Sermon for a Monday

WELL, WHAT DO you know. My Labor Day present is a chance to rest, because today, Uncle Alex Epstein over at Complications Ensue has the sermon of the day. It's well worth a read by Canadian Creatives. And as you fight all the myriad, byzantine bullshit, remember that this is why we fight:

Laurie Finstad's dark thriller/drama DURHAM COUNTY has finally made it to the States, on the new Ion network, so it's finally got a New York Times review. And a nice one too. But I thought the lede was interesting:

Any lingering illusion that Canada is a milder, blander version of the United States is dispelled by “Durham County,” a Canadian-made crime series that begins on Monday on the Ion network.

Countries make culture in part to bind themselves together. Countries without a strong sense of themselves through culture will fall apart. But another reason for nations to fund their own culture is international relations. If you don't export movies and TV, no one will have any idea who you are. Other countries might know what you can make, and if you have guns they'll respect those. But at a basic level, exported popular culture is how we learn about each other.

But relatively few people outside of Canada have a clue what Canadians are like, because Canada exports a lot less popular culture than it ought to, given it's a nation of 22 million English speakers, roughly on par with Australia. Americans think that Canadians are milder, blander white people but otherwise just like them. And yes, life in Canada is milder, except for the weather, because Canada has a functioning health care system and America has madness, and Canadians don't shoot each other nearly so much in spite of owning just as many guns. But Canadians aren't particularly white anymore, and we're not bland, and we're just as capable of being atrocious to each other as Americans are.

The rest is just as worth it. Happy Labor Day.

Sometimes You Win One

VIA the WGC TWEET -- a tiny bit of good news for Canadian creatives heading into the weekend. A decision released today by the CRTC compels the Canadian broadcast groups to release what's known as their "disaggregated financial data."

Now the CRTC release is incomprehensible, and the argument is complicated, but what this basically means is that the nets won't be able to hide expenditures on Canadian Drama amidst a whole bunch of other spending. We'll finally be able to see what they're spending -- and this will make it a lot easier to make the WGC's case at the group license renewals in November.

We know that they spend as little as they possible can on giving Canadians something high quality and homegrown to watch -- but now we'll be able to show it by the numbers. And that of course will change everythinSSSNORT..hahah.

Damn. Almost got through it without laughing.

Have a great long weekend.

Friends Like These...

IS IAN MORRISON and his Friends of Canadian Broadcasting -- are they just, y'know, reflexively against everything now? Like, you know, it's a given?

Meanwhile, Back At The Reason I Do This...

FIRST OF ALL, there is nothing that makes a single man with no kids feel older than when your goddaugther turns eighteen. There, I've assiduously ordered my life so that I can effectively live in my appointed Apatownian manchild bubble, and she's gotta go off to University and go turn eighteen. Oh Well.

I will have to explain to her how every moment from here on in, her time in the most desired demographic ticks away.

So then -- where were we? Ah yes. Not the energy or the time to get too far into any of it, but in a roundup of late-summer content:

Wilco (The Album) continues to delight and inspire me as I work, and bop around town in my car. It's pretty great.

I'm really enjoying an advance copy I'm reading of a a book by a Globe& Mail reporter on a subject that speaks right at the heart of Canadian myth...

Nurse Jackie ended a bit disappointingly for me, mainly because we didn't really learn very much more abou Jackie than we knew at the beginning of the season. Still, I've decided I will follow Edie Falco anywhere. And it's nice to see her looking kinda hot, like on OZ.

I've worked my way through the special features on the first season of thirtysomething, and there is much, much, much wisdom and writerly information there. They manage to do full interviews with most of the writers, including Joseph Dougherty, Paul Haggis, Liberty Godshall, and Richard Kramer. Disappointing that there's no Winnie Holzman, but whatareyougonnado? There's pretty good insight into the showrunning process of Herskovitz and Zwick, too. I've dipped into a couple of the eps, and find the acting a bit mannered, but I'm still thrilled to be able to revisit this show that I watched when I was twenty. And now I'm older than all the characters. Fuck.

In the cinema, both The Hurt Locker and In The Loop are two movies that just won't let go of me. Well worth seeing.

I've also gotten through screeners of two HBO shows. The first episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm is desperately funny in that signature Larry David way. Really top of form. And Episode 3, the start of the "Seinfeld reunion" arc, promises a lot to come...I think it's going to be a good one.

