Deadline: As Congress continues to investigate Cambridge Analytica’s unauthorized access to the private information of more than 87 million Facebook users during the 2016 election, the leaders of the DGA, SAG-AFTRA and IATSE have urged the Senate to look at the “broader context” of Internet regulations that they say allowed the breach to happen in the first place.
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As an artist, I firmly believe in making stronger copyright protections. But as important as making stronger copyright laws is, I doubt congress knows enough about the modern film and television industry to properly legislate it. If we look at the hearing of Mark Zuckerberg as an example, congress should be completely overhauled with new politicians that actually understand the current state of our country. Most of the current senators and congressmen, and especially those that led the panel questioning Zuckerberg, are an embarrassment to the people they serve. I think the most memorable line of that hearing came from a response to a senator asking something along the lines of, "Given that you don't charge for your services, how does Facebook make money?" To which Zuckerberg replied, "We run ads, Senator." After following the whole Congress-Facebook debacle, I am convinced that the current US congress could not legislate the modern film and television industry if they tried.
While ensuring that content creators are properly compensated for their creations, this seems to be the unions trying to piggyback one internet issue and try to illicit regulations for another. Their letter seems to be purposefully vague, because they want this issue to be included in a bill that will seek to create stronger regulations for the internet. However, these unions do not have the interests of consumers and internet users in mind, just the opposite. The relatively minimal internet regulations that are in place have allowed many companies to thrive and prosper, because it means that there are few barriers to entry. This call is effectively the unions saying “if you decide to pass a law regulating the internet, don’t forget about us”. But their letter provides scant solutions. They seem to be pleading poverty, yet they are still managing to spend billions of dollars making movies, paying millions to actors and directors. While box office receipts have been lower in recent years, this is due to increased competition in the form of Netflix, Hulu,and Amazon producing home content that pulls people away from the theaters. Amazon, one of the very internet companies this letter implicitly criticizes, has injected billions of dollars into the media industry and is poised to spend close to half a billion dollars to make a Lord of the Rings TV show. They are in turn employing scores of craftsmen and filmmakers that would not have necessary been employed, but for Amazon. Two plus two is not equaling four. This letter is really an example of the Film and Media unions trying to illicit a special carve out in legislation that will create welfare protections for their industries, and in turn make it less competitive.
While I applaud the move by these Unions, it also troubles me. To echo Nicholas above, I feel like these unions are only pushing this as a means to protect themselves and screw the little guy. Congress is in horrible shape and is filled with career politicians who are in the pockets of large corporations and lobbying firms. They are also a laughing stock in the wake of the facebook hearings. It just shows how out of touch with reality many in the halls of government in Washington really are. Congress will create a bill from this and in the committee process it will get watered down to the point where it really won’t protect anything. It’s like writing crime prevention legislation that has no hopes of ever preventing crime. The reality is that if congress does act on this, the people that will not benefit are all of the creators, artists, and talented people who work tirelessly behind the scenes to help make these major movies. That would be the real crime.
The Internet is definitely one of the worst avenues for copyright violations. I’ve heard this discussion very often from the music industry with big artists who make a stand against illegal downloading and other Internet provided services that infringe on copywrite. However, this is the first formal call to action that I’ve heard from the film, TV, theater community. It is definitely a problem considering that there are bootlegs of almost every famous musical, and literally every movie out there. While that used to be a dangerous thing to illegally download movies or television series, now it is common place and most people are at least familiar with how to do so. With familiarity comes a degree of social acceptance of the act. Even within our community, we find it acceptable to copy please and distribute them digitally. Although we are using them for educational purposes, it is pretty close to downloading shows illegally. Of course, I don’t know if it would be possible to eliminate all of the avenues in which people are violating copyright, but I am glad that the unions are advocating for stricter policies against it.
It is definitely overwhelmingly apparent at how hard it is to manage copyright laws on the internet, especially as technology is getting more advanced and internet users are increasing at the same speed I think it is so important to have more widespread copyright laws to protect the work of artists, because while the open sharing of people’s work is generally widespread and accepted, it can also be an exploitation of an artists work and can take away from not only the product being produced, but also the artists pockets. From another standpoint, I also see the widespread of work being one of the only ways that many people are able to even see art, because the price of seeing a show on Broadway is so incredibly expensive, but if you find a bootleg version of it on YouTube- it’s free, and if you went through the trouble of trying to find that bootleg version, its probably because you value the art form rather that undermine it. The laws in place to protect from copyrighting are definitely very necessary and incredibly important, but it is also a question of to what extent are the necessary and what exactly are they protecting from.
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