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Up Selling Selling Out

Bono made a spot of noise in a recent New York Times op-ed piece where he advocated stricter intellectual property controls over digital media. Much of the immediate reaction branded him as a new Lars Ulrich, the Metallica drummer who brought suit against Napster for promoting the illegal downloading of music, but Krist Novoselic, the bassist from Nirvana, wrote a response in the Seattle Weekly supporting Bono’s points.

Essentially, Bono and Novoselic argue that piracy and/or the inability to realize high return on content hamper artistic expression rather than promote it because creators do not earn enough money to be able to focus on their work or invest in producing a higher quality product. This is similar to an argument put forth on a recent WNYC Soundcheck (“Smackdown: Music in Commercials”) where Mark Caro and Eric Deggans debated the use of music in advertising.

One side of the argument would claim that licensing music for advertising is the dreaded “selling out” and detracts from the artistry of the music. The other side claims music has always been a commercial venture, artists need to make money to live and cannot subsist on record sales, and licensed songs expose the music to people who may not have heard it otherwise. Of course, this last point for increased exposure is also one those advocating looser intellectual property controls use.

This is one of those unending circular arguments that will likely never achieve resolution — there are too many emotional and monetary issues wrapped up in it for anybody to concede anything. That’s all fine and good for scholarly debates, but as archivists well know, trying to muck through these issues in real world scenarios is not all that pleasant. We typically find ourselves stuck in the middle of that mire, pulled by our responsibility to provide access to as many people as possible and our responsibility to legal and ethical concerns. Anyone who has ever done a rights assessment of an audiovisual work — especially one created pre-Internet distribution — quickly begins to wish there were no copyright laws. But that review is a necessary component of enabling access. The problem is not that copyright exists, but rather that as currently written the laws are too arcane for the laity to interpret and follow.

As you can see from my own circular spin on the topic, it’s not an issue to be solved in this forum. Perhaps, as with quicksand, the solution is to relax and float to the top rather than struggle and sink further. In other words, there may be ways to use the problems we encounter with copyright to promote the difficulties archives run into. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard or read, “Hey, why isn’t that on DVD/CD/Etc. yet?” with the suggestion being that whoever owns the material is stupid, lazy, and/or greedy for not releasing the work for consumption by others. Excluding Orphan works, the reasons are often related to issues of cost, a large chunk of which is typically the price of obtaining copyright clearances for all relevant parties. It took decades for Killer of Sheep, one of the great American films, to be commercially released mainly because of the cost of music licensing. And famously, the great Civil Rights documentary Eyes on the Prize has been in and out of limbo for years because the original licensing deals ended and have not been able to be fully renewed. The problem isn’t always that one single clearance is too expensive; multiple smaller licenses will add up or it can be difficult to even figure out who or where the rights holder is.

As we have seen with Congress addressing the issue of Orphans, it takes years of advocacy and work to effect meaningful change in the law. If we want change rather than evasion or stagnation we need to make it a point of discussion with the powers that be as well as the general public. Getting people to admit there is a problem is the first step to recovery. So next time your cousin starts complaining about how The Six Million Dollar Man isn’t available on DVD, explain how much both would cost in today’s dollars (Steve Austin’s upgrades and the home video licensing) and create some wider exposure for our work.

— Joshua Ranger

AVPS Presenting At ALA Midwinter 2010

Chris Lachttps://www.weareavp.com/team/chris-lacinak/inak will be addressing the Digital Conversion Interest Group at the American Library Association’s 2010 Midwinter Meeting in Boston this Saturday. Chris will speak on issues around digital video preservation, including reformatting and accessioning born digital video.

ALA Midwinter 2010 will take place on January 15-19, 2010 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center near Downtown Boston. The Midwinter Meetings are primarily a business meeting for the Association, but there are also a number of Interest Groups, Discussion Groups, and Forums that meet concurrently as well some extra-session educational opportunities. It’s a great opportunity to start getting involved and to meet colleagues, as well as the chance to visit a great city. Catch a flick at The Brattle or Harvard Film Archive while you’re at it. We look forward to seeing you there!

