Film production is full of controversy. In some of the latest controversy regarding the Oscar nominated film, Dallas Buyers Club, the company behind the production of this poignant story sued thirty-one people in federal district court in Texas in February earlier this year (2014) for downloading the movie illegally through the legal file-sharing service BitTorrent. The lawsuit is just another example among the thousands of recent lawsuits filed against BitTorrent users to dissuade Americans from stealing licensed productions such as movies, music, pornography, books, and software (Liebelson, 2014). These efforts to prevent the theft of such artistic productions may have an increasingly more difficult task at hand due to a recent ruling made by several federal judges. The ruling basically states that key information, which are the IP addresses (computer Internet protocol locations) used as evidence to support the alleged thefts, is insufficient to continue with such lawsuits. According to the article, copyright experts suggest that, although companies are still winning a large amount of settlements, the law firms are pursuing fewer plaintiffs compared to previous years. “I think the trend is towards judges looking at [piracy] cases more carefully than they used to, requiring more upfront investigation,” stated Mitch Stoltz who is a staff attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation (Liebelson, 2014). Stoltz also noted that, “There may always be some judges who will simply rubber-stamp these cases… but there are fewer of those judges than before (Liebelson, 2014).”
Now the issues of connecting people to their IP addresses through their Internet Service Providers, after getting a judge to issue a subpoena based on the evidence that the theft was committed through the identified IP address and supposed owner of that computer’s Internet protocol address, has become almost impossible to do accurately because of the WIFI routers sixty percent of the population utilize. Judges have become cautious issuing subpoenas based on IP addresses alone as a result of WIFI not accurately linking the account holder of an IP address as the true pirate involved in stealing. For example, federal district judges in New York and Illinois between 2011 and 2012 reached the conclusion in their cases that the plaintiffs “relied too heavily on IP addresses and did not do an adequate enough investigation to bring claims (Liebelson, 2014).” Furthermore, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in intellectual property law, R. Polk Wagner states that, “Judges are increasingly realizing that [IP addresses] don’t have a high degree of reliability, and they’re not an accurate representation of who has control of the computer (Liebelson, 2014).”
For the film production industry, this is an increasingly difficult challenge to try and take on everyday. It is an expensive and time consuming part of distribution rights control and protecting the art made by one’s company and its affiliated artists. The strength of a claim does depend on the evidence gathered beyond IP addresses moving forward in any lawsuit involving the illegal downloading of a film. Perhaps releasing a digital download version simultaneously with the film’s theatrical releases, DVDs, online streaming and Blu-Ray to inhibit the amount of piracy attempted on a studio’s productions can help to thwart theft. It will be interesting to see how this fares when the release of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon II is released in theaters and on Netflix the same day.
As if the challenge of keeping the works produced and protected in the film industry is not enough of a chore, characters could always sue over defamation. The case that recently raised the issue of a well-known film producer being sued for defamation of character of the people who the film was based on has to do with Leonardo DiCaprio and his work on Out Of The Furnace. Out Of The Furnace, was co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013 and contained an A-list cast ensemble including Woody Harrelson, Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Zoey Saldana, Sam Shepard and Willem Dafoe. The story line was based on a particular culture of people from New Jersey known as the Ramapo Mountain community. The group of eight people claimed that the film’s depiction of their character caused emotional and psychological harm due to the film demonstrating the group as “unfairly portrayed drug-using ‘inbreds’ (Lu, 2014).” Furthermore, the Ramapo Mountain community claims that this portrayal caused them “emotional distress” and characterized them in an ultimately negative way with comments in the film such as, “You f*** with these inbreds, you’ll come crawling back if you’re lucky,” and “inbred mountain folk from Jersey (Lu, 2014).”
According to the legal documents the Plaintiffs filed in January of 2014 in New Jersey, the defamation lawsuit reads:
The movie and article in the New York Post places Plaintiff’s and their family members in a false light. Each have (sic) had an extremely negative effect on Plaintiff’s community. It is extremely embarrassing to the Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs and their family members are harassed and discriminated against. The children are teased at school.
