by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Law, Piracy
This past Saturday, Director Stephen Soderbergh gave the keynote address at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival. In his address on the “state of cinema” Soderbergh spoke about the nature of art, movies vs. cinema, studios, and budgets among other things. He also discussed online piracy’s impact on indie filmmaking:
Theft is a big problem. I know this is a really controversial subject, but for people who think everything on the internet should just be totally free all I can say is, good luck. When you try to have a life and raise a family living off something you create…
There’s a great quote from Steve Jobs:
“From the earliest days of Apple I realized that we thrived when we created intellectual property. If people copied or stole our software we’d be out of business. If it weren’t protected there’d be no incentive for us to make new software or product designs. If protection of intellectual property begins to disappear creative companies will disappear or never get started. But there’s a simpler reason: It’s wrong to steal. It hurts other people, and it hurts your own character”.
I agree with him. I think that what people go to the movies for has changed since 9/11. I still think the country is in some form of PTSD about that event, and that we haven’t really healed in any sort of complete way, and that people are, as a result, looking more toward escapist entertainment. And look, I get it. There’s a very good argument to be made that only somebody who has it really good would want to make a movie that makes you feel really bad. People are working longer hours for less money these days, and maybe when they get in a movie, they want a break. I get it.
But let’s sex this up with some more numbers. In 2003, 455 films were released. 275 of those were independent, 180 were studio films. Last year 677 films were released. So you’re not imagining things, there are a lot of movies that open every weekend. 549 of those were independent, 128 were studio films. So, a 100% increase in independent films, and a 28% drop in studio films, and yet, ten years ago: Studio market share 69%, last year 76%. You’ve got fewer studio movies now taking up a bigger piece of the pie and you’ve got twice as many independent films scrambling for a smaller piece of the pie. That’s hard. That’s really hard.
You can find the transcript of his entire address here or listen to it or watch below:
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/90033156″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
State of Cinema: Steven Soderbergh from San Francisco Film Society on Vimeo.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Law, Piracy
5/9/15-Update:
A recent blog post explaining why I sent the Chilling Effects database a DMCA takedown notice has generated a lot of traffic to this post from 2013. While the original post is worth reading, if you’re interested in a more up-to-date perspective on Chilling Effects–and its role as an efficient search engine for pirated movies, music and books–you may want to read this more recent post: Does Chilling Effects make a mockery of the DMCA?
In effect, the database acts a shadow site for pirate links removed from Google search. Using Chilling Effects to search for pirated movies and music is actually easier that using Google. Using Google, one has to search through various results in order to actually find valid links. Meanwhile, search results on Chilling Effects provide results that offer infringing links in a convenient, clean lists. Great for would-be thieves–not so great for content creators.
Here are two additional, more recent Chilling Effects related posts that explore the relationship between Google and the efficiency of using the Chilling Effects database as a de facto search engine to find infringing music, movies, books, and more.
Back to original post published on 4/10/13:
The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse has been in the news lately as the target of DMCA takedowns by copyright holders whose say by that by compiling a database of takedown notices for pirate links Chilling Effects is, in fact, making it easier for the public to find pirated content online. According to Wired.co.uk:
As part of its transparency policy, Google publishes every takedown notice it receives from either copyright holders or government bodies. As TorrentFreak has pointed out, that means Google has built up a pretty huge database of pirated material, which effectively undoes the point of a takedown notice — to make copyrighted material harder to find. Now companies such as 20th Century Fox and Microsoft want Google to take down their own takedown notices.
What exactly is the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse and more importantly, WHO actually funds them? It’s important to understand that the clearinghouse is actually tied to the web of the Google machine. If you look at the sites “about” page, you’ll find the following:
The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse is a unique collaboration among law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Conceived and developed at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society by Berkman Fellow Wendy Seltzer, the project is now supported by clinical programs at Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, University of San Francisco, University of Maine, George Washington School of Law, and Santa Clara University School of Law clinics, and the EFF.
Google provides funding to the The Berkman Center and it’s various enterprises (including Chilling Effects). Fact is, this operation isn’t exactly the unbiased public interest clearing house is purports to be and its “cease and desist” database is routinely used by Google in a manner clearly designed to discourage rights holders from sending DMCA takedown notices.
At any rate, I first came across the Chilling Effects website in 2010 when I began sending (lots of) DMCA takedown notices to Google requesting the removal of pirated copies of our film from Blogger hosted websites and pirate sites with our film that featured Google AdSense ads. Given the current news, I thought it worth re-posting a piece I wrote for my popuppirates.com site that discusses whose rights really gets “chilled” by the Google-Chilling Effects merry-go-round.
Re-blogged from popuppirates.com:
Chilling Effects Website
If you send a DMCA notice to Google to report pirated content you’re likely to receive an email response that includes a stern warning (see example below) that a copy of your DMCA notice will be forwarded to the Chilling Efffects Clearinghouse for publication on their website. Why? Well, according to the C.E.C. they maintain a “Cease and Desist” database in order to document what they refer as “the chill.” According to their website, this is done because “Anecdotal evidence suggests that some individuals and corporations are using intellectual property and other laws to silence other online users.”
