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Features: The Hypocrisies of the Writers Guild of America, West |
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Victoria Riskin, President, Writers Guild of America, west, made a statement when her organization came out in support of the Directors Guild of America's position in the CleanFlicks case (Writers Guild of America, West Condemns Lawsuit Targeting Directors). LawMeme notes the numerous hypocrisies evident in the short statement:
We are astounded that a company would target some of our country's most esteemed directors in a misguided effort to claim a right to alter artistic work for commercial exploitation. In the name of corporate profits this company has altered the creative works of writers, directors, performers, cinematographers, editors and all of the crafts that create films. They now are personally targeting these directors to assert a right to continue that exploitation. The Board of Directors of the WGAw has unanimously voted to support the Directors Guild of America and our director colleagues in the effort to protect the work of all artists.
A number of things strike me with regard to this paragraph, but let's start with the implications of "commercial exploitation" and "in the name of corporate profits." What are these writers? Communists? Please, I know we're all upset about Enron and Global Crossing, but have we returned to the days where profit is otherwise known as "filthy lucre"? I don't think that writers are doing their work for free. After all, as Johnson put it, "no man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." So, it is pretty clear that commercial exploitation and writing go way back.
Furthermore, if CleanFlicks and the other companies were annotating and performing their services for free, would that make a difference in the WGAw's position? If not, then the castigation of a heinous profit motive is nothing more than a cheap, rhetorical trick and a hypocritical one at that. [Note to the WGAw: Unless the technology is banned, it will eventually be essentially free. I personally look forward to the day when I can make annotations to motion pictures and provide them to the world gratis.]
Implicit in this statement of support for the DGA is acceptance of a "natural rights" theory of copyright that embraces the "moral rights" of authors. The problem for the Writers Guild, however, is that their position on "moral rights" is rather faulty. Among other things, moral rights are supposed to be inalienable from a work (otherwise they wouldn't be "moral rights") and are in conflict with traditional U.S. copyright. Whenever a writer transfers copyright of a work, they are in many cases, alienating the supposedly inalienable. Works-for-hire are even worse, since the employer holds the copyright upon creation. However, the WGAw hypocritcally tolerates such violations of these supposedly inalienable, "moral rights."
Another thing about "moral rights" is that, traditionally, they have been viewed as perpetual. In other words, just because you're dead and the copyright has expired, doesn't mean the moral rights have terminated. Yet you have numerous examples of WGAw members bastardizing, without authorization, artistic works that are in the public domain. If the WGAw really believed in "moral rights" they would require their members to get authorization from the heirs for adapting works in the public domain if at all possible. But, nooooooo, they keep on making new and crummy versions of Mark Twain's works, although his heirs are readily found. And, more often than not, when members of the WGAw bastardize a work in the public domain, they do so for a base profit motive (for shame).
Finally, as I point out in almost every piece I write on the CleanFlicks case, this isn't about protecting works, it is about "protecting" copies (or reproductions) of works by prohibiting what a citizen can do in the privacy of their own home. We're not talking about a unique painting that is at risk of destruction or alteration. We're talking mass-produced reproductions of audiovisual works that are to be viewed in the citizen's home. In the WGAw's view, the artist gets to do what the government may not: control how an individual experiences ideas and expressions in their own home.
The Writers Guild absolutely supports the rights of consumers to choose films that meet their personal standards for content and depiction. There are thousands of selections available to the public that offer stories and content appropriate for any viewing taste. We urge the customers of CleanFlicks and all consumers to consider the importance of the rights of all artists to see their work shown according to their original vision. The premise of artistic rights was fundamental in the founding of our country and must not be exploited in the name of profit.
I absolutely support the right of the movie studios (who are actually in charge here) to choose venues in which to release their films that meet their standards for showing works according to the studio's original vision. There are thousands of theaters and other locations available to the movie studios that offer the proper viewing control, I urge the studios to use them. However, don't expect to sell copies of your movies to the general public and dictate how they are to be viewed in the privacy of the home. If artists are concerned about how their work is viewed, then they should limit where it can be viewed to those places they can control.
