Speaker: ACTA: Don't sell us down the river
526 Responses
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"Exposure? Popularity? Future sales..." etc.Yeah. Right.
Yes! You're not seeing any increase in sales at all? None? Not even of your older back-catalogue stuff (assuming it's still in print)? It's a bit hard to tell if there'll be any impact on sales of the book that Wikipedia says you're currently writing, obviously, but I would be very, very surprised if the free marketing you're getting will hurt.
I can't find the site now, but a bunch of SciFi authors got together and started releasing their new works digitally under a very liberal CC licence (maybe even PD, I don't remember). Uniformly they saw increased sales of their old, printed works, and I'm pretty sure that one of them had some stuff come back with a limited print run due to demand from people who suddenly found out who the author was and decided they wanted more of the same. Don't diss exposure, even if it comes from a medium that you distrust.Also, can people pay to get your works electronically through legitimate means? No, they can't, and you've pretty much said that that will only happen over your dead body. So you're actively against allowing people to get your works over the internet, but at the same time you're complaining that you get no money if they do. Do you see the inherent discord between these positions?
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Actually, and respectfully, no. Because we always end up in exactly the same place, and it's bloody frustrating.
Yes, it is. All right then ...
I'm in favour of limiting the ability to make infringing copies of commercial works such as films and books. But I also see the need to limit the scope of that limitation. I regard the protection of fair-dealing rights as fundamental to the public good, and I'm deeply uncomfortable with the creep of criminal penalties into the civil law of copyright. I also don't like copy-protection over-reaching to the point where it comes at the significant expense of law-abiding consumers.
Gio, Paul, Peter, Kyle, Keir -- where do you all stand on this? What balance best serves the public good? How should we best move forward? Again: put away the moral thunderbolts -- what might actually work?
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Paul Litterick, you asked for examples of musical artists who have prospered in the modern world, without the assistance of major labels, we gave some examples. What do you make of those examples?
Sorry sir, I had to sleep. I think those artists have been adept at making use of digital opportunities - reaching wider audiences without the benefit of major label support. I don't think they could be used as an argument for unregulated downloading. People can and do download without any intention of buying music, attending gigs or buying t-shirts. I think it very difficult to establish what effect that downloading has overall or in particular sectors. I suspect younger people download and much of the purchasing comes from older customers. I also suspect that people who like niche music genres are more likely to support the acts they like with purchases than do mainstream listeners.
I wonder what effect downloading has on smaller labels - the likes of Arch Hill - which do a good job in nurturing talent but need the income to keep going.
Speaking of arch, I for one welcome Gianni's comments.
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Doubt as much as you want, but Scribd is already here.
I'm not seeing a problem here. Scribd opens up access for many small, and probably not so small, writers who otherwise would struggle to get their book published, unless they did it themselves, and then distribution would be a issue.
It's just like indies leaping on the internet bandwagon to promote their self-recorded EP.
But, as Russell was saying, and as I've said various times, while presenting content digitally, there's still the experience. For a book, it's holding it and turning the pages. For a CD it's reading the sleeve, or possibly extra content on it. For a DVD it's the bonus features, and possibly the case (I've bought 3 steelbooks for more than the plain case).
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As a side-bar, one solution is for the studios to stop pissing their pants about "piracy" and let people who buy DVDs get a 'digital copy' as part of the package.
I noticed this while browsing in the Queen Street JB HiFi yesterday, on the packaging to the newly released Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince, and the re-released "ultimate edition" of the other five films. Is this happening a lot, or is it just as experiment on the part of Warners?
If the former, I'd have to say it's a more constructive -- and potentially profitable -- response that getting your lobbyists out there to pimp horrors like ACTA.
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I don't think they could be used as an argument for unregulated downloading.
Has anyone made such an argument?
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That's thanks to the Sono Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of copyright to the author's life plus 70 years. There are people who would like to see that further extended.
Oh, long copyright terms are awful. I work largely in history at the moment, it is incredibly difficult to locate copyright holders of historic works. If you want something distributed in the US you have to assume that everything created after 1895 is in copyright.
New Zealand's copyright laws are much more sane, and to get back to the seed of this discussion, it would terrible to lose them in favour of a Mickey Mouse Perpetual Copyright Act.
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Established artists? New artists? Metallica and Britney above, say, Minuit (whose name I picked because I just saw a BDO advert)? If the internet is a democratising force, which I think most of us would agree it is, that includes some degree of democratisation of income. Are we trying to foster growth of the art, or preserve the status quo? Because those are fundamentally incompatible aims.
I don't think they're incompatible. Any good scheme would provide options for proven artists to continue to output their good work, but would also provide options for up-and-coming new artists to get their first book/album/movie out to the public. The production of quality outputs in a range of fields would be the desired goal.
