creative future – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Why Won't Creative Future's Members Comment About This Hollywood Front Group Smearing A Well Respected Law Professor?

from the a-tragically-rhetorical-question dept

If you look in the dictionary, the word “projection” has many different definitions. I find it particularly amusing that in Merriam Webster’s dictionary, the following two are right next to each other:

This is a story that kind of involves both of those definitions, because it’s all about a front group, created and funded by Hollywood, very much “projecting” its own blame, guilt and responsibility onto one of the most respected and thoughtful copyright law professors. And… almost no one wants to comment on the organization’s shameful tactics. Perhaps some of you might help in my ongoing efforts to get literally any of Creative Future’s members to explain why it still supports the organization after its shameful smear campaign over the past few weeks and months.

Some of you may recall that during the run up to Hollywood trying to get Congress to pass SOPA, a terrible pro-censorship, anti-internet, mysterious Hollywood front group showed up called Creative America to advocate for SOPA. It was a Creative Disaster. While pretending to be a “grassroots” effort by “creatives,” it came out that the organization was actually very much created by Hollywood’s biggest studios:

CBS Corporation, NBC Universal, the Screen Actors Guild, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, the Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Entertainment

The grassroots effort completely collapsed and Creative America received widespread mockery on the internet. In early 2014, the organization brought in new leadership and took on a new name: Creative Future, with the same Hollywood studios behind it, the same bogus “grassroots” rhetoric, but now lead by a former Hollywood studio boss. The board of Creative Future has remained staffed entirely by Hollywood big shots. The most recent filing from the organization shows that its Board of Directors includes: Alan Braverman (Senior VP and General Counsel at Disney), John Rogovin (Exec VP and General Counsel at Warner Bros.), Leah Weil (Senior Exec VP and General Counsel at Sony Pictures), Kimberly Harris (Exec VP of Comcast and General Counsel at NBC Universal), Jean Preweitt (CEO of the Independent Film & Television Alliance), Christa D’Alimonte (Exec VP and General Counsel at Viacom), Carl “Chip” Smith (Exec VP of Public Affairs for 21st Century Fox, at least until earlier this year when Disney took them over). It’s notable that D’Alimonte only joined in April of 2017, at the same time as Michael Fricklas, who was Exec VP & General Counsel at Viacom, left both Viacom and the Creative Future board — more or less confirming that Creative Future is a mouthpiece of the big Hollywood studios, and when one person leaves a studio (as Fricklas did), they’re immediately replaced by a new person from Hollywood.

In other words, Creative Future is pure astroturf, and is 100% about representing the interests of Hollywood’s biggest studios.

Over the last few years, it seems that Creative Future has gotten more and more unhinged in its conspiracy theory pushing. Earlier this year, for example, it attacked the DC think tank R Street, because it had provided a grant to us. Creative Future declared that this somehow proved that R Street was “anti-copyright,” because (it claimed) we are “anti-copyright.” This is wrong on so many levels — in particular, because the R Street grant as specifically for our Working Futures project, and the money from the grant was used to pay authors to write creative science fiction stories. And, I would bet Creative Future’s entire operating budget (of over $3 million) that the contract we gave to those authors (in which they retain the copyright to their stories and are told they can do whatever they want with those stories, including republishing them elsewhere) was a hell of a lot better than the contracts any of the companies on Creative Future’s board signs with its “creatives.”

But we’re something of a sideshow here. The real anger from Creative Future over the past few years has been directed at EFF. For reasons that I cannot comprehend, a few extraordinarily confused Google haters, like to insist that EFF is a Google front group. Creative Future is one of the most vocal about this (see the above definition regarding projection). Creative Future actually is a Hollywood front group. The idea that EFF is a Google front group is crazy. Remember, EFF has regularly criticized Google’s practices, including filing an FTC complaint about Google’s privacy practices and is currently fighting hard against Google concerning how California’s new privacy law will be implemented.

And, for all the talk of claims that Google “funds” EFF, Google gave EFF a grand total of $7,500 in 2018. That’s out of the $15.1 million that EFF brought in, nearly $10 million of which came from individuals (either by themselves or their own personal foundations). In insisting that Google really funds EFF, Creative Future likes to point to various cy pres awards, in which a court forces Google to give money to EFF to atone for some sort of wrong doing. That’s not, in any way, Google choosing to fund EFF. It’s a court punishing Google over its failures, and having it fund EFF and others as punishment. Between Creative Future and EFF one of these organizations is a front group for a set of giant corporate interests, and it ain’t EFF.

