Author Archives: Dave

Author, blogger, thinker, developer, and all-around digital creative. Applied theatre professional. Mac enthusiast. Coffee fanatic.

Not-So Intellectual Propriety

Is it me, or does the ferocity with which the battle to protect intellectual property make the entire situation…well, less than intellectual?

This story broke over the weekend. In essence, someone in a meeting in L.A. heard some commotion, looked out of a window, and saw what was apparently a scene from Transformers 3 being filmed. He shot a quick video with his phone, and uploaded it to YouTube. The motion picture studio complained of copyright violation, and pressured YouTube to subsequently take down the video.

So, by this logic, filming the people filming the movie is now a copyright violation? Explain this to me, please?

Copyright law exists (in Dave language) to prevent unauthorized copies of a work being made. When I copyright a project, that is to prevent someone from making copies and distributing them without my permission, or from claiming it as their own. The second is always the primary motivator for me: I register my work for either copyright protection, or under a Creative Commons license, in order to prevent someone from claiming my work as their own. As recent attempts to lock down every conceivable form of media imaginable in insanely counter-productive ways by groups such as the RIAA, MPAA, and many book publishers has shown us of late, however, this can be taken to such an extreme that lawful users have difficulty legally obtaining copies of the work. 

A slightly grey area exists in the so-called doctrine of fair use, which permits certain uses of copyrighted material without permission, but not for profit, such as in the case of educators using material for instructional examples in their classrooms. When you use someone’s material as support in an argument in an academic paper, for example, you are using it under fair use, citing the source on your bibliography page.

Here’s the issue: I don’t understand how one could claim that the guy filming the filming of this movie scene was attempting to steal part of the plot from the Transformers 3 screenplay (after all, he apparently identified it as exactly that, thus effectively citing the source). In fact, I see nothing here that would indicate that he was even distributing a part of the movie without permission. He was making a brief, obviously amateur video of a movie crew shooting part of a film on a public street. How do you copyright the act of creating part of a creative work in public? That could easily have been a different movie, and the segment he posted to YouTube could well end up on the cutting room floor. By the same logic, if I encountered a famous novelist in a coffee shop writing his next great work, and snapped a quick picture with my phone for Twitter, could I then be sued for copyright violation if a few words on his laptop screen happened to end up in the photo?

Paranoia is a sad thing. We live in an age of YouTube, Flickr, and multiple other ways in which video and photos of average individuals walking through public areas may end up on the Internet. We are filmed at intersections by traffic cameras frequently. We may end up in the background of someone’s vacation photo. If anything, privacy issues may be at stake. Perhaps the film crew could object to their images being uploaded without their consent, but on the grounds of privacy, not copyright. Even on privacy grounds, I doubt this would be a viable claim. The only way to ensure you will not end up on the Internet today is to not leave your home.

I’ve mused here before that the only way to be true to one’s art may be to not make a living creating said art. All too often, corporations are permitted to own the art, or at least it’s production channels, in order for the artist to make any sort of income from their work. When corporations fear that their precious profits may be lost, this sort of over-reaction becomes rampant, making the world a smaller place for everyone. In fact, clips such as these could well result in better box office performance, as some will go to the movie in order to see if the scene they watched on YouTube is in the final product.

So, hold on. I’m about to do something crazy:

There. I’ve filmed myself writing. Now I can sue myself for copyright violation, right? I’ve infringed on my own intellectual property!!

Oh, wait. I suppose that wouldn’t make much sense.

Would it?

Some Link Love To Help My Friend

Since I began unobtrusive lucidity almost five years ago (wow, has it been that long?), I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve suggested that my readers give money to a cause, much less to a person. That’s just not the reason I have this space. However, there are occasional exceptions.

My friend, Cris, is in need of a critical back surgery very soon. Her condition risks serious complications, and the surgery is scheduled for the very near future. However, our health insurance system being as ludicrous as it is in the U.S., she must find some way to raise most of the six-figure cost of the surgery herself, as her insurance will not cover what may save her life (after all, only the wealthy deserve to be healthy here, right?).

She describes the procedure, her history, and provides a way to donate via PayPal at her site, which you can find here (for any of my readers who may ascribe to a different faith, I’ll let you know up front that this is an overtly Christian site). If you have some extra money and could assist my friend in affording what may literally be a life-saving surgery for her, I would be most appreciative. If you cannot, your prayers and thoughts will be most appreciated, as well.

You can also email Cris directly for more information if you’d like.

Thanks!

Flashpoints

I once read a quote by one of my favorite playwrights, Beth Henley. She said that, to get a script moving, you take two characters, and you get them into an argument.

A couple of months ago, I was working on a script that had stalled. So, I took Henley’s advice. I put the protagonist and her sister into a fight that had been a long time brewing, and suddenly the protagonist found her voice for the first time. I could hear her in my head exactly the way she would sound! That’s one of those events that a writer hopes will happen in every project.

