by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
Today I came across a blog post published by Chris Kornelis in the Seattle Weekly, “It’s Time for Artists to Fight Piracy as Vigorously as They’ve Challenged Pandora.” Kornelis asserts,”One of the year’s most peculiar yet persistent music-industry trends has been the way legitimate forms of digital-music consumption have been vilified more strongly than illegitimate ones.”
As an indie artist (filmmaker) who’s made a point of fighting piracy, the headline caught me somewhat off guard. Of course we speak out. But as I read his piece, I found myself in agreement with his overall message. Last month congressional hearings were held over proposed legislation that would change royalty formulas for internet radio services such as Pandora. Labeled the “Internet Radio Fairness Act” the bill was roundly criticized by those in the music industry, artists and publishers alike. After a massive outcry, including a protest letter signed by a diverse group of well-known recording artists and bands including Rihanna, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Alabama and CeeLo Green, among others–the bill went down in flames, at least for now.
In the wake of that defeat, and given the influence and unity displayed by a coalition of artists, Kornelis asks why more artists don’t routinely speak out and educate their fans about negative impact online piracy has on their (our) livelihoods and art. He notes that a few artists have spoken out and “…when they do, they are eviscerated, as Lars Ulrich, Lily Allen, or Duff McKagan will tell you…” He then challenges all of us to do more.
…it’s time for artists to band together to set the story straight. Don’t leave it to the few brave enough to speak strongly on the matter. There needs to be a large, coordinated effort by bands big and small to tell their story–to sign a letter to fans explaining how devastating piracy is to their ability to make music for a living (or at all). “The voice of that community is clearly the most important,” says Chris Ruen, author of the recent book, Freeloading: How Our Insatiable Hunger for Free Content Starves Creativity. “Artists need to raise their voices.”
Indeed. Whether musicians, filmmakers, writers, journalists, artists or photographers–we all need to speak up, and speak out. If we can use our collective voices to educate, and explain what’s at stake for creators and consumers, the more inroads we are likely to make. As Benjamin Franklin aptly noted, “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
I had to shake my head when I saw the outraged reaction to Declan McCullagh’s story on CNET.com about changes made Instagram’s “Terms of Service” that supposedly now give the popular Facebook-owned online photo-sharing service the right to “sell users’ photos without payment or notification.” According to McCullagh:
Instagram said today that it has the perpetual right to sell users’ photographs without payment or notification, a dramatic policy shift that quickly sparked a public outcry.
The new intellectual property policy, which takes effect on January 16, comes three months after Facebook completed its acquisition of the popular photo-sharing site. Unless Instagram users delete their accounts before the January deadline, they cannot opt out.
Nowadays social media sites are constantly tweaking their privacy and usage policies, so that’s nothing new. What struck me, however, was how many of the site’s subscribers were suddenly discussing, and expressing concerns about, protecting copyright. Suddenly the concept of protecting IP seems to matter–well, at least when it comes protecting their IP.
In comments responding to McCullagh’s CNET piece, one poster admonished Instagram saying: “You DO NOT have permission to use my stuff just because it’s hosted on your servers.” I agree, but Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom would likely take the opposing view.
Another posted this: “My photos will not sell without my knowledge and compensation. I spend time on my pictures.” For the record, this is essentially what content creators have been saying for a long time in rebuttal to claims that online piracy is OK.
Whatever happens with Instagram’s “Terms of Service” (the company already appears to be attempting to clarify them) I think we should take advantage of this dust-up as a possible teaching moment. Copyright is important to creators, small and large, on Instagram and across the web. Perhaps when people realize what’s at stake with their own creations, they will better appreciate what’s at stake when it comes to the creative rights of others.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
Creative Commons, a non-profit that promotes the sharing of creative works through the use of its free licenses, celebrated its 10- year anniversary this past Sunday (December 16th). Their licenses do not replace copyright, but rather provide various options that creators can use to outline how their creative work may be used/shared for non-commercial purposes:
The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.
There’s often confusion about these licenses and what they represent. Certainly they can provide creators with an easy (and free) way to define licensing options for their work. Unfortunately, Creative Commons licensing models are routinely cited by anti-copyright activists as a (better) alternative to conventional copyright in this new age of remix-culture and online “sharing.” Ironic, of course, since Creative Commons licenses are predicated on copyright law, the very copyright law that “freehadists” loathe. As with all copyright licensing, creators (not users) determine how their works are disseminated. A typical copyright “all rights reserved” license puts strict, clear limitations on usage while the Creative Commons “some rights reserved” language allows for more flexible use options in situations where the creator doesn’t desire compensation.
