Saturday, October 03, 2009
The intellectual property racket
Student Life: "The Disney Movie Appreciation Club, an organization that was set up with the goal of providing an outlet to relieve overly stressed students, had to be closed down recently due to potential license infringement. The length of a Studlife column is too short to give a comprehensive argument against intellectual property rights. Nevertheless, the recent closing of the club stands out as a perfect example of how, contrary to their original intent, intellectual property rights only limit the availability of information and expression."
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15 comments:
This is just greed to a max extent. I know under the interpretation of current laws, Disney, or whom ever shut down the club, is within their rights. But there was no money to be made. In the groups existence, there was no profit for any one to get a cut of, so now there is a disbanded club who can't watch movies together. I know this is small issue in these times of economic crisis, but in all seriousness, get over it. Once we stabilize our economy in the next 5 - 10 years and health care and social security and deal with the endless list of real problems in this country, maybe we can solve this one?
If they had simply changed the name of their club to childhood film appreciation club, I bet it would not have caused such a big deal. If they are using a dvd, and making no profit, and telling everyone its a disney movie, what's the difference between that and any other club showing a movie as an event. At cmu, this type of thing happens all the time. I can't believe disney disbanded the club. I bet someone who works there spends all day googling disney, and at some point the club came up, so they "dealt" with it. maybe changing the name will let them resume again.
I'm always stuck by who gets targeted in the average intellectual property case. The Disney Movie Appreciation club sounds like possibly the worst target for Disney to go after, since the club is based around the love of Disney, the company suing them. The article also mentioned the famous Napster case where a ten year old boy was sued for a million dollars. Are companies trying to prove that they can pick totally illogical targets or something? It's almost like they pick the absolutely worst group to go after, and leave the more valid targets alone. Maybe they should use the money they're wasting suing children and school clubs to make their media more secure so that people can't use their output in these oh so problematic ways?
I totally agree with Charley, there are bigger fish to fry than a club whose entire goal is to spread the love of Disney movies (and probably drumming up more support for Disney's current theatrical releases). Is Disney just trying to make a statement to uphold the FBI warning against "reproduction, distribution or exhibition"? In that case, why not work on providing better security against DVD ripping, or further shut down file-sharing efforts like our campus's beloved Dtella? There was really nothing to gain by shutting down this club, and they're only going to get negative publicity from this one.
What ticks me off most about the IP enforcers is exactly what this article is talking about. Many people who are guilty of infringing on these laws have completely honorable intentions. These students were not trying to claim Disney's creations as their own, they simply wanted to watch them. Many of the people getting burned by these laws are people who want to enjoy these pieces of art, not claim them as their own or make money on them.
I am fully in support of copyright reform, to fix the sad state of IP laws (both copyright, i.e. DMCA, and patent). I think this article brings up a big point about "owning" content compared to "liscensing" content. It probably makes sense that a movie theater needs to pay a different fee to show a movie than a consumer needs to pay for their home dvd. Similarly, AB Films needs to pay for the rights to show their films (even if they're on DVD and not 35mm). One thing that was unclear in the article is just the size of the group that the movies were being shown to. A comment on the article suggested the group was closer to the size of showing a movie in McConomy than in someone's dorm room (to go to extremes). Current copyright law currently makes it pretty clear that what was happening with the DMAC probably wasn't legal because of showing it to a non-private audience.
However, to a certain extent, it makes sense that anyone should be able to buy a dvd and show it however they want: after all, they bought it. After all, libraries and video rental stores don't buy copies with any special licensing and many people borrow/rent and return the movie to watch it, which isn't too much different from a club showing a movie in terms of who sees it.
If copyright gets reformed so there aren't showing restrictions on the content once someone has possession of it, this would create a price issue for studios: they wouldn't want movie theaters to buy the movie for 20 dollars to show it to thousands of patrons, but no individual would buy a movie if it cost hundreds or thousands of dollars (a price that the studios would feel more comfortable charging a theater).
A possible solution to this pricing problem is to have a "sliding scale" for pricing: when the movie comes out, it is very expensive, and only theaters would buy it to show and be the first to show it. As time elapses, studios could lower the prices so diehard fans and then ordinary consumers would buy it.
