

Will the U.S. Senate Allow Big Media to Hold Blind People for Ransom? - walterbell
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/will-us-senate-hold-blind-people-ransom-big-media

======
nostromo
This tactic of bundling feel-good legislation ("free puppies for orphans act")
with bad legislation ("extend copyright for a billion more years rider") is so
lame. I wonder if there could be a constitutional amendment that required
separation of concerns with new legislation. As in, if a vote is primarily
about, say, healthcare, but someone throws in a rider to build a new bridge to
nowhere in their state, the entire thing could be challenged in court.

~~~
simonsarris
During the US Civil War, the Confederate States Constitution had a section
like that, to limit bills to only contain one subject. Article I, Section
9(20):

> Every law or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one
> subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederat...](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America#a1-s9)

~~~
IndianAstronaut
Something like this could work well with a more dirdct democracy approach.

------
stickfigure
There is clearly some deeper political dialogue going on here. Would someone
please explain it for those of us who have been living under rocks? I
apologize in advance for not paying attention in advance.

~~~
GhotiFish
Personally I thought the article was well written and understandable.

Bill to allow books to be translated for blind people (in deference to
copyright law) is getting passed

There is an attempt to link this bill to another bill that allows performers
(who more or less have to yield their rights to their studios) to demand
removal of their performance (and thereby, the work in question) from public
view.

So, linking a good law (let us translate this for the blind) to a terrible law
(this film features me (one of our performers), so you MUST take it down) so
that it has some hope of passing.

Maybe I don't understand what you don't understand, did what I just write
help?

------
josho
I'm surprised to find that I disagree with the EFF wrt moral rights.

In Canada we have moral rights, so for example if as a contractor I wrote code
for an application I can, in theory, use my moral rights to stop the use of my
code when the app is used for a reason I disagree with. In reality this never
happens as companies typically ask you to waive your moral rights as a part of
your contract.

~~~
greglindahl
What's the difference between moral rights always being waived, and moral
rights not existing?

The EFF is complaining about the European version of moral rights, which can't
be waived.

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notsurewhat2
I had a really hard time wrapping my head around the point the author was
trying to make, and also a hard time making sense of any of the supporting
arguments. Not sure where to begin.

I guess I'll start with the title. What is making a problem for blind people?

------
pbhjpbhj
Wow, the EFF are being rather deceptive here:

>"The treaty would also allow “performers” (which, remember, usually means
Hollywood producers) to restrict the availability of their performances" //

Moral rights aren't transferable, if they were then they'd merely be bought by
the studios along with the other rights and there would be no cases ever to
answer.

>"Whilst it is fair that an artist receives attribution for their work, to
allow them to control how the performance is used after its fixation goes too
far." //

The idea is to provide a very limited control. The case mentioned in the
article wouldn't impinge moral rights: Moral rights come in when you defame
yourself by means of trickery or some other such conceit - actors act and it's
quite clear that the actress in the OP (Garcia) is acting and that she was
hired accordingly. If she didn't want to be in a specific type of film she
should be sure to get a better contract - contract law would then allow her to
sue.

Primarily moral rights means attribution. It also covers something like
modifying a work to present a _real_ person as having said something they did
not. I'm surprised at the EFF's apparent position here. It must be
Art.5(1)(ii) that the judge mentioned is supposed to have felt bears on the
case of the Actress in the OP:

>"(ii) to object to any distortion, mutilation or other modification of his
performances that would be prejudicial to his reputation, taking due account
of the nature of audiovisual fixations." [1] //

It doesn't sound like the Actress's performance would have prejudiced her
reputation as she was hired to perform as a character - her claim appears to
be based on a misunderstanding of the premise of acting and in particular a
complete misconstrual of the process of producing a film. The Treaty doesn't
make provision for anything like "an actor can prevent distribution if those
of feeble mind could confuse the actor with the character they portray". I
have enormous sympathy with the actress's fear of reprisal but this treaty
really appears irrelevant to the situation she is in. That said I could see a
plaintiff wishing to raise issue under the treaty in court - perhaps that's
why the judge mentioned it?