In his book “Free Culture-How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity,” Lawrence Lessig, a law professor, copyright critic, and founding board member of Creative Commons, has argued that current role of current copyright law “is less and less to support creativity, and more and more to protect certain industries against competition.” In the book’s Afterword, Lessig explains the rationale behind the Creative Commons movement:
Its aim is to build a layer of reasonable copyright on top of the extremes that now reign. It does this by making it easy for people to build upon other people’s work, by making it simple for creators to express the freedom for others to take and build upon their work. Simple tags, tied to human-readable descriptions, tied to bullet-proof licenses, make this possible…Content is marked with the CC mark, which does not mean that copyright is waived, but that certain freedoms are given.
While promoting “freedom” can seem like a benign and worthy concept, one should be mindful of the more nefarious agenda that lurks behind it. As author Robert Levine explains in his book “Free Ride: How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back,” “The organization’s licenses depend on copyright law; they just give creators a standard legal structure to sign away certain rights.” Levine points out that companies such as Google, Microsoft and EBay contribute to Creative Commons and that several of its board members represent interests that stand to “benefit from having more work free from copyright restrictions online.” He cautions that Creative Commons “may not have the best interests of artists at heart.” This concern seems justified given the fact the organization appears to have only one artist on its tech-heavy, 15 member Board of Directors.
Political agendas aside, the key with utilizing Creative Commons licensing is that it’s a matter of choice. Just because some creators use a Creative Commons to license their work does not mean those who make different choices should be vilified or ignored. One copyright size does not–and should not–fit all. Those of us who create music, films, photographs and more–own our work (and copyright) and, with the exception of legitimate “fair use,” we should be able to determine how it’s used.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
I came across a story published on today’s Torrent Freak highlighting the conflict between content creators and Google over the search giant’s search results that routinely point to pirated content. As I pointed out in a blog post last week, despite Google’s much ballyhooed August announcement that they would downgrade (not remove) search results for sites routinely reported for piracy, not much has changed.
Per TorrentFreak, and in typical Google fashion, Google’s Legal Director Fred von Lohmann, employs the oft-used boilerplate, disingenuous refrain that the rise in takedown requests could be considered an attack on free speech:
“As policymakers evaluate how effective copyright laws are, they need to consider the collateral impact copyright regulation has on the flow of information online.”
Von Lohmann goes on to complain that when Google instituted their “new” search ranking policy, they received more than 250,000 takedown requests per week and that number has grown to more than 2.5 million. While von Lohmann characterizes this trend as evidence that “flow of information online” is being obstructed, I see it as evidence that there is a ton of infringing content/product online that has, until now, efficiently flowed (via Google search) from thief to consumer, impervious to any limit or law. Why should we have sympathy for sites linking to pirated or counterfeit goods? How is that an attack on free speech? It’s not.
Why is that the rights of piracy’s victims–the content creators large and small who work to create films, music, books and more–are discounted in favor of thieves who profit from their crimes? Check out those reported search results and you will find hundreds of websites that make money by distributing access to pirated/stolen goods, some in digital form, some as tangible (counterfeit) products. Marc Miller, MPAA’s Senior Vice President for Internet Content Protection points out this inconsistency in TorrentFreak:
“Google’s reading of the data is missing some critical perspective: if the process is cumbersome for Google, it is even more cumbersome for the creators and makers who must constantly be on the lookout to protect their work from theft,”
Piracy apologists like to focus on erroneous takedowns and highlight stories whereby a 9 year-old in Finland had her computer confiscated, or a grandmother in Colorado had her ISP account wrongfully suspended. Certainly mistakes happen, and when they do it’s unfortunate, but they are few and far between when compared with the cumulative harm being done to those whose livelihoods are damaged by rampant online theft. For every search result removed in error there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, removed for valid reasons. Sensationalistic anecdotes make for splashy headlines and provide convenient red-herrings for those who defend the piracy status quo–big bad Hollywood versus the grandmothers of the world–but meanwhile the genuine stories documenting piracy’s ruin are routinely minimized or ignored.
