David Cronin, Intellectual Property Watch; New Business Models Proposed In Debate On EU Culture And Copyright:
"Small fees for internet users could be used to pay musicians and other artists for the dissemination of copyright-protected work online, a Brussels conference has been told.
Following complaints that intellectual property rules are generally ill-suited to a world where digital downloading is becoming increasingly common, Green Party Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) hosted a discussion on 8 June about how easy public access to culture can be guaranteed in a way that ensures artists can make a decent living.
Philippe Aigrain, a founder of the French civil liberties group La Quadrature du Net, argued that the fundamental premise of any approach to charging for listening to music or watching films online should be that sharing files is a basic right. He took issue with major companies in the entertainment industry who have waged a long campaign against many forms of downloading. “Some big interest groups think the right to share is the root of all evil,” he said.
Aigrain recommended a new system whereby each internet subscriber would be charged a monthly fee of 5 to 7 euros and that this would generate a fund for paying artists whose work is shared on the internet. According to his calculations, such fees should yield between 1.2 billion and 1.7 billion euros each year in France alone – about one twentieth of the country’s “cultural economy”.
The income would then be distributed among artists based on surveys of a “huge panel” of individuals, who would anonymously give details of which files they had downloaded. For audiovisual work, one-third of the revenue generated would be used for remuneration and the remainder to support new productions. Yet the ratio should be reversed for music, considering that it is usually less expensive to record tunes than to make films, he added...
Maja Bogataj Jancic from the Institute of Intellectual Property in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana spoke of how “copyright is at war with technology.”
“Digital technology is the greatest threat to the copyright system but it is fair to say it is also the greatest opportunity for creation,” she said. The “Creative Commons” system – through which authors and artists can grant others permission to circulate their work on a non-commercial basis – has made the sharing of published material easier, she added. Some 350 million creative commons licenses had been issued worldwide by the end of last year.
“Creative Commons licenses are built on top of copyright law,” she explained. “They do not exist without copyright law.”
Austrian MEP Eva Lichtenberger contended that “culture and creative activity need to be supported in such a way that artists can have a dignified livelihood.”
She used colourful language to describe how the entertainment industry has kept a close watch on the European Union’s debates on intellectual property. “When we look at copyright and the reform of copyright so that it can be adapted to the twenty-first century, there is a veritable lobbying war going on. Lobbyists even follow you to the ladies’ room in order to continue discussions you have been having.”
Her French colleague Karima Delli noted that 1.6 billion people worldwide have the means to copy files. “This is the very basis for a shared culture; the internet should be the means by which we democratise culture,” she said. “There is no magic solution. We are going to have to try out new economic models to fight against the concentration of powers in many commercial systems applying to cinema and books, etcetera.”
http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/2010/06/09/new-business-models-proposed-in-debate-on-eu-culture-and-copyright/
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Recording Industry Says LimeWire on Hook for $1 Billion; Wired.com, 6/8/10
David Kravets, Wired.com; Recording Industry Says LimeWire on Hook for $1 Billion:
"The record labels have told a federal judge LimeWire is liable for possibly “over a billion dollars” — the latest sign that the industry is seeking to annihilate the New York-based file sharing company.
The Recording Industry Association of America’s court filing Monday comes a week after the labels asked U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood to shutter LimeWire (.pdf). Weeks before, the New York judge ruled LimeWire’s users commit a “substantial amount of copyright infringement” (.pdf) and that the Lime Group, the company behind the application, “has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement.”
“The amount of statutory damages awarded in this case easily could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not over a billion dollars),” the RIAA wrote to Wood, in seeking a court order to freeze LimeWire’s assets (.pdf). The Napster case eventually settled for more than $300 million.
The RIAA’s latest court filings underscore that the record labels are seeking to shutter and financially decimate the company. Two weeks ago, Zeeshan Zaidi, LimeWire’s chief operating officer, said he was hoping to work out a licensing deal with the labels to enable them to sell their music on LimeWire’s online store.
The Copyright Act allows fines of up to $150,000 per infringement."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/limewire-owes-billion/#ixzz0r8P4iVmj:
"The record labels have told a federal judge LimeWire is liable for possibly “over a billion dollars” — the latest sign that the industry is seeking to annihilate the New York-based file sharing company.
