Internet Distribution and the Creator's dilemma

Session led by Susan Kantrowitz, Jay Fialkov, WGBH, and Mark Morril, Viacom

Subjects on the table: friction of distribution; costs of getting clearance wrong

• For WGBH, a huge problem, limited resources, old records. expectations of distribution vs limited release; archival clearances, cost, burden,
• Vietnam series, 1981, 100 releases in the file. Gerald Ford to South Vietnam; international distribution.
• WGBH: Huge transactional effort, inefficient. New ways to acquire rights such as voluntary blanket licenses going forward might also help with retrospective clearances.
• Viacom: archive going back to 1947 Paramount, also huge clearance issues. Solution is not to wipe out rights, but to use tech to clear better.
  • cleared entire motion picture library for DVD, now gone back to online, download once, etc. We want to be everyplace. That's lots of rights to clear, but its fundamentally our business.

• Assn of Commercial Stock Image Licensors. ACSIL Grid. Look at how people use content rather than how it's delivered. Personal use, home use, rather than tv/phone.

WGBH recent conference. Content owners acknowledge that the system has broken down.

Morril: Working to develop a class of tolerated use, broader than fair use/not conceding the fairness as a matter of law, but permitted.

• we're big supporters of the First Amendment.

• Defining the rights sets. differing definitions among unions, writers, television, photo; among groups within an industry.

• Open educational resources. cautious gatekeepers?
• expanding the scope of non-commercial use limitation of liability

• Terry Fisher: We haven't yet talked about legislative change (and that's good!). Rather, private responses. best practices, licensing changes, unilateral action, fair use assertion.
  • should we be aspiring to create, privately, a global copyright registry?
  • MM: Streamline the navigation, respecting rights.
  • TF: to do it in distributed fashion, need standards for data fields
  • EK: no standardized system. We use paper, because systems costing millions of $ don't work

• How does this affect individual creators?

• MM: we consider it a major success if we can keep our movies off the internet through opening weekend; if we can keep John Stewart and Steven Colbert off until their shows are over.
• How do we protect the creator's right to control distribution?

• Will new media breed new copyright practices?
• Is copyright education law or ethics?