The position of the anti-SOPA activists is antithetical to the principle of protection — for authors, that is — mandated in the Constitution of the United States. Our nation’s founders recognized that furthering the rights of creators is in the national interest, to “promote the progress of science and useful arts” by “securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Over the centuries, copyright protection has been codified in an expanding body of federal law in an attempt to implement the protection outlined in the Constitution.

The SOPA debate is emblematic of the growing tension between the copyright creator — the authors, composers, lyricists and artists who have contributed so much to the socio-economic fabric of American life — and the “interests” of the public in having free access to the works of others. However, the creator/public dichotomy is a false paradigm. What is truly at stake are the competing interests of the creators and the corporations who have acquired and are exploiting their works.

It is the rare creator who has the luxury to create simply for the sake of creating. As history has shown (every Renaissance artist worth his canvas had a patron), in order for creators to enjoy the benefits of their creations, it is necessary for them to cross over into the world of commerce, and to seek the patronage of publishers, record labels, and film and television producers. Sadly, the relationship between creator and corporate sponsor is seldom equal, as evidenced by the scores of documents executed by authors, songwriters and other creators, granting the rights in their works to corporate entities in perpetuity, often in exchange for modest compensation.

Congress attempted to include in the Copyright Act a series of provisions to give the creator (or the heirs of a deceased creator) the opportunity to terminate even perpetual grants of copyright, and “recapture” rights to their works in the U.S. These provisions, known as the “termination provisions,” were first introduced as part of the Copyright Act of 1976, and later modified as part of the Sonny Bono Copyright Act of 1998.

The intent of Congress in enacting the termination provisions was clear: To give creators, or their heirs, the opportunity to escape inequitable deals, or simply to revise the terms of their deals in order to share proportionately in the success of their creations. And, indeed, the opportunity to recapture rights is a potentially valuable asset for creators and their statutory successors. Yet, outside the music industry, the termination right is significantly underutilized, while even songwriters and recording artists are often thwarted in their attempts to recapture rights in a process made unduly complicated in response to pressure from corporate lobbyists.

Like the termination provisions, the real value of SOPA and other copyright enforcement legislation is its role in safeguarding the interests of the intended beneficiaries of copyright protection. Whether or not SOPA is the most effective means of curbing piracy in the online arena is a matter that should be thoroughly examined. However, the SOPA debate should not be commandeered as a vehicle for furthering the position of those who seek to write authors out of the copyright law and the Constitution.

Lisa A. Alter is a partner in the firm of Alter & Kendrick, LLP, in New York City. Her practice is focused primarily in the area of copyright law, with a particular emphasis on domestic and international music copyright issues. Ms. Alter has lectured frequently at law schools and professional meetings on copyright matters, and has represented clients on legislative matters impacting their copyright interests. She is the author of “Protecting Your Musical Copyrights,” which has recently been released in its second edition.

Here’s a really terrific video tribute to legendary Hollywood director and producer Steven Spielberg, done for the recent 2012 David O. Selznick Achievement Award from the Producers Guild.

It highlights a plethora of films Spielberg has made over his long movie career, many of which — once you see them strung together — have a heavy techie, special-effects or simply sci-fi element.

It’s pretty impressive to see such a significant body of work collected so well.

Enjoy:

Here’s the fifth in a series of videos blogs, or vlogs, being done by director Peter Jackson on his making of “The Hobbit” movie.

I really like how he’s doing this online, especially given the interest from the huge fan base for the fantasy novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.

The prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, which Jackson also directed, “The Hobbit” is being filmed in New Zealand — standing in for Middle-earth — and will be released in two parts, in December 2012 and December 2013.

Enjoy:

And here’s the CGI-rich trailer for the second “Snow White” movie that Hollywood will be pumping out.

First there was “Snow White & the Huntsman,” which is all angsty and dark, and stars the ever-glowering Kristen Stewart as Snowie, and Charlize Theron as the Evil Queen.

This one, called “Mirror Mirror,” is funny, and stars Julia Roberts as the wise-cracking baddie, with an ingenue in the role of Ms. White.

Enjoy:

Here is the latest trailer for “Tower Heist,” the new Eddie Murphy/Ben Stiller movie that Universal will offer to home viewers for $59.99, while the Hollywood film is still in theaters.

It’s part of an unusual experiment in digital distribution.

It does look funny, but does it look $60 funny?

Maybe that’s because the most charming part of the film was the clips from a pair of YouTube appearances by four-year-old Kellen Sarmiento, who is channeling cast member Darren Criss, the lead singer of the Warblers on the hit television show.

You’ll get it when you see the tiny star in a school blazer, doing his version of Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” and Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream”:

The upcoming movie from Justin Timberlake — who starred in “The Social Network” playing hyperactive entrepreneur Sean Parker and who recently was part of a group that bought Myspace — is also techtastic.

