Category: Art

Toby Mundy’s Defense of Books

I draw your attention to this wonderfully unsentimental yet passionate defense of books by Toby Mundy.  The publisher at Atlantic Books, Mundy offers his personal views on the devaluation of the medium for the thought-provoking site Medium.com.  Specifically, of course, he draws our attention to Amazon and its Wal-Mart-like ability to muscle publishers (and by extension authors) into lowering prices toward the existential threshold.  But from a cultural perspective, Mundy makes a sound plea to consumers not to confuse the book with the information it contains and, thus, not to be lulled by artificially cheap prices into setting fire to the basic economics that make a diversity of books possible.  Mundy writes:

“To price a book in the way information is priced is based on a rather one-eyed view of its value. As any textbook author will tell you, Information is undoubtedly part of a book’s utility. But that is only part of the story. A second purpose is to provide readers with transporting Experiences, usually from reading fiction. A third is to impart current Knowledge. When TS Eliot asked plaintively in ‘The Rock’, ‘Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?’ he was reminding us that these two things are not the same. Knowledge comes from the interpretation of information, experience and facts. It comes from the stories we tell about those things. Perhaps it is the capacity to create these stories that make us human.”

By contrast, Mundy opens his piece quoting Russell Grandinetti, Amazon’s VP for Kindle, who accurately says that books compete for our time with other things like Facebook, Twitter, and Candy Crush Saga.  But this somewhat common market view is only a half truth whose half-lie leaves out exactly the point.  There may be individuals who read books and play Candy Crush Saga, but I am confident that they do not value both equally.

See Toby Mundy’s full editorial here.

New Study: Impact of Pre-Release Piracy

People like to quibble about the harm done to the motion picture industry by online piracy. They split hairs over things like whether or not each pirated view represents a lost sale or chime in with arguments that piracy is a form of promotion or a natural market reaction to outdated practices.  If a lot of the arguments for piracy sound like rationalizations, it’s because they are.  And when you hear rationalizations you’re hearing the voices of people who know that what they’re doing is wrong.  But even if we were to take any of the pro-piracy rationalizations as serious analysis, they fall completely apart the moment we’re talking about one of the more obnoxious practices in the whole paradigm — pre-release piracy.

It’s happened a lot, but most recently, The Expendables 3 was leaked online three weeks before it was scheduled for theatrical release.  There’s no other way to put it:  pre-release piracy is a dick move.  It says to everyone who worked on the film, most of them regular folks with regular jobs, that you’re actually eager to see the film but that your own narcissistic desire to be ahead of some imaginary curve is more important than all the investment of money and labor that made the film in the first place.  More than any other form of piracy, pre-release piracy is a huge middle-finger to the grips, electrics, camera department, wardrobe, props, etc. that their jobs mean nothing compared to your need to see a mediocre-quality version of the film on a small screen before anyone else sees it in the theater where it was designed to be released.  Okay that’s my opinion, but what about the impact?

A new study by researchers at The Technology Policy Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is the first to examine the effect of pre-release piracy on revenue. Their conclusions state that, on average, predicted box-office revenues can be reduced by 19% by pre-release piracy compared to post-release piracy.  Theatrical release is the one window when there are no other legal means of viewing a film, and market changes caused by digital technology advances have closed that window considerably.  DVDs go on sale much sooner than they used to after a theatrical release, and some films are released in theaters and through VOD channels simultaneously.  Audiences for big, action films like the Expendables franchise tend to want to see these movies with friends, in theaters, and on big screens.  Profitable opening weekends are a critical slice in the pie-chart of returns investors are seeking when they fund these rather expensive films.

People reading this will, no doubt, have various reactions, including at least a few sentiments directed against big, Hollywood action movies; but that is a flawed lens through which to view the problem.  The Expendables 3 isn’t necessarily my kind of fare per se, but that is entirely beside the point.  What matters in the macro view is whether or not the effect of piracy poisons the ground where legitimate business should otherwise thrive.  When that happens, it’s detrimental to the entire, economic ecosystem in the industry.  Anyone who thinks they can cherry-pick-pirate what they consider the “corporate” fare out of existence and protect whatever their idea of a “better” film might be, is sorely mistaken.

