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*THIS TITLE HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO A COPYRIGHT CLAIM

"It's pure theft, stolen from artists and quite frankly from the American people as a consequence of loss of jobs and as a consequence of loss of income." Joseph Biden, Vice President of the United States

Increased intellectual property protections can stifle competition, harass average citizens, restrict creativity and have a chilling effect on free speech. Against these arguments, the entertainment industry presents a simple message, faithfully regurgitated by the Vice President above. While the numbers used to measure economic losses are questionable, this essay attempts to examine the other half of Hollywood's message: that piracy is stealing "from artists." In particular, the essay will focus on the fallacy that government support for the major copyright owners is a benefit to the creative artists, both present and future, who produce "television."

TODAY'S CREATIVE ARTIST

"Isn't it great to live in a country where a cigar-smoking puppet and a bear that masturbates are considered 'intellectual property'?" Conan O'Brien, former host, "The Tonight Show"

Work For Hire

Not only is Conan's self-stimulating bear property, it is NBC's property, despite the fact Conan created the character and developed it over a period of many years. Moreover, Jerry Seinfeld doesn't own "Seinfeld". Roseanne doesn't own "Roseanne." They are all "work for hire products."

As Eben has explained, the concept of work for hire began as an effort to incentivize printers to print literature. Perhaps it made sense to continue this incentivizing concept in the world of television, where production involved enormous up-front costs. However, the entertainment industry has abused the work for hire doctrine with the result that five companies now own the copyright to almost every modern American television show (see here, pp.354-55)

Today, the entertainment behemoths are still crucial to actually being on what we call television, but they are no longer necessary to producing "television": short, serialized video stories acted out by the same group of characters. The advent of digital film has allowed high-quality videos to be made on tiny budgets. The Internet provides an easy and free method of distribution. From the point of view of a creative artist, freedom from the shackles of the copyright industry creates enormous potential, both in the type of stories that artist will be able to tell and the manner in which she will be able to tell them. Increased copyright protection does not help these artists, it helps the content companies make the profits that keep those shackles firmly in place.

What Stories Get Told

That fact that the owners of the creative work aren't creative people but businessmen results in art being treated like any other product, which has a number of deleterious effects.

First, an artist's new, creative idea must compete directly with old ideas in the form of the dreaded "remake." Copyrights owners search out ways to make their stores of copyrighted material pay and pay again, even when those remakes fail and fail again. The desire to continue monetizing existing copyrighted material is a natural one for a business, but it quashes actual creativity that might otherwise flourish.

Second, the "productization" of television leads to the type of homogenized story telling we know all too well. The art is only useful so long as it sells advertising. This means that art must conform to particular (and sometimes ridiculous) content standards. Before HBO decided to produce "The Wire", its creator, David Simon, sent the network a letter in which he explained how a "cop drama" done outside of the network framework could be an entirely different form of television. HBO gave its approval and Simon proved that, freed from the artificial, commercially imposed restrictions of the traditional network model, even the much maligned television show could flourish as a work of art.

How Stories Are Told

Corporate ownership of creative works also diminishes the ability of the artist to tell her stories the way she would like. Television shows are broken into segments, each of which must end in a way that leaves the viewer both "wanting more" and in an emotional state that is receptive to whatever advertising he is about to see. Even though television writers labor with great care to make these artificial story developments seem organic, the viewer instinctively feels the falseness of what he's watching.

One reason that critics praised HBO shows like "The Wire" and "The Sopranos" was that they "felt real." They didn't seem authentic because of the cursing or occasional topless woman. What made those shows feel "real" was that the stories moved at a pace and in a manner that was completely consistent with, and dictated by the characters and the world they inhabited. They were, in other words, art and not just product.

TOMORROW'S CREATIVE ARTIST

"We're doing the show right now in 2010, and the reality is, we have to have our show on the Internet. Would the network like it if everyone who watched it for free on the Internet actually had to pay? Yes. But it always ends up helping us when people can see the show." Matt Stone, co-creator, "South Park"

In homes all over America there are men and women with a digital video camera and a story to tell. For most of these people, widespread acclaim for their work will never arrive. Perhaps their story won't strike a nerve with viewers, perhaps they lack the ability to relate their story in an interesting manner. Some of them, though, will produce art that we will want to see. But there's a good chance that we never will, and that would be a tremendous loss.

As Matt Stone alludes to, the most important ingredient in determining the success of a television show is that it be seen. The Internet would seem to provide the opportunity for a young video artist to stand up and shout "Here's what I can do!" The problem is that the artist must somehow make herself heard around the endless advertising on every bus, subway, television and computer screen, cajoling us to watch the latest remake of an old show starring that actress we sort of liked in that other thing, advertising that is financed by the copyrights held by a handful of companies and so rigorously defended by our government. Whether we would rather see that remake instead of something small, personal and amateur is unimportant. What is clear is that we should be rooting for that young video artist to succeed, not helping five enormous corporations make ever greater profits so that one day, if that artist does make his voice heard, they can force him to cede his copyright to them, call it "work for hire" and start revving up the Emmy campaign. The video artist's fight is, after all, a true David versus Goliath story: the kind of story that we love to watch on TV.

-- By JohnSchwab - 11 Apr 2010

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