(Lu, 2014)
The portrayal of characters in a film that actually exist in real life is a very fragile subject matter to produce, especially when the storyline is a dark or negatively based content. It would be wise to have a creative consultation with the writers and one’s attorney over the liability of character defamation involved with producing a film based on a community that exists in real life and any damages the release of such a film may consequently bring on as a result of pursuing the production without certain creative permissions legally authorized. However, the parties involved could be sensitive and overly subjective and the possibility of such liabilities is sometimes unavoidable, but being prepared and aware of them helps a film producer prior to the execution of a project.
No matter how prepared a film producer can be, the third controversy that has occurred recently regarding lawsuits and the insulting of a party portrayed in a film is that of Iran and the film Argo. Iran has retained counsel, a controversial French attorney, to file a lawsuit against Hollywood over a number of films, especially the Oscar winning Argo. The premise of the suit is that the films have supposedly depicted Islamic republic in a “distorted and unrealistic manner (Dehghan, 2013).” The lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, is known to be an “anti-Zionist” lawyer. Coutant-Peyre went to Tehran, met with authorities to file a case in international court against Hollywood directors and producers that have been described as propagandizing “Iranophobia (Dehghan, 2013).”
Now the irony of the counsel filing this monstrous and politically charged legal action is the controversial character of the attorney herself. Her husband is one of the world’s most infamous terrorists, Carlos the Jackal. She married him in prison, and she is representing him as well. However, she is true to her convictions and demonstrated this in her statement, “I’ll be defending Iran against films that have been made by Hollywood to distort the country’s image, such as Argo (Dehghan, 2013).” In Tehran’s Palestine Cinema, at the Hoax of Hollywood conference, Coutant-Peyre was a speaker during the event, which was held immediately after Argo’s Oscar-win. The film had not been available to the public, however it was shown only two times for a select audience. Ironically pirate DVDs of Argo, are attainable throughout the black markets of the entire nation of Iran for a very small amount of money (Dehghan, 2013).
The film’s basis is on the 1979 US hostage crisis and it is infused with thriller touches and spiced up with some imaginary events to bring forth a cinematic success for Ben Affleck’s Oscar winning title. Regardless, the film itself does illuminate one of the “darkest episodes in Tehran-Washington relations (Dehghan, 2013). It is about a CIA rescue mission bringing back six stranded US diplomats who escaped the Embassy within moments of the revolutionaries taking control of the compound. Supposedly large groups of Iranians feel that Argo stereotypes Iranians in a negative manner and it fails to separate everyday citizens from the revolutionaries responsible for the 1979 US Hostage Crisis. There are other films that enrage Iranians. For example, 300, in this story King Leonidas and his force of three hundred men fighting the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC, was said to have been “insulting to Iran,” according to Iran’s president Mahamoud Ahmadinejad (Dehghan, 2013). They are not very fond of Brian Gilbert’s 1991 film, Not Without My Daughter, and they do not like The Wrestler either. This Hoax of Hollywood conference is a politically fueled conference where the purpose is to “unify all cultural communities in Iran against the attacks of the west, particularly Hollywood (Dehghan, 2013).” After their meeting, Argo was condemned as a “violation of international cultural norms,” and they bashed the film’s Oscar claiming it was “propaganda attack against our nation and entire humanity (Dehghan, 2013).”
According to New York based journalist, Omid Memarian, who has also written on Iranian films, “For many in the Iranian regime, it’s impossible to fathom that Hollywood is not a state-run entity, as it is in Iran (Dehghan, 2013).” Therefore, it is because of their cultural misunderstanding (and perhaps ours too) that “Iranian officials therefore seriously perceive any cultural products about Iran, like movies, as a political statement and a part of what they call the west’s cultural invasion against Iran (Dehghan, 2013).” The particular jewel of perspective this article demonstrated is the impact and importance film itself can have on the audience and this lawsuit exemplified this idea quite well. Moreover, the New York journalist Memarian was quite interesting in his observation, “I think the fact that Michelle Obama awarded the movie’s Oscar has intrigued and magnified their suspicions about the involvement of politicians making such movies, which they consider anti-Iran, or more accurately, anti-Islamic republic (Dehghan, 2013).”