Intellectual property laws have always been a point of conflict for me. I am not really sure which side of the line to come down on. This article does lay out the benefits of the intellectual property protection, quite well and I agree that they were designed with the best of intentions, however, the interpretation has gotten out of hand. The concept of keeping people from steeling another person's work and claiming it as their own is a noble one. But how do you also allow for the free flow of ideas that makes art so powerful and allows for rapid innovation. We all build upon what was done before, whether we know it or not.
Going back to the article, it is important to point out that the club was only showing the movies from a DVD which clearly states that the video is for personal use only. I am not quite sure that an (what I interpret to be) advertised public showing is personal use, no matter if they collect money or not.
This is absolutely absurd. For Disney to sue a school for showing their movies is just avarice at it's worst. It's not like Disney is losing any money on this, or even that they need that extra little bit of money. Disney is an ENORMOUS company, they can afford to let a few kids unwind while watching their movies. If anything, this just gives the company a worse reputation. Same goes for RIAA suing a 10 year old. What is wrong with these people?? I'm all for protecting an artist's creative property, but this is just too far. I completely agree with this article. People are abusing the IA laws--but not in the way you'd expect. The owners of the IA are the ones who are taking advantage of laws that were created to protect them. I hate art theft, but this doesn't even begin to come near that.
I agree mostly, but not completely. I have had some interesting run ins with IP rights, particularly, with the Hemingway foundation as i was working to produce a movie of his short story Hills Like White Elephants as a student film. The foundation said they would give us the rights to make the film and distribute copies to the cast and crew only for a $500 fee. This was very very ridiculous to me- it seemed to be for private use only, and educational use at that. We went ahead and made the movie without the hemingway foundation's blessing, but it still angers me that IP has reached such a stage. I think what needs to happen is an overhaul of IP laws, to clarify what uses do not infringe upon the rights of the artist.
On another note- we are all artists to some degree and knowing and protecting to the fullest extent your own IP rights is incredibly important. The people that anger everyone by protecting or overprotecting their rights do so probably because they had some sort of IP stolen from then at some point in time. So its somethign to be very aware of.
Maybe I am alone on this standing, but I actually understand Disney's position. Disney offers licenses to groups like this to show their movies to audiences. The library I worked at back home bought this license and did things legally. It wasn't even too much money.
I do agree this is an example of greed, but the law is the law, and Disney has the right to do what they did.
Every time I've heard about an extension to the copyright laws the reason I would always hear is that Mickey Mouse is close to coming out of copyright and the Disney lawyers and lobbyists pushed for yet another extension to make more money. Now that Steamboat Willie has gone into the public domain Disney is now claiming that the old Mickey is not the same as the new Mickey, and while you can use the old character because of the age the new character is separate and still protected.
IP is one of those issues where there's no clear winner, you still need the creators of the content to have an incentive to create more, but at the same time people need to be able to make effective use of the content to want to buy it. Without both of those neither side will be very happy.
It drives me crazy when the original intent of an act or a law is completely disregarded and people just use it as an excuse to make money or profit in some other way. This club was promoting a love and appreciation of Disney; is this really something that Disney should be working to discourage? None of the students in the club wanted to claim Disney's work as his or her own. Does Disney really have nothing better to do?
It drives me crazy when the original intent of an act or a law is completely disregarded and people just use it as an excuse to make money or profit in some other way. This club was promoting a love and appreciation of Disney; is this really something that Disney should be working to discourage? None of the students in the club wanted to claim Disney's work as his or her own. Does Disney really have nothing better to do?
The constitution specifies that the establishment of a copyright monopoly must be of a 'limited' time. There have been many arguments made that copyright today which can exceed 100 years is effectively unlimited, as almost no media aside from printed word more than 50, let alone a hundred years is usable. The ways in which companies are using IP law (not only copyright, but also patents) is becoming more and more alarming by the day. (As an aside, there is hope for some good news on the software front: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20091002213301495 ). What bothers me most is that people are letting the big companies not only push through beneficial legislation, but also limit us in ways they have no legal right to. The fair use doctrine protects many uses, especially in non-profit and academic worlds. When folks cave in on an issue that is fair use, they effectively diminish all of our rights, and amplify the power of these big IP giants.
There must be a line drawn between protecting your property and not letting people use your property for the purpose it was intended.
Why would Disney disband a club that was geared at watching their films. is that not the point of producing movies... to have people watch them. And if many people have the drive to want to watch them together... all the better.
While I can understand the want for a company to protect what is theirs, I think that prohibiting the showing of a mass produced and distributed consumer item (as long as no money is made directly from said use) is completely ridiculous.
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