A few weeks ago someone working in print media asked me if I think that internet media outlets are closer to being accepted by Hollywood studios. My answer was yes, if by accepted you mean that studios have gotten more involved with online outlets. Problem is, their idea of getting more involved in the online media scene seems to be mostly about finding ways to control it, not so much working with it.
If you want proof, look no further than what happened to the popular, well respected movie website IESB on Monday. Site owners Robert and Stephanie Sanchez were hard at work, as usual, on posting their latest scoop when suddenly their website, their business, disappeared from the internet. They called their hosting company and discovered that their service provider received a letter from Paramount Pictures demanding that IESB be removed from the internet. Paramount’s claim was that pictures like the one to your right, posted by IESB, were in violation of copyright law. Faced with the legal power of a massive corporate entity like Paramount, their host did the only logical thing a small business owner can do in a situation like that, and caved. Who can blame them.
One problem. Those pictures belonged to IESB. They took them out in public, from the balcony of an apartment. They own them. They hold the copyright on them. They don’t belong to Paramount. IESB wasn’t doing anything wrong.
IESB is back up now, and Paramount claims it was all a big misunderstanding. They’re blaming their legal department, who they say went off half-cocked. Frankly, I find that a little hard to swallow. For that to be true, you have to believe that Paramount’s lawyers sit at their computers wandering around the internet randomly looking for websites to send cease and desists to for no apparent reason, without the approval of anyone in any other part of the company. It’s not the first time they’ve done this either. Some of you may remember Paramount as the company that had The Movie Blog shut down a few months ago over some copyrighted Transformers pictures. In both cases, the sites’ owners were never contacted by Paramount. There was no discussion with them. The studio went straight to threats and intimidation directed at their hosting providers, behind their backs. IESB had no clue that anything was wrong until their website was simply gone.
Even if this really was some unbelievable twice repeated accident, it’s a frightening example of how much power big corporate entities like Paramount have over small businesses and websites like this one. Any time they want, for any reason, Paramount (or presumably any big corporation with a team of highly paid lawyers) could shut down any individually owned website. If that’s not interfering with the freedom of the press, then I don’t know what is.
For IESB, it luckily took only a day to get things sorted out with their hosting provider and get their site back up. During that time, they lost valuable revenue, readers, and reputation. How will Paramount compensate them? From the official statement IESB posted earlier today here, it sounds like all they’re getting is hollow apologies and excuses.
My question is, what’s to stop big companies like Paramount from making this a regular habit? Big media conglomerates backed by big corporate money are of course, immune since they have the money to manipulate the court system to protect themselves. But truly independent blogs or websites like this one are helpless. It seems we exist only as long as they let us. If Paramount can have a website pulled down for running a picture they don’t like, then they are perfectly capable of shutting them down for saying something they don’t like as well. What can the single owner website like IESB or Cinema Blend do about it? Scuse me, I have to write a sycophant puff piece about Transformers. Meanwhile, support IESB and read their full violation explanation here.
