Canadian movies and DRM
p2p news / p2pnet:- On September 24, as part of the Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, there’ll be a panel entitled Digital Distribution: Technology and the Entertainment Industry. Along with Fading Ways Music musician Johnny Charmer, I’ll be taking part and while the panel won’t allow for speeches, what you see below is what I’d like to say, and I’ll try to bring different aspects of it into the discussion whenever possible.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I don’t believe people downloading and sharing music or movies without authorization is a sign of some type of moral decay in otherwise law-abiding Canadians, or the citizens of anywhere else. While there are a small few who may want something for nothing, the vast majority are expressing some unfulfilled need that they’d willingly pay for if what they wanted was available commercially.
Recently, Graham Henderson, current president of the Canadian" Recording Industry Association (CRIA), was quoted as suggesting that he believed that anyone who opposed him did so because they wanted music to be "free".
I believe he’s nearly correct. As an opponent to his lobbying efforts I want music and other creative works to be "free" as in "free trade", "free market", and "free speech".
Free Trade
Globalization is a fact of life and all businesses must come to grips with it. For the entertainment industries, this means they can no longer separate markets into separate geographical regions, releasing titles in some markets and not others, or releasing at different times. If music or movies are to be available in one place, they have to be available in all places. If a potential customer can’t go to an authorized domestic source for the movie and pay for it, he or she will go internationally and get it anyway.
Bu this shouldn’t be seen as a threat. Rather, it’s an opportunity to make more money. While advertising can be focused on specific lucrative markets, authorized standards-based digital downloads can be made available worldwide to fulfil the commercial need for those who may be in less lucrative geographic regions.
There must also be easy access to the back-catalogue, something the television and movie industies have handled far better than the recording industry. It’s possible to buy entire seasons on DVDs of older (and fairly recent) television shows, and there are stations such as DejaView and TV Land which are dedicated to rebroadcasting past television.
Free Market
Free market competition must exist for both the creative community and their audiences. This means a full spectrum of production, distribution and funding models must be supported, and not only the legacy methods used by the current "superstars".
Digital media storage and communications formats are an area where this is breaking down. What’s needed is to have vendor-neutral formats which allow creators and audiences to make independent technology choices. Never should a technology or brand choice made by one to be imposed on the other.
As a software creator and technical consultant, I focus on Free/Libre and Open Source Software, and vendor-neutral standards. This means that I’m not a customer or supplier of vendor-dependant solutions such as Microsoft Media or Apple’s iTunes. Current so-called "legal" digital download sites for music are tied to the products of these companies, meaning that as a non-consumer of Microsoft or Apple I’m forced to also be a non-consumer of major label music download sites.
This is a market that must be understood to be price sensitive, whether there are legal alternatives or not. As reported by Reuters on September 20:
Apple boss Steve Jobs, the man behind the popular iPod digital music player, called the music industry greedy for considering a hike in the price of digital downloads, warning such a move would drive users back to piracy.
For music, we have a small number of primarily American and European major labels which in Canada control 95% of the market for recorded music, but have far less than 5% of Canadian musicians signed to them.
This proves, indisputably, that there’s a need for a market correction, and for better market access for independants.
Free Speech
The greatest threat to the motion picture and recording industry is one the movie companies should recognize from their birth a hundred years ago in the United States. At that time there was a series of patent holders on motion picture technology, the majority held by Thomas Edison, who came together in 1909 to create the Motion Picture Patents Company. This company created the General Film Company whose purpose was to block the entry of non-licensed independents, and to fully control the movie making, distribution and projection process.
The independents of the day, including William Fox, fled west to hide from the enforcement arms of these technology companies. These independents, who would today be called "pirates" for wilfully infringing the motion picture patents, founded the now famous studios in Hollywood.
Forgetting their own past, these studios are now lobbying to recreate the same type of centralized technological control that they fled west to escape. In the name of stopping unauthorized digital copying of movies, they’re lobbying to have technological controls put into the tools used for the production, distribution and access of content.
The problem is far worse today than a hundred years ago. The monopolies being created by "Digital Rights Management" (DRM) companies will have a level of control built into the tools that go far beyond the wildest dreams of the patent companies of the past.
