Wait for It or Pay for It!

On the weekend, we went to the cinema to watch The Great and Powerful Oz. I enjoyed the movie. Won't say too much (spoilers!) but it gave an explanation of how The Wizard and The Wicked Witch of the West came into being. Interesting, with enough of the feel and flavour of the original Wizard of Oz. 

This is not what this post is actually about...

While we were waiting (and waiting) for the pre-movie advertisements to finish, the couple behind us were having a loud and animated conversation. It was difficult not to hear the discussion. It was even more difficult not to comment on it. I held my tongue though, as many of you will probably know, the following is a real sore point of mine. It all comes down to copyright.

The conversation began like this:

Girl: 'Did you see Game of Thrones, the other day. I haven't had time to watch it yet'

Guy: 'I download it on TorrentFreak (I think he said) watched it straight away.'

Now, I am not a fan of Game of Thrones, but even I know that it is shown 'express from the US', on Foxtel Showcase in Australia only two hours after showing in the US. How hard is it to wait two hours! For those who don't have Foxtel , I have also read today that Quickflix has made a deal with HBO so that Australians can legally download the series for instant streaming. 

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/04/game-of-thrones-just-got-easier-to-stream-in-australia-thanks-to-quickflix-and-hbo/

Yet, despite this, it appears Australians are still the pirate capital for this show. (along with London and Paris) http://delimiter.com.au/2013/04/03/despite-quick-cheap-legal-option-australia-still-top-games-of-thrones-pirating-nation/

What is that I hear? I don't want to pay to download it. Tough. Foxtel viewers have to pay for it. If you want it for free, then wait til it comes to free TV... like many of us had to in the past.

The conversation continued with the girl listing a long, long list of TV shows she watches (how she had time to go to the cinema, I don't know) and the guy listing all  plus more shows that he downloads illegally so he does not have to wait for it to legally hit our screens. Apparently he does not like to wait to see them and has to see them immediately.

If you distil it down, the essence seems to be that illegal downloaders dont want to:

 1. wait for it 

 2. pay for it.

It was only recently that we were able to get Doctor Who fast tracked from the UK. We used to have to wait months for it. We didn't die waiting for it.  We learned patience and craved it all the more when we got it. So learn the words delayed gratification. All good things come to those who wait etc. Maybe this skill could prove useful in everyday life? hmmm? No one owes you a free ride.

TV shows and movies (as well as most other art, novels, music etc) are the end product of someones imagination, time spent creating the work (sometimes this could be a year or more), hard graft in finding funding and then making the final item. The final result may be for entertainment but it is also the source of income for many people and their families. 

Somewhere along the line there has to be a payoff by viewers or no one gets paid. We, as viewers, pay either by pay per view (legal download), pay for view (Foxtel or equivalent) or via advertising (waiting til it goes to free to air TV). Patience and advertising is the flip side of seeing it for free. Simple facts of life.

Not only does it take money from the artist and actors who create it but illegal downloads endanger the continuance of your favourite show, skewing the actual audience numbers. I recently saw statistics on Game of Thrones.  Apparently if the audience of 2 million who watched it legally in Australia, had actually illegally downloaded it, then the television show would not have got renewed. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/box-seat/stop-stealing-game-of-thrones-says-us-ambassador-to-australians-20130427-2ilam.html

That is what copyright is supposed to help protect. Circumventing it will not only hurt the copyright's owner but eventually it will hurt the viewer.

Think about that for a minute. Are you willing to deny someone's family their income?  Seriously?  For the less altruistic out there, are you willing to jeapardize your favourite show being made for the sake of being impatient! 

The Impatient Generation

Time was that conversing with someone in another country, meant having to board a ship, or send a handwritten letter (via ship) and it would take months to cross the major oceans to reach another continent. At least from Australia - that big island in the Southern Hemisphere that is so far from the other continents. Then later, there was the telegraph. This could still take days for messages, depending on how far from a telegraph office you resided. Then there was the overseas phone call (at exorbitant prices) and finally, what is now termed, snail mail. I miss letter writing days, pen friends and collecting the stamps. 

What I think is really awesome, is that I can sit in my lounge room, in Australia and type some words. Push a button and these words will then get seen by people in all the major continents of the world, including Russia, South America, Asia and Africa - let alone Western Europe and Northern America. These days a message on FB or a blog can be posted and it has been seen, read or replied to within seconds! This is actually mind blowing!

There was a time when the only resources, for research, was the local library - the State Library if you needed something more in depth. I usually ended up at the University Library or ordering in books on interlibrary loans - some of which could take over a month to turn up. These days we just go 'google it'... One problem is that things published on the internet don't have fact checkers to make sure that we are not reading total fabrications. Internet is also essentially ephemeral; here one day, gone the next. It is all smoke and mirrors.

