from the sarcasm-hats-on dept

Everyone should probably don their sarcasm hats before reading this.  Sorry if your hat has been banned or stuck in a port somewhere while the ITC tries to sort out an injunction on sarcasm. 

One day, way back in 2008, I found this backwoods, hillbilly blog that was complaining about the Entertainment Industry's position that it's business model must be protected; and I thought to myself - "now here's a reasonable website that will help me make sure I extract as much money as I can from my chosen career in show business; and make fun of a few people along the way!  Perfect!" 

It also warms my heart to know that our rich cultural heritage continues to grow and bring new works into the public domain that will increasingly help us find more common ground with each other and a new utopia of copyright free inspiration. 

Oh.  Wait. 

None of that's happened. 

And it's 2012.  Which is like, 500 Internet Years away from 2008. * sigh*

OK, well then, instead of focusing on the firehose of bad news that really can get you down if you obsess over it (Mike, it's no wonder you need this to keep your head from exploding while writing about all the terrible things happening), I decided to pick out all the GOOD things (which we'll denote just for fun as a YAY!)  that managed to slip into the Techdirt stream so we can start out 2012 with some inspiration. 

Monday finished out with a zero YAY rating, since apparently everyone was recovering from their rousing send-off of 2011. 

Tuesday, rang up a Three YAY Rating. 

On deck first (in no particular order) is where Marc Randazza's Search for Naked Emperor's Clothing Heats Up.  With Righthaven principals basically hiding under a rock somewhere, getting judgements against the company enforced is turning out to be both tricky and humiliating.  But we've been watching the train wreck for long enough that each bit of suffering or potential suffering that Righthaven has to go through kind of fills me with a measure of possibly inappropriate glee. 

Next up, The Nerds Devise a Plan for Triumph.  Just the threat of SOPA/PIPA and all this other government censorship nonsense is enough to inspire geeks to move DNS control offshore.  Way offshore.  We just *thought* that nerds were cool before when they invented stuff like IRC and Telnet, but when they start launching their own micro-satellites to create an ad hoc DNS system in space?  Just you wait until we have Internet in the Sky, er, SkyNet...um...

Unbelievably, on the same day we got the post where a Politician Starts Politicking, a guy named Jack Arnold launched his campaign against SOPA supporter Rep. Marsha Blackburn, using his position against SOPA as a point of differentiation.  It's nice to hear he's at least putting on the show that the good people of the Interwebs are being listened to (though when it comes time to get real money in his campaign, or get fancy furnishings in his new congressional office if he wins, then all bets are off). 

Wednesday.  I don't like Wednesdays.  It doesn't get any YAY today, but there is this tidbit worth at least a golf-clap. 

Thursday is my favorite day of the week.  It's not quite Friday, but it's not the "T" day of the week that immediately follows Monday.  Either way, this day garnered a TWO YAY rating!!! 

First off, we got to hear that Pirates Like Hugs Too!  As it turns out, indie music site Bandcamp released some metrics that bolster the idea that by embracing people who search for terms that usually lead to pirated music, they could convert those folks into music buyers by giving them what they wanted in an easy to buy package. * OMG* who'da thunk that you really can generate more product sales by not being a dick to your customers and fans.  Stick that in your pipe and smoke it RIAA. 

Then as luck would have it, we had $5,670 Problems but a Judicial Smackdown Ain't One, the new hit single in the Righthaven train wreck from a process serving company that Righthaven decided it never wanted to pay.  Funny thing, wanting to get paid for doing real work.  Any bets on whether or not Righthaven will pay up on the suit when it's settled? 

Friday

Just to be contrarian, Friday is also *not* my favorite day of the week because the day that follows it is the start of work on my two-day-per-week "honey-do" list at the house, which never seems to get any shorter (this weekend, it's fix the dryer squeak, and install air-conditioning in the office, booo).  But I digress. 

Friday delivered the news that Al Gore Might Get Mad Enough to Uninvent the Internet if SOPA Passes.  In some ways, it's a shame that he didn't get enough votes become our 43rd President.  Oh wait.  Who knew that you could both be trying to find ways to address Climate Change AND still pay attention to other important things in the world.  The upshot of this post was that it's always good to see someone with a high profile support freedom of speech and be cogent about fighting censorship of the Internet. 

It also gave me an unprecedented THIRD opportunity in one week to laugh at Righthaven, where it has been definitively answered that no, Righthaven is Not Smarter Than a 5th Grader, since they now claim they can't tell the difference between a 5 and a 6 on the calendar and show up for a court ordered appearance on the right date.  We'll see if on Monday the 9th, they claim they thought the 9 was really a 6, and they had already shown up and don't have to come again.  Hilarious! 

