CTV kills Death by Popcorn
p2p news / p2pnet: “Our whole movie was about how corporate interests removed the Jets from Winnipeg. Now, corporate imperatives may remove our movie.”
So says Matthew Rankin who, with Walter Forsberg and Mike Maryniuk, all members of Winnipeg’s L’Atelier national du Manitoba who created Death by Popcorn, a mockumentary, “about the long, unhappy demise of the Winnipeg Jets, who debuted in 1972 and were sold off in 1996 to become the Phoenix Coyotes,” as CBC TV described it in 2005.
“Almost all of the raw material for Death by Popcorn came from the bins outside the old CKY television studios after the Atelier received a tip-off last March about a major round of corporate ‘de-accessioning’,” says the story.
“Forsberg and Rankin went dumpster-diving and ended up with literally kilometres of footage in their basement” and, “We have about 4,000 tapes,” it has Forsberg saying. “We have old two-inch reels we can`t even watch and we kept them anyway.”
But now it looks as if no one in Toronto, or anywhere else, from now on, will be able to watch Death by Popcorn, assembled largely from the trashed celluloid, and, “Welcome, once more, to the muddle where creativity and copyright collide,” says The Globe and Mail in 2006.
Death By Popcorn was in line for Toronto’s Harbourfront this summer, it’s been pulled because of CTV’s objections, says the story.
“The issue is, they didn’t receive written permission to use our material,” says Ken Peron, operations manager of CTV Winnipeg.
“From Peron’s point of view, he is defending his company’s material from unauthorized use,” says the Globe and Mail. “For their part, the artists say they used material that they had been assured was doomed to the dumpster, recycling it to create a perspective on their community.”
L’Atelier members were interviewed by CBC and CTV and, “There they made a fatal mistake,” says the story.
“We boasted we’d made the movie from CKY’s garbage,” says Rankin.
Now, although Death By Popcorn was slated for Toronto’s Harbourfront this summer, it’s been pulled because of CTV objections.
“The issue is, they didn’t receive written permission to use our material,” says Ken Peron, operations manager of CTV Winnipeg.
He asked L’Atelier to hand the material over because, “They were work reels, they weren’t fully usable, they were destroyed” and the mockumentary makers have so far refused, says the Globe and Mail, also pointing out that last month, Appropriation Art published an open letter signed by more than 500 artists (including eight Governor-General’s award winners) warning against tightening copyright laws, and that two weeks later, the Canadian Museums Association and the Canadian Art Museum Directors’ Organization also signed on.
The Appropriation Art offered three principles to ground Canada`s copyright policy:
FAIR ACCESS TO COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL LIES AT THE HEART OF COPYRIGHT
Creators need access to the works of others to create. Legislative changes premised on the need to give copyright owners more control over their works must be rejected.
ARTISTS AND OTHER CREATORS REQUIRE CERTAINTY OF ACCESS
The time has come for the Canadian government to consider replacing fair dealing with a broader defense, such as fair use, that will offer artists the certainty they require to create.
ANTI-CIRCUMVENTION LAWS SHOULD NOT OUTLAW CREATIVE ACCESS
Laws that privilege technical measures that protect access to digital works must be rejected. The law should not outlaw otherwise legal dealings with copyrighted works merely because a digital lock has been used. Artists work with a contemporary palette, using new technology. They work from within popular culture, using material from movies and popular music. Contemporary culture should not be immune to critical commentary.
“Some experts say the concern is premature, because no one knows what’s in the new legislation, says the Globe and Mail story, with copyright expert Glen Bloom stating, “Many works of art are already infringements under existing law.”
And, “That’s exactly what Toronto composer John Oswald discovered in 1989, when the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) destroyed hundreds of copies of his first ‘plunderphonics’ project because he hadn’t got permission from sources for his pop-music revisions,” it says, adding:
“Canadian artists find existing laws restrictive, and most assume that new legislation will only increase constraints – especially if, as expected, it leads to Canada’s ratification of 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization treaties protecting works in the digital environment. Canada took part in those WIPO talks, but unlike the U.S., never ratified. This annoys the entertainment industry, whose executives describe Canada as ‘a piracy haven’.”
“For some time, websites have monitored the entertainment industry’s federal lobbying activities. Gordon Duggan, Joyce’s partner at Appropriation Art, comments, ‘We’re at a point now where they [federal politicians] are drafting the legislation and they’re consulting with the industries but not the artists.’
” ‘If those arguing for greater openness were to be consulted, they say they would seek a parody exception. And they would argue against penalties for circumventing encryption. ‘If the U.S. and Canadian industry lobbyists have their way, all content will be digitized, and you can’t get at it unless they want you to,’ Ottawa copyright lawyer Howard Knopf says.
“L’Atelier national’s Rankin explains why that situation would be so objectionable from an artist’s point of view: ‘Britney Spears is everywhere in my world. I didn’t invite her. But if I try to reinterpret her presence, which is what artists do with their worlds, then I’ve broken the law’.”
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Also See:
CBC TV – The Plight of the `Peg, December 6, 2005
The Globe and Mail – Who’s killing Death By Popcorn?, July 5, 2006
500 artists – Canadian copyright alliance, June 6, 2006
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July 5th, 2006 at 7:54 pm
This is a sticky one. If a company that distributes copies of films to theatres threw worn out prints into the dumpster that would not void the copyrights covering the films. While that is not exaxtly the case here I can see the network falling back on an argument like that. The sad thing is, if the film makers had asked permission to use the discarded footage I bet CTV would have said no anyway. I hope CTV experiences some significant backlash for being such jerks without any good reason.