From: Terry W. Colvin (fortean1@mindspring.com)
Date: Wed Jan 01 2003 - 15:31:25 MST
Barbara Barrett wrote:
> The music industry nowadays approves of home editing because of the
> advantages to the music industry; the film industry will no doubt follow
> suit after an initial period of resistance.
Are you kidding? The music industry blames every shortfall, the Iraq
weapons cache, the current economic downturn and the last ice-age on
home taping. They always have and always will, because the
alternative is to admit that much of the stuff they churn out doesn't
sell because it's simply bad, and they have terrible taste and no idea
of what the public actually wants in music, movies, or books.
They have fought tooth and nail to prevent CD duplication, and even
now Sony has a line of CD's that are suppsoed to be dupe-proof.
The music industry would in fact like to charge you to record your own
original music on the basis that it must be related to something you
heard from one of their artists. If they could get away with it, they
no doubt would, and the current climate in the US is tending to
support some of their more outrageous claims.
> Recall that the Film
> industry was violently opposed to home VCRs, and even the video industry
> as a whole, claiming that the video industry would inevitably cause the
> death of the film industry, whereas the actual outcome was that video
> sales and rentals proved to be the salvation of the film industry.
Sure, but not home taping. There's currently a movement afoot to
prevent home taping of television shows, and the industry is currently
suing someone who used the Replay to tape a show and watch it without
commercials. The boradcasters feel that they are giving away a
product that cannot be tampered with.
> Likewise Clean flicks and their like will provide a source of revenue
> the industry would not otherwise have had.
But not for the originators. Now, if, say Paramount could get
permission from the directors to issue a Cleanflicks style version of
their product, they'd do it in a heartbeat, and I imagine that they
might just very well try to wring some sort of concessions out of the
directors/writers/creators to do just that. Again, with the full
support of our new corporate-friendly congress here in the good old
USA.
> Imagine a Clean flicks version of Harry Potter with "wizard/witch"
> changed to "prophet" with the good guys spells in Aramaic or calling
> upon saints, and the bad guys like Voldemort becoming Satanists invoking
> the Devil for their arts. The Christian Right, who've stayed away from
> these films in droves, would approve of such editing, and the story's
> core message of friendship, loyalty, and good over evil would not be
> lost. No one except the Christian Right would watch such an edited
> version, it wouldn't be thrust upon the rest of us, and the studios
> would get royalties they wouldn't otherwise get. I don't see any
> downside to this.
The downside is that is the creator of the original character might be
implacably opposed to having his creation raped to serve the
indoctrination requirements of the Christian right. Furthermore, it
decreases the audience for the original creation, and thus deprives
the original author of their profits. Right now, the only place that
xtians or anyone can get Harry Potter style adventures is from the
creators of the original characters. And many of the potential fans
of the series don't give a rats ass about the xtian message, and
rightly recognize that the core values of these adventures are pretty
much outside of organized religion. So, the kids will watch HP, while
their parents frothe at the mouth because a potential source of
propaganda goes by the wayside. Were someone to take my characters
and have them mouth xtian -- or any other kind of religion-supporting
spew, I'd be furious.
> For centuries music composers have been in the position that every
> artist who performs their composition will place their own
> interpretation upon it; some interpretations are so radical that the
> composition has meanings never intended by the composer. The altering of
> the Irish anti-war ballad "Johnny I hardly Knew Ye" to the pro-war "When
> Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" springs to mind (I use to perform
> both; doing the US Civil War version first segwayed into the slower
> Irish version; which I felt gave the latter's anti-war stance a greater
> impact).
This is years after the copyright has expired -- not the same thing as
altering something currently playing. This also refers to music.
Look at what happened with sampling. Now if a record uses
recognizable samples, you can be sure that the original artist is
identified and recompensed, no matter how much the sample is taken out
of context and recast in a different mode.
> Composers seen their creativity as providing the raw materiel for the
> creativity of others.
No they don't. They see their creativity as providing a stream of
income to feed themselves and their families and don't take kindly to
aomeone else freely lifting their ideas and removing that source of
income. The ones who don't mind are, in general dead and without any
family to profit from their work.
> The Music industry recognizes that stance and
> exploits it now, where once they opposed it: I believe the Film industry
> will go the same way after a similar initial resistance.
Do you live in the USA? I don't understand how uyou could believe
that the music industry supports and exploits this now. The film
industry is digging in for the long run. If they perceive that
Cleanflicks has a product that could legitemately sell, then, as I
said above, they'll wring the permission to rape the creation out of
the directors and writers and do it themslves without the Cleanflicks
intermediation and appropriation of the studio's profits.
Rickk
owns a couple of samplers
-------------------------
This also seems to have implications for things like the Jar-Jar-free
re-edit of Star Wars Ep. I that was floating around on the web a few years
ago. If CleanFlicks wins then anyone can re-edit movies for esthetic
reasons, not just objectionableness. It could unlock enormous amounts of
creativity which somehow feels like it ought to be a copyright infringement
if it isn't.
Bill
William Jacobs
Freelance Researcher and Science Journalist
-------------------------
>From another list, Terry Colvin forwarded:
> > Barbara Blithered:
....
> Provided we're not talking about mass censorship, suppression
> of the original, plagerisation (ie: "passing off"), avoidance
> of royalty payments, false accreditation, or pirating;
I don't see any way to avoid plagiarism or piracy if the
changes are done without the permission of the creator or
copyright owner.
> As these are folk who would otherwise not view the movie or
> purchase the DVD/video it's a source of income the studios/
>artists would not otherwise have.
This makes sense if one is only concerned with commerce, but
when creative works are involved, that's not the only issue.
> Imagine a Clean flicks version of Harry Potter with "wizard/
> witch" changed to "prophet" with the good guys spells in Aramaic
> or calling upon saints, and the bad guys like Voldemort becoming
> Satanists invoking the Devil for their arts.
But that's not the story that Rowling wrote, or the movie that
Waner Bros made. If someone doesn't like tht story, they have
the right not to watch it, or to make a story they like. Some
have actually tried that (see the "Left Behind" series of books
and movies). It's just a lot harder to create comething from
scratch than to modify someone else's work.
I suspect the issue for many artists is that they don't want
their names attached to something that has been changed so that
it doesn't necessarily reflect their intentions and views. I
know I'd be miffed if someone turned some story I might write
into some obvious religious propaganda.
Snopes has a point about skipping or reprogramming songs sequences
from albums, but the situation is a bit different. There's
a long tradition, known and accepted by most performers, that
songs are performed as individual works, separate from the album.
There are singles, live performances, and song compilations that
have all established the idea that the work is a collection of
individual items, rather than an indivisible cohesive work.
Some artists disagree for certain works, and have expressed that
by refusing to allow some songs to be used in compilations. Some
also have put out LPs that had no banding to separate the songs,
and later, CDs with no chapter stops. Some DVDs lately have been
marketed this way as well.
I'm not sayig that artistic works are totally sacrosact, but
someone who creates something has the right to maintain that
it conveys what it was intended to convey. Choices were made
for a reason.
If Rowling wanted the Harry Potter books to be a story of good
Christians fighting demons, that's what she would have written.
The fact that it isn't is a good indicator that that's not the
story she wanted to tell.
--John Hazelton
California, USA
--
Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1@mindspring.com >
Alternate: < fortean1@msn.com >
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