Latest Bad Info on HDV

MH_Stevens wrote on 10/12/2005, 4:29 PM

The main reason I take the "anti-protection" side in this most interesting debate is because as I'm more a scientist and technician than a filmmaker and I have spent many years trying to devise a workable copy protection system, and I have come to the conclusion it can not be done. We need to rethink from ground zero the way in which artists are remunerated .

Consider this - Shakespeare did not have this problem. He did not have this problem for two reasons. Firstly he wrote his plays to be performed and not to sell copies for home reading, so his plays did not have unauthorized printings and secondly each playing was live where the warm bodies had to pay every time they saw the performance.

When recordings and film were invented the studios had a bonanza because now they performed just once but got paid again and again. Not only did the film makers have a bonanza they killed their competition the local reps and music-hall. Now the film going public don't even want to make the walk to the movie theater but want to have their entertainment spoon fed to them just where you are sitting now - at your monitor - and the problem we are discussing here arose because many of those spoon fed customers don't care about whether the source they are watching is legit or not. Being good Americans and respecting the workings of the free market we buy on price.

I believe the solution is a return to a pay-per-view system like that Shakespeare had. No recorded media as a part of the remuneration chain but with everything streamed and a royalty type payment made on the downloader. As Bob said, if it can be watched it can be recorded so the basis of the payment must not be based on the number of time a particular title is watched but as some sort of overall tax that get distributed among artists according to some fair agreed plan.

My own fear is that the power of the big studios will not allow the small independents to get a fair share and there is the beginnings of a feeling they have started this consolidation and shut out process already with Blu-ray. Maybe with good organization and strong lobbying such as system could be made to work fairly.

Mike

fwtep wrote on 10/12/2005, 5:07 PM

Mike, copy protection DOES work to a degree. Sure there are workarounds, but it definitely curbs more casual forms of piracy.

As for your "overall tax that gets distributed among artists according to some fair agreed plan," I can only laugh at that. How do you propose that would be worked out? And how would you account for all of the people who need to be renumerated? How would you weigh the amounts?

What I find funny about people complaining about copy protection is that they don't give it a second thought in all other aspects of their lives. Do you have a credit card? That's a hardware dongle. Shouldn't you just be able to tell the person at the store that you have credit with Visa instead of being forced to use your dongle? Do you have a driver's license? That's a dongle too. Do you have to show ID at the bank? More protection. The fact is, enough of society can't be trusted that it ruins it for everyone on all levels.

Fred

PS: How do you know Shakespeare didn't have a problem with piracy? And how do you know he was happy with the way the system was set up?

MH_Stevens wrote on 10/12/2005, 5:33 PM

Actually it was Marlowe who had a problem being pirated by Shakespeare wasn't it?

There is an ironic after-thought to my last post. With the greatly improved resolution of HDTV over my Time-Warner cable showing on the new Sony WEGA 1980x1080 monitors and my FX1 with its fantastic Carl Zeiss glass I could set the camera up in front of the TV and shoot a copy pretty close to the quality of the original, so if you want to chat about this with me face to face take Cesar Romero up the hill from Union Station and meet me on the corner by Mama Tierra's with all the other DVD street vendors this Saturday morning!!!!!

Fred: Sure copy protection "helps" a bit but because of the scenario described above protection has gone about as far as it can, while technology and the public's expectation to be satisfied keep on increasing. In ten years time everyone will have a 4000x2000 HD monitor with 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio and a second generation HD camera with two hour tapes shooting 4:4:4 and copy protection will be dead. I'm telling you to keep ahead of the curb and find a better way to be compensated.

Mike

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/12/2005, 5:38 PM

PS: How do you know Shakespeare didn't have a problem with piracy? And how do you know he was happy with the way the system was set up?

Actually, Shakespeare was very concerned about plagiarists/pirates, and also very much in favor of protection of his plays, and had major political issues with censors. Shakespeare, although one to try to avoid politics, had arguments before the court of Elizabeth to protect his plays from the Quarto texts/Foul papers, also from the rough texts/drafts. In fact, he was one of the founding fathers of the idea of not printing a play until after it had been performed, thus helping to spoil the opportunity that other playhouses would steal from printed scripts.
And, to thwart piracy of his works, he refused to publish many of them, not being printed til more than seven years following his death.
Most of this information is likely available online, but "Will of the World" by Stephen Greenblatt has quite a bit of info on the piracy of Shakepeare's works in his day.
Were he alive today, I'd bet he'd likely be in favor of whatever copyright he could obtain.

MH_Stevens wrote on 10/12/2005, 7:24 PM

Thanks Spot - that was interesting stuff and I'll look for that book. My point that Shakespeare had the means to protect his stuff still stands. What I wanted to advocate was that there is no effective protection available right now and the whole concept of how producers of film get compensated needs to reevaluated.