So there's my personal happy-techdirt-filter as applied for this first week of the New Year.  I think it's important to try and maintain some hopefulness (and act when needed, doing things like calling/emailing your Congressional Representatives) that all is not lost.  After all, history is chock full of civilizations that have had their ups and downs, and somehow we all muddle ahead together. 

Instead of letting a small part of civilization make all the "progress" for themselves, let's do our best to make 2012 the year we make a little more forward progress for our civilization as whole. 

As it stands, I can't find any official position from the Producers Guild of America either.  I asked for one on their Twitter stream, no answer yet; but don't expect one.  It would be good to hear if we have one so I can hasten my exit;)

You should believe it.  The communication channels from union leaders to their members is generally awful, and once in a while bubbles up to only slightly bad. 

I've worked with a lot of IATSE members and they are regularly surprised by things their "leadership" does. 

Also interesting to note that my own industry trade association (not a union), the Producers Guild of America, seems to have taken no public stance on this issue; which makes me wonder if they're using my annual dues to fund lobbying on behalf of SOPA... hm. 

Oh, and I'll adjust my argument.  Obviously not ALL network and studio execs think/know their business models are in trouble. 

Some prefer life with their heads in their sand - most have 10, 20 years max until they're out, retired with lots of money or dead; so the longer they can keep their legacy gravy train rolling and then jump off and let the new guys figure it out, the better for them. 

All good for them; but probably not so good for the long term sustainability of the companies they "lead." 

I'm a Producers Guild member - and time and time again, the network and studio execs all know their business model is broken, but can't figure out how to fix it. 

It all boils down to a business that requires 100% lockdown on every bit of IP and creativity; they *will not relinquish or share any lick of control* with content creators. 

This is the #1 reason they will eventually fail. 

Adapting means giving up some level of control, because they no longer hold *all the keys* to the kingdom of content distribution.  And they are not (yet) willing to cede any level of control, even when doing so could be a big net benefit for them. 

And while I understand that it's not in LoC's purview nor budget to catalog and archive what IS our ever-evolving digital culture at any given moment, it's a great point to be brought up. 

I actually HAVE my 1995 original GeoCities website (Soho/8499) backed up on a data disc.  It's hilarious, somewhat sad, and accurate to look back on the images and text included as a viable-to-be-cataloged moment in time of digital culture. 

That said, how the heck would one go about that?  I have no idea; other than to guess it would take a helluva lot of data storage and money. 

Even worse (and slightly off-topic) is the number of old film & television series we are going to loose, that will never get to be public-domained because the studios and networks *literally* can't find the right paperwork that allows them to create digital copies.  There's a LOT of this media, that is going to disappear. 

It does not exist.  There's a large # of reasons that international sales are just that, sales to territories.  And while money is one of them, regionalization (think, digital personalization) is one of them.  Subtitling, dubbing into other languages, culturally acceptable ad sales materials, etc.  are others. 

Now, that's not a defense of the way thing are now, but there really truly *are* things that can and should be "value adds" in regional sales of content in a global market. 

But generally speaking, regional distribs/resellers (if you will) of content are far further behind the tech curve than we are; so to suggest these newer digital models to the middlemen (who really can add some local value), really threatens their own businesses, and on top of that, they're not technically capable of delivering to their broader audience in ways that provide good experiences to their audience and still satisfies tracking and reporting (at the very least, even forgetting DRM, which the US rightsholders are, of course, unwilling to do) requirements. 

Anyway, it's a little thornier than we'd all like it to be for sure.  It will, eventually get sorted out. 

To add to this, I've done two indie films this way, with investors in LLC's.  Adam's structure is about standard, though I'll add a bit more detail. 

In indie-land, we'll usually pay back gross receipts minus some minor approved costs like very, very minimal overhead, accounting fees, and union residuals to investors first until they are made whole plus a set return (recoupment for the investors on my last film outperformed the S&P 500 by about 16% over 5 years from 2004-2010, which ain't sayin' much, but hey, at least it didn't *lose* money). 

After making the investors whole "plus," the profit split shifted to a 50/50 with producers and investors (which, was as it turned out, just about um, zero... the film did no more business).  But the deal itself was fair, and scalable. 

The Studios CANNOT RELEASE much of their back catalog due to the fact they don't even know if their old rights deals allow them to release a lot of it digitally. 

In particular, they are not sure that the music deals on old tv and films are cleared for digital releases, AND they are not willing to spend the legal $$$ (a lot) to find out.  In many cases, the physical paper rights records simply don't exist anymore.  And if they can't prove they have the rights, they can't get E&O insurance coverage, and if they can't get E&O on the digital releases, they simply won't release it.  It's too big a liability for them. 

I don't think you're going to see a lot of older back-catalog content until it falls into public domain, a very long time from now.