Audiobook creator error9/14/2023 ![]() ![]() That means that the creators behind those works will no longer receive residual payments from Disney for the licensing fees it receives from the likes of Netflix-instead, their work will stream exclusively on Disney Plus, and Disney will no longer have to pay the creators any more money for the use of their work. Meanwhile, Disney has launched a streaming service and is pulling the catalogs of all its subsidiaries from rival services. The Trump administration approved the AT&T/Time-Warner merger just as the Obama administration approved the Universal/Comcast merger a decade earlier. On top of that, the big entertainment companies are increasingly diversifying and becoming distribution channels. The Hollywood screenwriters have been locked in a record-breaking strike with the talent agencies-there are only three major agencies, all dominated by private equity investors, and the lack of competition means that they increasingly are negotiating deals on behalf of writers in which they agree to accept less money for writers in exchange for large fees for themselves. Mergers like the $71.3B Disney-Fox deal reduced the number of big movie studios from five (already a farcical number) to four (impossibly, even worse). ![]() A system that is often promoted as protecting the interests of artists has increasingly sidelined creators' interests even as big media companies merge with one another, and with other kinds of companies (like ISPs) to form vertical monopolies that lock up the production, distribution and commercialization of creative work, leaving creators selling their work into a buyer's market locked up by a handful of companies.Ģ019 was not a good year for competition in the entertainment sector. Decades of trying to make copyright into a system for both industrial actors and their audiences has demonstrated that the result is always a system that serves the former while bewildering and confounding the latter.īut even considered as a rulebook for the entertainment industry, copyright is in crisis. Copyright law can either be technical and nuanced enough to serve as a rulebook for a vast, complex industry.or it can be simple and intuitive enough for that industry's customers to grasp and follow without years of specialized training. ![]() One of the biggest problems with copyright in the digital era is that we expect people who aren't in the entertainment industry to understand and abide by its rules: it's no more realistic to expect a casual reader to understand and abide by a long, technical copyright license in order to enjoy a novel than it is to expect a parent to understand securities law before they pay their kid's allowance. No matter how much lunch money you give that kid, all you'll ever do is make the bullies richer. Expecting more copyright to help artists beat a concentrated industry is like expecting more lunch money to help your kid defeat the bullies who beat him up on the playground every day. Giving them more monopolies – longer copyright terms, copyright over the "feel" of music, copyright over samples – just gives the industry more monopolies to confiscate in one-sided negotiations and add to their arsenals. But monopolies have a tendency to accumulate, piling up in the vaults of big companies, who use these government-backed exclusive rights to dominate the industry so that anyone hoping to enter it must first surrender their little monopolies to the hoards of the big gatekeepers.Ĭreators get a raw deal in a concentrated marketplace, selling their work into a buyer's market. Copyright's primary approach is to give creators monopolies over their works, in the hopes that they can use these as leverage in overmatched battles with corporate interests. But copyright has signally failed to accomplish this end, largely because of the role it plays in the monopolization of the entertainment industry (and, in the digital era, every industry where copyrighted software plays a role). Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, addressing what's at stake and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.Ĭopyright rules are made with the needs of the entertainment industry in mind, designed to provide the legal framework for creators, investors, distributors, production houses, and other parts of the industry to navigate their disputes and assert their interests.Ī good copyright policy would be one that encouraged diverse forms of expression from diverse creators who were fairly compensated for their role in a profitable industry. We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. ![]()
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