There’s something about a dramatic exchange motivated by frustration and hurt that removes the inhibitions we subject ourselves to under normative societal expectations, and permits what’s in our souls to pour out…the good, the bad, and the ugly, all of which would likely have been otherwise self-censored. Two people discover exactly what is on the other’s mind, and the elephant in the room is abruptly revealed in those “heated exchanges.” In the script of my life, I hate it when it comes to that point. Karen and I have experienced a few of these “heated exchanges” in our marriage. None of them have been pleasant, and, at least at first, were the result of small things that could have been talked out calmly instead. In more recent times, however, I’ve found these arguments to be catalysts. When you place two lives together, they move on a continuum. Ideally, they move forward together, and make progress. Sometimes, like my script, they stall. I’ve found a profound truth, however, in the fact that you never stay still on a continuum for very long. You either regain momentum, or begin to slide backward.

Karen and I had two ground-breaking discussions recently that have been incredibly healthy for our marriage. They were the result, at least in part, of an argument that occurred because a handful of issues had overheated. Now, ideally, those issues would have been handled individually before they reached that point. Not as dramatic, and it doesn’t make for nearly as good a script, but it’s better for my blood pressure when I’m the one arguing. This recent argument became a catalyst that propelled us forward, restoring momentum when we had began to drift backward.

I suppose that, when two people stall out, you can take them and put them into an argument…

I’m thinking of this tonight as I listen with a heavy heart to the sounds coming through the wall of our apartment. As well-constructed as our building is, you cannot help but hear when someone yells at a certain volume. That particular argument was punctuated by “blah blah blah” and “f***k you.” Not pleasant to hear. I’m aching for the people (I presume a couple) involved. I’m hoping that this serves as a catalyst to restore forward momentum for them, so that they won’t digress backward.

When an actor is preparing a script, two of the first questions that they ask themselves are: what does the character want, and what is keeping him from getting it? That is the motivation for our theatre of life, as well. These moments of friction occur because we are experiencing frustration at an inability to get what we feel we (sometimes desperately) need. Psychology tells us that behaviors are a way of getting what we want, or obtaining a desired result. Theatre calls this conflict, and it is the essence of a story. Without conflict, the plot doesn’t move. How unfortunate that, no matter how hard we endeavor to make it otherwise, we don’t seem to experience the positive until we’ve waded through the negative. As Buechner would have said, we have to experience the tragedy before the comedy, and both before the fairy tale.

I hope that your conflicts…these unfortunate flashpoints that ignite between us and those we love… always move you toward a more positive place.

And now, perhaps I should re-visit that script from a few months ago…

Photo Attribution: 

Ocean View

I’ve groaned a lot about Spring in the Southeast lately. When I lived in the Northeastern U.S., winter was the season I dreaded most. I was excited to move south, because I knew that I would no longer have to dread the days on end with only the most obscure sunlight, endless slush and white landscapes, and dreary grey skies. I was right, of course. Those experiences are all but extinct here. What I didn’t expect was that winter would be replaced by spring as my most hated season, because I have never experienced allergies of this magnitude. The first time I saw my car yellow with pollen, I couldn’t fathom what was happening.

Such is life, right?

I remember my introduction to Florida well. While I didn’t grow up in a coastal area, the beach seduced me with its beauty on my first visit, and I’ve longed for it ever since. That evening, only slightly tired after a relatively normal travel day, I stood with a friend looking out off of the parking deck of the airport and was stunned by what I saw. Later, driving over the water, I nearly lost my breath. The following day, walking the white sand of Clearwater Beach and watching the sunset over the Gulf at the end of the day, I was so hopelessly in love with that place.

I’ve never been back to Florida, despite every intention to return. As summer nears, and I watch the change in the way the evening light falls over the streets and hills of Virginia, I find myself wishing desperately that I was back in Tampa. I think, also, that the place, as much as I loved the area, is somewhat metaphorical for where I otherwise find myself positioned in life; that is, somewhere I have tasted and in which I long to exist, yet find so incredibly elusive at the moment.

Career goals play into that discontent. I’ve lived the 9-5 grind, and I am so, so over that now. I no longer define my success by moving into the corner office (amazing how it doesn’t matter after you’ve achieved it). I’ve made moves forward: I continue to experience the addictive rush of theatrical magic when the lights warm the stage, and, while I haven’t sold the “Great American Novel,” I am not un-published for the last few years, either. Yet, I am longing to reach a place in life that I feel I should already have attained given the fact that I’m only a few years south of 40, and feel as though I haven’t been paying nearly enough attention to dreams and wishes along the journey.

Blah on professional wardrobes and corner offices, anyway.

I’ve tasted the ocean air with a scandalous passion, and yet have never been able to hold onto it for the long term. I’m just too stubborn, though, to give up hope, because I know that I will eventually wake up every morning to that metaphorical sand and ocean (hopefully with an identical geographical experience). Yet, I don’t want to call it achievement, because that makes everything, again, about success and material gain, which I’ve discovered to be worthless in and of themselves. This is about doing what I’ve realized is in my DNA, the piece of my soul I’ve discovered requires feeding to remain in possession of any sort of vitality…a “something greater” to which success must be attached if it is to have any significance.  I’m experiencing that in fleeting moments now, but am forcing myself to remain confident that the experience will be consistent in the future.

Until then, I cope with spring. Feel free to send me postcards of coastal sunsets. One day, I’ll be happy to return the favor when needed.