In the futuristic film “In Time,” Timberlake plays a man who must steal time to live longer. It feels a little like “Logan’s Run,” but with better clothes.

Timberlake, who is also a singer, is trying to leverage the good notices he got from the Facebook movie to a more wide-ranging Hollywood career.

Enjoy:

It seems the computer-generated imagery in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” convinced critics and audiences that the well-worn movie series prequel is a winner.

It grabbed $54 million at the box office over its opening weekend.

Its producer, Peter Chernin, told me that a lot more of the film than it seems — including the stunning opening scenes in the wild that look like a real-life nature special — were mostly CGI, used to prep audiences for extended scenes of the apes morphing into believable rebels.

Here is the last trailer for the movie:

If this movie trailer for upcoming indie film and Sundance favorite “Like Crazy” doesn’t make you relive the bittersweet agony of every doomed relationship you have ever had since puberty, then you must be a robot.

This small movie is being called the “Love Story” of today and is getting big play all over the Internet, mostly for its combo of scenes from a young and dashed love and Ingrid Michaelson’s melancholy version of the classic song “Can’t Help Falling in Love.”

So please grab the tissues and enjoy:

While it’s hard to believe that a decade has passed since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the 10th anniversary is fast approaching.

One of the myriad of tributes will be “Rebirth,” a documentary film that employs time-lapse photography and also just time passing in the lives of those who lost loved ones in the tragedy.

The film will get both a theatrical and a television release around September 11, and it looks like it deserves it.

Until then, here’s the gripping movie trailer:

In honor of Comic-Con International, the huge and nerd-tastic comic book convention, opening tonight, here’s the new teaser trailer for the third of Hollywood director Chris Nolan’s elegant Batman movie series, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The movie debuts next year and will be the final installment for this franchise. The previous film starred the late Heath Ledger as the Joker.

And, this latest effort already looks creepier and darker than ever, featuring a leather-clad Catwoman (played by Anne Hathaway) and a whole lot of special effects:

Here is a pretty loud video for an upcoming remake of the consistently remade movie “The Three Musketeers.”

This time, of course, Hollywood has to jack up the volume and visuals with a lot of 3-D-worthy explosions, because there does not seem to be any film that can’t suffer from high-tech special effects anymore.

Back in April, director Peter Jackson, master of the “Lord of the Rings” movie trilogy, decided to do a production video blog from the set of “The Hobbit,” which is filming in New Zealand now.

This is his second one, chronicling the making of the film about life in Middle-earth.

Am I a total nerd that I am completely stoked to see the the last “Harry Potter” movie this weekend and completely bummed it is over?

For those who love the films, here’s a great compilation Warner Bros. did of the whole series:

One of the best lines I ever heard from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg — who has been very vocal about casting light on women’s challenges in the workplace — was about her service on the Disney board.

Discussing the depiction of its happy-ending female animated characters, she joked to me that what she always pushed for at meetings were “princesses with jobs.”

Sandberg seems to have gotten her wish now, with this upcoming movie from Disney unit Pixar, “Brave.”

Incredibly, it’s the first time in its dozen films that Pixar has a female hero at its center.

It’s about a red-headed Scottish princess named Merida, who insists on being a warrior — complete with rocking bow and arrow.

Finally.

I am not quite sure what Hollywood is up to here with this very CGI-heavy film, “Immortals.”

It looks like an odd cross between the highly stylized “300″ (it’s from the same team), that old movie cheese-fest “Clash of the Titans” and the even more stylized tea dances that took place in San Francisco during Pride celebrations last week.

In other words, a lot of buffed and shiny man-flesh.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

Enjoy:

Here’s the second trailer for the last movie in the terrific “Harry Potter” series.

It’s also the first of the films to be presented in 3-D, which has become a much abused technology by Hollywood.

Such a bow to a dubious trend at the very end kind of depressed me, since “Harry Potter” creator, J.K. Rowling, has been so strict in keeping the production of the movie in line with her books.

But looking at this video for “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” which opens July 15, it looks like it might be tremendous in 3-D, and a fitting end to the cycle.

Judge for yourself (and check out the first trailer here):

In a surprise cameo, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has gone Hollywood, appearing in a new trailer for the movie “Moneyball.”

Based on the excellent Michael Lewis book about the Oakland Athletics baseball team and its quirky general manager Billy Beane, who is played by Brad Pitt, Kotick is apparently playing its owner.

Kotick seems to do a pretty good job as a sports mogul, which is not much different than his one as a gaming mogul. And, if it works out as it seems it will, a social networking mogul as a possible new owner of Myspace.

Here’s the video of the trailer for the film, which comes out in September, with Kotick:

While I was in Los Angeles recently, I was invited to a private screening of a documentary about the New York Times called “Page One: Inside the New York Times.”

