bob tarantino

Entertainment, Media and IP Law 03.25.09

Peeking behind the curtain:  Michael Geist comments on the decision of an Ontario judge to order the disclosure of all information relating to discussion board participants by the owners of the website.  Geist's conclusion: "I fear that the high threshold seems to have been abandoned here, with the court all-too-eager to dismiss the privacy considerations associated with mandated disclosure by not engaging in an analysis as to whether the evidentiary standard was met."

The grandest licensing scheme of them all:  Geist (him again) reports and comments on the Songwriters Association of Canada proposal to create "a new right of remuneration for music file sharing in return for the consumer freedom to share an unlimited amount of music across all platforms".  The most interesting part of the initiative is its potential for extension to video works as well, since ACTRA has evidently expressed some tentative openness to considering the issue.

Bloodsport:  Barak Y. Orbach has written a paper about the origins of US film censorship - which oddly enough apparently has its origins in films of boxing matches in the late 1800s (ht: Media Law Prof Blog).  Download the paper here.

The most painful headline ever:  In reporting on the news that a Toronto firm has been tasked with licensing and protecting the trade-mark interests of Bob Marley's estate, the CBC elected to use this headline: "Toronto firm gets up, stands up for Bob Marley trademark rights".  Ow.  (Oh, and shouldn't the CBC style guide prefer the Canadian iteration "trade-mark" to the American "trademark"?)

"It costs money even to talk to the copyright holders": Everybody else has already talked about Sita Sings the Blues and its innovative release strategy, but I would be seriously remiss if I didn't mention it as well.

Consistently in the middle of the pack:  The Canadian Intellectual Property Office released its 2007-2008 Annual Report a few weeks ago.  9,321 copyright applications were received, compared to over 47,000 trade-mark applications, 5,174 industrial design applications and 0 (count 'em) integrated circuit topography applications.

Entertainment, Media and IP Law 03.15.09

New techniques: A couple of interesting stories this past week about emerging Canadian talent - David and Ian Purchase used YouTube to get noticed by Hollywood, and one-eyed Toronto filmmaker Rob Spence is planning on using a camera embedded in a fake eye to film a documentary about "the rise of global surveillance" (also here).

Flashpoint opens the door: One of the funny things about Hollywood is the herd mentality - if something works once for one guy, everybody's got to follow suit.  Thankfully, this time the trend is working in favour of Canadian film and television producers.

Defamed today, defamed forever: An interesting discussion over at slaw about whether the time period for launching a defamation action over an online publication should begin running from the first time it was placed online or whether it should start afresh every time the online publication is accessed regardless of how long that is after initial publication (in England, the answer is evidently the latter; in the US, the former).

New Media Fund? Meh: Concerns are expressed about the newly constituted Canada Media Fund and conflicts of interest.

Backstage blogging: Gordon P. Firemark muses on the dangers of letting talent talk about their work experiences while still on the job.

Fairey Use?  More discussion on the AP/Richard Fairey copyright dispute here (Knopf) and here (Wired).

ImageStamper: Plagiarism Today provides some in-depth coverage on an interesting new service which "stamps" a Creative Commons license onto digital images.

Inaccurate sales figures? Surely you jest: Clive Cussler ordered to pay nearly US$14 million to production company over misrepresentation of the number of copies his novels had sold.

The children are our future: Fascinating interview with Terry McBride of Nettwerk Music Group here.

The Salmon Arm Salute

Dean Beeby at the CP wrote an excellent, nicely detailed story about the Ontario Film Review Board, focusing on its recent decision regarding the social crudeness of a depiction of someone "flipping the bird".  The OFRB's own (rather informative) website is here.

The board, which classifies all mainstream films in the province, amended its manual so that the rude salute now will help knock a film from a General (G) designation into the Parental Guidance (PG) category.

The gesture, sometimes called “flipping the bird” or simply “the bird,” is rated the equivalent of an animal humping someone's leg, according to the manual's section on assessing the psychological impact of mainstream films.

And the “finger” is now classified as one notch more obnoxious than “a little bit of farting, belching” in the crude behaviours category, in the latest edition of the manual, obtained by The Canadian Press under Ontario's freedom-of-information law.

The gesture, though, is considered less obnoxious than a teenager vomiting and his friend urinating onto bystanders, say the arcane guidelines in the 32-page document.

"the industry isn't showing signs of a slowdown"

Wired has published a short piece which discusses a few interesting, if countervailing (and largely counter-intuitive), trends: a new study which shows that movie theatres are going to get hit hard by a recession, confronted by continuing strong box office, both in terms of dollar gross and attendance numbers (which might be an indication that, er, there isn't a recession, but I digress), and the question of whether new formats (VHS and DVD, among others) function as a replacement or a driver for theatre attendance.

SAG Strike 05.02.08

Nikki Finke is reporting that "the AMPTP and SAG will keep bargaining on a day-to-day basis through at least May 6th".  That being said, she also notes that the labo(u)r uncertainty is resulting in a de facto strike position, since there is "no greenlighting because of fears of a SAG strike".  Finke notes that "Major players in this town are telling me they haven't seen the movie industry this dead since, well, they can't remember."  Which means that there is an impact north of the border as well: "If the Screen Actors Guild goes on strike over the same issue as the recent U.S. screenwriters strike—residuals from new media platforms—the B.C. film industry could experience a repeat of 2007’s drop in foreign production."  Independent producers without distribution are able to sign "guaranteed completion agreements" (meaning a SAG strike won't shut down their production so long as they agree in advance to abide by whatever terms are agreed to in the final collective agreement), but any chill on production in the US inevitably has an impact on the Canadian industry (which means lost jobs, which means lost tax revenue, etc., etc.): there was nearly $1.5 billion worth of foreign location shooting in Canada in 2006/07, as reported by the CFTPA.

Toronto Star on Toronto Film

The Toronto Star spent considerable effort this past weekend focusing on the Toronto film industry.

• Peter Howell wrote about "the paradox of Toronto that even while the city enjoys international recognition and acclaim for the annual Toronto International Film Festival, the burg can't catch a break when it comes to actually appearing as itself in movies. You are as likely to see the CN Tower in a Hollywood movie as you are the Abominable Snowman. It's almost inconceivable to think of a film being made in Paris without showing the Eiffel Tower. Yet Paris is rarely called upon to wear a mask the way Toronto so often is." (Left unasked is the question of whether the disguising of Toronto perhaps has something to with the fact that the most compelling visual of the city that Howell could come up with was in fact not a "visual" but the fact that we have a film festival every fall...)

• Philip Marchand profiled the post-production industry in the city.

• uber-producer Don Carmody offered his thoughts on Toronto's selling points for US studios and what else could be done to enhance the city's profile as a filmmaking destination.

• A graphic representation [.pdf] of declining film and TV spending in Toronto over the last eight years.

• A map of the Filmport facilities [.pdf].

• A nice graphic [.pdf] showing how soundstages are constructed.