Dan Glickman, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, says the MGM v. Grokster case shows how it's "harder and harder to fit an old model into this new distribution system that we've got."
Dan Glickman, a former congressman and a Cabinet member in the Clinton administration, took over as CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America last fall.
Although Glickman didn't initiate the association's lawsuits, which have led to the U.S. Supreme Court's pending decision on the legal merits and ramifications of peer-to-peer file sharing, his brief tenure has coincided with the hearing of what is perhaps the most-watched legal action in the tech community.
It's a case that will set the tone for how digital copyright is managed—legally and in the real-world marketplace—for some time to come.
Glickman, who is making a deliberate effort to talk to more tech folks more frequently, sat down with me for an interview in his Washington, D.C., office Tuesday morning.
What do you think the Supreme Court is going to decide in MGM v. Grokster?
I'm not clairvoyant. My guess is, if I were betting, that we—meaning the MGM et al group—will win a victory. I can't tell you how sweeping the victory will be, nor can I tell you whether the issue ultimately, in part, gets remanded back to the district court for further evidentiary discussions.
The betting around Washington is that it is going to be sent back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Yeah. I think if it's sent back, it will be sent back with an affirmation of the 9th Circuit. It will be sent back with the recognition that conduct which is geared to encourage people to infringe is wrong and illegal, and if it's sent back, it will be sent back with some different legal context in mind.
Is conduct innovation and invention, or is it encouragement of the innovation and invention?
It's clear the conduct is not innovation or invention because we're all in that game, whether we're in the technology business directly or the content business. The conduct I'm referring to is the conduct which actively encourages people to break the copyright law, and that is what we saw in Grokster, where we have a peer-to-peer service that is established, in our judgment, to encourage people to take music and movies without paying for them.
Grokster is set up in a way that avoids "ownership." That's kind of a trend, and if I were you, I'd be worried. Are you?
Well, obviously, we're worried enough to go to court to try to stop this behavior from occurring.
I've got on my desk—you see, 'Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil'—the fact of the matter is that the law is replete with evidence that [if there's] active or constructive knowledge that the law being broken, you can't escape from that, you can't hide from that. You can't say 'I don't know and I don't care.'
So, the vogue in some tech companies to think, 'Oh well, if it's out there on the network, it's off our servers, we don't have to worry about it,' is not one that you'd cotton to?
It's certainly one we don't cotton to when, in fact, the user is encouraged to in fact infringe. This is, of course, a tricky area. I don't know exactly how far the court is going to go, and I'm not an expert lawyer in this situation.
Almost everyone I've spoken to in the past couple of days has talked about how engaged the justices were, and they were struck by the astuteness of their technical questions, that's both tech people as well as people here in Washington.
I sat in on the hearing, and all but Justice Thomas asked serious questions, all the way from somewhat complicated technology questions to more basic questions about the role of copyright in a modern society.
Let's talk about that. My feeling is that the Grokster case is really the thing everyone is waiting for. That after this, there will be some congressional redress or action. There's a feeling that Congress will somehow update or change copyright law, either to protect companies like your members against the 'wink-wink-nudge-nudge' or on the part of technology users to allow them more freedom and to relieve the threat that they feel is hanging over them.
From the larger perspective, we have to recognize that creative juices are largely fed through some form of compensation. That is that while, yeah, some people do create out of the goodness of their heart, it defies the laws of human nature to think that people are going to come up with new ideas—whether it's movies, music, books, software or other inventions just because it's a sweet and wonderful thing to do. That's that side of the coin.
The other side of the coin is that technology is changing so rapidly and consumers' desires for new products are changing so rapidly that it's harder and harder to fit an old model into this new distribution system that we've got.
On the other hand, I went to the Consumer Electronics Show in January, and I saw all this amazing stuff. [The fact that] all these new things had movies—they're running things that we have created—on there shows that it's a little bit like the old song, 'Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage—you can't have one without the other.' It's going to get trickier and trickier to try and figure out how to compensate artists and creators in this new world.
Read it @ Eweek
Wow, I don't think Glickman could have been any more vague or dumb sounding if he had tried to be. ROFL
So, shouldn't MPAA sue SBC Yahoo? I mean they have a billboard down the street saying "Download Music, Movies, and images fast." Why not sue google? They have sites displayed on their Google Adsence and Search Engine. The argument of encouraging people to infringe on copyrights could be used for any ISP, search engine, etc. if the MPAA, RIAA, or some other big company that decided a smaller company or individual is a threat to the big companies control. Another example of why the DMCA does nothing but hurt small companies, and that effects the economy.
" It's going to get trickier and trickier to try and figure out how to compensate artists and creators in this new world."
I bet he is REALLY worried about getting those artists and creators compensated !!!!!!!!
'From the larger perspective, we have to recognize that creative juices are largely fed through some form of compensation.'
This is true. And concerts should be that form of compensation. This would quickly separate the real artists from the plastic, engineered, so-called artists the music industry keeps foisting on us.
And, in regard to movies; P2P traffic in movies is at its highest now. But the movie industry announced record sales. Doesn't seem to fit very well with what these dumbasses are trying to get us to believe eh.
good point,. "We' Know when they say download, it means music, movies etc.., but yet download in itself could also mean downloading picture, attachments, etc.., see my point? :icon_rabb
Originally Posted by trekkeriii
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