[Marxism] The Cranes are Flying worldwide distribution, and why payback is not piracy

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

SOMEONE writes: "It seems that because of copyright issues the movie is only
available in United States, Canada, Puerto Rico" and so on.

"The Cranes Are Flying"  is available world-wide, free of charge, and to
find it all you need do is a Google search for:

"The Cranes are Flying" torrent

Here are some results:

<www.torrentreactor.net/find/the-cranes-are-flying>

<www.thepiratebay.org/torrent/3619043/The_Cranes_Are_Flying_(Leyat_zhuravli)
_%5BCiN%5D - 15k>

<www.torrentz.com/cf0726c81ed03182b9e7b556c51ccfa656a69517>

and <www.mininova.org/tor/599280>

Use your favorite bit torrent client, or if you don't care to learn a new
program, although they're ultra-easy, get the free opera web browser, which
incorporates the protocol used but handles those transfers like any other
download (from the end user point of view).

Now, I know that some people believe the Hollywood fairy tale that proceeds
from movie rentals and so on go to the writers and actors and artists and so
on. That is 90% plus a crock: virtually all the money goes to some
dinosaurian copyright cartel, its overpaid executives, predatory lawyers,
bookies ("bankers") and coupon-clipping parasites, in other words the
*employers* (a.k.a. "class enemies") of writers, costume designers,
engineers and camera guys, actors, directors and so on.

But in the specific case of The Cranes Are Flying, this is at least a double
crock: This movie was made by Soviet working people with the bill explicitly
paid for by working people. That because it was made in an economy that was
openly and explicitly socialist in principle, where, despite bureaucratic
abuses and privilege-taking, there were no private individuals or businesses
profiting from "owning" controlling these imaginary things called
"copyrights." Copyright "ownership" of creative works from the late Soviet
Union, especially large-scale collective works like a movie that required a
significant investment by society as a whole, are an outrage, even by the
logic of capitalist ideology, precisely because the investor WAS society,
and THAT society --with whatever issues-- was a) organized economically
along socialist lines so things like movies were created as the "property,"
so to speak, of all the people and b) no longer exists.

The legal fiction of "copyright" may still have existed in the USSR because
it was a society only in the first stages of building socialism (despite the
claims of its leaders, and as proved by its reversion, it's de-evolution,
back to capitalism). Also, because of the world the USSR lived in, dominated
as it was by capitalism, it was necessary for the Soviets to incorporate a
number of these "intellectual property" conventions to have intercourse with
the rest of the world even if within the USSR they did not at all mean or
make possible the kind of piracy that is the real meaning under capitalism
of private property in creative works.

Copyright is nothing save the phantasmagorical reflection in the rarefied
field of legal ideology of the REALITY that capitalists have a monopoly over
the means of production (well, in this case, reproduction) of things like
books, music and movies. Or, to be more precise, because this is really my
theme, have had such a monopoly. Until recently.

It took nearly three centuries after the invention of the printing press for
copyright as we know it today --or in reality, as we have known it until
recently-- to develop and finally be codified in England's 1710 Statute of
Anne. That law provided for a term of 14 years of copyright for a new work. 

The bourgeoisie has used its monopoly control including and especially of
copyright as one of the weapons it uses to impose its ideological hegemony
on society. The bourgeois monopoly cartel domination of cultural production
profoundly limits, distorts, and corrupts what can be said.

There are, for example, countless good arguments to be used in favor of
legalizing file-sharing. One relatively innocuous and in reality quite
capitalistic idea that arose just about the week AFTER Napster arrived a
decade ago was to do what is done in radio -- Congress provides for a low
fee, in this case say $50/year for all you can eat, with the proceeds
distributed to musicians, composers and so on based on the popularity of
their works. 

You simply don't hear word one in the media about ideas like this because
what is LEFT OUT is the "publisher," the record company. And guess who every
last newscast is owned by? A card-carrying member company of the copyright
cartel. Contrary to popular belief, we hacks (socalled journalists) are not
stupid ... well, at least not THAT stupid. Sacrificing the food on our
children's plates for "journalistic integrity" or some such nonsense is
something better left to Hollywood. 

So we write those scripts and go tsk tsk tsk about "internet piracy" all the
while wondering what we can download tonight. 