Apparently those operating the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse see no need to differentiate between the illegal activities of “online pirates” from those of legitimate “online users”
For Google, these emails are clearly an ill-conceived attempt to intimidate those whose rights have actually been infringed. As I mentioned earlier in my blog, it’s ironic that the only thing being “chilled” in this scenario is the legitimate right of content creators to earn a living through their work.
Email re: Chilling Effects
Apparently our complaint was legitimate, despite being posted on the C.E.C. website.
Examples of our Fast Girl Films DMCA notices sent to Google ending up on the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse website.
For the record, the DMCA notices (above) led to the infringing content being removed. Here’s what the reported pages looks like now….
Blogger site with content removed due to copyright infringement.
As it turns out, each and every one of our DMCA complaints to Google (posted on C.E. C.) have been legitimate and legal. And so it goes….
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Law, Piracy, Tech
According to a study released yesterday by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, last year’s shutdown of the notorious pirate file-sharing hub Megaupload, had a positive impact on movie revenues. Citing the increase in sales following the popular cyberlocker’s demise, the researchers (Brett Danaher and Michael Smith) note:
…immediately following the shutdown, there was a positive and statistically significant relationship between a country’s sales growth and it’s pre-shutdown Megaupload penetration, such that for each additional 1% (lost) penetration of Megaupload the post-shutdown sales increase was between 2.5% and 3.8% higher (depending on which of our models you believe to be most accurate).
The fact that these trends didn’t exist before the shutdown but existed after the shutdown suggests a causal effect of the shutdown on digital sales, and we find a similar (but slightly weaker) relationship for digital rentals. In aggregate, our estimates suggest that, across the 12 countries in our study, revenues from digital sales and rentals for the two studios were 6-10% higher than they would have been if Megaupload hadn’t been shutdown.
Given the size of Megaupload’s illicit traffic (ranked #63 worldwide in 2011), these results are not particularly surprising. However, in terms of its overall impact on piracy, it’s important to note that the seizure of Megaupload had a ripple effect across the entire cyberlocker landscape. Shortly after Dotcom’s arrest, other major players in the piracy’s profit pyramid, also bit the dust. These included Filesonic, and Wupload. Others, such as Fileserve, shifted their business models away from a rewards system that paid cash for downloads. Clearly the site operators, who grew wealthy through a cyberlocker business model that had thrived for so long in a lawless environment, were suddenly running scared. Their black market had been discovered and many jumped ship rather than face potential jail time.
Now, more than a year later, a cornucopia of new cyberlocker sites has emerged to take their place. So far, these sites–many based in Eastern Europe far from the reaches of U.S. authorities–have failed to achieve the size and scope of the defunct giants.
Another significant factor working in favor of content creators is that Megaupload’s takedown created a brief vacuum that gave legitimate streaming portals a respite, providing them with a much-needed opportunity to elbow their way into the global marketplace and establish a loyal costumer base.
After all, it’s always much easier to set up a successful shop if you don’t have another store down the block giving away the same products for free.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Law, Piracy
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Some cyberlocker websites that offer file storage, do (eventually) respond to DMCA takedown notices, but in an ironic final twist, a fair number of them have found a way to use copyright violation notifications to their advantage–monetizing requests via pop-up ads.
Examples are easy to find. Today I went to a notorious download site that offers download/streaming links to any number of popular (recent) films. I chose to find links for the Oscar-nominated “Silver Linings Playbook.” If you look at the column on the left, you’ll see more than 2 dozen links to view and/or download the film. I did not check them all, and imagine some have already been removed by studio anti-piracy efforts.
For purposes of this piece, I chose a link hosted on a site called “Faststream.in” When I clicked the link I arrived at a splash page that offered a stream of the film. I could click the button “proceed to video” be bombarded with ads before watching the film. However, what happens when the rights holder wants to send a DMCA notice to the site? On this site there’s no DMCA option provided, only a “contact” link. Click that and (cha-ching) a pop-up ad appears. To access the actual contact page, you have to close the ad.
I’ve come across many sites that utilize the same setup. I suppose that if a site is going to lose its carrot to attract ad clicks, operators may as well make some money in the process. Aside from earning cash from clicks, this cumbersome procedure also makes sending a legit DMCA notice a time-consuming, and thus expensive, proposition. I checked the U.S. Copyright Office list of designated agents to determine if this site had registered one. No listing was found, so using this contact page–for each and every takedown request– appears to be the only way to contact the site to send a takedown notice. No wonder the movie is still online.
I checked the WHOIS information to see if their was any contact information and found that the domain was registered by a Jeremiah Haselberg of PiratePoint.Ltd. in Canada. At least he’s honest about the nature of his entrepreneurial activities eh? Or maybe he’s just named his company after a favored vacation spot, Pirates Point Resort in the Caymen Islands….a “safe harbor” in more ways than one.
Aside from making money off DMCA takedown requests, this site is follows the traditional cyberlocker pirate business model, incentivizing infringing uploads with cash rewards.
It’s bad enough that rights holders have to police these sites to safeguard their work, but adding to their coffers in the process only adds insult to injury. Such is the nature of online piracy today.
This past Saturday, Director Stephen Soderbergh gave the keynote address at this year’s San Francisco International Film Festival. In his address on the “state of cinema” Soderbergh spoke about the nature of art, movies vs. cinema, studios, and budgets among other things. He also discussed online piracy’s impact on indie filmmaking:
