Walt Disney Co is currently attempting to trademark the character name "Princess Aurora" for all media: stage, sound, film, TV, video, Internet, photographs, news. In short, everything except literature. The name comes from the 1697 Charles Perrault fairy tale and Aurora is the Princess's daughter (and thus a princess herself). The first use of "Princess Aurora" was in the 1890 Tchaikovsky ballet "The Sleeping Beauty," which Disney turned into the 1959 animated film. It has been used continuously since then in the ballet as the title character's name. The problem is that, if the Disney Company is successful, it will effectively control the legal right to all future performances of the ballet. The move also could sink any movie about the ballet or that uses a scene of the ballet in another movie. "This would be like a film studio trademarking the character name "Ebenezer Scrooge" for all media (no one has) and then no one could perform "A Christmas Carol" on a stage, TV, in a film, radio, etc without first securing the right to use the name from the trademark owner," a critic emails me. Not surprisingly, Disney is also seeking to trademark "Princess Aurora" for products. Therefore, a campaign has emerged to complain to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office if people feel this trademarking of a pre-existing character name should not be allowed.

Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily » An Attempt To Stop The Disney Machine

TV: Government given five-year TV and film piracy warning | Technology | guardian.co.uk

 

Government given five-year TV and film piracy warning

TV: Government given five-year TV and film piracy warning | Technology | guardian.co.uk

Industries will fade into insignificance if more is not done to stamp out illegal copying, trade body warns

A still from an advert emphasising how cinema ticket and DVD sales help fund the film industry

The UK's film and TV industries will fade into insignificance in five years unless the government rapidly steps up its anti-piracy efforts, a leading trade body warned today.

In a survey of more than 30 directors of TV and film companies, the Industry Trust found that 94% believe the damage cannot be repaired without stronger support from government and more action from internet service providers, who have been accused by some critics of failing to act against web users who illegally download audio and video files.

The trust's director general, Liz Bales, said that although the film industry is not suffering as much as the music sector, the proportion of illegal film and TV content distributed globally online is heading towards 90% of the totall, as experienced by the music industry.

In 2007, 95m films were downloaded illegally in the UK, compared with just 158,000 legally, according to the trust.

The government's interim Digital Britain report has laid out proposals for improving broadband speeds across the UK, which will make it possible to download entire films in a few minutes.

Commissioned by the UK Film Council, the trust's survey also found that 91% think the industry needs help encouraging consumers to use legal online content services, while 60% think ISPs need to play a bigger role in supporting legal content initiatives.

"If the current framework hasn't changed in five years, the UK industry will have become insignificant," Bales said.

"This is a wakeup call for government as well as industry. Digital Britain proposed creating a massive hub in the UK of innovative content creators and publishers, and net-savvy civilians backed up by digital literacy," she added.

"But in opening the floodgates for business, we need to make sure we are not enabling illegal businesses. We need to clear the undergrowth, in the government's own language."

The survey coincides with the Industry Trust's conference today, which will explore specific proposals for encouraging takeup of legal online content services while discouraging illegal downloads.

Proposals include watermarking legal content, more research into legal alternatives and increased collaboration to limit the availability of illegal content. Media firms also want to discuss bringing more legal alternatives into the market.

Bales said that positive moves for the industry will include the launch of the NBC Universal and Fox web TV service Hulu in the UK, which is expected later this year, a new streaming service by Lovefilm and uptake of FindAnyFilm, which has built up 1 million users in the 10 weeks since it launched.

She added that the industry is moving away from the anti-piracy campaigns based around social stigma, such as "Knockoff Nigel", with a more positive campaign called "You make the Movies" launched earlier this month emphasising that DVD sales and cinema tickets are part of the funding process for high quality content.

The trust has also supported a new site called Find Any Film that aggregates to legal download services, cinema listings and archive information, but is looking to the government for significant regulatory support.

Bales said the model should be similar to that of Ofcom, which helps to police the largely-self regulatory media industry.

"The film industry is not interested in end user litigation," she added. "Consumers deserve consistency and to know what the framework is. ISPs need to be more proactive in identifying those people infringing copyright and have a simple, measured system of graduated response."

Bales said that despite the attention given to the Pirate Bay, the site was "not particularly innovative" but had used the same principle as Grokster and Kazaa to create "a very lucrative business".

The Pirate Bay was not concerned with the quality of content, the value for consumers or in creating a business model, she added.

• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.

TV: Government given five-year TV and film piracy warning | Technology | guardian.co.uk

The Associated Press: Hollywood, RealNetworks square off on DVD copying

The Associated Press: Hollywood, RealNetworks square off on DVD copying 

Hollywood, RealNetworks square off on DVD copying

By PAUL ELIAS – 12 hours ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hollywood calls it "rent, rip and return" and contends it's one of the biggest technological threats to the movie industry's annual $20 billion DVD market — software that allows you to copy a film without paying for it.

On Friday, the showdown over the issue will take place in federal court in San Francisco, where an army of lawyers representing Hollywood will argue that RealNetworks Inc.'s DVD "ripper" is an illegal digital piracy tool.

The company, in turn, will say the $29.99 software that allows DVDs to be easily copied to computer hard drives is legitimate.

The same federal judge who shut down music-swapping site Napster in 2000 because of copyright violations will preside over the three-day trial, which is expected to cut to the heart of the same technological upheaval roiling Hollywood that forever changed the face of the music business.

The movie studios fear that if RealNetworks is allowed to sell its RealDVD software, consumers will quickly lose interest in paying retail for DVDs that can be rented cheaply, copied and returned.

Their lawyers argue the software violates a federal law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that makes software and other tools that enable digital piracy illegal. They also contend shoppers will widely condone such illegal behavior if RealNetworks' product is allowed on the market.

For its part, the Seattle-based company says its RealDVD product is designed to simply let customers back up a purchased DVD and that the software allows for only one copy to be made.

The company argues that the contract it signed with the DVD Copy Control Association, which equips DVD player manufacturers with the keys to unscrambling DVDs, allows RealDVD because the software doesn't alter or remove anti-piracy encryption on DVDs like illicit software that is easily obtained for free online.

RealNetworks says its product legally fills growing consumer demand to convert their DVDs to digital form for convenient storage and viewing.

In October, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel temporarily barred sales of RealDVD after the product was on the market for a few days. At the time, the judge said it appeared the software did violate federal law against digital piracy, but ordered detailed court filings and the trial to better understand how RealDVD works.

The industry's lawsuit has incurred widespread wrath from bloggers, digital rights advocates and groups on both sides of the political spectrum, including former Republican congressman and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and the left-leaning Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The industry's critics accuse the studios of stifling innovation as they attempt to develop their own copying software.

"It's all about control," said Cato Institute scholar Timothy Lee. "No one is allowed to innovate in the DVD space without industry permission."

The industry, through the Motion Picture Association of America, counters that its goal is to stamp out piracy. It says it welcomes legitimate attempts at innovation.

"RealNetworks acted in bad faith by taking a license to build a DVD player and instead built a copier that violates the circumvention rules of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by enabling consumers to copy DVDs illegally," said Greg Goeckner, the MPAA's top lawyer. "Our objective is to get the illegal choices out of the marketplace and instead focus constructively with the technology community on bringing in more innovative and flexible legal options for consumers to enjoy movies."

Regardless of the trial's outcome — and the judge isn't expected to rule immediately — some predict that Hollywood control over digital copies will continue to wane because of the proliferation of illegal software online.

"If Hollywood wins, I don't think much changes in the real world," said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Anybody who wants DVDs copied can download software for free in 10 minutes."

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The Associated Press: Hollywood, RealNetworks square off on DVD copying