But Creative Future has its bogeyman, and so when news came down that EFF had appointed renowned and incredibly well-respected copyright law professor Pam Samuelson to be its new board chairperson, Creative Future went on the attack. It first published a hilariously full of “projection” blog post accusing Samuelson of being “anti-copyright.” It’s not even remotely worth debunking each of the points, other than to note that not a single one of them is accurate. It repeatedly frames reasonable positions taken on copyright as extreme. It takes statements of opinion — including the claim independent artists (you know, the ones not supported by Creative Future’s esteemed board of legacy Hollywood big shots) are put at “some disadvantage” in fighting piracy — as “lying to lawmakers.” What? It also (perhaps no surprise) claims that Samuelson’s reasonable arguments regarding the copyrigtability of APIs in the Oracle/Google fight proves she’s anti-copyright.

That last one is particularly stupid, given that Samuelson has been among the most knowledgeable experts on questions regarding the copyright of interfaces since before Google existed, and the idea that siding with Google in the Google/Oracle case is “anti-copyright” suggests a near total lack of understanding on the topic.

There’s a lot more in there, but nearly all of it is projection a la the top definition that I quoted at the top of this article. Creative Future is a front group. Creative Future regularly lies. Creative Future always defends Hollywood’s biggest studios, and not the interests of independent artists.

In response to this fact-free smearing of such a respected professor, Microsoft (who no one would ever claim is “anti-copyright”) told Creative Future to remove its name from Creative Future’s list of “members.” Microsoft has chosen not to comment publicly on this issue, but two separate sources confirmed to us that the decision to leave Creative Future was 100% in response to the smearing of Prof. Samuelson, which people at Microsoft believed to be beyond any reasonable standard of decorum, even if the company still supports Creative Future’s mission. Most organizations might stay quiet when receiving a rebuke like that, but Creative Future instead tried to brand Microsoft as anti-copyright, because apparently facts are completely optional in the delusional world of Hollywood.

Creative Future then decided to run a second article smearing Samuelson, literally blaming her for Microsoft deciding to disassociate itself with the organization:

We?re also unhappy because she asked Microsoft why their logo was on CreativeFuture?s website. In response, Microsoft emailed us asking us to remove their logo. Of course, we did so.

This statement is somewhat telling. For all of Creative Future’s attempts to describe the hundreds of organizations on its website as “members,” it seems quite clear that most of them are not “dues paying” members. They just have their logo on the website.

With that in mind, I began to wonder what were some of the other organizations on that same page of logos, and what they felt about their name being associated with flat out lies being used to smear one of the most respected law professors in the world. There are hundreds of logos on the page. Over the past few weeks I’ve contacted somewhere in the neighborhood of fifty of those members to ask for any comment on the situation. Below are all their comments.

…

Ha ha, just kidding. Not a single organization was willing to comment on the record. The vast majority completely ignored my request. A few sent back generic “no comments.” One said the situation was “complicated.” Oh really? The most startling to me, however, were the organizations on the list whose focuses are entirely about promoting women’s voices, and fighting back against stereotypes about women. I figured, at the very least, those organizations — including Women in Film, Women Make Movies and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media — would at least have something to say about an organization put together by Hollywood’s biggest studios smearing such a respected female law professor.

But, nope. None of them wished to comment — even after it was pointed out that Microsoft had left Creative Future over this mess.

Other organizations that I thought might have a bit of a spine, but who refused to comment: Alamo Draft House (I will find other places to watch movies, thanks), the American Film Institute, Comscore, Crackle (do they still even exist?), IMAX, the Jim Henson Company, Legion M, Miramax (you’d think, post Harvey Weinstein, they’d be more open to recognizing issues, but nope), National Hispanic Media Coalition (this one’s especially disappointing, as they’ve been a staunch ally on net neutrality, and even posted a guest post on Techdirt earlier this year), PodcastOne, the Tribeca Film Institute, and many, many more.

And, of course, none of the giant Hollywood studios, which set up Creative Future and hide behind its “edgy” attacks on people, wanted to comment either. I wonder why, Disney, ComcastUniversal, Viacom, Sony, and Warner Bros., might want to ignore the fact that an organization that they set up and control, is out there smearing respected law professors? Actually, I don’t wonder at all.

Anyway, I recommend that people scan Creative Future’s big list of “logos” and see if you recognize any. Feel free to ask them (politely, of course) why they’re willing to have their name associated with an organization smearing such a well-respected professor with outright lies?

