Copyright Laws and Hollywood Paranoia
For the Love of Money
Why Don't Media Executives Understand Who Really Pays the Bills?
UPDATED: April 5, 2000 (originally filed: March 8, 2000)
We have the greatest legal war in the history of the United States being waged right now - with a minimum of press coverage and almost no public interest. This battle is being waged in almost every state, through dozens of court cases, by hundreds of lawyers and with millions of potential victims. Why hasn't the press caught on?
One reason is that each individual battle, each single court case and injunction is relatively small. A second reason is that many cases are based on different issues or concepts. This isn't visibly big like the Microsoft antitrust case. But what all these cases add up to is Hollywood versus The American Citizen, and computer users in particular.
All the cases center around one fundamental issue: The rights of individuals to make copies of music, movies, television shows, or other copyrighted material for their personal use. Hollywood is so paranoid about losing a penny of royalties, that they prefer to alienate (and, if possible financially destroy or even imprison) their biggest fans.
And these Creative Bureaucrats will spend any amount of money to achieve their goals.
Battle One: DVD versus LINUX
The eight Motion Picture Association of America member companies, which have been battling the DVD-descrambling utility called DeCSS, have hired one of the largest, oldest, and meanest law firms in New York city, Proskauer Rose.
By contrast the Electronic Frontier Foundation spent months attempting to find a law firm in New York that didn't have any conflict of interest problems, before finally landing a high powered attorney.
Unfortunately this battle is being waged in several states at once. But the beleaguered defense teams have a secret weapon: The Internet and open collaboration.
Well... Open Collaboration is not exactly secret. The under funded defense teams are hosting forums that anyone can join and participate in. They hope that eventually they can enlist enough netizens that the best legal arguments will be developed. Programmers (and hackers) have used this kind of open collaboration for years.
The discussion group is called, appropriately enough, "dvd-discuss," and it's part of the so-called open-law project organized by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Battle Two: Recording CD's
Would you like to spend a really frightening twenty minutes? Then read the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Rules for making Copies of Music. Every copy of a CD made on a computer is ILLEGAL!! Yep! Better get that copy of "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" back from your Aunt Mildred before the FBI arrests her.
But today's real battle is being waged over digital recording technology, in particular MP3. In fact the company who snared the technology's name, MP3.com is at the forefront of the current Music Industry attack.
The RIAA'S incredible twists of logic effectively are designed to prevent you from buying a CD, then storing a non-duplicatable streaming copy on the MP3.com mainframe.
Here's the RIAA logic: you might have borrowed a friends CD instead of buying your own.
They hope to bankrupt the once high-flying MP3 to prevent this technology from being used. But, the WIZARD also believes there is a hidden agenda: MP3.com also allows thousands of budding artists to avoid the big record labels and sell their music on-line directly to listeners. The RIAA can't afford to allow a music source outside their financial control to gain a foothold.
This is now such a big issue that the WIZARD, fkap has added a news center just for MP3 news as a permanent part of the WIZARD, fkap MULTIMEDIA Center.
Battle Three: Linking, Fan Sites and More...
Perhaps the most frightening attacks are outlined in several articles below. The Media Bureaucrat's are using individual fans as weapons on this war by issuing restraining orders and lawsuits against web masters who link directly to other sites that are involved in the above lawsuits.
The MPAA single minded attack continues with a new lawsuit filed April 5, 2000. See MPAA Sues to Stop DeCSS Linking from WIRED Magazine for complete details.
Hollywood is also "protecting their copyrights" by attacking fan sites. Usually just the veiled threat of a lawsuit brings an individual fan to his or her knees. But the media companies aren't afraid to go ahead and file a suit. It doesn't matter that they'll never collect a penny.
What amazes the WIZARD is that the fans actually pay all the bills. Creative Artists don't make one damn thing: they don't grow crops, mine minerals or build machines. The fruits of their labors don't have any value until a fan pays the price of a ticket, buys an album or supports a television show. Why doesn't the creative collective understand that they are nothing without the fans?
The RIAA can't actually attack the true music pirates with their million dollar off shore recording and duplicating studios (usually located in countries without intellectual property treaties with the United States). So they mollify their artists by attacking digital copies made by individuals for relatively personal use. Stay tuned.