Ultimately in the end of this “announced lawsuit,” a producer can experience a publicity stunt, a political campaign against their work, and in this case a whole country supposedly going to follow through on an “announced lawsuit.” Sometimes, the frivolity of such suits can overwhelm the plaintiffs and perhaps they burn themselves out. Most importantly, be aware of each one of these liabilities because they could happen to anyone in the entertainment industry and their complexities evolve constantly.
Thank you for reading,
Michelle Fernandez
Now the issues of connecting people to their IP addresses through their Internet Service Providers, after getting a judge to issue a subpoena based on the evidence that the theft was committed through the identified IP address and supposed owner of that computer’s Internet protocol address, has become almost impossible to do accurately because of the WIFI routers sixty percent of the population utilize. Judges have become cautious issuing subpoenas based on IP addresses alone as a result of WIFI not accurately linking the account holder of an IP address as the true pirate involved in stealing. For example, federal district judges in New York and Illinois between 2011 and 2012 reached the conclusion in their cases that the plaintiffs “relied too heavily on IP addresses and did not do an adequate enough investigation to bring claims (Liebelson, 2014).” Furthermore, professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in intellectual property law, R. Polk Wagner states that, “Judges are increasingly realizing that [IP addresses] don’t have a high degree of reliability, and they’re not an accurate representation of who has control of the computer (Liebelson, 2014).”
For the film production industry, this is an increasingly difficult challenge to try and take on everyday. It is an expensive and time consuming part of distribution rights control and protecting the art made by one’s company and its affiliated artists. The strength of a claim does depend on the evidence gathered beyond IP addresses moving forward in any lawsuit involving the illegal downloading of a film. Perhaps releasing a digital download version simultaneously with the film’s theatrical releases, DVDs, online streaming and Blu-Ray to inhibit the amount of piracy attempted on a studio’s productions can help to thwart theft. It will be interesting to see how this fares when the release of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon II is released in theaters and on Netflix the same day.
As if the challenge of keeping the works produced and protected in the film industry is not enough of a chore, characters could always sue over defamation. The case that recently raised the issue of a well-known film producer being sued for defamation of character of the people who the film was based on has to do with Leonardo DiCaprio and his work on Out Of The Furnace. Out Of The Furnace, was co-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio in 2013 and contained an A-list cast ensemble including Woody Harrelson, Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, Forest Whitaker, Zoey Saldana, Sam Shepard and Willem Dafoe. The story line was based on a particular culture of people from New Jersey known as the Ramapo Mountain community. The group of eight people claimed that the film’s depiction of their character caused emotional and psychological harm due to the film demonstrating the group as “unfairly portrayed drug-using ‘inbreds’ (Lu, 2014).” Furthermore, the Ramapo Mountain community claims that this portrayal caused them “emotional distress” and characterized them in an ultimately negative way with comments in the film such as, “You f*** with these inbreds, you’ll come crawling back if you’re lucky,” and “inbred mountain folk from Jersey (Lu, 2014).”
According to the legal documents the Plaintiffs filed in January of 2014 in New Jersey, the defamation lawsuit reads:
The movie and article in the New York Post places Plaintiff’s and their family members in a false light. Each have (sic) had an extremely negative effect on Plaintiff’s community. It is extremely embarrassing to the Plaintiffs. Plaintiffs and their family members are harassed and discriminated against. The children are teased at school.
(Lu, 2014)
The portrayal of characters in a film that actually exist in real life is a very fragile subject matter to produce, especially when the storyline is a dark or negatively based content. It would be wise to have a creative consultation with the writers and one’s attorney over the liability of character defamation involved with producing a film based on a community that exists in real life and any damages the release of such a film may consequently bring on as a result of pursuing the production without certain creative permissions legally authorized. However, the parties involved could be sensitive and overly subjective and the possibility of such liabilities is sometimes unavoidable, but being prepared and aware of them helps a film producer prior to the execution of a project.