In [2] EFF say:

>"If every person captured doing something creative on film could claim a
copyright in it, service providers could find themselves flooded with takedown
notices under the DMCA, resulting in the silencing of all kinds of lawful
speech."

Seems highly fanciful given Art.12 allows for rights of Art.7-11 to be
transferred. Art.6 rights concern fixation of performances, so once that's
done a performer's rights would be exhausted there. Basically leaving only
Art.5 - attribution and "misrepresentation" of the performance.

That actors, artists, etc., might choose to exercise their moral rights -
perhaps using the DMCA if that is enabled in the ratification [I don't know if
it would be] - rather than the DMCA being used almost exclusively as a weapon
of the massive multimedia conglomerates – to ensure no presentation without
profit – seems like a very strange objection for the EFF to take. Oh noes the
DMCA might be used by an actor to ensure their acting credit isn't removed
from a show they were in; whatever will we do now?!?

As for the idea Google will get swamped with actors or performers issuing DMCA
notices, that process surely will not change and their involvement is _de
minimis_ \- [which I understand to be] take down on a properly issued
complaint, reinstate on a properly made counter-statement and then wait
pending a court decision? Almost entirely automated I'd expect except for
acting on the court decision?

\---

[1] The Beijing Treaty text -
[http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_2...](http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_20.pdf),
start with Art.5 and then Art.12 to get a good overview in about one page of
text. Articles 1-4 and 19+ are pretty much boiler plate.

[2] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/every-orc-author-
rehea...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/12/every-orc-author-rehearing-
judges-challenge-5-second-copyright-garcia-v-google)

------
anigbrowl
This is complete nonsense. I am not impressed with the authors' argument in
the least.

 _The Beijing Treaty acknowledges this reality through a provision that allows
the full transfer of rights to the producer of an audiovisual work; a
provision that was prompted by the U.S. delegation during the last round of
negotiation of the treaty, in response to Hollywood demands [PDF]. Thus, these
new monopoly rights will serve only to enlarge the bulging copyright
portfolios of the motion picture industry, leaving performers no better off
than before._

In other words, the Beijing treaty contains a provision - at the request of
the motion picture industry - that all the rights of a performance be
transferable to the producers, rather than having every individual actor or
other performer being able to exercise a veto over release.

This will have exactly _zero_ effect on the copyright portfolios of the motion
picture industry (in which I work) because this is _the way things already
work._ Job #1 for the junior producer/production manager is making sure that
anyone who performs any sort of creative service whatsoever for a film signs a
release which transfers all rights in that performance to the production at
the time the person completes work on the set or hands off the asset (eg an
original music recording for the soundtrack).

If you don't have releases for everyone who participates in the film, then no
distributor is going to hand over a check. Because while the studios do still
put out a certain number of pictures, the contractual situation for most
movies is that they're made by an outside company on a very tightly regulated
budget, and the production company usually has very little cash flow for a
long time after the picture's release unless it's a surprise hit or a
blockbuster with lots of merchandising tie-ins (which is only about 50-100 of
the 5-6000 commercial film releases in the US every year). Distributors, by
contrast, tend to have quite a bit of cash flow, so if a distributor were to
fork over money for the rights to a film only to have the release held hostage
by one or more of the people in the credits, it wouldn't be a very sustainable
model. That's why one of the (many many) things you hand over to a distributor
to get paid is a big bundle of signed release forms for everyone who appears
on camera etc.

If it wasn't for this provision being added to the Beijing treaty, then any
participant _would_ be able to hold the release of a film, which would be a
completely unsustainable way of doing business. Any would-be producer who
overlooks the business of getting signed releases from all the participants
doesn't get very far; failure to do so makes the film unsaleable until the
remaining producers, if any, go through the tedious business of getting in
contact with everyone who worked on the film and begging for a retroactive
release.