I'm not saying my ideas are good but for example producers of special interest films where hard copy is to be sold and the likelihood of broadcast is low might take orders based on a trailer to cover their costs before release, or big studios might sell a season ticket that would allow the holder to watch any production, for having once bought the ticket there is no point in buying a pirated copy, and if pirated copies were made only a few of the repertoire would have been copied so there is incentive to buy the ticket anyway, or maybe the customer buys a license before he can watch any film like the UK TV licence to fund the BBC. I'm not saying these ideas are good because they just came out of my head right now without any aforethought but I am saying producers of media need to get creative before they totally loose control of their work.

If we stay as we are only the big makers of trash will be able to absorb and then pass on the theft (like Walmart does) and struggling in dependants who are well represented here will flounder.

Spot|DSE wrote on 10/12/2005, 8:09 PM

I understand your point about Shakespeare, but to be clear on the trivia of the Shakespeare history, he didn't have good control, even tho he tried (apparently quite hard) to do so. This is what the Quarto Papers are all about. It was partially his attempt to "hide" cover sheets of dialog/play scripts, and also how he hid his notes. for a long time, people thought the Quarto's were actually ripoffs of Shakespeare by play attendees. later it was discovered that they were actually his own writings, and were eventually printed and published.
You're right, there is no effective protection right now, and even when Vista is released with all it's embedded protection tools plus the rest of it, it will only be a minor hamper to the serious players. But it will be a serious hamper to the average joe for a long time, IMO. Farss is right, it's the huge pirate companies making this ugly, but 1.6 known billion downloads in the US last year by Katie and Johnny Smith go a long, long way to being a part of that overall cost/loss.
It's only going to get tougher, for creators and owners of IP alike. It's unfortunate. But that's the way it's going to be, and as much as I'd like, I can't see any other way.

fwtep wrote on 10/12/2005, 8:31 PM

Mike wrote:
> for example producers of special interest films where hard copy is to be sold
> and the likelihood of broadcast is low might take orders based on a trailer to
> cover their costs before release

Here's the problem with that which you're missing: The only way someone (studio/distributor) will pay money for the film is if they think they can recoup that money plus profit. If there's too much piracy the studios will pay you LESS money for your film because they won't be taking in as much money from it. I'd LOVE to have sold my film at a profit, but no one would pay that much.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not crying about this, even though I do wish I got more money out of it. I knew going into it that the chances of even just breaking even were slim; heck, most people don't even get ANY distribution on their first film, let alone getting it from Sony. I'm only participating in this conversation because whenever there's a debate about copyright issues the people who've never even copyrighted anything like to tell everyone else they way it should be, and that we should accept the way things are and not make any attempt to change or contain it.

MH_Stevens wrote on 10/14/2005, 12:43 PM

It's not just film where you need a sponser. It's any craetive media that can be copied or transmitted. Read this from todays paper:

"OMAHA, Neb. -- Pictures taken by a professional storm chaser from Blair are circulating the world, but there's a problem: the photos are stolen.

Storm chaser Mike Hollingshead hasn't been paid or given credit for the photos that have appeared in the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and Brazil, among other places. Furthermore, the photos of tornadoes in Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa are being passed off as Hurricane Katrina pictures.

Many people received the photos in their inbox. They've been sent thousands of times. Hollingshead has link after link on his Web site to all of the other sites, chat rooms and e-mails where his pictures have appeared."

You can't stop this sort of thing and so that is why I say everyone need put on their thinking cap and try to come up with some original alternative to suppliment copy protection that does minimal good. Fred's sad case says to me the days are coming when you either join a major studio that can absorb and pass on the cost of theft or you make movies as a hobby. Back to the way it was in the 30"s and 40's - does anyone want that?

fwtep wrote on 10/14/2005, 1:28 PM

> You can't stop this sort of thing and so that is why I say everyone
> need put on their thinking cap

You can't stop it, but one key thing is to teach everyone-- starting in schools at a very young age-- that it's wrong and that it's stealing (include it with the other things you teach kids not to do). You can't stop shoplifting either, but we are taught by parents and in schools that it's wrong to steal. You can't stop bank robberies either but you can teach that it's wrong and do everything you can to deterr them. Unfortunately the vast majority of people simply do not see illegal downloading as wrong. They feel that since nothing physical is taken that there's no harm done. Raising children to understand that its wrong would go a long way toward helping (not fully curing, of course). The problem is that far too many who should be doing the teaching doing the crime.

You can't stop every kid from running with scissors, but that doesn't mean you abandon the effort. You can't stop bank robberies but that doesn't mean you leave the bank unlocked all night and get rid of the security guards. You can't stop all cars from speeding but that doesn't mean you ignore people who go 100mph down narrow residential streets. Etc.

Fred