Darknet

Apple to begin selling movies on release date

San Jose Mercury News: Apple to begin selling movies on release date. Excerpt:

[On Apple's iTunes], new releases will sell for $14.99, while most catalog offerings are priced at $9.99. The movies can be viewed on video iPods, iPhones and computers, as well as a widescreen TV connected to an Apple TV. People who purchase a movie through iTunes can play it as many times as they like, just like a DVD. ...

We've been waiting for this for years -- a new wrinkle in Hollywood's film release system. Leave it to Apple to nudge the studios into serving the early adopters.

Hollywood and Silicon Valley try again to bridge their divide

NY Times: Hollywood and Silicon Valley try again to bridge their divide.

A story that Dan Scheinman, a senior vice president at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif., likes to tell illustrates the cultural divide between Hollywood and his Silicon Valley.

Last year he met with an affluent film producer who marveled at the extraordinary riches afforded Google executives. Mr. Scheinman told him that most got wealthy accepting stock options instead of million-dollar salaries. When Mr. Scheinman asked if the producer would ever accept equity instead of cash if they worked together, the moviemaker sniffed.

“I fly a G4,” he told Mr. Scheinman, referring to the Gulfstream jet he owned. “How far do you think my G4 will go on stock options? I need cash.”

Only 350 miles separate the two California business cultures, and executives are once more trying to bridge the gap between technology and entertainment. But media moguls and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs working together again has all the familiarity of a late-night rerun.  ...

Downloaded movies can go to DVD soon

Canadian Press: Consumers one step closer to burning digital movies onto DVD.

Expanding the limits of fair use

San Francisco Chronicle: Debate heats up on what's protected by copyright laws. Excerpt:

The new documentary "War Made Easy" isn't just a searing critique of how administrations over the past 40 years have manipulated the media to build support for war. The 72-minute film is a media provocation itself - a challenge to federal copyright laws.

Based on a 2005 book by Bay Area media critic Norman Solomon and narrated by actor Sean Penn, roughly 90 percent of "War Made Easy" consists of archival news footage from major television networks that would cost a ton of money to license - if the filmmakers had paid for all of it; they bought only about 60 percent from distributors.

The filmmakers say they are protected under the "fair use" provision of federal copyright law, a measure that is being tested in ways unimagined when it was codified 30 years ago. ...

Over the past few weeks, CNN, ABC and NBC have announced they will allow footage of the presidential debates that they broadcast to be used on other media platforms under certain conditions. For example, NBC requests that debate footage not be used for commercial purposes, that the network's moderators or journalists not be used in campaign advertising and that its logo be prominently displayed when a clip is used.

But while some of those provisions sound similar to what's in federal copyright law, what is fair use remains the subject of debate.

"The similarities in all this is that we're all feeling our way in the digital era in the area of fair use," said Patrick Ross, executive director of the newly formed Copyright Alliance, a Washington trade group whose supporters include movie studios, television networks and artists interested in preserving copyright protection.

The networks' decisions "are fantastic for anybody who has anything to say about the presidential race," said Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project at the Center for the Internet and Society at Stanford University. "What you're going to see in this election cycle is an explosion of people expressing themselves in different ways using video. This is going to get more people participating in the process."

After seeing how debate clips turned up on YouTube and blogs - and were mashed up into parodies - "the networks realized that you can either work with people or you can fight them," said Jason Schultz, an attorney specializing in intellectual property law at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco. ...

Free content is being pitched as a civic offering, as CNN announced May 7: "The presidential debates are an integral part of our system of government, in which the American people have the opportunity to make informed choices about who will serve them. We believe this is good for the country and good for the electoral process."

In recent weeks, other networks - including NBC and ABC - have changed their policies to allow use of footage from the presidential debates. NBC's policy went into effect after last week's AFL-CIO debate in Chicago, which was broadcast on MSNBC.

Getting the networks to release their debate footage is a rare example of bipartisan media organizing; liberal organizations like MoveOn.org and conservative commentators like Michelle Malkin joined forces to pressure the networks.

"We know that people are going to do it. This just legitimizes it," said Mike Krempasky, a conservative who founded RedStateblogs.com.