The Recording Industry Association of America’s court filing Monday comes a week after the labels asked U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood to shutter LimeWire (.pdf). Weeks before, the New York judge ruled LimeWire’s users commit a “substantial amount of copyright infringement” (.pdf) and that the Lime Group, the company behind the application, “has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement.”
“The amount of statutory damages awarded in this case easily could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars (if not over a billion dollars),” the RIAA wrote to Wood, in seeking a court order to freeze LimeWire’s assets (.pdf). The Napster case eventually settled for more than $300 million.
The RIAA’s latest court filings underscore that the record labels are seeking to shutter and financially decimate the company. Two weeks ago, Zeeshan Zaidi, LimeWire’s chief operating officer, said he was hoping to work out a licensing deal with the labels to enable them to sell their music on LimeWire’s online store.
The Copyright Act allows fines of up to $150,000 per infringement."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/limewire-owes-billion/#ixzz0r8P4iVmj:
LimeWire Begs Music Industry for Second Chance; Wired.com, 5/25/10
David Kravets, Wired.com; LimeWire Begs Music Industry for Second Chance:
"The company behind the file sharing software LimeWire is considering aggressively filtering out pirated content and is hoping to strike a deal with the music industry in which it would be permitted to live on as a for-pay music download service, a company executive said Monday.
“The biggest challenge right now is changing the behavior of a generation of internet users to get them to pay for music,” said Zeeshan Zaidi, LimeWire’s 35-year-old chief operating officer, in an interview two weeks after suffering a crushing defeat in a copyright lawsuit that threatens to leave the company insolvent.
On May 11, a federal judge ruled that LimeWire’s users commit a “substantial amount of copyright infringement” (.pdf) and that parent company Lime Group “has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement.”
The ruling sets the stage for a potentially massive damage award against the company that could leave it insolvent. Attorneys for Lime Group and the Recording Industry Association of America are expected to return to court next month to haggle over the company’s fate.
Zaidi said in a telephone interview that the company wants to convert its 50 million monthly users into paying music customers, and become a player in the paid music-distribution business. For now, the bulk of LimeWire’s traffic consists of unauthorized copyright material — some 93 percent, according to RIAA estimates.
“One way to address what the court is talking about, short of shutting down the network, which I think is overreaching and drastic, is to filter the network of these files in question,” Zaidi said. “This is a way for us to move forward in the case.”
Zaidi’s plan could put LimeWire on roughly the same course followed by Napster after its 2002 courtroom defeat to the RIAA. Roxio purchased the Napster brand and domain name at a bankruptcy auction and attached it to a legitimate music download service, which exists today as an also-ran in a field dominated by Apple’s iTunes.
Similarly, Swedish entrepreneur Hans Pandeya had dreams of legitimizing the The Pirate Bay, the world’s leading BitTorrent search engine. His plan was to strike licensing deals with content providers and sell movies, music, games and software on the notorious site, but he never managed to pull off the acquisition of The Pirate Bay’s domain name.
To be sure, moving from the pirate model to the pay-to-play model has many built-in assumptions.
Foremost, converting copyright scofflaws into paying customers is a tough sell. And for LimeWire, it may prove to be a futile endeavor to get the major record labels — which just defeated LimeWire in court — to cut licensing deals.
“Suffice it to say, we’re talking to all of the major players in the industry to try to get the licenses we need to get this service off the ground,” Zaidi said.
Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, which represents Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music, said “we intend to pursue damages.”
Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chairman, said two weeks ago that, “Unlike other P2P services that negotiated licenses, imposed filters or otherwise chose to discontinue their illegal conduct following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case, LimeWire instead thumbed its nose at the law and creators.”
For now, LimeWire has about 5 million songs on its online retail store, none of them from the RIAA’s Big Four, Zaidi said. He declined to provide sales figures.
In its LimeWire lawsuit, the RIAA is seeking up to $150,000 per copyright violation, though the final damages have not been determined. It was the first case targeting a file sharing software maker following the 2005 Grokster decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for lawsuits targeting companies that induced or encouraged file sharing piracy.