Bored to Death is something else entirely. It's like a Wes Anderson movie in half hour segments. Ted Danson continues to turn in another winning post Damages performance. He's playing basically the same character, only in a comic incarnation. Zach Galifianakis and Jason Schwartzman have a delicious Odd Couple vibe, and you really feel New York all over the thing.

And what can one say about Mad Men? Better and better and better.

A Reader Writes: The Copyright Conundrum

TODAY, I'VE PROMOTED a comment exchange that happened down in yesterday's post because my comments got so big (first draft people, first draft) that they had to be submitted across four comments.

The chain was started by a letter by a reader named MR, who's an IT guy. I feel it exposes a lot of the fault lines around the whole "Balanced Copyright" argument. I want to get into my office and onto other things today, so I hope that MR will forgive me and not read some of my response as categorizing what he might believe personally. Any use of the word "you" or talking about sides is meant to convey a general impression of those making certain arguments, and not MR himself.

More importantly, I feel dialogues exactly like this is what has been missing so far from the whole "Fair Copyright" debate. I applaud MR for writing in with his thoughts, and I again strongly encourage my fellow film and TV writers to make yours known, both by submitting to the Copyright Econsultation, and maybe even by wading in over at Michael Geist or Fair Copyright sites.

MR writes:

I've spent the last 25+ years in the IT sector constantly absorbing (i.e. surviving) one disruptive innovation after another. Reading your blog has given me insight and a greater appreciation of the challenges your profession faces (your posts regarding work product/processes, copyright, the CRTC, etc). It's very much appreciated.

Having said this though, I wonder where this sense of entitlement comes from? Your digital works have access to a worldwide audience numbering over a billion potential patrons (internet pop and climbing); who are primed to be gratified instantly; at a near zero cost of distribution (via the evil internet); and you can't think of way to make a living? Fine, our kids will. I don't know what else to say.

It is your industry that broke the deal. Copyright is intended to foster the arts, innovation, reward the creators so that our culture is enriched. Tell me, what great Canadian works have fallen into the public domain since you were born? It isn't our fault that your business is predicated on the continued suppression of the public domain. Oh, please my fellow Canadians - I am deserving of a MONOPOLY on imagination. I really, really need a 50 year monopoly entitlement. Otherwise, I may have to get a second job to make ends meet. Is this what your saying?

The status quo isn't working. A law which has already criminalized 99% of otherwise law abiding tax payers isn't the answer. If the 21st century is all about the "digital economy" - we as a society must ensure that copyright is structured to regulate COMMERCIAL INTERESTS solely. That's it. Don't get me wrong; I'll be the first one to take up your cause if another was exploiting your work for commercial gain. But I'm not interested in criminalizing teenagers, students, or grandmothers. Suffer the free riders and focus instead on the upper percentile who will PAY.

YES. PEOPLE will pay, and have always paid, to be entertained. We'll also continue to pay for entertainment. You should not need a fifty year monopoly in this age of instant dissemination to a global audience. A more reasonable approach to length would be five years, renewable in five-year increments to a maximum of 20 years. Funding for the arts could be secured by diverting 10% of the proceeds of copyright to a fund to help creators. Each subsequent renewal would further increase this contribution by 20% so that a 20 year copyright entitlement would see 70% of the proceeds go to a new arts fund. These numbers are simply thrown out to foster further discussion. I know little of the monies involved... The principle is to: 1) encourage shorter copyright length; and 2) have established creators fund more directly less established ones.

We may need to allow disruptive influences in your industry. We also need a healthy public domain. It's time the pendulum was allowed to swing the other way. Otherwise, your industry will join our telecom industry as digital backwaters - too much control in to few hands. Stagnate.

Anyhow, I don't mean to sound like a dick. Your blog has made me realise that I don't have an easy solution to this problem. For this I thank you as it's made me revise my position on this issue.

Unfortunately, I'm not sufficiently familiar with your industry's costing to be able to address your 50 million dollar challenge. In my industry an ROI needs to be no more than 5 years but with a potential of a billion customers at zero cost for manufacture and distribution as outlined above - the funding would be there. On a 50 year ROI, I have no idea who would take that chance.