The shape of cinema, transformed at the click of a mouse

From the Sunday NY Times:

The Revolution Will Be Downloaded (if You’re Patient)

The shape of cinema, transformed at the click of a mouse  

Movie editors racing against clock

Deseret News: Movie editors racing against clock. They use 'educational' loophole to stay open.

Is copyright a threat to creativity?

Brett Gaylor's site, Open Source Cinema, is a website he's been working on to create Basement Tapes, a documentary about music and copyright.  Writes Brett: "I'm trying to get to the bottom of all this copyright craziness that I've been following since the Internet kicked the legs out from underneath  the record industry - lawsuits, crackdowns, mashups and smackdowns. In the face of the hysteria around the downloading of music and illegal sampling, the film asks the question: is copyright a threat  to creativity?"

Software exploited by pirates goes to work for Hollywood

Brad Stone in the NY Times: Software exploited by pirates goes to work for Hollywood.

Hollywood studios are going into business with one of their biggest tormentors: the peer-to-peer pioneer BitTorrent.  

On Monday, the company, whose technology unleashed a wave of illegal file-sharing on the Internet, plans to unveil the BitTorrent Entertainment Network on its Web site, BitTorrent.com. The digital media store will offer around 3,000 new and classic movies and thousands more television shows, as well as a thousand PC games and music videos each, all legally available for purchase. ...

Wal-Mart's lame-o online film service

In this week's Newsweek, Steven Levy takes a look at Wal-Mart's lame online distribution service. Key grafs:

... Those technical difficulties are associated with the ridiculous necessity to play back movies with specialized software, because of digital rights management (DRM) requirements. Though the overall experience is much better in time-tested systems like iTunes, onerous copy-protections rules affect all legal movie downloads. Wal-Mart's rules are especially infuriating: you can watch a movie only on the computer you use to download it. (iTunes allows you five.) An alternative is to buy a version that lets you watch it on certain portable devices, but not iPods. But that means the movie won't look good if you play it on your computer. In contrast, a DVD plays on any computer or television in high quality, and friends and family members can borrow it.

Also, online movies do not include any of the bonus content that routinely comes with DVDs. Burning the file to a DVD is OK for backup, but the disk won't play on a computer or television set. ...

In short, even the entrance of Wal-Mart into the marketplace has not changed the fact that you're better off with the old model than the new. Wal-Mart's Kevin Swint lays this directly at the feet of Hollywood. "The studios set the pricing," he says. As for bonus content, "that's the way the studios provide the content." And, of course, it is the studios who set the rules for copy protection.

I wrote about the Hollywood studios' reticence in embracing their digital destiny in Darknet. And while Swint's point is well-taken, it's not the studios that are responsible for this inexcusable behavior on the part of the Wal-Mart service:

Unsupported Browser
We're sorry ...
Our website requires the browser Internet Explorer version 6 or higher. It appears that you are using Firefox, Safari, or another browser that Wal-Mart Video Downloads doesn't currently support. Click here to get Internet Explorer for free from Microsoft.

The current Newsweek also has an observant essay on "Why TV is better than the movies" (if it's online, I can't find it). In passing, the piece spells out why Hollywood is not moving faster to offer digital delivery of its entertainment products:

Hollywood wants to be consumer friendly, but not too friendly, because that arm's length exclusivity is the essence of glamour. And without glamour, what is Hollywood? Yup -- television.

A search engine for Oscar nominees

OscarTorrents: an audacious new site from The Pirate Bay: a search-engine for torrents of this year's Oscar nominees.

Hollywood weighs copyright protections

Wall Street Journal: Hollywood Weighs Copyright Protections. Hollywood execs believe it is only a matter of time before the debate over removing copyright protections on music spreads to include digital movies. Studios are increasingly engaged in internal debate over the right course for the future, with technology executives and engineers calling for Hollywood to at least re-examine the issue.

Illegal movie downloads OK with most consumers

Information Week: Illegal Movie Downloads OK with Most Consumers

The majority of U.S. online consumers do not believe downloading movies illegally from the Web is a serious offense, says a survey by Solutions Research Group. "Most people perceive celebrities and studios to be rich already," says study director Kaan Yigit.

New disc may prevent DVD wars

Some good news for consumers, from the NY Times:

Consumers wary of buying new high-definition DVD players because of a technology war reminiscent of the days of Betamax versus VHS will soon have a new kind of DVD that might make the decision less daunting.

