Indie Filmmaker to Infringers: Please Pay Me for Good Karma
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 by Patrick RossIndependent filmmaker Ellen Seidler of Fast Girl Films used loans and credit cards to finance a $250,000 motion picture, And Then Came Lola. But as she explains on the film’s web site, her film has appeared all over the Internet on pirate sites profiting from her film through the use of online advertising:
It seems that some film fans, even if well meaning, don’t appreciate how this can really hurt indie filmmakers. Films like ours, with no theatrical release, earn revenue ONLY through through DVD and VOD sales.
Her film is available on DVD and Blu-Ray and iTunes, but she also has this message to those who have viewed or downloaded her film outside of authorized channels: “Did You Watch a Not-So-Legal Version? Want Good Karma? Donate PayPal.”
If other attempts at donation models prove prescient, Fast Girl Films won’t see a whole lot of income from the PayPal page. But online ad sellers are making money. As Ms. Seidler told NPR’s All Things Considered, “everybody’s making money but us.”
Ms. Seidler told NPR reporter Laura Sydell that it is dismaying that one company profiting from these ads from legitimate companies such as Netflix is Google, whose AdSense program placed many of the ads on pirate sites next to her film. Most frustrating to her is that Google requires her to submit a separate complaint for each ad appearance on each pirate site:
They make it very, very difficult. They set up a lot of road blocks, and, you know, you can’t keep up with it.
She tells Ms. Sydell that she hopes Google’s “don’t be evil” motto will lead it to do what is ethical, namely not place the onus on preventing Google from profiting from infringement on the owner of the infringed work.
Those following the Viacom-YouTube case know Ms. Seidler shouldn’t hold her breath. Google has spent countless dollars securing a lower court decision saying it really doesn’t have to do anything whatsoever to help rightsholders, even if it is profiting from the infringement of their works. I wrote recently in The Washington Post the devastating impact this can have not just on major media companies but on individual artists and creators.
Independent filmmakers and indie studios are feeling the pain. Last Thursday, at a workshop hosted by the U.S. Commerce Department, Susan Cleary of the Independent Film & Television Alliance spoke on that very subject. Independent studios must secure distribution agreements in various markets before they secure funding; those distribution agreements are the collateral that allows production to begin. With international markets such as Spain evaporating because of a tolerance for profit pirate sites, loans can’t be secured and independent films can’t be made. She also pointed out that having to do individual takedown notices for every infringing appearance is untenable when you only have a few people employed with the studio and there are hundreds of thousands of notices that would have to be sent.
I testified on these sites last December at a workshop at the Federal Trade Commission, and last week the Obama Administration cracked down on several of them, rerouting their domain names to the Department of Homeland Security. The Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus created a new watch list for these sites this spring, and U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee members raised the possibility of further action recently when U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel testified before the Committee.
Ms. Seidler is hoping people make the ethical choice not to enjoy her hard work without respecting her rights, and hopes they recognize it’s wrong for others to profit from her work when she doesn’t. Hopefully, by sharing her story with NPR’s listeners, a few people will “get” the fact that you’re not just sticking it to “the man” when you disrespect someone’s copyright.