Also lost in this debate is the fact that if one takes the time to read the DMCA, it’s easy to see that the law actually favors the reported party, not the other way around. If a site has been removed in error, the owner can use the Google website to file a counter-claim with a click of a mouse. That immediately puts the onus on the party that filed the original DMCA request to go to court and prove the legitimacy of their claim. If that next step isn’t taken, the takedown becomes moot. Filing a court case is a costly endeavor so it’s unlikely that those whose file false DMCA claims, whether in error or purposely, would bother to spend money to enforce a bogus DMCA. Conversely, those content creators who don’t have deep pockets have little recourse when it comes to enforcing a valid DMCA takedown if the other party, representing an infringing (pirate) website, chooses to file a counter-claim.
There’s no denying the current process is rather unwieldy and somewhat broken, but when it comes to rights being at risk, I don’t believe Google has much to complain about. Sure it costs time and money to process the takedowns and remove offending search results–but isn’t that just the cost of doing business? There’s a price paid by those who create content–why should it be any different for those who profit by disseminating it?
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
As promised, Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom continues to work on a new cloud-based storage service called “Mega.” He’s even released some screen shots to gin up expectations. Of course the files featured on the example reflect a benign use of the site as a place to store medical records and family photos. According to Examiner.com’s Michael Santo, key to the new site is an encryption methodology controlled entirely by the user, not the site itself.
By using 2048-bit RSA encryption for files uploaded to the service, Mega will keep itself safely ensconced within the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions, which places any legal issues for content on the end user, not the site.
The question that remains unanswered is what business model will Mega use? How exactly does Kim Dotcom plan to make money? After all, given his track record, I imagine he’s developing this new business with profits in mind. The reason Megaupload was so insidious was not because it offered a convenient way to upload, store and “share” big files (like pirated movies). Rather, it was because its business model incentivized users to do so with cash rewards and other perks. There are plenty of cloud-based services out there that already do what Dotcom is proposing to do with his new site. And, while there are surely pirated copies shared via those channels, the problem is minimal because those sites aren’t designed to profit from piracy.
At any rate, I suppose we will have to wait a bit longer to see what pirate king Kim Dotcom has in mind for this new “Mega” venture. Somehow I expect that the profiting from piracy will remain a fundamental part of his business model. At least that’s my bet.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
Not to beat a dead horse, but surprise, surprise….I did a Google search this morning to see how easy it would be to find download links for “Kyss Mig,” a recently released Swedish indie film. I used Google to search for “download kyss mig” from this past month, and….oops, so much for Google’s new search algorithm that’s supposed to penalize (reported) pirate sites. Why am I not surprised that The Pirate Bay result tops the list?
Maybe if I use the less pirate-centric term “watch” instead of “download” I’ll have better luck finding a legit source? Um, well, no, guess that won’t work either. Once again the top search results are sites notorious for linking to pirated films. Even more maddening is what I discovered when I clicked the first link…
Not only did I find the full film streaming (for free) online (I checked and actually viewed the first ten minutes) but right beside was a Netflix advertisement. When I checked the source of the ad I found it led me back to “doubleclick.net” a Google-owned company. Perhaps this is how Google expects users to find legit copies of the film? After all, Kyss Mig does stream on Netflix….kind of a roundabout way to find the film when I can watch it right here, right now for free! Of course Google makes money from the ad either way (as does the pirate website) so what do they care? Hmmm, perhaps the Google ad placement has something to do with why this pirate site is comes up first in search results? Not to don my tin foil hat but….
A full (free) stream of the indie film “Kyss Mig” was easy to find thanks to Google search results–result that generated ad revenue for Google and website operators. BTW, movie is now offline since I reported it to the distributor.
I guess I’m going to have to be a good girl and use the search terms “buy Kiss Mig.” Only then am I given results that lead me to legit options.
BTW, I notified the distributor that the film was available via this pirate site so as of Monday, December 10th, this illegal stream is history. Too bad I can’t say the same for the website itself.
Today I came across a blog post published by Chris Kornelis in the Seattle Weekly, “It’s Time for Artists to Fight Piracy as Vigorously as They’ve Challenged Pandora.” Kornelis asserts,”One of the year’s most peculiar yet persistent music-industry trends has been the way legitimate forms of digital-music consumption have been vilified more strongly than illegitimate ones.”