Warner Brothers, which helped popularize the DVD more than a decade ago, plans to announce next week a single videodisc that can play films and television programs in both Blu-ray and HD-DVD, the rival DVD technologies.

Warner Brothers, a division of  Time Warner, plans to formally announce the new disc, which it is calling a Total HD disc, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Sharecrow dedicated to alternative DVD commentaries

Here's an email I recently received from Steve Concotelli, co-founder of Sharecrow.com:

I wanted to let you know that I co-created a new website, www.sharecrow.com, which picks up where DVDTracks left off.

Sharecrow is the world's largest website dedicated to alternative DVD commentaries. We have links to over 400 commentaries, with more being added every day. Many of these are fan-created submissions, but the number of officially endorsed commentaries is increasing.

In addition, we created the world's first DVD player that allows you to play these downloaded commentaries in sync with a DVD. With our software, users can now play a DVD and commentary together on their computer, without recording anything onto the DVD. Users simply assign an audio file to a DVD, and from that point on both will play in sync -- even as you skip around the DVD. It's the first player of its kind and Sharecrow's popularity is growing.

We are working to re-define the relationship movie fans have with their DVD's. With Sharecrow, movie viewers can now be active content creators for their favorite (or not-so-favorite) movies and tv shows.

Downloadable films don't come easy

Friday's NY Times: Films That Come Over the Net Don’t Come Easy.

The latest CinemaNow feature [offers] movies you can burn to a disc that will play on any DVD player. Intended to solve the “last 10 feet” problem, the burn-to-DVD service is still in preview or “beta” mode, but it already has a selection of over 100 titles, including “Center of the World” by Wayne Wang, the Al Pacino movie “Scent of a Woman,” and concert videos by artists like Johnny Cash and the Doors.

It took me an hour to download the $12.99 offbeat thriller “Panic.” But when it came time to burn the DVD, which CinemaNow’s software does automatically, the recording failed after 30 minutes, wasting one blank DVD. A second attempt, which took about 30 minutes, was successful. ...

Building a better Hollywood

For those who missed it, Fast Company magazine devoted its December issue to a package on Building a better movie business. It's now online here.

The coming bust in hi-def DVDs

NY Times: Fiddling With Format While DVD's Burn.

The war for control of the next-generation DVD is approaching a critical juncture: next week in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show, companies championing the two competing high-definition DVD standards - Blu-ray and HD-DVD - will unveil their lineups of new players and movie titles.

There are growing signs, though, that the battle for supremacy in this multibillion-dollar market may yield a hollow victory. As electronics makers, technology companies and Hollywood studios haggle over the fine points of their formats, consumers are quickly finding alternatives to buying and renting packaged DVD's, high definition or otherwise.

"While they fight, Rome is burning," said Robert Heiblim, an independent consultant to electronics companies. "High-definition video-on-demand and digital video recorders are compelling, and people will say, 'Why do I need it?' " when considering whether to buy a high-definition player. ...

So far, the marketplace's answer is: We don't need it.

If Hollywood and the tech industry joined forces

Scott Kirsner in today's San Jose Mercury News on how Silicon Valley and Hollywood could join hands to rescue a movie industry in distress - if only the studios would be willing to embrace new business models.

The cineplex dilemma

Randall Stross in the Sunday NY Times: Is Mark Cuban Missing the Big Picture?, about the difficulties involved in undoing Hollywood's elaborate system of movie release windows.

Fair use in film

From Larry Lessig:

The Center for Social Media has released a fantastic report on “fair use” in film. The aim of the report is to try to state, and hence establish, norms or “best practices” that should govern “fair use” for film. This is an important effort and Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi deserve thanks for the hard work pulling the team together to produce this. Download the report here (PDF).

OnHollywood 100

Here are the nominees so far for the OnHollywood 100. Price is $995 (50% off) through Dec. 31. Mark your calendars for April 25-27, 2006, in Hollywood.

Hollywood's plans to control your TV

I just read the September issue of Scientific American, where Wendy Grossman has this article (subscription required to read full text): Flagging Copy Rights. Piracy protection may redefine home recording.