My response:

The thing that strikes me most about this debate is that the rhetoric has advanced so very far while the arguments haven't. "Your kids will", and admitting that "I'm not sufficiently familiar with your industry's costing to be able to address your 50 million dollar challenge," but not connecting that back to the central point is the problem here: To me, to people like me, you simply CANNOT put all the stuff you want to put on the table and ask us to take on faith that "it will work out."

"People will always pay for entertainment." What are you talking about? What has the whole downloading culture taught us, then? There is an entire generation for whom that is not true about music. For all the nose stretchers and truth-distortions the music industry has put out since Napster, they're not wrong about that. The value proposition in music is gone. Destroyed. Otherwise great, moral, decent kids -- children of friends, have looked at me mystified when I told them I paid for songs I downloaded from Itunes.

Mystified.

You talk about my sense of entitlement? Well, when I hear about the pendulum swinging back and lets take copyright to five years, all I can wonder is, "are we going to do the same with all inherited wealth?" Really. If I made money trading securities, or building a woodworking business, and I'm quite rich and I die, I'm allowed to pass that onto my family, am I not? Oh sure, it's taxed. But I can still transfer my mill, or the chain of restaurants, or the computer company I started in my garage to my heirs, correct? I can't just start making a digital music player and call it Ipod because it's five years since it was introduced, right? Is Google going to turn over all its propietary code five years from now?

Of course not.

Now - step away from the rhetoric and don't ask me why I feel so entitled, but you explain to ME why the fruits of an artist's intellectual property are different.

Or as another commenter put it on the post yesterday: "Does the guy who makes your pizza have a sense of entitlement for wanting you to pay him? I mean, really, we all have to eat. Isn't the right to food greater than the privilage of charging for it? You are dealing in grandiose abstractions."

There are a whole lot of things that would be better if they weren't allowed to be corporately exploited for as long as they are. It would be better for Canada if the media wasn't so concentrated. But it is. Are we going to change all law? Get rid of inherited entitlements and wealth? Really? Or are you just talking about screwing over the artists, now? What about athletes? He's a great pitcher, but Halladay is making a whole lot of ridiculous money. Oh, and those Real Madrid footballers who blew through Toronto last month -- those guys make way too much, too. Why is that right?

There's a particular strain of muddleheaded evangelism that attaches to the internet industries like a wad of gum on the bottom of a shoe. I covered the early days of the .com internet for a show called MediaTelevision. For about four years I spoke to all the visionaries and freethinkers, and would be geniuses and entrepeneurs. And I'm telling you, the language I heard was very, very similar to what I hear today from a lot of those arguing for "balanced copyright."

That says to me two things: 1) that though fifteen years have passed, the arguments haven't advanced, and 2) the last time we took a flyer on the promises and the hype of that crowd, we had the dot com bust -- and billions of venture capital evaporated overnight.

All these boring questions I'm asking now -- "If we do what you're asking, how does the model work?" are very similar to the simple, "hey what's your business model" questions we all asked 15 years ago. We were called negative then, and told we "didn't get it," and all sorts of other dodges. And ninety percent of those geniuses and visionaries with stock options up the yoni were cast out in the wilderness a while later. They were smug, they burned through money like it was water, and they slunk away, conveniently forgetting that, uh, you know, the people who raised those doubts about how it was all going to work out? They were not "old school" or "tired" or "not in the know" or "locked into old paradigms," they were, in fact, RIGHT.

So forgive me if our trust quotient is low. When someone asks you a question you can't answer, or tells you that the answer to the question you've just asked about your ENTIRE LIVELIHOOD isn't relevant, or worse, isn't even their problem -- the desire to listen to what comes next is, shall we say, low.

It's amazing to me that none of the "fair copyright" [that phrase is starting to read to me like "Ignorance is Strength"] seem to get that. For what it's worth, until you jump off a cliff with calling me entitled and calling for five year copyright, there are general principles that I find nothing to disagree with.

I think that there should be a way to enshrine an expansion of non-commercial uses, and that the main focus of copyright should be to protect commercial infringements. That being said, the academic view that fair use, or use in education = free is ridiculous. The fact that tenured Professors with job security are demanding free use from freelancers with none is a bit odious to me, frankly. Surely there is a middle ground between "so restrictive it's impossible to use in study" and "free."