In the end, though, this all comes down to pure projection — and not the one that involves a screen. Creative Future is a front group for big businesses, pretending to be a “grassroots” group for creatives. As such, it can’t even imagine that there really are legitimate organizations like EFF that are actually focused on protecting individual rights and are actually supported by individual members. And thus, they feel the need to project Creative Future’s own sins upon such organizations. It also can’t imagine that someone like Prof. Samuelson, with her decades of clear, careful, nuanced, and thoughtful writing and advocacy on better copyright law (i.e., copyright law that protects everyone’s rights, not just big Hollywood studios, and includes in that the public’s rights), could possibly come by her positions honestly.

This whole episode has been revealing. Not about Prof. Samuelson or EFF. But it’s said an awful lot about the type of people who run the major Hollywood studios. Alan Braverman, John Rogovin, Leah Weil, Kimberly Harris, Jean Prewitt, Christa D’Alimonte and Chip Smith: this cowardly attack is on you. If you’d like to actually provide a real comment on this nonsense you’ve helped create, you know how to reach me.

Filed Under: alan braverman, chip smith, christa d'alimonte, hollywood, jean preweitt, john rogovin, lies, pam samuelson, projection, smear campaign
Companies: cbs, comcast, creative future, disney, eff, google, microsoft, nbc universal, sony pictures entertainment, viacom, warner bros.

Why Is Hollywood Pushing A Totally Bogus Push Poll Trying To Undermine The Internet?

from the questions,-questions dept

If you’ve spent time on Facebook lately, you may have come across the following advertisement:

The ad is from “CreativeFuture”, an MPAA front group that pretends to be representing the interests of “artists” but miraculously only seems to promote the extreme viewpoints of the giant Hollywood studios (imagine that). The group is often the go to quote for the copyright extremist position — and has a history of basically blaming technology for Hollywood’s own failures to adapt.

Not surprisingly, then, that it’s now running this highly unscientific “survey” with a bunch of ridiculous leading questions, to try to argue that internet companies aren’t doing enough and that Congress should destroy the laws that protect the open internet. You can check out the survey yourself, but let’s dig into the questions and just how leading and/or silly they are.

It starts off with the following preamble:

In recent months, there has been rapidly growing concern in Washington, in the press, and among members of the public over the lack of responsibility shown by the major internet platforms (including Google and Facebook) toward potentially illegal activity taking place on their services.

From sex trafficking to foreign influence on our elections, from privacy to piracy, it has become increasingly clear that more needs to be done ? by the internet platforms themselves, and possibly by the U.S. government ? to ensure platform responsibility.

Note the use of “sex trafficking.” For the most part, Hollywood has been trying to hide the fact that it’s been one of the biggest supporters of SESTA, the fake law that pretends its targeting sex traffickers, but is really targeting the internet. It’s kind of rich for an industry that includes Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen and Roman Polanski among its biggest “names” to be complaining about sex trafficking.

From here on it, I’ll just post the text instead of screenshots, but I’ll include the above so you can see what it looks like in case it magically disappears after this post goes live.

1. There is growing evidence that the major internet platforms are being used for purposes that may violate U.S. laws. Should the major internet platforms take responsibility for these uses of their services?

* Yes * No

That’s a broad and incredibly leading (and misleading) question. Lots of tools are used to violate US laws. This includes cars and telephones. But we don’t call for Ford to take responsibility for the fact that people speed, or for AT&T to take responsibility for the fact that someone phones in a bomb threat. That’s not how it works. But, of course, if you don’t know any of that and just think “oh, bad stuff is happening, of course someone should take responsibility” gullible people are going to vote “yes.” You could just as easily rephrase the question as “Bad people sometimes use the internet too. Should that be the fault of Google and Facebook that they don’t magically make bad people good?” Such a question would be equally as meaningful.

2. Recently, the major internet platforms opposed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) because they want to avoid responsibility or legal liability for such uses of their services. Do you believe that the major internet platforms need to do more to stop sex trafficking on their services?

* Yes * No

First of all, this isn’t entirely accurate. As we’ve discussed, the Internet Association and especially Facebook have been supportive of SESTA. And the reason that other (smaller) platforms have opposed SESTA is not because “they want to avoid responsibility or legal liability,” but because they know why that’s a really dangerous plan that will create lots of problems unrelated to sex trafficking while actually making the problem of sex trafficking worse. As we’ve discussed at great length — and which the team at Creative Futures would admit if they had an intellectually honest bone in their bodies — the problem with SESTA is that it creates a moderator’s dilemma. It will lead some sites to stop moderating entirely to avoid the “knowledge” standard in the bill. And it will cause others to censor with wild abandon to try to avoid any and all liability, no matter how ridiculous. Of course, coming from Hollywood — an industry famous for sending tons of bogus DMCA takedowns — widespread censorship of legitimate content apparently isn’t a big deal. Hollywood should be fighting for the First Amendment, not shitting all over it.