In essence, what no one dares to say in a newspaper or TV newscast is that
*publishers* (record labels, movie studios) simply have no legal or moral
claim to the ongoing revenue stream generated by these works once their
physical substrate changes. 

What would Casablanca be without Ingrid Bergman and Bogey and that wonderful
cast or European refugees, or the author of the original play, the screen
writer or director? Hell, they were all paid for making a B movie, the
second, lower half of a Saturday double feature, NOT an immortal classic.
But Casablanca without Ted Turner, who owned it for a while, and even tried
to colorize it, would still be Casablanca, and it would still be Casablanca
without Time Warner, who owned it for a while, or without AOL, who bought,
lest we forget, Time Warner, changing the company name to AOL Time Warner,
or the newly renamed "Time Warner" seeking to divest itself of its AOL
albatross by floating it on the stock market because no one will pay even
chump change for this outfit any more.

Yet who made all the money from cable and UHF TV syndication, from movie
festivals, from endless replays on TBS and Turner Classic Movies, from the
hundreds of thousands or millions of VHS and DVD copies that have been sold
world wide? Did even a penny make its way to Bogie's estate or his
descendants? To those involved who were still alive from the 1970's on when
the revival of old movies became a huge business, thanks first to UHF and
24-hour TV programming and shortly thereafter to Cable?

Yet, to begin with, in principle, PUBLISHERS are involved in creative works
simply because of the physical substrate of the content. Making many copies
of a book or movie or audio recording (whether vinyl, tape or CD) takes --or
used to-- the deployment of a substantial industrial base, and its
distribution being plugged into the appropriate networks (whether retail
stores, movie theaters, or radio and TV companies). Publishers used that to
seize control of the "content industries" as a whole. 

And that is WHY publishers get 100% of ongoing, multi-year revenue streams
from creative works, or as close to 100% as makes very little difference,
EVEN WHEN THEY THEMSELVES CONTRIBUTE ZERO. The REALITY is this: Those who
MAKE creative works do not OWN them, those that OWN them do not MAKE them.
Sure, some of the "makers" --especially those with strong unions-- get
"residuals" of a fraction of a percent to a low single-digit percent
--perhaps-- in the case of a box-office-swamping Supernova star at the very
peak of their popularity. 

But this a tiny fraction of the revenue stream and even the director and
stars have no control over when, how or to whom the movie they made gets
distributed. 

Take another example, recorded music in what is now recognized as the golden
age of this genre, the 1960's. Quite often even the copyright wound up
assigned to the publisher for a flat fee or a promised single-digit
percentage of the revenues. 

But what entitled the record company to 80%, 90% or more of the revenue from
COMPLETELY unexpected new streams, like sales of cassette copies, then CD's
and now iTunes and similar? Most often a given publisher simply allows
another to bring out the work in the new media. Although NOMINALLY
"publishers" in reality they have become de facto "rights granters," which
copyright was supposed to vest in writers, composers, musicians, actors and
other artists.

That control over new media distribution was not and could not have been in
the contracts, even when the contract so said, because you can't make a
legal contract the subject matter of which is completely unknown. 

The "rights" to cassette, CD and online distribution EITHER belonged to the
public in general, because they had not yet arisen and thus congress could
not have assigned them to anyone, or they belonged to the original composer,
musicians and so on, considering congress to have intended, as it said, for
any rights similar to those it was creating to be so handled. 

Who for sure they never belonged to is the record companies. But the huge
lion's share wound up with the music monopoly mafia.

But that's not the worst of it. A few VERY big acts --like the Beatles, the
Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys or later Queen-- were able to establish
business organizations around their music that can hold their own against
other corporations. 

But the big majority of acts, from one-hit wonders like the Kingsmen to
well-established franchises like The Byrds did not. TONS of these people, or
their descendants, wound up getting screwed out of even the small percentage
the record companies CLAIMED they were paying to the artists.

A few years ago, at the height of the Napster panic, Roger McGuinn of the
Byrds went to Congress to talk about this. He reported, under oath and under
penalty of perjury, that as of the moment of that testimony, in the year
2000, the Byrds had not yet received ONE CENT (NOT ONE!!!) in royalties from
their record company for their biggest hits, "Turn Turn Turn" and "Mr.
Tambourine Man." The ONLY money they had ever seen was the original advance.

