How Digital Filmmaking Destroyed Screenwriting — “Cheap digital production closed the doors of distributors to low-budget projects, in a way that didn’t exist in the days of film. The internet devalued content to the point that it was no longer possible to make a profit on an independent film. The DVD-premiere market collapsed and was replaced by VOD (that provides tiny returns on film in comparison). DIY distribution via social networking has failed to create careers, simply because everyone talks and nobody listens.”
Spain: Did the “Google Tax†really change the market? — MÃchel Olmedo Cuevas writes, “it seems that the Spanish experience is closer to that of Brazil, where national newspapers amounting for 90% of the traffic dropped out of Google News almost three years ago, and do not seem to be looking to make a comeback since, according to the newspapers association, only 5% of overall traffic was lost, after 135 out of 154 newspapers decided to leave the news aggregation service provided by Google.”
Google v. Oracle: The Curse of Being Popular? — Thomas Young has a look at the “lock in” argument raised by Google in its petition to have the Supreme Court review a decision finding it liable for copying Oracle’s Java software. “The (perhaps unintended) thrust of Google’s argument is that downstream factors, such as how consumers interacted with the work, could impact whether copyright protection ever attached to the work in the first place. This notion would carry a steep price for copyright holders; namely, that user considerations, such as popularity or familiarity, could eventually invalidate their copyright interests and force their works into commons.”
Room for Debate: Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams and a Blurry Copyright Law? — The Blurred Lines verdict continues to provoke discussion. This week, the New York Times published a series of short articles from copyright experts looking at the case from a variety of perspectives.
How the jury in the ‘Blurred Lines’ case was misled — And copyright luminary Wendy Gordon has her take on the verdict. She argues that the instructions provided to the jury did not adequately explain the law and wrongly supported the notion that any copying is infringement.
World IP Day 2015 – Get up, stand up. For music. — Mark your calendars, World IP Day is on April 26, and this year, the theme is music. “What is the future of our relationship with music? How will it be created and disseminated? How will we listen to it? And how will we ensure that all those involved in bringing us this universal pleasure can make a living from their craft?”
Guild Joins Organizations in Protesting the “Code of Best Practices in Fair Use†— This week, a number of visual arts organizations, representing thousands of professional creators, published a letter criticizing a recently published code of best practices for failing to collect input from a major segment of the visual arts community and coming to the unfortunate conclusion that “copyright acts primarily as a barrier, encouraging self-censorship; and that artists are in an adversarial relationship with the marketplace.”