The studios have also been lobbying to change the laws everywhere on the planet. There will be nowhere for the next generation of independent creators to go to get away from the technology monopolies created on behalf of the older generation of independents.
The cost/benefit analysis for DRM
I’ll try to bring up the cost/benefit analysis for DRM. The most misunderstood aspect is the lack of benefit to the entertainment industries. As I’ve written in other articles, DRM technologies do not affect the activities of those who already wish to violate copyright, and can not stop them. DRM technologies only negatively affect law abiding citizens.
Computer security professor Edward Felten described the political insanity we are observing in a recent article:
Imagine that you somehow convinced policymakers that the auto industry could make cars that operated with no energy source at all. You could then demand that the auto industry make all sorts of concessions in energy policy, and you could continue to criticize them for foot-dragging no matter how much they did.
Trying to create digital technologies that can stop people from unauthorized copying is about as realistic as a car that needs no energy source. While this technology is snake-oil and can provide no benefits, there are still considerable costs.
The most prominent type of DRM is Access Controls, which ties the access to content to a specific brand of technology. It will also impose brands onto creators who wish access to audiences who are already customers of specific brands.
Another controversial technology is the use of watermarks and the embedding of watermark detection technology in digital cameras. The fact is that while watermarks can disable a camera when an episode of "The Simpsons" is on a television in view of the camera, it can also be used by governments or criminals that can broadcast watermarks to hide activities they don’t want anyone to see.
The extreme cost to photojournalism alone fully outweighs the theoretical benefit to copyright holders of the false promise of this technology.
Russell McOrmond - p2pnet contributing editor
[McOrmond is an independent author (software and non-software) who uses modern business models and licensing (Free/Libre and Open Source Software, Creative Commons).]
=====================
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win
- Mohandas Gandhi
September 22nd, 2005 at 2:59 pm
many people outside canada (US residents) don’t have a chance to see canadian films unless shown on PBS.
there are many good canadian films and tv shows, and if you live anywhere outside the states, you’ll probably have a chance to see them on tv or in the cinema. if you line in the states, you don’t know what you’re missing because the cartels and networks won’t allow better quality “foreign” films to push into the mainstream distribution zones of their inferior hollywood crap.
most americans are unaware that many of their most beloved tv and film performers are canadian, nor do they realise that quite a few of the most popular movies are filmed in canada at a lower cost than if produced domestically “in country”.
this is because the cartels will not publicize that info, which leads the population to believe the “product” is “made in america”.
not only are a lot of major films produced in canada, but quite a few (perhaps the majority?) of independent films are as well. films that will never been seen by most americans.
and “independent” used to mean high quality, unknown performers and directors, and lower budgets. today, most major studios have their own “independent” film companies producing movies with famous performers, huge budgets and the same low quality as always. what’s independent about that?
there is no real reciprocation between hollywood and canada (and the rest of the world) other than canada allowing for the cheaper production costs to hollywood crap, and hollywood in turn claiming “ownership” of canadian performers and their works.
September 22nd, 2005 at 3:33 pm
Very interesting sidebar on how the major movie studios ended up in California, fleeing patent protection in the east. I hadn’t heard that before. Thanks for that very relevent history lesson! It’s amazing how easily we all forget the lessons of the past.
September 22nd, 2005 at 10:45 pm
There is quite a bit that can be found by doing a search on “Motion Picture Patents Company”.
Another good source for this history is Lawrence Lessig’s book “free culture” that tries to remind us of our past so that we aren’t doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. http://www.free-culture.cc/
Something to always remember in this debate: the “recording industry” and Hollywood were “pirates” at their inception, and were legalized later. The nonsense that this generation of “pirates” (often innovators exploring new methods of creation, distribution and/or funding of creativity) should be stopped by last generation of “pirates”.
As to the third set of extremists, the “software manufacturing” companies represented by the Business Software Alliance (CAAST in Canada): their membership is also often found guilty of copyright and patent infringement, with remedies from the courts that are often in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Their claim to be the “copyright police” is like rogue gangs claiming to be “law and order”.