Zaidi said the recording industry should take the opportunity to partner with LimeWire, “to put the most amount of money into the pockets of artists and those who own their copyrights.”
The music industry, he said, “is in the driver’s seat. What happens next depends on what they choose to do."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/limewire-filtering/#ixzz0r8O5w65F"
"The company behind the file sharing software LimeWire is considering aggressively filtering out pirated content and is hoping to strike a deal with the music industry in which it would be permitted to live on as a for-pay music download service, a company executive said Monday.
“The biggest challenge right now is changing the behavior of a generation of internet users to get them to pay for music,” said Zeeshan Zaidi, LimeWire’s 35-year-old chief operating officer, in an interview two weeks after suffering a crushing defeat in a copyright lawsuit that threatens to leave the company insolvent.
On May 11, a federal judge ruled that LimeWire’s users commit a “substantial amount of copyright infringement” (.pdf) and that parent company Lime Group “has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement.”
The ruling sets the stage for a potentially massive damage award against the company that could leave it insolvent. Attorneys for Lime Group and the Recording Industry Association of America are expected to return to court next month to haggle over the company’s fate.
Zaidi said in a telephone interview that the company wants to convert its 50 million monthly users into paying music customers, and become a player in the paid music-distribution business. For now, the bulk of LimeWire’s traffic consists of unauthorized copyright material — some 93 percent, according to RIAA estimates.
“One way to address what the court is talking about, short of shutting down the network, which I think is overreaching and drastic, is to filter the network of these files in question,” Zaidi said. “This is a way for us to move forward in the case.”
Zaidi’s plan could put LimeWire on roughly the same course followed by Napster after its 2002 courtroom defeat to the RIAA. Roxio purchased the Napster brand and domain name at a bankruptcy auction and attached it to a legitimate music download service, which exists today as an also-ran in a field dominated by Apple’s iTunes.
Similarly, Swedish entrepreneur Hans Pandeya had dreams of legitimizing the The Pirate Bay, the world’s leading BitTorrent search engine. His plan was to strike licensing deals with content providers and sell movies, music, games and software on the notorious site, but he never managed to pull off the acquisition of The Pirate Bay’s domain name.
To be sure, moving from the pirate model to the pay-to-play model has many built-in assumptions.
Foremost, converting copyright scofflaws into paying customers is a tough sell. And for LimeWire, it may prove to be a futile endeavor to get the major record labels — which just defeated LimeWire in court — to cut licensing deals.
“Suffice it to say, we’re talking to all of the major players in the industry to try to get the licenses we need to get this service off the ground,” Zaidi said.
Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the RIAA, which represents Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Music, said “we intend to pursue damages.”
Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chairman, said two weeks ago that, “Unlike other P2P services that negotiated licenses, imposed filters or otherwise chose to discontinue their illegal conduct following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case, LimeWire instead thumbed its nose at the law and creators.”
For now, LimeWire has about 5 million songs on its online retail store, none of them from the RIAA’s Big Four, Zaidi said. He declined to provide sales figures.
In its LimeWire lawsuit, the RIAA is seeking up to $150,000 per copyright violation, though the final damages have not been determined. It was the first case targeting a file sharing software maker following the 2005 Grokster decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for lawsuits targeting companies that induced or encouraged file sharing piracy.
Zaidi said the recording industry should take the opportunity to partner with LimeWire, “to put the most amount of money into the pockets of artists and those who own their copyrights.”
The music industry, he said, “is in the driver’s seat. What happens next depends on what they choose to do."
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/limewire-filtering/#ixzz0r8O5w65F"
LimeWire Crushed in RIAA Infringement Lawsuit; Wired.com, 5/12/10
David Kravets, Wired.com; LimeWire Crushed in RIAA Infringement Lawsuit:
"LimeWire was found liable of copyright infringement Tuesday in a decision that threatens to financially devastate the New York company behind the file sharing application.
In a 4-year-old case brought by The Recording Industry Association of America, U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood ruled that LimeWire’s users commit a “substantial amount of copyright infringement” (.pdf) and that the Lime Group, the company behind the application, “has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement.”