 _The Beijing Treaty would also require U.S. law to be changed to recognize a
new set of “moral rights” of performers, which include the right to
attribution for a performance, and the right to preserve its “integrity”.
Moral rights are strongly recognized in civil law countries such as France,
but the United States has always resisted recognizing them—and for good
reason. Whilst it is fair that an artist receives attribution for their work,
to allow them to control how the performance is used after its fixation goes
too far. It impinges upon the separate First Amendment rights of the producer
of an audiovisual work, limiting their creative freedom to meld the
contributions of performers into a unified whole copyright work._

Oh, the _same_ producers whose 'bulging copyright portfolios' the authors were
just grumbling about, and are now attempting to defend? GMAFB. 'Moral rights'
are a fine concept - attribution is often the _only_ benefit performers get
from participating in a film, especially low-budget ones where owning a piece
of the revenue is worth a bit fat $0 - I myself own a chunk of 4 or 5 feature
films, and the reason that I don't know the exact number off the top of my
head is because I long ago resigned myself to the reality that none of them
will ever show a dime of profit (for reasons which have nothing to do with
Hollywood accounting, and everything to do with amateur lack of marketing).

As for preserving integrity, this is again something that is already
accommodated for in professional level contracts. It's not to limit the right
of the producer/editor/director to cut an actor's favorite line or use one
take rather than another, or even to cut an actor's performance out of the
film entirely if the quality of the performance or the overall dynamic of the
story means it runs better without. That sort of provision is designed to
ensure actors don't find their performance incorporated into what turns out to
be a porn movie, or so that actors ostensibly recruited to participate in some
family-friendly Christian movie don't find themselves edited into _Extreme
Gore Horror Part VII_.

Moral rights in the US for still pictures, sculpture etc. are articulated
through the Visual Artists Rights Act.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Artists_Rights_Act).
Motion pictures are dominated by contractual arrangements, the same way as
they are everywhere else, due to the sheer logistical complexity of
production/ Contrary to what the EFF is claiming, the acknowledgement of moral
rights is not an awful attack on US film producers; has it not occurred to the
authors that countries with a strong moral rights tradition also usually have
healthy film industries, and that moreover the film industries of those
nations are not typically mired in copyright litigation?

I'm quite annoyed with the EFF and these two authors here. Yeah, it's good to
point out the horse-trading involved in tying ratification or implementation
of one treaty to the terms of another. But the complaints about the Beijing
Treaty are ill-informed, self-contradictory, and exhibit zero interest or
awareness of how the motion picture business works, nor to have thought
through the actual language of the treaty
([http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_2...](http://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/copyright/en/avp_dc/avp_dc_20.pdf))
such as the distinction between moral and economic rights and the absolute
transferability and assignability of the latter.

I don't work for a large film studio or IP owner. I work on films with small
budgets, and tracking and managing all the paperwork involved in transfer of
rights is one of the biggest and most expensive administrative overheads. I'm
hoping to go into production later this year on my own film, which is going to
require at least 30 sets of releases/rights assignment contracts. The Beijing
Treaty could be ratified tomorrow and it's going to have exactly zero impact
on my creative endeavor because that level of exhaustive compliance is already
the industry standard for any commercial offering. Insofar as it's damn hard
to recoup the costs of making a film, and as even 'no-budget' films typically
cost quite a bit of money to make, I'm actually quite supportive of some
regulatory consistency that would reduce the administrative overhead of
international distribution and make it easier to negotiate with distributors
in individual markets rather than through regional sales agents, aka
middlemen.

------
sukilot
Sad to see EFF arguing against the woman who was tricked into appearing in
_Innocence of Muslims_. Sure, the law she is using to arguing her case might
not be a good one, but it's still cruel to throw her under the bus.

~~~
themartorana
Assuming her story is entirely true, there is _still_ the argument that we
shouldn't ever whitewash history. _Innocence of Muslims_ now has an important
role in history, from the abuse of the actors involved to the bloody protests
that claim the "film" as the protagonist.

Yes, it's tragic that someone is caught up in this against their will, but
censoring it in the US doesn't make it any less relevant to recent history. At
this point in time, not being able to watch the film is the same as censoring
any other video with historical impact.

I can't imagine being in the actress's position, but facts cannot be erased -
only censored.