The right to protect against unauthorized copying of digital television and film seemed to take a step back for the entertainment industry and content provider--and a step forward for the consumer and video pirate--when a federal court struck down the planned July 1 introduction of the "broadcast flag." The flag is a set of bits in a digital transmission that can prevent recording. But advocates of free recording are not celebrating the defeat of the flag--transmissions standards currently being devised could trump the ruling.

The consortium creating the standards is the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) Project, a group that includes broadcasters, mobile phone companies, set-top box manufacturers and movie studios. Most of its work defines ways to transmit, encode and format data. But the next version of the DVB standards will include a scheme called Copy Protection/Copy Management (CPCM), which, if implemented, may give copyright holders even more control than the broadcast flag would have.

As drafted, CPCM will allow them to specify, for example, whether protected content can be copied -- and, if so, onto how many devices. They could dictate how many times a program can be viewed, where it can be viewed and how long a copy may be kept. While attending a public DVB Forum meeting held in Dublin this past March, Jim Williams, vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America, said in private that preventing someone from accessing a single HBO subscription from two different locations is "social justice." ...

Changing attitudes on digital copyright

Michael Rogers, the Practical Futurist, at MSNBC.com: Changing attitudes on digital copyright. Readers respond to Practical Futurist column (a review of Darknet). Excerpt:

Memo to Hollywood: Based on reader reaction to last week’s column, "Will Hollywood Lock up Our Movies?," you may actually be able to avoid the online fate of the recording industry. ... But you’re going to have to choose copy protection that gives buyers flexibility, along with a whole lot of consumer education. And under no circumstances use Brad Pitt and Jennifer Lopez as spokespeople for the cause.

The reader reaction, in an unscientific way, suggests a distinct attitude shift since I last addressed the issue of digital piracy in 2003. Back then, my suggestion that the music industry had a right to protect its intellectual property brought a barrage of e-mail, ranging from self-righteous to outright nasty, running more than 90 percent against the industry.

This time — with movies folded into the mix — there’s been another barrage of e-mail, but this time about 60 percent is in favor of reasonable digital copy protection.

Hollywood, Netflix to offer movies on demand

San Jose Mercury News: Netflix near launch of movie downloads.

One industry source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the new Netflix service would be similar to fledgling, studio-supported ventures like MovieLink and CinemaNow. Those services allow people to rent copy-protected movies and television shows over the Internet and watch them on their computers.

Such services struggled because they offer a limited number of new releases. That is unlikely to change, so long as DVD sales and rentals remain the largest single source of revenue for movie studios. ...

Carmel Group President Sean Badding said it also prepares Netflix for the far-off day when consumers actually look to the Internet to rent a movie.

Say what? We're ready for Internet movie rentals now. Get real. Akimbo does this today -- purchases of videos you can watch in your living room, via the Internet. Hollywood's just not ready to climb aboard in a serious way yet because of the DVD gravy train. You can bet that new Hollywood releases won't be part of this deal.

Will Hollywood lock up our movies?

Columnist Michael Rogers of MSNBC.com explores the issues raised in Darknet in his latest column: Will Hollywood lock up our movies? New book sheds light on fight over our digital rights.

Rogers is the first mainstream media writer to pick up on the term "digital rights" that I've been using. Excerpt:

You buy a DVD, and then loan it to your neighbor. You shoot a video of your new baby and make copies to send to everyone in the family. Your college professor shows a short clip of a classic film in class. You’re on vacation so you record three weeks of “Desperate Housewives.” These are all rights we take for granted — but in fact everything you know about owning music and movies is up in the air right now, and where it will come down is anyone’s guess.

That’s the message of J.D. Lasica’s excellent new book, "Darknet: Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation," a comprehensive look at the current battle over how record and movie companies will protect their digital property from piracy — and what media consumers may lose in the process. “Darknet” refers to parts of the Web unseen by the public and specifically to the world of illegal underground file-sharing — the only option, in Lasica’s view, that consumers may have if content owners are overzealous in locking up their intellectual property. ...

In short, an enormous struggle over the protection of intellectual property is underway between the media industry and a loose confederation of digital freedom fighters. Lasica details every aspect of how overly strict control on media could hurt consumers: The new generation of media users, who sample existing works to create new ones, would be locked out by copy protection. Restrictions on commercial content may impact how individuals can use self-created media — some new video cameras, for example, create files that can’t easily be distributed to others. Educators might not be able to take “fair use” snippets of films to illustrate classroom lectures, the way they currently quote from books. Lasica even shows how upcoming efforts to make computers safer from online scams could also give media companies more control over the content we buy. ...

