Category: Issues and Actions

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Internet Privacy & Web Reputations

The NY Times Sunday Magazine has a thought provoking article by Jeffrey Rosen entitled “The Web Means The End Of Forgetting”. It’s filled with lots of good points quite relevant to the film biz in this time of audience aggregation and automized taste curation.

Rosen points out:

The truth is we can’t possibly control what others say or know or think about us in a world of Facebook and Google, nor can we realistically demand that others give us the deference and respect to which we think we’re entitled. On the Internet, it turns out, we’re not entitled to demand any particular respect at all, and if others don’t have the empathy necessary to forgive our missteps, or the attention spans necessary to judge us in context, there’s nothing we can do about it.

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Issues and Actions

Sell Your Film As Art

The NY Times has an intriguing article on the owners of the copyright of “Kiss Of The Spider Woman” who have packaged the film, it’s rights, and various other support materials, and have hopes netting a windfall.

I have always wondered why more filmmakers don’t go the Matthew Barney route and focus first on selling to “collections” as opposed to audiences. The Spider Woman’s team’s approach of going at long after the initial run and sales cycle is another route altogether. As library values decline faster and faster, perhaps all that will be left in the way of hope for some pension-esque fund will be those wealthy patrons and their butterfly collections.

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Issues and Actions

G’head, PROVE I Don’t Have The Right To Copy Your Work!

As Variety has reported:

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton’s decision against Viacom and in favor of Google and YouTube placed the onus on copyright holders to identify specific instances of infringement and then inform websites to remove the pirated content. If the sites do so promptly, they are shielded from liability.

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2nd Film Future Commodity Market Approved

But as Variety has reported, it looks like Congress is going to stop it, and the film business will remain like onions — unable to leverage the future to mitigate risk. We need to find ways to create a secondary market for film investment, so it is far more liquid than it is today.

Cantor Exchange president Richard Jaycobs said in light of the bill reported out by the conferees on Friday, “Cantor is continuing to assess its options for providing risk management and financing tools to the motion picture industry.”

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Issues and Actions

Boxoffice futures market gets green light

The Hollywood Reporter gives a good industry-centric overview of the film futures issue.  Change is going to come.

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Issues and Actions

What’s The Legality Of Re-blogging?

The LA Times cautions you to “Reblog this at your own legal risk“.

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Issues and Actions

Help Keep NJ’s Film Tax Credit

I received the following letter from Joseph Guerriero of Tax Credits LLC. Film tax credits are job stimuli. As tough times as these are, it is foolish for any state to dis-incentivize films, and all the money they bring, from shooting in their state.

Follow Joseph’s advice, and write to the representatives and urge it’s passage.

Senator Paul A. Sarlo, Chairman of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, has called a special public Committee hearing to discuss the future of New Jersey’s Film and Digital Media Tax Credit Program. The Hearing will take place on Wednesday, June 9th, from 11:00 am – 1:00 pm at NBC/Universal’s “Mercy” Studio,10 Enterprise Avenue North in Secaucus (just off Meadowlands Parkway).

Introduced last November, the Garden State Film and Digital Media Jobs Act,(Senate, No.3002), which was co-sponsored by Senators Paul Sarlo and Thomas Kean Jr, seeks to enhance the current tax credit program for filmmakers…to attract even more films to the state, stimulate local business and create more jobs. Unfortunately, the new administration has proposed suspending the current program altogether for Fiscal Year 2011 (which begins on July 1, 2010).

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