The RIAA was seeking up to $150,000 per copyright violation, though the final damages in the lawsuit have not yet been determined. The lawsuit claimed at least 93 percent of LimeWire’s file sharing traffic was unauthorized copyright material.
Limewire claims “50 million unique monthly users.” Its website says its “software is downloaded hundreds of thousands of times every day and boasts millions of active users at any given moment.”
It was the first case targeting a file sharing software maker following the 2005 Grokster decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for lawsuits targeting companies that induced or encouraged file sharing piracy.
Before the RIAA filed suit, the record label’s trade group urged LimeWire to license its material or shut down.
“LimeWire is one of the largest remaining commercial peer-to-peer services,” Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chairman, said in a statement. “Unlike other P2P services that negotiated licenses, imposed filters or otherwise chose to discontinue their illegal conduct following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case, LimeWire instead thumbed its nose at the law and creators.”
George Searle, LimeWire’s chief executive, said in a statement that the company “remains committed to developing innovative products and services for the end-user and to working with the entire music industry, including the major labels, to achieve this mission.”
Searle was not immediately available for comment.
Judge Wood scheduled a June 1 hearing to determine how to proceed.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/limewire-crushed/#ixzz0r8Mg5a3p"
"LimeWire was found liable of copyright infringement Tuesday in a decision that threatens to financially devastate the New York company behind the file sharing application.
In a 4-year-old case brought by The Recording Industry Association of America, U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood ruled that LimeWire’s users commit a “substantial amount of copyright infringement” (.pdf) and that the Lime Group, the company behind the application, “has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement.”
The RIAA was seeking up to $150,000 per copyright violation, though the final damages in the lawsuit have not yet been determined. The lawsuit claimed at least 93 percent of LimeWire’s file sharing traffic was unauthorized copyright material.
Limewire claims “50 million unique monthly users.” Its website says its “software is downloaded hundreds of thousands of times every day and boasts millions of active users at any given moment.”
It was the first case targeting a file sharing software maker following the 2005 Grokster decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for lawsuits targeting companies that induced or encouraged file sharing piracy.
Before the RIAA filed suit, the record label’s trade group urged LimeWire to license its material or shut down.
“LimeWire is one of the largest remaining commercial peer-to-peer services,” Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA’s chairman, said in a statement. “Unlike other P2P services that negotiated licenses, imposed filters or otherwise chose to discontinue their illegal conduct following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case, LimeWire instead thumbed its nose at the law and creators.”
George Searle, LimeWire’s chief executive, said in a statement that the company “remains committed to developing innovative products and services for the end-user and to working with the entire music industry, including the major labels, to achieve this mission.”
Searle was not immediately available for comment.
Judge Wood scheduled a June 1 hearing to determine how to proceed.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/05/limewire-crushed/#ixzz0r8Mg5a3p"
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
When Titans Clash: Comic-Book Creator Edition; New York Times, 6/16/10
Dave Itzkoff, New York Times; When Titans Clash: Comic-Book Creator Edition:
"Comic-book creators are generally better known for imagining and illustrating the larger-than-life conflicts of fearsome opponents, not for engaging in them themselves. So it was somewhat unusual to find Neil Gaiman, the best-selling fiction writer and comics author (“Sandman”), in a Wisconsin court on Monday, where he is suing his onetime colleague Todd McFarlane over royalties that Mr. Gaiman says he is owed from Mr. McFarlane’s Spawn comics series.
The Associated Press reported that both Mr. Gaiman and Mr. McFarlane gave testimony in a United States District Court in Madison, in the latest round of a dispute involving characters from Spawn, a series about a murdered C.I.A. agent who becomes a warrior for hell after selling his soul to a demon.
Mr. Gaiman said that a character called Dark Ages Spawn was essentially a copy of Medieval Spawn, which he had created for Spawn issue No. 9 in 1993, and that angel characters called Domina and Tiffany were copies of Angela, who also had first appeared in that issue.
Mr. Gaiman said, ”It looks like the same kind of thing,” after being shown an image from a Dark Ages Spawn comic book. ”It’s a knight-in-armory kind of Spawn.”
