An online collection of links, articles and websites relevant to the teaching of Media and Cinema Studies in the 21st Century. Designed with the needs of the contemporary student in mind, this blog is intended to be a resource for teachers and students of the media alike.
Until recently, the MMA (formerly known as the CLASSICS Act) was looking like the major record labels’ latest grab for perpetual control over twentieth-century culture. The House of Representatives passed a bill that would have given the major labels—the copyright holders for most recorded music before 1972—broad new rights in those recordings, ones lasting all the way until 2067. Copyright in these pre-1972 recordings, already set to last far longer than even the grossly extended copyright terms that apply to other creative works, would a) grow to include a new right to control public performances like digital streaming; b) be backed by copyright’s draconian penalty regime; and c) be without many of the user protections and limitations that apply to other works.
Second, the public found a champion in Senator Ron Wyden, who proposed a better alternative in the ACCESS to Recordings Act. Instead of layering bits of federal copyright law on top of the patchwork of state laws that govern pre-1972 recordings, ACCESS would have brought these recordings completely under federal law, with all of the rights and limitations that apply to other creative works. While that still would have brought them under the long-lasting and otherwise deeply-flawed copyright system we have, at least there would be consistency. Two things changed the narrative. First, a broad swath of affected groups spoke up and demanded to be heard. Tireless efforts by library groups, music libraries, archives, copyright scholars, entrepreneurs, and music fans made sure that the problems with MMA were made known, even after it sailed to near-unanimous passage in the House. You contacted your Senators to let them know the House bill was unacceptable to you, and that made a big difference.
Weeks of negotiation led to this week’s compromise. The new “Classics Protection and Access Act” section of MMA clears away most of the varied and uncertain state laws governing pre-1972 recordings, and in their place applies nearly all of the federal copyright law. Copyright holders—again, mainly record labels—gain a new digital performance right equivalent to the one that already applies to recent recordings streamed over the Internet or satellite radio. But older recordings will also get the full set of public rights and protections that apply to other creative work. Fair use, the first sale doctrine, and protections for libraries and educators will apply explicitly. That’s important, because many state copyright laws—California’s, for example—don’t contain explicit fair use or first sale defences.
The new bill also brings older recordings into the public domain sooner. Recordings made before 1923 will exit from all copyright protection after a 3-year grace period. Recordings made from 1923 to 1956 will enter the public domain over the next several decades. And recordings from 1957 onward will continue under copyright until 2067, as before. These terms are still ridiculously long—up to 110 years from first publication, which is longer than any other U.S. copyright. But our musical heritage will leave the exclusive control of the major record labels sooner than it would have otherwise.
The bill also contains an “orphan works”-style provision that could allow for more use of old recordings even if the rightsholder can’t be found. By filing a notice with the copyright office, anyone can use a pre-1972 recording for non-commercial purposes, after checking first to make sure the recording isn’t in commercial use. The rightsholder then has 90 days to object. And if they do, the potential user can still argue that their use is fair. This provision will be an important test case for solving the broader orphan works problem.
The MMA still has many problems. With the compromise, the bill becomes even more complex, extending to 186 pages. And fundamentally, Congress should not be adding new rights in works created decades ago. Copyright law is about building incentives for new creativity, enriching the public. Adding new rights to old recordings doesn’t create any incentives for new creativity. And copyrights as a whole, including sound recording copyrights, still last for far too long.
Still, this compromise gives us reason for hope. Music fans, non-commercial users, and the broader public have a voice—a voice that was heard—in shaping copyright law as long as legislators will listen and act.
George Orwell’s 1984, Black Mirror S03E01, Psycho Pass, The Orville and many others have all theorised how technology can make our lives better… or worse.
Popular apps for young kids, especially those available in Google’s app store, are teeming with advertisements that distract them from play, manipulate them to make purchases, and extract their personal data.
That’s the conclusion of a new study that’s prompted a slew of child advocacy groups to ask the US federal government to investigate these products. The groups argue that many apps violate the Federal Trade Commission Act by disguising ads, programming characters to lure kids into purchases, or misleading parents into thinking the games are educational.