I was born pre-video recorders, pre-DVD, pre-moblile phones. My friend would audio tape- yes a cassette tape! Our favourite television show (back then we had only one TV and my show clashed with the parent's show) and when we replayed it, she would narrate the visuals for me! I remember having to wait months (and sometimes years) for a television show to be aired here, in Australia. We would wait months for Doctor Who. All this is lost on the current generation who have had mobile phones, instant messaging and internet downloads at the finger tips.

Just the other day, I saw someone bitching (yes, they were quite spiteful and indignant) that 'how dare they have to wait til the next day to see Doctor Who? They should be able to download it straight away.' They did not care to wait for the official download but wanted a pirate copy NOW, as 'why should they have to pay (less than $2) for a copy when they can get it illegally... oh .. don't get me back onto copyright issues!! For now, let me just say that people seemed to have lost their patience and expect everything for nothing! It won't kill you to wait less than 12 hours! We had to wait 6-9 months or more!! 

This also translates into other areas of life and becoming a cultural norm, unfortunately. (Sadly, it is not just the internet generation either; baby boomers and X-gens can be just as impatient.) 

Dear Impatient generations,

Deal with it! Stop and smell the roses. Good things come to those who wait. Enjoy life, slow down, enjoy art and movies.. but remember someone had to make them, for you to enjoy. 

love,
Learnt the Value of Waiting.

Where have all the artists gone?

Many of us know the words;

Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
Will will they ever learn?
Will will they ever learn?

I heard this again, yesterday, just after reading an article on Amazon vs Indie Bookstores. Together, they echoed a discussion I had been having, intermittently with my husband, over the past week. (It is amazing how such co-incidents happen - a bit Twighlight zone... no not the vampire book ugh!). It will be very interesting to see how this actually plays out. There seems to be a lot of big companies trying to oust the little guy out right now. Screw 'em! Don't they realise that if they push out the individual, then the world loses independent thinking and ideas that would not have been born in the stifling atmosphere bread in closed off corporations?

There seems to be a lot of action in regards to copyright and stealing of copyright recently. There has been many articles showing up advising us that newspapers are trying to get payment for quotes from them. This may at first seem that they are championing copyright, but read carefully. What they want is to have your copyright and make money if you use as little as  5 words of (what would become) theirs!

Associated Press Expects you to pay license for 5 word quotes

and another one here. and in Canada it went to court: Is this Canadian Newspaper breaking Copyright Law?

What I find interesting is that, with Canadian Law - so far at least, has upheld Fair Dealing with several paragraphs being allowed. And in Australian law, it allows for parody. This makes sense. 

How are we supposed to allow for discussion or debate, if we cannot quote appropriate statements? Or is that what big newspapers want? They want to pontificate, to force the public to see their point of view but stop anyone from putting forward another point of view. Even more interesting, is that most newspapers use copy from other sources. They always have. How else can they get their stories? They cannot be omnipotent, no matter how much they blow their collective horns! Some now want to copyright their words, even just 5 of them. So they are justified in stealing, by their definition, copyrighted words of others? 

If they do succeed, will this only be for them or will the independent author benefit as well? Hang on, they can print what THEY want due to freedom of speach...so screw the independents with not enough money to fight them? ugh.

Then there are artists. In Ausrtralia, as soon as you create a piece of work, art or writing, it has automatic copyright. This is how it should be. There are programmes and websites, such as Tineye and Google Image Search that help track down stolen copyrighted art.

I have some friends who are fantastic artists but, even in my small circle, I know of two who have had their work stolen, copied and sold from under them. One has a court case pending, so I will not name her. The thieves have stolen exact images, not even changed to claim a parody! Now that is not only illegal and immoral but downright lazy! Yet, they get away with it. I am hoping my friend - an independent artist - wins her battle. For a battle it is!

Hopefully the 'shit hitting the fan' with copyright theft and fights for restrictions and large companies trying to control all copyright, with end up with a backlash and in the ashes, the individual artist/writers benefiting and not having their livelihood stolen from them. Think about it! Look at the movies coming out of Hollywood over the years. Many are remakes or based on old television shows (the movie moguls are betting the current generation do not know shows) or comics. There are very little original movies, these days. Most that are, are from books, written independently from movie corporations. If the individual has their ideas stolen from them, we would only have large corporations (with the money to win in court) dictating this area of our PRIVATE lives as well; they will restrict what we see and hear and in the end what we can produce and think. Hello Big Brother.

What if the artists went on strike? Why should they produce artwork or books or movies, if they are to only have it stolen? Then who will create the original novels, comics, art, film, tv and images that our modern society craves? 

Just think about it.... while we are allowed. ... how does one copyright private thoughts, I wonder?

Let loose the dogs of war!

(which by the way is more than the five words!)