Mr. McFarlane said all the Spawn characters share certain features. The writer Brian Holguin, who was also involved with the creation of the Dark Ages Spawn character, testified that the similarities were unintentional.
”We were trying to sell comic books,” Mr. Holguin said, according to The A.P. ”We could have done Italian Renaissance Spawn, but I’m not sure it would have sold as well.”
A jury found in 2002 that Mr. Gaiman was a co-copyright holder for the Medieval Spawn and Angela characters, as well as a third named Cogliostro, and was owed royalties. They have yet to come to an agreement on payment. Lawyers for Mr. Gaiman said the author will donate any money from the case to charity."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/when-titans-clash-comic-book-creator-edition/?scp=1&sq=gaiman%20spawn&st=cse
"Comic-book creators are generally better known for imagining and illustrating the larger-than-life conflicts of fearsome opponents, not for engaging in them themselves. So it was somewhat unusual to find Neil Gaiman, the best-selling fiction writer and comics author (“Sandman”), in a Wisconsin court on Monday, where he is suing his onetime colleague Todd McFarlane over royalties that Mr. Gaiman says he is owed from Mr. McFarlane’s Spawn comics series.
The Associated Press reported that both Mr. Gaiman and Mr. McFarlane gave testimony in a United States District Court in Madison, in the latest round of a dispute involving characters from Spawn, a series about a murdered C.I.A. agent who becomes a warrior for hell after selling his soul to a demon.
Mr. Gaiman said that a character called Dark Ages Spawn was essentially a copy of Medieval Spawn, which he had created for Spawn issue No. 9 in 1993, and that angel characters called Domina and Tiffany were copies of Angela, who also had first appeared in that issue.
Mr. Gaiman said, ”It looks like the same kind of thing,” after being shown an image from a Dark Ages Spawn comic book. ”It’s a knight-in-armory kind of Spawn.”
Mr. McFarlane said all the Spawn characters share certain features. The writer Brian Holguin, who was also involved with the creation of the Dark Ages Spawn character, testified that the similarities were unintentional.
”We were trying to sell comic books,” Mr. Holguin said, according to The A.P. ”We could have done Italian Renaissance Spawn, but I’m not sure it would have sold as well.”
A jury found in 2002 that Mr. Gaiman was a co-copyright holder for the Medieval Spawn and Angela characters, as well as a third named Cogliostro, and was owed royalties. They have yet to come to an agreement on payment. Lawyers for Mr. Gaiman said the author will donate any money from the case to charity."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/15/when-titans-clash-comic-book-creator-edition/?scp=1&sq=gaiman%20spawn&st=cse
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Razor-thin copyright line; Variety, 6/2/10
Melinda Newman, Variety; Razor-thin copyright line: Approximating temp music for trailers is tricky business:
"How close is too close for comfort?
That's the question many movie trailer composers are asking themselves. With increasing frequency, executives at studios and movie trailer houses are requesting they replicate the temp music in a trailer when the original tunes aren't available or are too expensive.
"As time goes along, they're more and more demanding that we get as close as possible without plagiarizing, and it's gotten dicey," says composer John Beal, who has written music for more than 2,000 trailers.
Scott Ogden, former creative director at trailer house Flyer Entertainment and the newly named producer at Herzog & Co., freely admits, "We bring in composers when we have a piece of music that everyone loves, but we can't license it. We ask them to do an interpretation of it."
Ogden calls it an "interpretation"; others call it "parallel music" -- the one thing no one wants to call it is copyright infringement, and composers worry that the line between imitation and duplication is getting razor thin.
"I have had instances where I've said (to the studio or trailer house), 'It's my advice to you that I think we've gone too close.' If it's gets into a situation that's very tricky, we hire a musicologist," says composer Veigar Margeirsson, who's written trailer music for such movies as "Iron Man," "Transformers" and "Hancock." "I never say we'll just knock it off and hope for the best."
Sometimes, a studio or trailer company pushes too hard. "Several years back, I was doing something orchestral for a trailer, and they decided, 'We love this song by a certain band.' It wasn't a very famous band, but it was a recognizable song," Margeirsson recalls. "They wanted to go so close, at a certain point, I said, 'I can't do this anymore.' They were literally asking me to duplicate note for note what I was supposed to do. I said I have to stop."