But Is It Art?

I caught this little BBC news story (“The cassette comes back as art”) the other day via the Social A/V Archivist’s blog. I clicked through on the link because I thought it might be about the use of tape as an art material. Turns out it was a trend piece on the renaissance of the audiocassette in England, specifically as a medium for sound art. (Silly me for inferring something beyond the controlled vocabulary of “cassette” in the title.)

I was interested in my imagined topic because during some gallery visits this fall I noticed that there was typically at least one piece which included a pile of magnetic tape as one of the materials. 1/4″ tape hanging from a tree. 1/2″ tape strewn on a platform with eggshells mixed in. Cassettes with tape that had been detached from the hub and was spooling on the floor as playing from open faced Walkmans.

I understood some of what they were trying to express through the selection of magnetic tape as material, but it also made me feel sad for the way tape is thought of and treated. Almost every day when I’m walking through the city I see a busted open VHS or audiocassette, its innards sprawling and knotted across the sidewalk. I’ve often wondered if film was ever treated this way, if at some point in mid-century New York film was just such a ubiquitous commodity that people threw it on the street to blow around in the bay winds until it clung to a parking meter or against someone’s leg.

Certainly there has been an overwhelming amount of cultural detritus published on tape, but even the most dog-eared, broken-binding, ripped-cover copy of Let’s Go: France 1988 is placed lovingly on one’s stoop for someone else to pick up and read. Maybe the issue isn’t one of easy disposal of unworthy content, but rather an issue of disrespect for a certain format type. I’ve often wondered if magnetic tape suffers less love because it has no visually noticeable content like film or paper to draw us in. Do some of these resultant attitudes towards tape – that it’s cheap, plastic, replaceable, low quality – only apply to our old UB40 cassette collection, or might it creep into our general attitude towards magnetic media and subconsciously affect how we treat even materials we’re interested in maintaining? And what might this mean for digital files, which we have even less tangible connection to? And c’mon really, eggshells? What does that juxtaposition even have to do with anything?

— Joshua Ranger

Testing One’s Resolve

Most people I speak to who are beyond their 10 year high school reunion and use Facebook have at least one story about reconnecting with someone from their school years. Typically someone “really attractive” who they didn’t date but “always had a thing with.” I must have been hanging out with the wrong group of people, because the only cohorts that contact me are the ones who were really into the Anarchist’s Cookbook, or who knew the schedule for when a new batch of records were put on the shelves at Goodwill, or who were always busy talking about Dr. Who on newsgroups.

The other day one of these old compatriots started IMing with me. Sorensen (his last name, which is what we all called him by because there were too many other kids with his same first name) lived in the hills, wore an Indiana Jones fedora all the time, and his dad had a field full of 50s and 60s Buicks in various states of disrepair.

“Happy New Year, Josh”

“Happy New Year, Sorensen. How are things back in the ‘Burg?”

“Cold for this area. We actually got snow the other day. Global warming ha!”

“Wasn’t it just in the 60s like two weeks ago?”

“Sure was. I was walking around in a t-shirt! Crazy man, crazy. So you got any New Year’s Resolutions?”

“Sort of but not — I try to set goals to accomplish during the year rather than making some general behavioral change. I’m more likely to stick with a change if it’s embedded in working towards something. Like, I want to qualify for the Boston Marathon this year. That will push me to work harder on my running than just saying I want to run more or something. What about you?”

“Nah, man, I don’t do any of that. It’s just setting yourself up for failure.”

“You mean because nobody sticks with their resolutions for more than a week anyway?”

“No, that’s not it. I’m pretty stubborn when I set my mind to it. Like one year my resolution was to drink less Coke, and I did it, too!”

“I remember that — you drank Pepsi instead and drank about twice as much of it as you did Coke.”