“What we’re hoping is that the FTC will fine the app developers and fine them enough that it sends a clear message to the preschool app industry,” Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, told BuzzFeed News. His group and 21 others signed a letter sent to the FTC today outlining their concerns, based largely on the new study’s findings.
On TV, ads aimed at kids must follow certain rules. Product placement isn’t allowed, for example, and neither is “host selling,” when a character encourages kids to buy something. But those rules, set by the Federal Communications Commission, don’t apply to the internet. “The FCC wouldn’t touch this,” Golin said. “We have this regulatory vacuum.”
The new study looked at 135 kids apps, a mix of paid and free, iOS and Android, including 96 of the most frequently downloaded in the “Ages 5 and Under” category of the Google Play Store. About one-third were labelled “educational.” Most of the free apps had been downloaded more than 5 million times each, and the paid ones more than 50,000 times.
Almost all — 88% of paid apps and 100% of free ones — contained at least one type of advertising, the study found, such as pop-up ads, banner ads, in-app purchases, and commercial characters.
Banner ads sometimes showed content that’s inappropriate for kids, the researchers said, such as a Health Living Today ad for “10 Bipolar Facts to Learn: Search Treatments.” Other ads were for apps like Pocket Politics, a game that shows a cartoon of President Trump wanting to press a “nukes” button, and FastLand, a car shooting game. Both of these app ads played a demonstration video before they could be closed.
For Golin, one of the most disturbing examples was Doctor Kids, which shows a character crying if you don’t click on an in-app purchase. “Children form real attachments to these characters,” he said. “For a kid, that’s a pretty powerful thing to express, when a character is crying.” (Doctor Kids’ maker, Bubadu, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Nine of the kids' apps contained what the researchers call “camouflaged” ads, which are made to look like part of the game but bring up a video ad when clicked. On the My Talking Tom app, for example — which has had more than 500 million installs, according to Google Play — kids will see a present drop down from the ceiling. If they tap on it, they’ll be prompted to “watch videos and win.” (The maker of My Talking Tom, Outfit7, did not respond to a request for comment.)
In Builder Game, which has more than 10 million installs on Google Play, thought bubbles pop up over characters telling the child what to do. Sometimes, the study found, the bubbles led to games that could only be played after watching an ad. (Builder Game’s creator, also Bubadu, did not respond to a request for comment.)
The leader of the new study, pediatrician Jenny Radesky of the University of Michigan, remembers one morning last winter when she observed her then 8-year-old son playing an app called Masha and the Bear Vet Clinic, in which he tried to help remove thorns from a sick wolf. After watching an ad video, the game gave him a tweezer that made it easier to get the thorns out and accumulate candy rewards.
“I asked him, ‘Why are you willing to watch an ad video just to do that?’ He said, ‘I get candy,’” Radesky told BuzzFeed News. (The owner of Masha and the Bear, Animaccord, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Her son is like most kids his age or younger, she said, who don’t have the critical thinking skills to understand the “persuasive intent” of an advertisement — that the apps want you to watch the ads because they financially benefit. “That sort of stuff was really hard for him to understand.”
Past studies have shown that even brief exposures to ads embedded in cartoons and other media can influence children's brand preferences, noted Tom Robinson, professor of pediatrics at Stanford University. It's "disheartening," he said, "that so many app makers are willing to use such insidious methods that so obviously take advantage of children’s vulnerabilities."
Most of the public furore over screen time, both in academic studies and the popular press, has focused on the amount of time that kids use apps, with kids under 5 averaging about one hour per day with mobile devices. But researchers are beginning to recognize that what kids are seeing and doing with technology is just as, if not more important than how long they’re doing it. (Radesky, for example, is not anti-app: For patients who struggle with temper tantrums, she recommends watching Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood apps, which she says can “teach both parent and child what to do in a moment of stress.”)
In 2016, Radesky helped write the latest American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines for kids and screens. Although the guidelines were less restrictive than the previous version, when it came to the subject of advertisements they drew a hard line, saying that advertisements in kids apps should be eliminated. “It’s not ethical because they don’t understand it. They’re just going to click on it,” Radesky said.