Adding to the composer's challenge is that he or she is usually tasked with creating music that has the same tempo as the temp score, although some musicians have found a way around that. "We had a trailer several years ago and everything was hard cut, I think to a Beastie Boys tune," says Jeff Eden Fair, who, with his wife, Starr Parodi, has scored such trailers as "United 93," "V for Vendetta" and "War of the Worlds." "We realized we could get that effect by using a different time signature and make it totally unique and still hit all the marks."
Composers say they frequently get trailers with as many as 20 different music snippets in the two-and-a-half-minute reel. It's their job to compose something new that manages to hit all the high points as the temp music or write the bridge between licensed tracks.
"The most I've ever seen is 30," Beal says. "They say, 'Here's what we feel works best for each of the cuts; we'd like for you to write original pieces of music.'?"
Beal, who has been scoring trailers since the '70s, says it wasn't always this way. He recalls a time when he was handed a trailer with no temp music and told to compose his own new score. That changed 10 or 15 years ago. "There was a shift in testing trailers, and there was more temp music being used during the focus group process," Beal says. "At that point, people became so concerned about the numbers they were getting from the focus group, they didn't want to take a risk on anything original. And when they couldn't license that music, we'd get calls to emulate that music."
Now, Beal says "100% of the time there is a temp score, and 90% of the time I'm asked to get close to it."
When trailer editors aren't hiring composers, they are more frequently turning to libraries, which offer pre-cleared music that is often cheaper than creating scores from scratch or licensing tracks. Most composers either own their own libraries or supply music to one.
Beal says that for smaller films, the scoring trailer budget may be 10% of what it was 20 years ago. On major studio films, fees are as little as half of what they once were, although for blockbusters, the budget still remains high, if not growing.
But there's another reason composers say studios and trailer editors are going more readily to libraries from the start: It's a sure-fire way to avoid what composers call "temp love." "Certain executive have told me they fully believe it's the route they should take," Fair says. "Not because it's creative, but so they don't have to sell music to the movie director twice.""
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118020113.html?categoryid=4051&cs=1
"How close is too close for comfort?
That's the question many movie trailer composers are asking themselves. With increasing frequency, executives at studios and movie trailer houses are requesting they replicate the temp music in a trailer when the original tunes aren't available or are too expensive.
"As time goes along, they're more and more demanding that we get as close as possible without plagiarizing, and it's gotten dicey," says composer John Beal, who has written music for more than 2,000 trailers.
Scott Ogden, former creative director at trailer house Flyer Entertainment and the newly named producer at Herzog & Co., freely admits, "We bring in composers when we have a piece of music that everyone loves, but we can't license it. We ask them to do an interpretation of it."
Ogden calls it an "interpretation"; others call it "parallel music" -- the one thing no one wants to call it is copyright infringement, and composers worry that the line between imitation and duplication is getting razor thin.
"I have had instances where I've said (to the studio or trailer house), 'It's my advice to you that I think we've gone too close.' If it's gets into a situation that's very tricky, we hire a musicologist," says composer Veigar Margeirsson, who's written trailer music for such movies as "Iron Man," "Transformers" and "Hancock." "I never say we'll just knock it off and hope for the best."
Sometimes, a studio or trailer company pushes too hard. "Several years back, I was doing something orchestral for a trailer, and they decided, 'We love this song by a certain band.' It wasn't a very famous band, but it was a recognizable song," Margeirsson recalls. "They wanted to go so close, at a certain point, I said, 'I can't do this anymore.' They were literally asking me to duplicate note for note what I was supposed to do. I said I have to stop."
Adding to the composer's challenge is that he or she is usually tasked with creating music that has the same tempo as the temp score, although some musicians have found a way around that. "We had a trailer several years ago and everything was hard cut, I think to a Beastie Boys tune," says Jeff Eden Fair, who, with his wife, Starr Parodi, has scored such trailers as "United 93," "V for Vendetta" and "War of the Worlds." "We realized we could get that effect by using a different time signature and make it totally unique and still hit all the marks."