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Answer number Two: I object to the life plus seventy years copyright protection; I do not see why descendants should benefit from Grandpa's work. I also agree with your statement beginning "I'm in favour of limiting the ability ..."
But I think artists and their publishers need some protection from operators like Pirate Bay. It is not enough to expect artists to produce low-budget work and accept marginal returns. That will kill a lot of media, particularly high-investment work like orchestral music.
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Sorry sir, I had to sleep. I think those artists have been adept at making use of digital opportunities - reaching wider audiences without the benefit of major label support. I don't think they could be used as an argument for unregulated downloading.
As Josh noted, no one has made such an argument. And that wasn't your question. You asked if anyone had succeeded in the modern environment, without benefit of a major label. There are many examples.
But come on guys: tell us what you want. What should the law do, how should it operate and what effect would you expect it to have? I'm bored with being sermonised at. Tell us what you think should happen.
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People can and do download without any intention of buying music, attending gigs or buying t-shirts.
But are they a loss in sales then?
A student who has $20 to spend a week on entertainment has to choose where to spend it. If they choose to buy the latest CD of their favourite artist then they can't afford to go to a movie. So they download it for free. Or vice versa.
My point is, in some situations (and probably quite common situations) a downloaded movie or album isn't a loss. & with the right mindset it can be seen as a gain, as it's reaching more customers than if the person didn't download it.
Thus why various studies have shown that downloading an album for free from a P2P site has, in some situations, increased sales for some artists. It increases exposure, and someone who otherwise wouldn't buy their album finds a couple of tracks & decides it is worth spending that $20 they have to spend that week on the CD.
If anyone here hasn't heard of Janis Ian, go read her The Internet Debacle. It's a very interesting take on how the net can help artists.
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George, Paul: what sanctions should be wielded to enforce those very long copyright terms? Should people with a public-good use for the works just go ahead and use them?
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People can and do download without any intention of buying music, attending gigs or buying t-shirts.
Sure, but on Monday I watched the whole of the latest Doctor Who special on YouTube (fucking awesome, BTW)-- which means, I guess, I deserve to have my internet access cut off. But if you think I won't pay full list for the DVD the day it's released, you don't know me and my inner geek at all. :)
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That will kill a lot of media, particularly high-investment work like orchestral music.
I do wonder how much "piracy" really would affect an orchestra. I mean, surely they would make most of their earnings from public performances & other mediums (TV, etc)? In saying that, I have bought classical music CDs, but never downloaded one.
Seems to me it would be similar to watching an opera on TV.
And again, we get back to the experience... (I wonder if I'm getting repetitive yet :)
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Same thing happened with when that other great (quasi-)piracy device burst onto the scene: television. That's when cinema started going widescreen and hypercoloured.
Exactly, though I hadn't really thought of it in those terms. Likewise the surround sound experience and the rise of the VCR, now that you mention it.
The real problem that the major labels appear to have is this entrenchment of both Hollywood accounting and also the massive cost structures. The very existence of a $20m list and a $10m list says that the entire industry is built on enormous, ridiculous costs. Good movies can be made for a lot less than we're lead to expect, as Cameron pointed out. Hell, Slumdog was produced for a relatively lean USD15m. Kevin Smith is a master of the low-cost, high-quality movie. When I go looking on Google for figures on how much various movies cost to make and see the adjective "only" prepending the figure "$28 million", I can't help but cringe. Says Kevin Smith, "We shot Chasing Amy on Super-16 film for $250000. Ultimately, with all the music and blowing up to 35mm film, the final cost was almost $800000." It is clearly possible to make good movies, on film, for quite low sums. This list of sub-USD1m-budget indies is quite interesting, too.The huge costs are not an unalterable absolute, they are a result of historical choices that have now become accepted as the normal state of affairs. That is not the consumer's fault, and should not be expected to be the consumer's problem. -
Gio, Paul, Peter, Kyle, Keir -- where do you all stand on this? What balance best serves the public good? How should we best move forward?
Umm... I'll try some general suggestions:
1. Limit copyright to something sensible, maybe 50 years from original publication. Difficult to see that happen globally, but pie in the sky.
2. Try and reward artists and their publishers that are willing to work without fear in the brave new world. Govt funders like the Film Commission, nz on air to reward people who put their stuff out there in new ways. If you get an album/single funded it has to be available on itunes, amplifier, youtube etc.