The solutions that Lasica offers in his conclusion are sensible, and should be required reading for media companies. ...

What’s perhaps most striking is how little most consumers are aware of what’s at stake.

Hollywood's cliched filmmaking

Today's NY Times Week in Review carries an essay comparing Hollywood to Detroit, and discusses outdated business models. Excerpt:

Moviegoers apparently are having a similar reaction to Hollywood's buffet of warmed-over dishes. Most of the movies in wide release last week - the 19th straight week in which box office receipts were lower than the same week a year before - were either remakes or brand extensions: "War of the Worlds," "Batman Begins," "Herbie: Fully Loaded," "Star Wars: Episode III," "The Longest Yard" and "Bewitched." What's next, a remake of a lame 1970's-vintage television show like "The Dukes of Hazzard"? Well, yes.

Attendance at the cineplex is falling? Don't blame piracy.

Is Hollywood ready to embrace the Internet?

From Monday's NY Times: Forget the Bootleg, Just Download the Movie Legally.

After years of avoiding it, Hollywood studios are preparing to let people download and buy electronic copies of movies over the Internet, much as record labels now sell songs for 99 cents through Apple Computer's iTunes music store and other online services.

I'll believe it when I see it. Hollywood's online movie fare continues to be loaded down with DRM and digital time bombs.

Meantime, the Times reporter writes, "there are not easy ways to move movies downloaded onto a PC to a television set. ... At first, the movies will be restricted to playing on a single computer with a television hookup. Some studio executives think this is far too narrow and consumers will want the ability to transfer movies to several computers, to portable devices and possibly to burn them to their own DVD's."

Ya think?

Filmmakers vs. permission society

I had missed this the other day: As Larry Lessig notes, Stay Free! has a fantastically interesting story about the struggles of a filmmaker with the permission society. The documentary Mad Hot Ballroom, directed by Park Sloper Marilyn Agrelo, follows New York public school kids in a citywide a ballroom dancing competition.

When Agrelo and Sewell were filming boys playing foosball after school, Ronnie [a young boy, above] at one point shouted, "Everybody dance now!", a line from a C+C Music Factory hit. Incredibly, the filmmakers' lawyer said the line had to be cleared with the song's publisher, Warner Chappell. The price? $5,000.

Format Wars, Episode II: The DVD

LA Times: Competing visions of high-definition viewing head for a showdown on store shelves.

DixV's challenge to Microsoft

In today's San Jose Mercury News, Mike Langberg takes a look at DivX, a startup in San Diego that I devote a chapter to in Darknet. Excerpt from the article:

Everyone in Silicon Valley and Hollywood believes movies will soon be sold and consumed online, and everyone recognizes huge profits will come from being the codec of choice. That's why Microsoft is spending heavily to develop and promote its Windows Media codec. And, no surprise, Microsoft's deep pockets are very attractive to Hollywood. DivX, so far, can't get past the studio gates.

But Hollywood just might take notice of DivX version 6, introduced Wednesday. The upgraded format allows for the full DVD experience -- including menus, scene selection, multiple audio tracks and subtitles -- in one file. Windows Media and earlier versions of DivX only provide a single stream of audio and video with none of these interactive features.

You can see for yourself, if you've got a computer running Windows XP or Windows 2000 and broadband Internet service. A software package called the DivX Play Bundle is available free on the Web. It's a relatively small file, 7.5 megabytes, that's easy to install and lets you watch DivX video.

The company Web site is also offering a free download of ``Star Wars Revelations,'' a 47-minute movie created by fans of the ``Star Wars'' series on a $20,000 budget. The 396-megabyte DivX 6 version of ``Revelations,'' when viewed with the DivX 6 player, presents a full DVD-like menu where you can jump to specific scenes and listen to commentary by the director. Video and audio quality is good enough that you'd think you were watching a DVD on your computer. ...

DivX is an easy and effective way to reduce the size of your personal video files, if you're willing to shell out $20 for the DivX Create Bundle. And DivX 6 points the way to DVD-like downloads. The quality of DivX compressed video appears roughly comparable to Windows Media. But none of that matters if Hollywood doesn't get behind DivX, and that looks like a long shot.