3. The major internet platforms benefit greatly from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998 and the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, two 20-year-old laws that were intended to give the then-fledgling internet the opportunity to grow. Today, the major global internet platforms ? companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter ? use these laws to avoid taking responsibility for the content they deliver to consumers or help them find, and from which they make immense profits. Given the tremendous growth of the internet in the last 20 years, do you believe it is time to reconsider the DMCA and the CDA?

Hilarious. Remember, the DMCA was pushed for by Hollywood back in the 1990s. They even went so far as to route around Congress (who refused to give them the DMCA) and get it into a trade agreement in Geneva, forcing Congress to pass the DMCA to “comply with our international obligations.” For Hollywood to now whine about the DMCA that they pushed so hard for is hilarious. Separately, the “reason” given in this question about why Congress passed both the DMCA and CDA 230 is not at all accurate. Hollywood engaging in historical revisionism? What a surprise! The reason for both laws was not to let the fledgling internet grow. It was to properly place liability on those actually breaking the law. Yes, growing the internet was cited in the debate for both, but because anyone with common sense could see that falsely putting liability on websites for actions of users would be a disaster for the internet — whether its in its early days or end-times.

4. Do you believe that services like Facebook, Google, and Twitter should take greater responsibility for the use of their platforms to promote false and misleading news articles?

Does Hollywood really want to call out others for “promoting false and misleading” information? Does no one in Hollywood know anything about Hollywood’s own history of propaganda and fake news? Either way, once again, what CreativeFuture is pushing here is misleading and ridiculous. The people creating fake news are responsible for creating fake news. Making a tool that they use “responsible” for it would be like making the guy who built the printing press responsible for fake news propaganda published in newspapers. That’s not how it works.

5. Do you believe that services like Facebook, Google, and Twitter should take greater responsibility to ensure that foreign agents cannot use their platforms for political advertising or influence?

Great. Now Hollywood is trying to argue that Google and Facebook should block foreigners from using its platforms. Lovely. As we pointed out when the Mueller indictment of Russian trolls came out, they went to incredible lengths to hide the fact that they were Russian. People looking to abuse the system will always figure out ways around blocks — and it’s not like Google and Facebook and others haven’t been pressured already to do more, just in the court of public opinion.

6. Do you believe that services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others should take greater responsibility for protecting the privacy of their users?

This one’s a layup. Who’s actually going to say no to this? Everyone’s going to say yes, but no one will discuss the details or what it means. Besides, is Hollywood really positioning itself as the bastion of protecting privacy? The same Hollywood that couldn’t even protect Sony Pictures’ emails from leaking all over the internet? And the same Hollywood where Harvey Weinstein was famous for running an army of spies to go after critics, and leaking personal information about them to the press? That same Hollywood?

7. Do you believe that services like Google, Facebook and Twitter should take greater responsibility for the use of their platforms to facilitate the illegal distribution of creative copyrighted movies, television shows, music, photography, and books?

What does “greater responsibility” even mean in this context? All of those sites have spent many, many, many millions of dollars to set up systems that go way beyond what the law requires to take down (or block from ever being posted) tons and tons of content. And, of course, to Hollywood, it’s never enough. It can never be enough. But rather than get its own house in order, it just wants to blame the internet. Same old song.

8. Has the growing public attention to the failure of giant internet platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter to take responsibility for their role in facilitating illegal activities changed your opinion of the companies?

No. But the growing flailing by CreativeFuture and the MPAA has made it clear how desperate they’ve become.

I can’t wait for CreativeFuture to release the ridiculous “results” of this poll and pretend that it proves anything.

Also, irony of ironies: without CDA 230 it’s quite unlikely that this ad or this survey would exist at all. SurveyMonkey relies heavily on CDA 230 to allow anyone to post whatever surveys they want — without requiring it to be reviewed carefully before it went up. If SurveyMonkey needed each poll to be reviewed by an editor, SurveyMonkey wouldn’t exist at all. Similarly, Facebook’s ad platform would not be open to all to use, would likely be significantly more expensive and less useful and targeted. But, CreativeFuture doesn’t know or doesn’t seem to care about any of that, so long as it can push this extremist viewpoint against the internet.

Filed Under: blame, cda 230, dmca, hollywood, intermediary liability, push poll
Companies: creative future, creativefuture, mpaa