Composers say they frequently get trailers with as many as 20 different music snippets in the two-and-a-half-minute reel. It's their job to compose something new that manages to hit all the high points as the temp music or write the bridge between licensed tracks.
"The most I've ever seen is 30," Beal says. "They say, 'Here's what we feel works best for each of the cuts; we'd like for you to write original pieces of music.'?"
Beal, who has been scoring trailers since the '70s, says it wasn't always this way. He recalls a time when he was handed a trailer with no temp music and told to compose his own new score. That changed 10 or 15 years ago. "There was a shift in testing trailers, and there was more temp music being used during the focus group process," Beal says. "At that point, people became so concerned about the numbers they were getting from the focus group, they didn't want to take a risk on anything original. And when they couldn't license that music, we'd get calls to emulate that music."
Now, Beal says "100% of the time there is a temp score, and 90% of the time I'm asked to get close to it."
When trailer editors aren't hiring composers, they are more frequently turning to libraries, which offer pre-cleared music that is often cheaper than creating scores from scratch or licensing tracks. Most composers either own their own libraries or supply music to one.
Beal says that for smaller films, the scoring trailer budget may be 10% of what it was 20 years ago. On major studio films, fees are as little as half of what they once were, although for blockbusters, the budget still remains high, if not growing.
But there's another reason composers say studios and trailer editors are going more readily to libraries from the start: It's a sure-fire way to avoid what composers call "temp love." "Certain executive have told me they fully believe it's the route they should take," Fair says. "Not because it's creative, but so they don't have to sell music to the movie director twice.""
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118020113.html?categoryid=4051&cs=1
Friday, June 11, 2010
Senators Losing Patience With U.S. Policy on China; New York Times, 6/11/10
Sewell Chan, New York Times; Senators Losing Patience With U.S. Policy on China:
"Leading senators frustrated by a lack of progress by the Obama administration signaled on Thursday that they were willing to consider retaliatory measures to address China’s policies on trade, currency and intellectual property.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing, the members suggested that President Obama’s strategy of quiet diplomacy was producing limited results.
In testimony to the panel, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner could point to only a few accomplishments from the annual bilateral talks he attended in Beijing last month with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As both economies struggle to recover from the recession, longstanding complaints have gotten louder that China gives unfair support to its export-oriented manufacturers, fails to abide by World Trade Organization agreements, permits the theft of American intellectual property and protects its domestic industries from competition from abroad...
“We do not have a strategic, coordinated United States economic policy, that I can determine, with respect to China,” Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the committee, told him.
Mr. Baucus said he was particularly concerned about failure to enforce intellectual property rules. With the goal of promoting “indigenous innovation,” China has set product standards and procurement preferences that are a disadvantage to American workers, companies and technology, many economists believe. Mr. Geithner said some progress on those areas had come out of the bilateral talks, known officially as the United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/business/11geithner.html?scp=1&sq=china%20geithner&st=cse
"Leading senators frustrated by a lack of progress by the Obama administration signaled on Thursday that they were willing to consider retaliatory measures to address China’s policies on trade, currency and intellectual property.
At a Senate Finance Committee hearing, the members suggested that President Obama’s strategy of quiet diplomacy was producing limited results.
In testimony to the panel, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner could point to only a few accomplishments from the annual bilateral talks he attended in Beijing last month with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
As both economies struggle to recover from the recession, longstanding complaints have gotten louder that China gives unfair support to its export-oriented manufacturers, fails to abide by World Trade Organization agreements, permits the theft of American intellectual property and protects its domestic industries from competition from abroad...
“We do not have a strategic, coordinated United States economic policy, that I can determine, with respect to China,” Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the committee, told him.
Mr. Baucus said he was particularly concerned about failure to enforce intellectual property rules. With the goal of promoting “indigenous innovation,” China has set product standards and procurement preferences that are a disadvantage to American workers, companies and technology, many economists believe. Mr. Geithner said some progress on those areas had come out of the bilateral talks, known officially as the United States-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/business/11geithner.html?scp=1&sq=china%20geithner&st=cse
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