Another big concern of kids apps is data privacy. Although the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) limits how much personal information can be collected and tracked from kids under 13, thousands of apps distributed by Google may violate the rule, according to a report published earlier this year. Six apps analyzed in the new study requested users’ location information, a potential violation of COPPA.
“It’s a race to the bottom right now with a lot of these preschool apps,” Golin said. “Their whole goal is to get higher in the Google Play Store ranking.”
Platforms like Google and Apple have a gatekeeping role to play, he and Radesky agreed. Apple, for instance, doesn’t allow apps to be listed in the “Kids” category of its iOS App Store if they have in-app purchases (unless they are behind a parental gate), or if they serve ads based on the user’s activity (although they can still serve ads).
Perhaps it’s not surprising that Apple, which built a business around fancy devices and curated services, would have app rules that could hurt its advertising revenue. Google, on the other hand, is in the ad business.
In an emailed statement, a Google spokesperson said that Google Play apps primarily directed at children must participate in its “Designed for Families” program. They must adhere to COPPA rules and certain ad and content restrictions. “Additionally, Google Play discloses whether an app has advertising or in-app purchases, so parents can make informed decisions.” (One of its kid-specific rules, for example, forbids showing ads that could be mistaken for app content — which seems to have been violated by some of the apps flagged in the new study.)
Radesky hopes platforms like Google and Apple will do more. “If they could just put the good stuff up top, that would be awesome.”
Fairfax and Nine appears to be the most plausible and powerful merger opportunity
News Corp's main hurdle to any acquisition is likely to be the ACCC
Even after merging most businesses would still struggle to grow sales in the face of massive competition from overseas digital giants
The denouement of the drawn-out and fraught process, televised on the Senate channel, had more the torn and frayed look of the Survivor franchise than the smoochy fairytale feel of The Bachelor, which aired around the same time.
So now the rule book has been rewritten, how is the game going to change? And is the promise of mergers and takeovers of struggling media businesses going to create new champions able to protect and expand their turf?
Certainly, the prospect of mergers is real — if for no other reason than: why did the media owners champion the changes in media ownership rules? Will they be successful? That is an entirely different question.
What are the new rules?
It was not so much a rewriting of the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment Bill as just hitting delete on a couple of key provisions that changed things. Out went the "75 per cent audience reach" rule prohibiting a TV network broadcasting to more than 75 per cent of the population. It opens up possibilities for the likes of Seven, Nine, Ten and the regional players Prime, Southern Cross and WIN.
The removal of "two-from-three" rule — owning any two of TV, print and radio was OK, owning all three was not — is the one that puts everybody into play. There are also bits like replacing TV and radio licence fees with a "spectrum fee", although they are unlikely to make much difference to the flow of deals in the wings. However, that doesn't mean it is total open slather — some checks remain.
The "five/four rule" enshrined by the Howard government in 2007 to prevent the number of media owners falling below five in capital cities and four in regional areas, is still on the books, while the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission — with its own rule book — is still on the prowl looking to bust market domination. To lesser extent, the Foreign Investment Review Board and shareholders themselves are in the mix, but they have never really been known to stop media takeovers.
A couple of times, shareholders have tried to stand in the way of a merger — to wit, a body of West Australian Newspaper investors against Kerry Stokes in 2011 and Ten investors at the moment — but they have generally been run over in the process.
Here are the most likely deals
The big investment bank, Morgan Stanley, has tallied up the permutations and combinations flowing from the law changes and has come up the most likely deals. There are a fair few options, but for the sake of brevity, this is the short list of the bigger deals being discussed:
Nine Entertainment and Southern Cross;
Fairfax Media and Nine;
Seven West Media and Prime Media;
News Corporation and just about anyone.
Nine and Southern Cross have previously said they've had discussions, but Nine's sale of its 10 per cent stake in the regional broadcaster was not seen as a positive step to a future takeover. Would it create a bigger, stronger company? Morgan Stanley's Andrew McLeod thinks not. "Bigger combined audience reach, yes, but higher growth and higher return on capital are questionable," Mr McLeod said.
