Dive into the archives.
- Digital Watermarks: Can they save copyright?
Everyone knows that illegal downloads can’t be stopped (except, maybe the MPAA, but they’ve been deluded for a while about speech issues). That could seem kind of depressing if you are a filmmaker who’s just maxxed out a few credit cards and hit up every friend you have making a movie with no obvious hope of recouping. Some people have said that we should just dump copyright altogether since it’s unenforceable. But copyright was created to protect artists who put their original ideas and execution into a work so that they could control how money… [more]
- RiP: A Remix Manifesto in the tradition of mainfestos past
I recently got a chance to check out RiP: A REMIX MANIFESTO, the Canadian documentary that takes a look at copyright (and the mashup artist Girl Talk) in a kind of method way- the producers, EYESTEELFILM, and director, Brett Gaylor decided that since the costs of licensing all the expensive music in the film would be prohibitive, and since the film was about these costs, it would essentially be fair use to go ahead and use whatever they wanted (including network footage, usually very expensive) and just see what happens.
It’s a pretty interesting concept, and though the film… [more]
- Sony’s “Open Market” could open the Digital Market- a little
TechCrunch reports today on a move by the major studios to protect digital media through a DRM scheme called Open Market. Rather than bow to the the individual protections of a single retailer, otherwise known as iTunes, the studios are working with about 30 different retailers and portals, including Amazon, Best Buy, Direct TV, Time Warner Cable, T-Mobile, Target, Wal-Mart, and others to create a system whereby any digital media available through the participating companies would be subject to third party encryption that would only work on registered devices. (Essentially, you could only play the movie on a device… [more]
- Politics II: Watermarkworld
Tim Lee has posted his response to Rasmus Fleischer’s proposal to ditch copyright law at Cato Unbound, making the hardly strident but accurate point that copyright law is still functional outside the digital realm.In that domain, a reader comments on my earlier post: I think the general consensus among folk who study this stuff is that watermarking — and a variety of schemes have been floated for years now — isn’t really going to be that helpful. The large-scale distribution content firms worry about, as on p2p networks, typically involves skilled geeks who can strip away… [more]
- The politcs of reproduction
Digital distribution isn’t just a quandary for filmmakers or “the industry”- politicians are worried about it too. Just how copyright law can be maintained, transformed, or judged gratuitous is something that the Congress is grappling with (though unsurprisingly, not in a very productive way).Over at think tank Cato’s Unbound, which operates in a kind of debate format, Rasmus Fleischer has posted his argument as to why the entire Copyright law is superfluous, essentially because in the digital age, all media is so easy to copy that it is not possible to protect works from being duplicated… [more]
- INTERVIEW- Karin Chien- dGeneration
As digital distribution evolves, it seems likely that smaller operations will benefit from serving niche markets- both to concentrate sales efforts and to become more attractive to advertisers.dGenerate is a new distribution project set to launch this summer that partners American indie producers, Chinese filmmakers, and Tribeca Film Institute and TFI’s Amazon digital distribution partnership Reframe. dGenerate head Karin Chien was kind enough to share some information about this exciting new venture.(ICI): How did you come up with the idea for dGenerate?Karin: Honestly, the idea came… [more]