And then there are the Kingsmen. They broke up right before "Louie Louie"
became a monster hit. They had not recorded for a regular label, but rather
paid for a session at a local Portland studio themselves, hoping to use the
record to get them booked for an entire summer on a cruise ship (their main
source of income was high school dances). No one SAVE the guys in the band
had even a hint of a claim to the recording. But they allowed a local label
to press a few hundred copies (under terms that I've never known what they
were) and this label in turn granted, sold or rented (again the terms are a
mystery) rights to a national label (wand).

When puritanical do-gooders imagined they heard dirty words and allusions in
the (for most people) unintelligible lyrics, the record took off like a
rocket, selling eight million copies.

For more than three decades, the Kingsmen received not one cent in royalties
from this bonanza. In a case that wound up being appealed to the Supreme
Court and allowed to stand even by these robed reactionaries of the ruling
rich, the judicial system awarded the band, as a matter of equitable relief
(i.e., justice, no matter WHAT the effing contract said) all their back
royalties (almost entirely uncollectable) but knowing that, the judge
restored to them full, unhindered copyright, all royalties going forward,
and ownership and physical control of the master recording. (This last point
is quite significant the way recording contracts and royalties work. Which
is why it took a contempt citation or two to pry the master from these
capporegimes of the music mafia)

The composer of Louie Louie is a similar story. Afro-American R&B pioneer
Richard Berry [no relation to Chuck] wrote the song in 1955, released a
recorded version in the LA area in 1957, and shortly thereafter sold the
copyright for $750 because he needed to money for his wedding. 

Although "covered" (re-recorded) more than a thousand times, Richard Berry
didn't receive a penny until, in the late 1980's, with the help of an
organization dedicated to getting Black musicians their due, he was able to
get some $2 million and restoration of most of his rights as author of the
song. (I know there are provisions in copyright law that under certain
circumstances allow rights to revert to the original author, in other words,
that limit assignment of copyright, but I don't know any of the details).

How could the music mafia commit such outrages, and get away with them for
DECADES? Because they had a monopoly on making records, distributing them,
and even on what got radio or MTV play. And like all mafias, they had a rule
of silence and enforced it. Disputes about royalties were expected, allowed
and respected. But handled quietly, privately. Those who made a stink would
be blacklisted. Also, the sums involved were relatively modest. Copyright
law limits recovery of unpaid royalties to a few years, three if I remember
right. All relevant records were in the hands of the record companies. As a
musician or composer, you simply had to write off the losses or settle for a
small percentage of what you were really owed.

Again, all that was based on, built on, the monopolization of the means of
production by the bourgeoisie as a whole and then the cartelization of
different publishing industries through copyright. No competition allowed.
Five different labels could not put out Louie Louie provided they paid the
same royalty the Kingsmen were promised and accepted in the late 60's after
the first time they made a big stink about not being paid. 

NOW thanks to digital technology and the Internet, the bourgeois monopoly on
the reproduction of creative works, those that have been transferred to the
digital domain, has been broken. With the relative modest sizes of
MP3-compressed songs, music was the first to be affected, but now, nearly a
decade after Napster, it is clear ALL recorded media content, including
books, movies, TV Shows etc., can and will be "Napsterized," and the
Godfathers of the media monopoly mafias are braying boo-hoo-hoo, because of
piracy I couldn't get a new 100-foot yacht this year.

FUCK 'EM. 

PIRACY is what publishers have been doing AT LEAST since 1403 when the
Worshipful Company of Stationers originated as a guild in London. For 300
years the developing bourgeois publishing industry organized explicitly as a
monopolizing cartel controlled everything that could be legally printed or
read in English. Beginning in the 1700's, they switched to modern
state-guaranteed copyright to make themselves invulnerable. But now their
monopoly is at an end because the underlying physical monopoly in the
production of copies --at least in the digital domain-- is no more.

I feel sorry for the artists, musicians, writers, and so on that imagined
they'd hooked themselves up to a life-long gravy train in royalties. IF
capitalism continues as an ongoing system for a while, they will have to
figure out and become part of new structures and business relationships in
the entertainment sector. But payback is not piracy.

Joaquin


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