Copyright documentary from Australian radio

Oscar sez, “I just finished a 48-minute radio documentary for the Australian public broadcaster, the ABC, about remix culture, piracy and copyright.

It’s got brain-melting copyright education programs aimed at kids, commentary from Lessig, and tomfoolery from the Australian film industry about losses from internet piracy.

There’s also a history of the Statute of Anne, and the Australian music industry agreeing that amateur remixing at home should be allowed.

It includes a cut-up of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube which will hurt your ears and make you laugh, and tracks from Girl Talk, Steinski, Strictly Kev and many others.”

I’ve just gotten as far as the woman from the Australian film industry explaining that even though sales of DVD and box-office tickets are up, copyright infringement is still a deadly threat to the movie industry, demanding that the Internet be totally remade to prevent it, just in case. Nice stuff.

Adrianne Pecotic: The fact that there is a level of illegitimate consumption of film and television is something that detracts from the revenue that could go back into the industry and could go back into supporting local video stores, local cinemas and online distribution. Theft is not justified because someone is being successful, and that’s a really important point in this debate.

Oscar McLaren: But it does seem strange that I mean, we’re told in quite apocalyptic terms often that the video industry and the film industry is really starting to hurt. I don’t imagine many people would actually be aware that the revenues are in fact going up quite steadily and have been for the past decade or so.

Adrianne Pecotic: I think the important thing about the losses that are being suffered by the film industry through piracy, is that individual investors in individual films rely on that investment in that particular film, for that film maker, or that investor as their entire revenue. If you’re looking at the analysis across the board of the whole industry and whether it is going up or whether more people are consuming films or less people are consuming films, you’re not asking the question of whether a particular film has had the opportunity to recoup its proper revenue.

Oscar McLaren: For the record, box office sales were also at all-time high levels last year, reaching nearly $1-billion.

Internet piracy

MP3 link

(Thanks, Oscar!)