Second, I am personally offended by the corporate machinations that have resulted in the extension of copyright beyond 50 years. After that time, with millions made and more to come, I'm not so interested in serving the interests of Mickey Mouse. The public domain is important. Corporate lobbying should not be able to effectively kill the public domain by ensuring nothing will ever pass into it again. Now those two positions alone -- plus the distaste I have for the punishment and annoyance that digital locks present -- are moves to the middle of a TRULY balanced policy. And if you talk to most artists who are engaged in these issues, you will find a similar, concerted movement to try and rationalize the consumer good with our needs to be able to earn a living.

But here's where you guys are fucking it up:

We float a solution -- maybe not a great one -- maybe not even the best one -- about moving toward collective licensing and a levy/pay system. It's a whole new vision of copyright and fair use. It would be a BEAR to work this out with media corporations, but we think it's worth pursuing. And what is the reaction to this concrete idea from the supposed "fair copyright" side? Instant rejection. "Ipod Tax!" "No!" "Not my hard drive!" "Unfair!" "No, no, no!" How's it played in the media? An Ipod tax. You know why? Because the association with the hated music industry is the best way to quash the idea before it can even gain traction and debate. One of your stated goals is that consumer behavior not be criminalized. Well, that takes care of that. But nope, you reject it out of hand -- and play right back into the hands of the corporate DMCA solution. Great job, guys, on the way to beating your drum, you're being played like a fiddle.

So fine, you stamp your feet, say "no, no, no!" "No levies!" "Not fair." Okay, fine.

What's your alternate proposal for us, then? Show us that you actually are thinking about copyright in a "balanced" way that tries to find a compromise that meets everyone's needs? Oh, um, vague promise, vague promise, and if you can't work it out, your kids will.

I see. In other words: Fuck You.

The myopia of the "fair" copyright side comes from the fact that you go in with goals that are so radical and different, so "let's blow everything up," that you sound like a lunatic fringe and you make it impossible for anyone who's actually an industry stakeholder to support you. Arguing against being able to extend copyright to 70, 75, 150 years? Yup, that's a solid argument that I can get behind but...what? Oh no, you want copyright to be 5 years? WTF? Looking at people who are scared about their livelihood, rejecting their solutions without discussing them, or trying to understand why they've come to that position, and then turning around and saying, "sell T shirts?" That's offensive. And in the face of that, the submissions from a lot of the big corporate media interests are going to seem reasonable by comparison.

There's an unholy coalition around "balanced copyright" that serves it very poorly. The first group are the Internet evangelists who've been talking bullshit for well nigh on 20 years now. And the second group is students for whom this is their "one issue." The latter know nothing of negotiation, business, the way the world works, economics or just about anything else, but by God they know they should be able to sample and remix that clip from Gossip Girl or Snoop Dogg anyway, anytime they want.

I had a kid on Twitter yesterday who started out berating ACTRA and the WGC for re-tweeting one of my posts. I asked him about six times if he understood what the artists' concerns were and in response not only did he have nothing, he consistently presented a straw man argument about logos I'd used in an earlier story which would only have been the slightest bit relevant if, somehow, I was against the extension of fair dealing to protect parody and satire. Which, of course, I'm not.

But nuance, or, in fact, anything other than the straight up and down, marching forward to the great utopian future of free copyright, doesn't play with this crowd. If you're not with them, you're Universal Music or Disney all the way.

The "Fair Copyright" side, unfortunately, is an echo chamber that in its own way is as closed, as self-serving, and as out of touch as the record labels they love to feel superior to. And that's what's really discouraging about this debate. I feel the really important -- and DOABLE things, are not going to get done because they're wrapped up in a whole lot of utopianist crazy.

Seriously...

RE: MY CHALLENGE below, and why I'm making it.

Anyone?

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Right, so, um, it's all about people using Protools in their basement? Not about, you know, shows that need fifty million in cap before they start selling -- maybe?

Mmm. Yes, you're right. That sounds like a much better system. Let's just enshrine that in law.

You know what guys? Enjoy your DMCA bill. You're playing right into it. You wonder why creative artists won't speak up and out -- en masse -- against restrictive protocols and Digital Locks and heavy-handed, draconian takedown schemes? Because you're asking them to drink Kool Aid that has a skull and crossbones floating on top.