The film, which debuted at the most recent Sundance Film Festival, opens Friday.

The documentary is by Andrew Rossi, who spent a year following reporters and editors at the famed newspaper, even as the media landscape shifted dramatically due to the impact of digital technologies.

Luckily for me, one of the movie’s principal characters — and I do mean character when it comes to him — is the Times’ quirky media columnist, David Carr.

I met Carr a dog’s age ago, when he ran “The City Paper” in Washington, D.C. He has only gotten more interesting over time, especially as the Web has transformed the news business.

Actually, wrecked the news business seems more the sensibility of “Page One” and also the audience at the screening, which largely bemoaned the troubles that quality papers have gotten themselves into in the age of the Internet.

Of course, the situation at the Times is a lot more complicated than that and there are some significant benefits to readers in the new paradigm, even if it did not help traditional media.

Carr winks and nods to both sides of the debate in the film — his attack on Web bad boy Michael Wolff over aggregation is priceless, even though he clearly loves the Internet’s thrilling possibilities, too.

As I have previously written, what is probably most interesting is that many of the stories covered by the Times in the film are about the technological forces that have put it and other traditional media organizations through the digital ringer in recent years.

Here’s the video of my interview with Carr — please, as I tried to, ignore his rant at the start about the Times’ failed talent raid on a defenseless little tech blog site! — as well as an exclusive clip and the trailer for the movie:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110615/ready-for-his-close-up-the-nyts-media-dude-david-carr-talks-about-page-one/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110603/viral-video-will-the-3-d-movies-never-end/ http://allthingsd.com/20110603/viral-video-will-the-3-d-movies-never-end/#comments Fri, 03 Jun 2011 07:12:51 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=82512 Here is yet another trailer for yet another Hollywood movie coming out in 3-D–this time the sequel to penguin-dancing “Happy Feet.”

At this rate, they are going to put out Woody Allen films using the technology.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110603/viral-video-will-the-3-d-movies-never-end/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110427/viral-video-another-earth-another-life/ http://allthingsd.com/20110427/viral-video-another-earth-another-life/#comments Wed, 27 Apr 2011 07:37:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=43162

For anyone who loves the idea of a doppelgänger–someone out there who is you except different–this trailer for much-anticipated indie film, “Another Earth,” is for you.

It’s about astrophysics and accidents and aliens and alienation, on the occasion of the “discovery of a duplicate planet in the solar system.”

Deep stuff!

Here’s the moving movie trailer:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110427/viral-video-another-earth-another-life/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110411/viral-video-rip-sidney-lumet/ http://allthingsd.com/20110411/viral-video-rip-sidney-lumet/#comments Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:35:02 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=42502 Famed Hollywood director Sidney Lumet died over the weekend, which is a sad passing given his immense talent.

Along with classic movies like “Serpico” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” Lumet also directed “Network.” It is BoomTown’s go-to film for the answers to every one of life’s questions.

At the very least, because of its iconic “mad as hell” scene with actor Peter Finch, embedded here:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110411/viral-video-rip-sidney-lumet/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20110329/time-for-a-sequel-to-aol-time-warner/ http://allthingsd.com/20110329/time-for-a-sequel-to-aol-time-warner/#comments Tue, 29 Mar 2011 21:21:49 +0000 Dennis K. Berman http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=38301 This isn’t a joke. The buzz from California is that it just may be time to try another AOL-Time Warner.

That $164 billion merger disaster defined a decade of thoughtless deal making, reckless ego and vaporous “synergy.”

But for Hollywood executives and bankers now toting their iPads like baby blankets, the new technology has brought them back to an old conversation about “content” and its distribution.

Just as cable-television upended the distribution of films and television, so too are increasingly mature digital platforms like 20 million-customer Netflix or even Google Inc.’s YouTube. As these platforms spar with cable-operators and media conglomerates for consumer attention, they are finding it increasingly necessary to differentiate themselves.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110329/time-for-a-sequel-to-aol-time-warner/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110322/viral-video-hip-hop/ http://allthingsd.com/20110322/viral-video-hip-hop/#comments Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:00:21 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41818

It seems like the better movies these days are animated.

At least that’s the hope, since BoomTown is required to see them all with the Swisher boys.

Here’s a video for the latest–”Hop”–a live-action and CGI film, which is out April 1.

Enjoy:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110322/viral-video-hip-hop/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110318/viral-video-entering-the-source-code/ http://allthingsd.com/20110318/viral-video-entering-the-source-code/#comments Fri, 18 Mar 2011 07:15:37 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=41712

One of the movies that showed at South by Southwest was “Source Code,” an action thriller in which a solider is on a mission to find a train bomber by occupying his body.

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, it actually looks terrific.

Here’s the trailer, as well as the first five minutes of the film:

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