That may be. But I think that columnists like Langberg invariably overlook the world of digital media beyond Hollywood. It's not about grade-B movies. As my videoblogging colleague Jay Dedman says, the stuff we're already seeing on Ourmedia is better than summer reruns on the tube. Don't underestimate the personal media revolution. DivX's challenge is getting regular people to use its codec rather than QuickTime or Windows Media. The company might consider returning to its open source roots for that.

How Hollywood can fight the Darknet

NY Times: Keeping Moviegoers Away From the Dark Side.

Music came first, but now the movie business is facing its own Internet challenge. Hollywood had a few years of breathing room because a movie is such a hefty bag of digital bits that it used to take several hours, if not most of a day or night, to download a film.

Not anymore. Ever-faster networks mean that a movie can be delivered online today in an hour or two, so the Internet traffic in films, illegally distributed, is starting to take off. In fact, the same day the latest "Star Wars" movie opened in theaters last month an online version was posted on a file-sharing site - before being shut down in a federal raid a few days later.

Little wonder, then, that Dan Glickman [pictured above], the new field general in Hollywood's battle against piracy, is awaiting the Supreme Court ruling in MGM v. Grokster, a decision that could come as early as Monday. The case is the latest conflict in years of legal attacks by the music industry against file-sharing systems like Grokster and Kazaa and their users. The court's decision could define the reach of copyright in the Internet era and the liability of file-sharing services. Its impact will be felt equally by the movie industry and the music business. ...

Mr. Glickman has moved the trade association with somewhat surprising speed and force in certain areas, notably enforcement. During his tenure, Mr. Valenti held out the threat of suing individuals for copyright infringement, but he never took that step, which can be portrayed as dragging customers into court. But Mr. Glickman pushed ahead with a flurry of suits against some 200 people, with the latest filed last month. ...

Yet the movie industry, some analysts say, is too intent on fighting these days. "It's a real mistake to focus on suing people so much instead of moving with the technology into the future," said Harold L. Vogel, an independent media analyst.

Hollywood is experimenting with Internet downloading services that charge a few dollars a movie or charge a monthly subscription fee like Movielink, CinemaNow and Starz on RealNetworks. Still, these seem half-hearted efforts so far with a selection that is far more limited than at a neighborhood Blockbuster store or Netflix, the popular mail-order movie rental service.

"My advice to Hollywood is to really start selling online," said Bram Cohen, the 29-year-old programmer who created the BitTorrent software. "They have nothing that vaguely competes with Netflix."

Netflix is investing in developing online distribution technology. The biggest obstacle, said Neil Hunt, its chief product officer, is that it cannot obtain the electronic rights from Hollywood to offer anything like its 45,000-title library of DVD's. "The goal of the studios is to preserve the DVD revenue stream," he said.

Hollywood's leading lobbyist understands the challenge. "It's not enough just to sue," Mr. Glickman said. "The industry has to develop hassle-free, reasonable-cost ways to offer movies over the Internet."

For once, Mr. Glickman is absolutely correct.

Here, unfortunately, Mr. Glickman veers off into the deep end, preparing his pitch to Congress in the event Hollywood loses Grokster.

Survival tips for old media

The Wall Street Journal offers a roundup of experts' views on How Old Media Can Survive in a New World. Excerpts:

Forget DVDs. It may come as bad news to studios, which are currently embroiled in complicated negotiations over the launch of the next generation of DVD, but they should start thinking beyond putting movies on a disc. "Physical media is going to be supplanted over time with material that sits in a hard drive," says Curt Marvis, chief executive of CinemaNow Inc., a Marina del Rey, Calif., movie-downloading service. That way, he argues, studios could take advantage of all the copy protection and bonus features of a next-generation DVD, and lose the expense and hassle of packaging and shipping the actual disc. ...

Embrace the enemy. Wayne Rosso, president of Mashboxx LLC, believes the music business needs to do the once unthinkable: Give an online file-sharing network -- namely, the one he runs -- license to distribute its releases legitimately. ...

Why studios rely so much on DVDs

The San Jose Merc has two articles today about Netflix CEO Reed Hastings (I'm a longtime Netflix member):

Calm amid the storm: Netflix will emerge from battle with Blockbuster as a powerful mass-market force, CEO says.