No matter how prepared a film producer can be, the third controversy that has occurred recently regarding lawsuits and the insulting of a party portrayed in a film is that of Iran and the film Argo. Iran has retained counsel, a controversial French attorney, to file a lawsuit against Hollywood over a number of films, especially the Oscar winning Argo. The premise of the suit is that the films have supposedly depicted Islamic republic in a “distorted and unrealistic manner (Dehghan, 2013).” The lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, is known to be an “anti-Zionist” lawyer. Coutant-Peyre went to Tehran, met with authorities to file a case in international court against Hollywood directors and producers that have been described as propagandizing “Iranophobia (Dehghan, 2013).”
Now the irony of the counsel filing this monstrous and politically charged legal action is the controversial character of the attorney herself. Her husband is one of the world’s most infamous terrorists, Carlos the Jackal. She married him in prison, and she is representing him as well. However, she is true to her convictions and demonstrated this in her statement, “I’ll be defending Iran against films that have been made by Hollywood to distort the country’s image, such as Argo (Dehghan, 2013).” In Tehran’s Palestine Cinema, at the Hoax of Hollywood conference, Coutant-Peyre was a speaker during the event, which was held immediately after Argo’s Oscar-win. The film had not been available to the public, however it was shown only two times for a select audience. Ironically pirate DVDs of Argo, are attainable throughout the black markets of the entire nation of Iran for a very small amount of money (Dehghan, 2013).
The film’s basis is on the 1979 US hostage crisis and it is infused with thriller touches and spiced up with some imaginary events to bring forth a cinematic success for Ben Affleck’s Oscar winning title. Regardless, the film itself does illuminate one of the “darkest episodes in Tehran-Washington relations (Dehghan, 2013). It is about a CIA rescue mission bringing back six stranded US diplomats who escaped the Embassy within moments of the revolutionaries taking control of the compound. Supposedly large groups of Iranians feel that Argo stereotypes Iranians in a negative manner and it fails to separate everyday citizens from the revolutionaries responsible for the 1979 US Hostage Crisis. There are other films that enrage Iranians. For example, 300, in this story King Leonidas and his force of three hundred men fighting the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 BC, was said to have been “insulting to Iran,” according to Iran’s president Mahamoud Ahmadinejad (Dehghan, 2013). They are not very fond of Brian Gilbert’s 1991 film, Not Without My Daughter, and they do not like The Wrestler either. This Hoax of Hollywood conference is a politically fueled conference where the purpose is to “unify all cultural communities in Iran against the attacks of the west, particularly Hollywood (Dehghan, 2013).” After their meeting, Argo was condemned as a “violation of international cultural norms,” and they bashed the film’s Oscar claiming it was “propaganda attack against our nation and entire humanity (Dehghan, 2013).”
According to New York based journalist, Omid Memarian, who has also written on Iranian films, “For many in the Iranian regime, it’s impossible to fathom that Hollywood is not a state-run entity, as it is in Iran (Dehghan, 2013).” Therefore, it is because of their cultural misunderstanding (and perhaps ours too) that “Iranian officials therefore seriously perceive any cultural products about Iran, like movies, as a political statement and a part of what they call the west’s cultural invasion against Iran (Dehghan, 2013).” The particular jewel of perspective this article demonstrated is the impact and importance film itself can have on the audience and this lawsuit exemplified this idea quite well. Moreover, the New York journalist Memarian was quite interesting in his observation, “I think the fact that Michelle Obama awarded the movie’s Oscar has intrigued and magnified their suspicions about the involvement of politicians making such movies, which they consider anti-Iran, or more accurately, anti-Islamic republic (Dehghan, 2013).”
Ultimately in the end of this “announced lawsuit,” a producer can experience a publicity stunt, a political campaign against their work, and in this case a whole country supposedly going to follow through on an “announced lawsuit.” Sometimes, the frivolity of such suits can overwhelm the plaintiffs and perhaps they burn themselves out. Most importantly, be aware of each one of these liabilities because they could happen to anyone in the entertainment industry and their complexities evolve constantly.
Thank you for reading,
Michelle Fernandez
No comments:
Post a Comment