In the big-movie market, if investors are scared off major motion picture investment because pre-release piracy threatens the most critical phase of first sales, that means fewer films get made overall and that the only big films that do get made employ financial models to offset expected losses.  In other words, if it can’t be in a Happy Meal, it won’t be on the screen.  But the smaller movie market has similar challenges with regard to windows of opportunity to recoup investments, and that translates into the probability of making the next film.  If those windows are artificially closed by piracy that preempts the real market from voting with its pocketbook, this will not result in a healthier industry by whatever measure, economic or cultural, you prefer to use.

Westboro Baptists Infringe to Offend

In at least a few posts advocating for the right of the copyright holder to control the use of works for reasons other than money, I have raised hypothetical scenarios in which particularly odious entities make use of works in ways that are uniquely offensive to the soul of the original.  Most recently, I employed such hypotheticals on the subject of compulsory licenses, which would compel music rights holders, for instance, to allow any use of their works as long as the use is compensated.  I argued that this strips the creator of one of the most basic rights of copyright, which is the right to choose the manner in which his/her expression is used, except for of the types of uses typically protected by the doctrine of Fair Use.  So, along comes a real-life example of the dark side of remix culture and the kind of cultural gaffes we might get in a world where all works are fair game.

It looks like members of the Westboro Baptist Church cobbled together the six functioning brain cells in the group and scrawled out some clever new lyrics to accompany Paul McCartney’s famous melody “Hey Jude.”  For your listening and viewing pleasure (or nausea), I offer  “Hey Jews,” sung by the men, women and, yes, children of what I assume to be the Westboro Baptist Church choir.  Drawing upon the favorite theme of killing their savior, the Wesboro Baptist version of this song, originally composed as a ballad of avuncular tenderness for young Julian Lennon, is an anti-semitic screed I suspect most people would ignore, except of course that guys like me will call attention to it.  So, why am I doing that?

Because the video in all its ignorant glory serves up some interesting gefilte fish for thought, if you will.  First, I have no idea whether or not Sony/ATV will take any action against the WBC for infringement, although they could; and if they did, I don’t think a judge would rule this video to be a fair use.  This has nothing to do with its offensiveness but rather with the fact that the revised version does not lampoon the original work itself.  Simply taking a known song and changing the words does not make the new work a parody of the original.  For instance, Weird Al’s “Word Crimes,” which is a fantastic new hit based on Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is not a parody of that song.  So, why does Al get to use it?  Because he got permission and paid for the use, the permission being the more socially important of those two steps.

Sony/ATV may not sue simply because the Wesboro Baptist Church is so universally reviled and ignored that they may just let the infringement go rather than make a case out of it. But alter the situation just a bit, and the scenario might look very different.  Imagine the rights holder is still the author of the music and not as galacticly famous as Sir Paul, and the offensive derivative is made and promoted by a more prominent group.  Does that skew your idea as to how much power the rights holder should retain to prevent such a use?  Some will call this song/video free speech, but I say free speech gives the Wesboro Baptists the right to write, record, and publish their own offensive idiot song, but not a right to use someone else’s work as they see fit.  Because in a sense these neanderthals are speaking with just a little bit of Paul McCartney’s voice, never mind desecrating the very personal reason he created the work in the first place.

I understand this song’s influence in the world will be zero.  Likewise, neither the original work nor its author will be harmed by this association such that anyone is going to assume McCartney endorses the Westboro Baptists.  But change the players in an otherwise similar story, and harm is possible.  Hence, preserving the copyright holder’s choice to sanction, prevent, or ignore certain uses is actually more important in the digital age than it ever was.  Because now any idiot can broadcast, and any idiot will.