“Well that’s because it wasn’t as good as Coke and I had to drink more to get my fix. Then when the year was up and I could go back to drinking Coke, it just didn’t taste the same anymore. I couldn’t drink either and had to find something else. You see, failure! Because I swore off Coke for a year I lost my love for it. Except for the few years when Jolt was around I’ve had a hole in my life ever since.”

“But wasn’t the point to drink less soda, not to just stop drinking a particular one?”

“Well that’s a stupid question. I would have resolved to drink less soda then, wouldn’t I have? But I didn’t have a problem with that. I might have a Sprite or a Mountain Dew every once in a while, but not too often. The problem was that I was drinking too much Coke.”

“But then you solved that, didn’t you?”

“But at what cost, Josh. At. What. Cost?”

————

Chatting with Sorensen made me consider a few things:
1. I need to spend less time online.
2. There are many interpretations of failure.
3. If personal change is so difficult, how are we supposed to begin to tackle institutional change?

This last is one of the big struggles for archivists in trying to advocate for their collections and for trying to enact necessary change for necessary care. It’s a big job that will not be accomplished in the first week of the new year, or even by the end of the year itself. But steps towards a bigger goal can be achieved in digestible chunks. I take a lot of my resolve from my experience with running. It’s a very mental sport that depends on one’s patience, of being able to take one’s time to build up to different levels of accomplishment. But at the same time, one needs to know when to push and go big, to challenge what one thinks one can do and achieve something beyond one’s comfort zone. You might fail at it, but the beautiful thing is that you wake up the next morning and try again.

So I agree with Sorensen — I don’t care for New Year’s Resolutions. They set you up for failure because a year is too short of a time. We’re in this for the long haul and need to plan for the big investment. It’s a lot of work to do, but I reckon that’s why Sorensen needed all of the soda to keep himself going.

— Joshua Ranger

Instant Classics — Just Add 1s And 0s

Interesting piece by Daniel D’Addario in Newsweek about the non “classics” in the Criterion Collection library (The Curious Case of the Instant Classic), including The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons, Che, and A Christmas Tale. Criterion does rightfully have a lot of cache based on the work they have done and people almost inherently trust their taste. Should we step back and review how they spend that capital, or should we just back off and let them do the things they need to do to earn money that will support their other good work?

I remember when I was growing up of always being dubious of the “Contemporary Classic” label on the VHS sleeve of a new release. It seemed obvious even then that it was more marketing ploy than anything else. But do most people notice the cover, label, publisher, or even title of the movie all that closely? I’m also reminded of the local Blockbuster when I was in college that consistently shelved the Danny DeVito / Joe Piscopo hit Wise Guys under their Classics section merely because the cover looked like it had been colorized from black and white.

But can we really critique Criterion’s selection of newer movies just because they are new? I would much rather watch their release of Carnival of Souls than the roughly contemporary 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, but that doesn’t mean Godard is unworthy.

Actually, I think the real problem here is the eternal confusion over preservation and DVDs, something D’Addario almost touches on but doesn’t state clearly enough, and his confusion over the issue is partly what seems to be fueling his anger over Criterion’s dealings. To state it most simply, a DVD is not preservation. It is the result of preservation work, but it is not the preservation. That is done with the film which is eventually transferred to DVD for a wider viewing pleasure.

Sorry to be preaching to the choir here, but it’s a point of clarification that we need to be making. D’Addario partly seems upset because these “pristine” new works are being released by Criterion when they don’t need to be preserved or restored. But just because they are being released on DVD doesn’t mean they’re getting the same preservation treatment as The War Trilogy. And maybe more importantly, isn’t it better to create and maintain a preservation master while it’s easy rather than having to go through all of the restoration work 60 years down the road?

— Joshua Ranger

Things That Shouldn’t Be Archived #3 — The Year In Review

But then again, it had a good beat and I could dance to it…

— Joshua Ranger

Library Of Congress Releases 2009 National Film Registry

While you were busy comparison shopping between a Kindle and a Nook this past month, paper books were still being published, including Daniel Eagan’s America’s Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. He spoke about his review of the first 500 films to be placed on the National Film Registry on WNYC’s On The Media last week: