Last week saw an assault on intellectual property that puts the whole future of entertainment in doubt. The Danny Green/Anthony Mundine fight was an event that fans had waited for years to happen and it was certain to attract a maximum audience.
Both Green and Mundine expected to gain a fee of several million dollars each for putting their health on the line and to accumulate that sort of prize the promotors sold viewing rights to the highest bidder. Foxtell - which provides subscription television and computer screen entertainment in Australia was successful and put the fight on viewer access for a sixty dollar fee. Seats in the auditorium also attracted premium prices.
A member of the public who paid for Foxtells service recorded the fight live on his camera phone and promptly transferred the images directly to input on Facebook. The word travelled quickly, and an immense audience logged onto Facebook and watched the event free of charge. This is clearly a breach of the law and Foxtell is threatening legal action for recovery of what amounts to its stolen property.
The alacrity with which the public ignores the law and seeks free entertainment is threatening the financial structure of the entire entertainment industry. In particular, it takes millions of dollars to film the average movie and the production company expects to recover that cost and make a profit by the fee the public pays to sit in a theatre and watch the film.
In today's world the moment a new film is released people in the audience with hidden cameras record both the viewing and soundtrack - and hours later copies are being sold on the streets for a fraction of the price of a theatre seat. The quality is usually awful, but it serves the purpose and dilutes the flow of paying customers into theatres and robs the film company of its just rewards.
The music industry has been hard hit by illegal copies of recordings. High quality recording equipment is both plentiful and cheap. Various "sharing "schemes purport to allow people to access music without paying royalties, which are included in the price of music sold in traditional form. Those royalties compensate the artists who created the music. Because of its individuality each artist has the protection of copyright to charge for their intellectual property.
Putting the Green/Mundine fight free on Facebook will send a shudder through the promotors of all live events. Most people have a Smartphone and they are encouraged to use its camera to record interesting events which they can download onto Facebook for the entertainment of others. In this instance, the viewer chose to record the fight he was paying Foxtell to watch - and to transfer this directly to Facebook for all to see.
This threat will not be lost on those negotiating viewing rights for all manner of sport and special events. The fee they pay is for exclusivity and this determines what they can charge onward to others. This is a new risk factor that may lower price bids, and such fees are the mainstay of most sporting codes.
It also says something about public morality. The person who put the Green/Mundine fight live on Facebook must have known he was breaching the law, and the people who gleefully watched the fight for free would be aware that this was an invasion of someone elses intellectual property - but they participated without regret.
All this will influence the future of the entertainment we value so dearly. It is important that the artists are rewarded for their success and that relies on control of the material produced on its journey to the public. In the world of electronics, the process of evolution is fast diminishing the protocols that have served us well in the past.
We seem to be on the cusp of format change that will shape entertainment to the mores of this twenty-first century.
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