So Fairfax and Nine? Far more plausible and powerful, according to Mr McLeod. "This could be a rare opportunity to combine media assets and actually lift revenue growth rates via the two online businesses," he said. "Nine's video content could strengthen Fairfax's online video capability and lift traffic and audiences for the Fairfax sites."
Importantly, Mr McLeod notes both companies have little or no debt, which is a big advantage in delivering a highly positive earning per share outcome to both sets of investors.
Seven has always been regarded as a natural predator for its regional partner Prime and now the reach rule has been removed, it is off the leash. Given Prime is a reseller of Seven content, no-one else is likely to bid for it. Does it make sense for Seven? Sort of, but Prime is a lean operation and the cost savings in merging the two may not be large enough to make it worthwhile, and the potential for ongoing earnings growth is minimal.
News Corp is the $10b gorilla
Talking about off the leash, News Corp has never been shy about buying businesses — good, bad or indifferent, profitable or unprofitable — it just buys them and considers the consequences and write-downs later.
Last month, it wrote down the value of sundry newspapers, its stake in Foxtel and the REA real estate portal by $1.3 billion. Although that is dwarfed by the impairments News Corp has racked up by buying the likes of Dow Jones and Gemstar over the years. With its US rival CBS likely to snaffle Ten, News Corp could well turn its attention to Nine or Seven.
News already owns plenty of assets here and so any deal could be quite cost-effective or nerve-racking, depending on whether you are a shareholder or work in a newsroom facing further "rationalisation". The merger of online businesses and picking up Nine or Seven video content would be handy for News Corp's digital platforms.
Of course, any move from News while OK under the new media laws would still need to leap any hurdle put in its way by the ACCC. News could always satisfy itself with a tasty morsel like the $700 million Here, There & Everywhere radio network owner of brands such as KIIS and Gold, as well as the Adshel outdoor advertising business.
Player
Earnings (2018 estimates)
Market capitalisation
News Corporation
$1.135b
$10b
Seven West Media
$208m
$1.1b
Nine Entertainment
$206m
$1.2b
Fairfax Media
$268m
$2.2b
Southern Cross
$171m
$1b
Here, There & Everywhere
$120m
$700m
Prime Media
$53m
$100m
Earnings based on Morgan Stanley estimates of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA).
What does history teach us?
The last significant media law changes in 2006 — largely centred on abolishing foreign ownership rules — certainly arced up deal making, both large and small. It also sparked activity not held back by foreign ownership issues.
The then-Packer vehicle PBL sold half its media assets to the foreign private equity business CVC, proving you can have more than Alan Bond in your life. Kerry Stokes also hooked up with private equity, this time Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts selling it a 50 per cent stake in his media assets including Seven and the magazine business for $3.2 billion. They are worth about a third of that today. That deal allowed a cashed-up Mr Stokes to get a large foothold in, and ultimately control of, his hometown West Australian Newspapers. Fairfax headed bush and bought Rural Press.
Morgan Stanley's Andrew McLeod says the experience of 2006 shows transactions could occur very quickly in 2017. "Some of the remaining ownership rules, such as the 'five/four minimum voices' rule, present a first-mover advantage for consolidation occurring in some assets and some markets," he said.
So can the mergers turn back the tide?
The bigger question is whether any of this will create more robust businesses able to compete and grow against the likes of Facebook and Google in the ad market.
Unlike King Canute of yore, who stood in front of a tide to prove his fallibility knowing such things were beyond mere mortals, the Government is backing its plan to help turn back the digital tsunami crashing in from offshore and sweeping away local profits.
Good luck with that, says Mr McLeod. "We think the key debate is whether on the other side of any merger and acquisition, higher growth/better quality media companies emerge — or if after one year's costs savings are banked, the downward trajectory in earnings and shareholder value resumes," he said. "We can envisage a few genuine re-invention opportunities, but in most cases it's more likely the latter."