3. Copyright law has to be backed up in some way, and that's going to have to include internet use to break copyrights. It shouldn't target the internet connection though, it should be a civil fine. We should be sensible about it and not have to worry about the stupid stuff like having a video of your kid up on youtube dancing to Abba. It should target distribution over reception, particularly large-scale. -
Russell, copyright terms should be shorter, particularly the 50 years from death of the author applied for literary, dramatic and artistic works - 40 years from publication or 20 from death (whichever is shorter) would be a much more reasonable regime.
As for sanctions? Appropriate to the crime. Small fines issued in the same way as parking fines, for the most part.
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John, Ringo: I want copyright reduced to life plus thirty, but that is not going to happen. However, I think enforcement has to include sites which facilitate illegal downloads. Public-use should be a defence, but should not allow carte-blanche downloading.
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John, Ringo
Ha!
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New Zealand's copyright laws are much more sane
Like hell they are. Death-plus-50 is no improvement on death-plus-70 in any material sense. If ACTA passes, I doubt we'll have the choice to keep our "sane" copyright laws, either. We'll be forced to enact death-plus-70 and 95-years-for-corporates terms, just as they are in the US.
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Ah, I see what you mean about works with unknown authors. Yes, that is definitely a huge plus for NZ copyright law. Wouldn't count on that surviving past ACTA either, though.
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That's when cinema started going widescreen and hypercoloured.
Exactly, though I hadn't really thought of it in those terms.What the hell, it's Friday. Here's something which addresses this very issue.
Bonus: Tony Randall!
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As for sanctions? Appropriate to the crime. Small fines issued in the same way as parking fines, for the most part.
I really wish that were the case: a low-cost tribunal process to facilitate such fines -- including those somewhat bigger than a parking fine -- would be far more appropriate than summary disconnection from the internet, or the RIAA "example to les autres" million-dollar lawsuits against randomly-chosen people with a handful of downloaded songs on their computers.
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40 years from publication or 20 from death (whichever is shorter) would be a much more reasonable regime.
As for sanctions? Appropriate to the crime. Small fines issued in the same way as parking fines, for the most part.
You know, I could live with that. I think 40 years is long, but as the average life expectancy increases it becomes far less ridiculous than the present situation where the shortest possible copyright term is over 2/3 of the average life expectancy.
Civil fines would be a suitable remedy, too. However, and it's a really big however, fair use must be codified and it must be fair. Until there is no possibility of being deemed infringing because you had 30 seconds of a song playing in the background of a clip of your toddler dancing, or because you parodied a scene in a movie, my opposition to any and all moves to strengthen the legal protection of copyrighted works will be absolute. As Russell said, copyright is meant to be about the public good. So far, what we're seeing is not at all good for the public.
I'm not against real, criminal penalties for commercial infringement, either. Never have been. When you're making money by ripping off someone else's work, you are unquestionably depriving them of income. The nexus is impossible to argue, which cannot be said for arguments about downloading for personal use. But fines that look like a telephone number, and jail time, should never be available remedies against people who are just downloading for their own enjoyment.
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Ah, yes, I forgot about TRIPS.
We could have a reasonable discussion about copyright in NZ... but that's not going to happen since we signed TRIPS in 1994 (WTO, Wikipedia). TRIPS is an agreement that makes it very difficult to have a copyright regime that is significantly different from the US and the EU. It establishes life of the author plus 50 as a requirement in international law. It's why we rewrote the Copyright Act in 1994.
I remember going to meetings in the 1990s with Jane Kelsey telling us how we were about to, and then had, given up our sovereignty on this issue. Reading through it, I can see just how much we have.
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I don't think they're incompatible. Any good scheme would provide options for proven artists to continue to output their good work, but would also provide options for up-and-coming new artists to get their first book/album/movie out to the public. The production of quality outputs in a range of fields would be the desired goal.
I call them incompatible based on consumers all having a fixed level of disposable income. My Little Jenny example from a couple of pages back. The more exposure one has to new artists, the more one must trade off financially supporting one for another. This will impact most on those who are at both ends of the income spectrum: the financial superstars, and the financial zeroes. Those in the middle will probably not see much movement in either direction. The debate has, however, largely been driven by those who have achieved significant success and thus have a significant interest in maintaining the current system. See Lily Allen, Metallica, and all the other major acts that've jumped on the "downloading is killing the industry" wagon. It's hard to accept that people who have album sales totally into the millions are being hurt in the same way that bands struggling to even survive are being hurt, but the only ones who get trotted out are the success stories. It's like the infamous comment from Valenti: "I found the most convincing part to be the working stiffs, the guys who have a modest home and kids who go to public schools. They make $75,000 to $100,000 a year. That's not much to live on. I don't have to tell you that." There are lots of musicians who would be absolutely thrilled to be making $75k from their art, but we're not hearing from them about how downloading is hurting them.
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