I think for real creative community it should be insulting that he speaks for it, presenting MPAA's perverted views as "views of the creative community". Lexi Alexander is quite outspoken about how interests of MPAA are at odds with interests of actual creators.
Well, given some of the past actions of the MPAA[1][2], I suppose this attitude is altogether unsurprising. The sooner the MPAA fades away and is replaced with something less archaic, the better.
The MPAA is not going to fade away, because motion picture publishers have economic interests, same as any other industrial sector. I could cite a bunch of things I don't care for about it, such as the ratings policy, but it's going to keep existing in some form.
I think what the MPAA is worried about here is that if US fair use standards are exported to all TPP countries, then decisions in US courts come to cover a much larger part of the world, with potentially unpredictable economic effects. In this case, they're arguing for not changing the copyright laws of the other countries.
Catch is, MPAA don't serve interests of the publishers anymore. They serve their own Lysenkoist interests. It takes some guts for publishers to ditch them though.
> In this case, they're arguing for not changing the copyright laws of the other countries.
They are perfectly fine with changing those laws, as long as they make them worse (lengthen the copyright term, more DRM anti-circumvention idiocy and etc.). They obviously don't want to change them when it goes in the different direction. However it has nothing to do with economic unpredictability.
It's pretty simple. They support what gives them (MPAA) more control, and they oppose what reduces their power. However their control has no positive effects on economic benefits of the creative community. If anything, it hurts it, since they stifle innovation, lock up culture and are acting in backwards thinking and crooked manner in general. MPAA are parasitic, but always try to come up with new ways to justify their existence in the eyes of the actual creative community (because more and more people there understand that their existence isn't justified).
That's complete nonsense dude. There are big fish and little fish and the MPAA largely represents the interests of teh big fish, ie the majors and to some extent the mini-majors to use the industry nomenclature. If you think the MPAA has gone rogue and that Disney, Universal, Sony and the others are clutching their pearls in horror then you're detached from reality.
As an indie producer, do I think my interests are coincident with those of the major studios, no. But they're not entirely orthogonal to them either. If you're going to come back with the line that nothing really original or creative comes out of the major studios, that's a tired old 'No True Scotsman' fallacy and the conversation isn't going to go anywhere. The fact that the industry is lopsided and dominated by a small number of big economic interests who wield disproportionate influence isn't inherently bad, taht's actually a pretty normal and expected outcome of any given system.
If anything, it hurts it, since they stifle innovation, lock up culture and are acting in backwards thinking and crooked manner in general.
Yeah yeah, wake me when the revolution comes. It's going to be a while, because nobody has come up with a good way to monetize content at scale yet outside of the regular distribution channels (even companies like Amazon and Netflix basically operate within the traditional model in terms fo content acquisition and so forth). The reality of film production is that the manufacture of a good quality product still requires a lot of capital up front, ie in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and up.
Ultimately, it is the distributors that write the checks. And considering the total film industry involves ~$100 billion in revenues, with the US being by far the biggest producer (capturing more than a third of that), I don't think that's going to change all that quick.
Disney, Sony and etc. aren't the creative community. They are legacy publishers who are stuck in DRM obsessed mentality. Yeah, MPAA is their pawn. But such mentality doesn't actually help the creative community. You know, actual authors. That's what I was talking about.
> The fact that the industry is lopsided and dominated by a small number of big economic interests who wield disproportionate influence isn't inherently bad, taht's actually a pretty normal and expected outcome of any given system.
It is pretty bad, since they weild too much power to screw up the legal system, and this has negative effect on everyone, way beyond their own industry.
You know, after the "Blurred Lines" incident[1], it wouldn't surprise me if the music industry started pushing for more limits on copyright enforcement.
I doubt it. As with patents, sometimes they burn the people wielding them, but those wielding them as a weapon still see more value in excluding smaller players and those who don't cross-license than in stopping damage to themselves.
Fair Use doesn't even get used in Colleges and Universities since there is such fear of litigation. How about we secure the fair use in our school first and than we can start talking about Fair Use for International Treaties.
I don't understand your position. TPP/TTIP create new major litigation risks, so without rejecting these treaties it may not even be possible to achieve the goal of risk-free Fair Use at schools in the first place.
"P.S. The rest of the TPP, however, is just hunky dory to my member companies. Sony's consumer electronics division can not wait to sue the living shit out of the next country that tries to institute an environmental impact assessment on one of its devices. Woot!"
Please don't use quotation marks that make it look like you're quoting when you're not. It's too misleading. The satirical intent of your comment is clear enough without the quotes.