Last year Australian TV networks lost around $1 billion between them, newspapers have lost even more over recent years, while profitability in radio is flat-lining at best. The test will be to achieve real top-line growth in sales, not just confected and unsustainable profit growth from cost-cutting.
The problem there is the advertising revenue pool is a bit of a zero sum game — with some GDP-style growth added in. In such a relatively stagnant pool, gaining sales means someone is losing. And on an exponential scale, the digital giants are winning and everyone else is losing. The one thing the likes of Facebook and Google won't do is bail out Australian shareholders with an ill-considered purchase of an old economy business. They are not that dumb.
AN unfettered internet, free of political control and available to
everyone could be relegated to cyber-history under a contentious proposal by a
little known United Nations body.
Experts claim that Australians could see political and religious
websites disappear if the Federal Government backs a plan to hand control
over the internet to the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU). A
draft of the proposal, formulated in secret and only recently posted on the ITU
website for public perusal, reveal that if accepted, the changes would allow
government restriction or blocking of information disseminated via the internet
and create a global regime of monitoring internet communications - including
the demand that those who send and receive information identify themselves. It
would also allow governments to shut down the internet if there is the belief
that it may interfere in the internal affairs of other states or that information
of a sensitive nature might be shared.
Telecommunications ministers from 193 countries will meet behind closed doors
in Dubai next month to discuss the proposal, with Australia's Senator Stephen
Conroy among them. The move has sparked a ferocious, under-the-radar diplomatic
war between a powerful bloc of nations, led by China and Russia, who want to
exert greater controls on the net and western democracies determined to
preserve the free-wheeling, open architecture of the World Wide Web. The battle
for control has also seen a cartel of telco corporations join forces to support
amended pricing regulations changes which critics warn will pave the way
for significant increases in the cost of day-to-day internet use, including email
and social media. While Senator Conroy said this morning he would not be
supporting any changes to the current arrangements, the decisions made by other
powers could also have a huge impact on Australian web users.
Simon Breheny, Director of independent think-tank, The Legal Rights
Project, told News Ltd that Australia would end up with a
"lowest-common-denominator situation" whereby what Australians could
view on the internet could be controlled by dominant member countries. "If
we sign it, it will mean we won't have the freedoms we have no regarding
commerce and sharing of ideas," he said. "That's the greatest concern
- rather than going beyond commerce, it comes into the field of sharing
political and religious ideas."
In a show of unity, civil rights groups, big communications corporations
including Google and international labour unions are to meet in London today to
launch a global campaign and petition titled Stop the Net Grab. Led by the
International Trade Union Confederation, it will appeal to the UN and ITU itself
to immediately open the plan for global debate and demanding a delay of any
decision until all stakeholders - not just governments are given a voice.
Two influential Australians are at the centre of the move - Dr Paul Twomey and
Sharran Burrow. They will be joined to launch the campaign by Vinton Cerf, one of the fathers
of the internet and now chief Google evangelist. Ms Burrow, the General
Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, warned urgent global
action is now needed as the "internet as we know it" comes under very
real threat. "Unless we act now, our right to freely communicate and share
information could change forever. A group of big telecommunications
corporations have joined with countries including China, Egypt and Saudi Arabia
that already impose heavy restriction on internet freedoms," she said. "So
far, the proposal has flown under the radar but its implications are extremely
serious. Governments and big companies the world over may end up
with the right not only to restrict the internet and monitor everything you do
online but to charge users for services such as email and Skype."
Dr Twomey is former CEO of the International Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers, the US body that governs domain names and addresses, and the
Australian Government's National Office for the Information Economy. He warned
that as the internet enters its third decade in mass use, the need to defend
its founding open model is more urgent than ever. "The ongoing disputes
about control have also been compounded by concern in national security and
political elites in the wake of recent events such as the Arab Spring and
London Riots where social media were key tools," he said. "And there
is the accelerating pace of cyber espionage, targeting North American and other
developed countries intellectual property as well as the global rise of
hacktivism.”The danger is that there is now a growing likelihood of the
interests of more traditional forces for Internet control overlapping with, and
even seeking further to align with, national security and law enforcement
agenda."