For what it's worth, I did get a nice email from Michael Geist, who suggested that perhaps I was asking the wrong question about where the business model comes from for Film and TV. He thinks the current system works fine. Having seen the Music Industry say the same thing for a good five years before they realized just how fucked they were, I'm not inclined to agree. I concede that indie films will always get made. And that Transformers 25 will probably be able to find financing. What I'm worried about is everything I've ever worked on and everything I like to watch -- which is everything in between.

The people who are bloviating about how great it will be when copyright is eradicated still haven't explained to me -- or anyone else -- how anything in the great middle -- those movies that don't have a PR budget equal to their production costs, and most TV shows -- get made. Everything's about this artist and that artist and how much happier everybody is now that they can strap on a guitar and play freely. Well, if one of these kids writing that could put together a decent press kit, or figure out how to run the Genny on a film set, then maybe I'd have more than a shake of the head for them.

But till then, I just repeat: Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

I am weary even suggesting this. But if you ARE a Film and TV creator/writer -- know that most of the submissions that they're likely to get in the Copyright Consultation are hippy-dippy types talking about the abolition of copyright altogether, or the brave new exciting world of liberated chicks with guitars, or heavy handed record company types screaming about digital locks and protect the math of the "sorry your first three albums didn't make any money but at least I got to go to Hawaii for six months."

If you want your POV represented -- as workers in an industry where a massive outlay of upfront-cash is the only way to get anything made -- you should weigh in on the official government consultation site before Sept. 13. If you'd like to see the WGC's position, check that here.

And if all else fails, show up on campus and tell the brave copyfighters that their loans are up, the Vig's 3 % a week, and if they want to raise the money they should sell Tshirts.

My Open Copyright Challenge

THE MORE I read online coverage anywhere about the Copyright Consultations in Canada, the more I feel that the "Fair Copyright" side is doomed because of a fundamental misunderstanding:

I call it the Kumbaya factor.

I've been hearing, "Kumbaya" from advocates of the internet in my various jobs since 1992 or 1993. And the rhetoric -- which is every bit as self serving and myopic as anything you hear out of the record industry -- has not advanced.

I've read the submissions from places like TUCOWS who make the argument that copyright stifles creativity. I've read the silly assertions by people that it's all about giving away your primary product for free, and selling t-shirts or something like that.

Inasmuch as the Record companies try to make everything about recorded music, the lefty "copyfighters" (what a ridiculous term) just sound ridiculous any time they get talking about larger-scaled media.

In my case, as a TV screenwriter, sure, I can sit in my garret or office and bang out a script, and the outlay costs to me are very low, just as a composer or an indie artist can use new recording tools that make at home demos almost as polished as studio recordings. And yup, somebody can get a cheap prosumer like camera and Final Cut and make a low indie movie.

But so what?

What I'm asking is, simply, this: do any of you pie in the sky folk have a workable model by which a TV series, like the ones getting written about now that people watch -- HOUSE, Fringe, How I Met Your Mother, Battlestar Galactica, Two and a Half Men -- take your pick. How does one of these series get made -- with their $50 million or more annual budgets, under any of the hippie systems of "free" or "open" copyright you guys advocate?

Don't give me the same B.S. What is the model? How do you get that amount of money to lay out up front over your proposed utopian system?

It's hard and discouraging for an artist or a creative person working in film to try and come down on the side of a fairer copyright regime that deals with things that I think are really important for consumers: copyright terms that don't get extended past 50 years, enshrined parody and satire protections, some protection and redefinition of "derivative works," because most of the rest of the stuff that gets spouted is so airy-fairy, pie in the sky ridiculous that you just wind up shaking your head and thinking, "any self respecting government INDUSTRY minister is going to look at this and run screaming for DMCA and digital locks."

So I raise the challenge: what's the model for my business with no copyright?

And you can't cheat. You can't raise Joss Whedon -- who's famous and a brand because of the work he was able to do under an old style copyright regime.

"Fair Copyright" types hate digital locks, they hate copyright terms, they hate collective licensing and any kind of levy. They hate everything.

So how's it get done? How does the movie actually get made. Not ten years from now. Next year, when a copyright bill passes the House of Commons in this country.

How does it happen?

Cause I'd love to hear the argument.

I'm tellin ya. One more university kid types at me trying to explain Marshall McLuhan, and I spank him and send him to bed without any Wifi.

Get going. Convince me.