Q&A: `Consumers are very social and they want to talk about movies'

Key excerpt that is right on the money:

The studios make so much money in DVD sales that DVD gets an exclusive window against cable video-on-demand and Internet video-on-demand. We believe that the DVD exclusive window will last for at least the rest of this decade. That's because it makes economic sense for them.

Think of book publishing. You've got hardcover and paperback. There's a lot more money made on the hardcover side. If you ask consumers, would you like the paperback up front? They'll say, ``Absolutely.'' They don't get it, because the publishers need the hard cover phase to pay for all the publicity.

Similarly, if you ask consumers would you like to download any movie, anytime? Of course they'd say, ``Yes.'' But they don't get it, because the profit on a DVD sale is about $14 to the studio. Whereas VOD or Internet downloads, it's $1 or $2 to the studio. That's why it makes economic sense for the studios to protect DVD sales.

Hollywood's 'perfect irrelevance'

It's Oscars day. Film critic Bruce Newman of the San Jose Mercury News has this on page A1 today:

When Hollywood commences its devotional services to itself at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles tonight, it will mark the first opportunity for the major studios to come together and celebrate the perfection of their own irrelevance.

With the studios churning out ever greater numbers of remakes, sequels, recycled TV shows and comic book movies -- all of which bring a safely ready-made audience -- they have grown more risk-averse, and less likely than ever to make, say, a drama about a female boxer or a comedy about two guys on a wine-tasting trip. So it comes as no surprise that when the filmmakers who created ``Million Dollar Baby'' and ``Sideways'' took their ideas to the studios, they were repeatedly turned down flat. ...

Book, film on 'copyright criminals'

From Stay Free!:

Kembrew McLeod on copyright criminals

My buddy Kembrew McLeod has just published his book Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. (You may remember Kembrew for his brilliant part in the Illegal Art Exhibit; he trademarked the phrase "freedom of expression" and then threatened to sue AT&T for using it in an ad campaign.

The book is filled with all kinds of curious stories about the copyright cartel; we'll be reprinting a short excerpt in the upcoming issue of Stay Free! magazine. But you don't have to wait for that; you can download the ENTIRE BOOK FREE (courtesy of a Creative Commons license) at Kembrew's website.

Kembrew has also just finished a trailer for his documentary Copyright Criminals. ...

Disposable DVDs at crossroads

Katie Dean in Wired News: Environmentalists are thrilled that Disney has ditched the disposable DVD format, which didn't sell well anyway. But the company that created the technology has been sold, and the new owners are committed to the throwaways.

The auto-documentary

The Sunday NY Times Magazine has a piece by A.O. Scott on auto-documentaries, or what the paper's headline writer less charitably terms "Enter Narci-Cinema. The documentary film goes confessional." In Darknet I marvel at the cinematic abilities of a young filmmaker who made Tarnation on a budget of less than $300. Writes Scott:

Movie cameras are still made with the lens fixed on one end and the viewfinder on the back, but these days most consumer-grade video camcorders are equipped with a monitor that swivels around, dissolving the conventional boundary between what is in front of the camera and what, or who, is behind it. Jonathan Caouette used such a video recorder to shoot parts of ''Tarnation,'' his autobiographical first film, and he has succeeded, to an extent unmatched by any other filmmaker I can think of, in unlocking the metaphorical and literal potential of modern video technology to turn the camera's lens into a mirror.

''Tarnation'' is both the purest and the most radical expression of a subjective impulse that is helping to reinvigorate the art of documentary filmmaking, as well as rewriting its rules. As the tide of confessionalism and personal revelation that has come to dominate literary culture moves into the visual realm, we may be entering the age of the autodoc, or the moicumentary.

Since the early 1960's, when lighter cameras made on-scene, on-the-fly shooting possible, documentary has been ruled by the ideology of cinema vérité, an aesthetic that is, if not entirely objective, at least rigorously impersonal. Though their names are legend -- D. A. Pennebaker, Frederick Wiseman, Barbara Kopple -- the exemplars of verite are never seen or heard in their own films. The vérité ethic still survives -- notably in ''Control Room,'' a documentary about Al Jazeera directed by a Pennebaker protegee, Jehane Noujaim -- but the trend in nonfiction filmmaking is increasingly toward self-disclosure and self-display.

