More on the copyright extension debate.
Owners of an about-to-expire copyright have several favorite arguments for extending it. One is that it spurs creativity by making original works more valuable. But an extension actually restricts creativity by narrowing the shared universe of works artists can build upon. Another is that they need an extension as an incentive to convert old material into new media. As Jack Valenti, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, has pointed out, digitizing films is expensive. “Who is going to digitize these public domain movies?” he asks.
The author’s answer is that the fans, the public, the folks who have been digitizing their record albums and the like will rush to do it.
I’m not sure about that, but I am sure that just looking at the evolution from VHS to DVD answers that question: it will be done by companies looking to make a buck, and it will be done by adding value.
The biggest resistance to going to DVDs on the part of the public has been “Hey, I already have this on tape.” And DVDs that merely are carbon copies (so to speak) of video tapes have not done well.
Where DVDs have been successful have been in the value added. Where DVDs have added commentary, feature tracks, cut footage, games, photo galleries, etc., they’ve attracted purchase from folks who already have the videotape.
So Movie X goes into the public domain. Companies looking to make a buck will have a choice.
They can just do a digital dub of the movie (perhaps off the tape) onto a DVD. Cheap for the consumer, low-cost for the producer, low quality. But some people want that.
Someone can try the high end route. Add value. Add a documentary. Add some commentary tracks. Add a photo gallery.
Maybe someone gets Roger Ebert to add his comments. Is that worth an extra $5 to a potential buyer? Is it worth more than getting the movie’s star to talk about life on the set? Why not two companies trying both approaches? What’s the best way to answer that question.
Simple answer: by letting consumers decide.
I can go down to the book store and find a dozen different versions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the shelves. The Shakespeare play is not owned by any of the studios, thank God. How, then, do any of those book publishers make a profit? How is the play protected and brought to the public for generation after generation?
By adding value. Footnotes. Annotations. Illustrations. Introductions. Analysis. Presentation. Selling to different price points.
I can’t go and make a photocopy of a particular Random House edition of Midsummer and sell it to people. But nothing prevents me from taking the raw content by Shakespeare and publishing my own version of it — as a book, as an e-book, on the Internet, as an audiobook, whatever. And in the vast marketplace of ideas and consumers, some people may or may not decide my version, my added value, is worth paying for (assuming I even want to charge for my labor).
It becomes a consumer choice, not a producer choice. And that is what has the MPAA and the RIAA calling for their brown pants, as the old pirate joke goes. Jack Valenti would have you believe that we would be better off, have a richer, more creative atmosphere, understand and appreciate Midsummer better if only Random House decided exactly how it would be published, at what size, with what added materials, for how much.
Do you agree?
Besides which, Hollywood has done a crappy job of updating films into the digital era. Hundreds, thousands of films have been lost because they’re locked away in company vaults and the companies see no commercial return for rereleasing them, or rescuing them from their decaying state.
Turn some fanboys onto those films, or some Taiwanese entrepeneurs, or a college film school, and I’ll bet you we’d see more of the Hollywood heritage saved than Jack Valenti and his masters are interested in.
Copyright law has been extended eleven times in the last four decades. Has that made life a richer, more creative place? Have the “useful arts” been promoted?
Do we really need just one edition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?
(via BoingBoing)
I’d love to have great, clean copies of some of the early silents that have sat moldering in the archives. I’d buy them if someone would make them watchable. Plus DVDs are so much easier to store.
In following up a link from Lileks, I found the film collection he was lauding — a DVD set of some classic “rescued” films. What’s particularly interesting, in light of Valenti’s comments, are the review notes:
“It celebrates the scope and wealth of cinema history’s “orphans,” the films abandoned by the marketplace and left to nonprofit organizations to rescue. This is the proof of their efforts, and only a tiny, tantalizing example of what has been preserved.”
“The 50 films in this four disc set have been meticulously preserved by eighteen of the nation’s premiere archives, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Museum of Modern Art, George Eastman House, UCLA, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Featuring numerous supplements and produced by the nonprofit National Film Preservation Foundation.”
Thank goodness the for-profit MPAA members have been busy keeping these treasures safe for the public, and upgrading them to digital format and … oh, wait. They haven’t been. That’s why these films needed to be rescued.
Kino international does restoration of a lot of the classic silents. They just released a gorgeous restored version of Metropolis in theaters and it should be coming to DVD soon.