Category: Opinion

How Bad Copyright Law Makes Us Less Safe

Techdirt is a fascinating site for many reasons. Right now this TVWriter™ minion, at least, is blown away by this article on the cultural and political ramifications of copyright law. Who’d a thunk that the copyright thing was so frighteningly complicated?

1st seen on the web at https://chinguyenlan.wordpress.com
1st seen on the web at https://chinguyenlan.wordpress.com

by Mike Masnick

For quite some time we’ve pointed out how problematic Section 1201 of the DMCA is. That’s the part of the law that says it’s copyright infringement to simply circumvent any kind of “technological protection measure” even if the reasons for doing so are perfectly legal and have nothing to do with infringement at all. And, of course, we now have the big “1201 Triennial Review” results that are about to come out. That’s the system that was put in place because even Congress realized just how stupid Section 1201 was and how much innovation and research it would limit — so it created a weird sort of safety valve. Every three years, the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress would work together to come up with classes of technology that are magically “exempted” from the law. Now, normally, you’d think that if you have to come up with exemptions, there’s probably something wrong with the law that needs to be fixed, but that’s not the way this worked.

The latest triennial review results are about to come out, and a lot of people are focused on it — in part because of current events. As you may recall, earlier this year, we wrote about one of the exemption requests in particular: over whether or not you can tinker with the software in your car. GM was fighting against this, and we were shocked to then see the EPA side with GM (!?!?) on this issue, claiming that it’s a perfectly reasonable use of copyright law to stop tinkering with cars on the off chance that some of that tinkering might lead to changing emissions to illegal levels. read article

John Ostrander Weighs in on the ‘New Boys in Town’

trevor-noah

by John Ostrander

Well, it’s been a few weeks since Stephen Colbert assumed command of The Late Show and Trevor Noah has taken the reins of The Daily Show. In both cases the hosts are taking over from prior hosts who had long tenure at their respective shows (David Letterman and Jon Stewart). The new boys have been there long enough now to form some opinions.  Admittedly, they’re just my opinions but this is my column.

I want to start with The Daily Show and Trevor Noah. To be honest, this was the one that was of greater concern to me because I really loved watching Jon Stewart. I felt that he (and the show) had an important role on television. It was very funny and had a real point of view and delighted in deflating personalities and kicking other networks and other media up the butt when needed (and it has been an ever increasing need over the past few years). Jon Stewart had a keen eye and a well developed sense of outrage to go with his highly developed sense of comedy.

Could Trevor Noah compete? Could he fill those shoes? Would The Daily Show still be a must-see show for me? read article

Book Review: “Screenwriting Tips, You Hack”

A good book review is itself a work of art. The following review will show you what we mean. (As well as giving you a terrific sense of the book being discussed. We’re clicking over to Amazon to buy it right now.)

by Henry Sheppard

41qoKRdD0UL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_I’ve read a lot of screenwriting advice books. They come in a range of styles and vary in value from dubious to priceless. One of the recent additions to the canon is Xander Bennett‘s Screenwriting Tips, You Hack: 150 Practical Pointers for Becoming a Better Screenwriter.  Xander was a script reader, working for a minor production company in Los Angeles, when he became frustrated by the quality of the screenplays he was reading. He tweeted his complaints until someone told him he should put them in a blog. So he moved to publishing the Screenwriting Tips… You Hack blog as “a snarky diatribe.” Since 2009 he has posted a tip a day on how to make spec scripts better. His first tip reads:

Don’t be boring. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON’T BE BORING. Tape it to your laptop. Tape it to your eyeballs. Don’t. Be. Boring.

Good advice, I thought. (Actually, it was a rule invoked by Billy Wilder in each of his various writing partnerships. Or, more accurately, his two rules were “Thou Shalt Not Bore” and “Anything is Permitted” — Lally, Wilder Times, but that’s a digression.) read article

5 Hot Trends of TV’s Development Season

“You can write what you know, love, and believe in, or you can write what you can sell.”
Old Hollywood writer saying.

Here’s what you can sell.

This week anyway. read article

Is There Really Such a Thing as “a Shonda Rhimes Show?”

Or to put it another way, can TV really be a home for auteurs? Should it be?

auteur_lead-pic

by Chloe Gilke

Last spring, I enrolled in a class called “Hitchcock and Modernity.” I’m a certified Hitchcock fanatic and freely spend my time writing unassigned essays about “Vertigo” and the male gaze, so the opportunity to learn about some of my favorite movies in a class setting was impossible to pass up. Still, as I clicked the “register” button, something about the course’s title made my skin crawl. Hitchcock and Modernity. Like countless other English classes at the University, this course would be focused on a single author and his body of texts, noting repeated themes and language and analyzing their significance — but authorship in film is not as simplistic as this method implies. read article