In ''Tarnation,'' Caouette's subject is himself -- not only his childhood and the relationship with his mentally unstable mother that defined it, but also, more centrally, his inner life. In addition to telling the sad story of his mother's illness and its effects on him, Caouette collects the monologues and make-believe screen tests he conducted as an adolescent in the privacy of his own room. The film is stitched together with dreamy, homemade montages and musical interludes. At once diaristic and dreamlike, ''Tarnation'' is in some ways more like a poem than a prose memoir. It echoes the work of film artists like George Kuchar, who has been recording the minutiae of his own life for decades, and avant-garde cineastes like Jack Smith and Ed Pincus, whose 200-minute ''Diaries'' chronicled his daily doings from 1971 to 1976. ...

The auto-documentary follows the same trend as blogging and citizen journalism: greater disclosure, greater transparency, greater self-awareness. That's all to the good.

'Illegal copying' -- or customer freedom?

'Illegal copying' — or increased freedom and flexibility for users who want to use legally purchased DVDs in the home? You decide.

Associated Press:

A film-industry group has sued a high-end consumer electronics company based in Mountain View, claiming its home theater jukebox system makes illegal copies of movie DVDs.

The DVD Copy Control Association alleges that its proprietary copy-protection technology of movie DVDs, known as the Content Scramble System, is being misused in the Kaleidescape System that makes permanent copies of movie DVDs onto a hard drive and allows users to access the video library from anywhere in a home.

With the system, which starts at $27,000 for the storage of as many as 160 movies, multiple films can be simultaneously played in different rooms using accompanying movie players hooked up to a network.

The Copy Control Association, an arm of Hollywood studios, filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit against Kaleidescape on Tuesday in Santa Clara County Superior Court, seeking a judge's order to halt sales of the product. It's the latest move in the ongoing, larger war the movie industry has waged in trying to prevent what it considers unauthorized usage of its content.

Kaleidescape has a license to use the CSS technology, but ``the company has built a system to do precisely what the license and CSS are designed to prevent -- the wholesale copying of protected DVDs,'' said Bill Coats, lead litigation counsel for the association.

Privately held Kaleidescape vowed to fight the charges and countersue.

``We've scrupulously followed every one of their requirements,'' Michael Malcolm, Kaleidescape's founder, chairman and chief executive, said Wednesday. ``They seem to think their license prevents the loading of movies onto hard drives, but they're simply wrong.''

The video jukebox system, which also restricts users from transferring the movies onto a personal computer or onto the Internet, has been selling well since its introduction in 2003, he said.

``In fact, we have quite a few studio executives and movie directors who have the system in their homes,'' Malcolm said.

Actor fined over Oscar screener piracy

AfterDawn via BBC: Actor Carmine Caridi has been fined $300,000 for distributing screener copies of movies that were nominated for Oscars. Caridi, 70, handed out copies of The Last Samurai and Mystic River to Russel Sprague, who he thought was just a film buff. Instead Sprague, 51, made copies of the movies and distributed them over the Internet.

How copyright law affects documentary filmmakers

MediaRights, a nonprofit organization that helps media makers, educators, librarians, nonprofits, and activists use documentaries to encourage action and inspire dialogue on contemporary social issues, announces this:

Profs. Pat Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi this week will release a new project report entitled "Untold Stories: Creative Consequences of the Rights Clearance Culture for Documentary Filmmakers." A collaboration between the Center for Social Media at American University's School of Communication and the Washington College of Law's Program on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, the project was supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The report is based on conversations with some 40 individuals who talked at length about how intellectual property concerns effect their own practice. 

Hollywood needs to 'move past pirates'

Jim Coates of the Chicago Tribune (in the LA Times: Movie industry needs to move past pirates, cut to good files.

Coates comes to the same conclusion I did (as well as other media observers):

The Motion Picture Association said in announcing the planned suits that there are no fewer than 40,416 copies of The Terminal available on peer-to-peer networks, 35,842 copies of Alien vs. Predator and 32,418 copies of Spiderman 2.

Because it poses less damage from bundled spyware than others, I used the LimeWire P2P software and found that even with my fast broadband connections, it takes several hours to find and download a movie. And the q