[Note to whiny artists: If you are viewing this essay at anything other than a resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels using Mozilla 1.0 as your browser (using the default theme with the personal and navigation toolbars visible, but not the sidebar, status bar or component bar), then you are not viewing this essay according to my original vision. Please make the appropriate adjustments.]
Whether the artist is a novelist, painter, sculptor, architect, journalist, photographer, dancer or works in any of the creative media we must continue to stand for the right of freedom of expression and the importance of protecting that expression. Do architects get moral rights too? Can they show up at your doorstep and demand that the painters you hired to change your home's color scheme cease and desist? How about photographers? Can Ansel Adam's heirs stop my local framing shop from putting my poster of Moon and Half-Dome in a gilt wood frame because this conflicts with Adam's original vision? The answers are, if the WGAw's position were law, yes and yes.
No one is threatening freedom of expression here, except the egotistical artistic tyrants of the DGA and WGAw.
Previous LawMeme articles on or related to Clean Flicks:
Let a Thousand Edits Bloom
Silly Things Directors Say
DGA Pres to Duchamp: You Scoundrel!
Rewind to the Future
The MST3K Syndrome - Coming Soon to a Home Near You?
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Average Score: 4.54 Votes: 11

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"User's Login" | Login/Create an Account | 7 comments |
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Re: The Hypocrisies of the Writers Guild of America, West (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Tuesday, October 15 @ 17:33:17 EDT | There is much more to be said about the hypocrisy of organizations such as the Writers Guild and the DGA, as for their attitude towards “moral rights” of authors. Before aiming their targets against annotations and re-edited versions, the guilds should first look straightforward in the hollow eyes of the studios that finance their lunch boxes (and indeed, in this context, there are no free lunches). The degree of artistic dictatorship that authors and directors agree to suffer from Hollywood’s studios is far reaching and absolutely less justified than the firm First Amendment expressive and creative protection that annotations and re-editing versions should benefit from. Why not classify such works just as a modernized version of what Joyce did to Homer. So after our derogated Faust decided to sell his soul to the devil, let him not complain about some harmless angles that are just trying to bring it back to the creative community he once proclaimed to belong.
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[ Reply to This ]
Re: The Hypocrisies of the Writers Guild of America, West (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Wednesday, October 16 @ 09:52:55 EDT | Lawmeme's position seems to be that one must distinguish between editing which produces a new, unauthorized, fixed derivative version of the work and places it on the commercial market, and tools which edit the work on the fly but don't create in themselves a new fixed version (though the user may have this option).
If lawmeme doesn't find this distinction important, it should. |
[ Reply to This ]
Re: The Hypocrisies of the Writers Guild of America, West (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Wednesday, October 16 @ 10:49:36 EDT | The big disconnect here, as the prior commenter suggested, is the silliness of talking about moral rights of creative authorship and Hollywood movies. It brings to mind Don Lockwood's statement: "Dignity, always dignity."
Or this Monty Python Sketch. |
[ Reply to This ]
Please cease and desist from your horrid analogies (Score: 0) by Anonymous (Name Withheld on Advice of Counsel) on Tuesday, November 12 @ 10:34:17 EST | No, architects don't get to tell you what color to paint your house because architects don't build or paint houses -- THEY DESIGN THEM. And if you were to alter the architect's design and sign his name to it, that would be morally wrong and possibly illegal.
That's what companies like CleanFlicks do when they change swords to lightsabers (as they did with The Princess Bride).
Another of your worthless analogies is the notion of changing the frame on your Ansel Adams poster. Again -- that's not what's at issue. Photoshop out the moon, or the peak of Half-Dome, then sell the photo to other people, and now we're dealing with an adequate analogy.
Most worthless, of course (or least worthy, depending on how you look at it), is your "note to whiny artists," satirically suggesting how we should arrange our desktop before reading your article.
How about if, instead, I edited the text of your article so that it read as a condemnation of companies like CleanFlicks, and published it with your name on it. I don't imagine you'd have a problem with that.
- Michael Gilvary, member WGAw |
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