Sci-Fi World Tour Stop Three: England and Germany's Star Maidens

Welcome to the rebellion.

Our last two stops took us from the Australian Phoenix 5 series, which battled mightily against its down-under budget, to Germany's mighty entertaining Raumpatrouille, whose budget was so big it only lasted seven episodes.

This time out we find ourselves somewhere in low orbit between Germany and Great Britain as we enjoy a bizarre co-production between these two countries; the wonderfully wonky Star Maidens.



The series opens on the planet Medusa, a world ruled by dayglow, sweatpant and short shorts wearing, sequin and peek-a-boo shirt and mini-skirt modeling, sparkly make-up bedecked, futuristic women. We are indoctrinated into this sparkly society via a video "history program for junior girls"...

A society ruled by women. This perfect condition existed as long ago a thousand orbits, when our planet Medusa belonged to the solar system of Proxima Centauri. These were the golden years of our history. Led by the Grand Council of Women we had created a world of intellect; of leisure and advanced technology where the menial tasks and some of the others (wink wink) were patiently performed by our men.

But it turns out Medusa is not so far away at all. A giant comet striking their planet knocked it out of orbit, sending it spiraling out of its star system and into ours!

The Medusans discover this new solar system houses another inhabitable planet called Earth. Unfortunately...

Earth proved a great disappointment to us. Contrary to all common sense it was controlled by men. typically we found it to be crude, primitive, muddling along in an untidy and disease prone existence.We withdrew and Earth was declared out of bounds to all civilized space travelers.

But one man is not satisfied with the status quo. Adam (Pierre Brice), a menial laborer, tricks his dull-witted pal (a pre-Blake's 7 Gareth Hunt!) into helping him evade the hot pant wearing, female security force and steal a spaceyacht. That's right, a spaceyacht. The boys are soon hot-footing it for Earth and the freedom they hope a male-dominated society will bring them. Of course, being terrified of any woman, even a little girl, makes that a little difficult when they do finally arrive.

Adam and Shem
(former German teen idol and future space pirate)

But the sexy President Clara (played sexily by the sexy Dawn Addams) sends her sexy, tough as nails, Chief Security Controller Octavia (sexy Christiane Kruger), after the fugitives.

With the help and occasional hindrance of the sexy, Supreme Councillor (Judy Geeson as the unsubtly-named, sometimes brainy, sometimes spoiled but always sexy Fulvia) Octavia hops into a flying saucer and heads to Earth, learning about our backward society and the dastardly effects of champagen even as a pair of earthlings are flung back to Medusa to learn about their odd world.

Viewers are then treated to an insightful treatise on male-female relations circa the 1970's....

Wait. That's not it.

Viewers are in for sexy, titillating romp that plays with gender identity and sci-fi tropes. Oops! Wrong again...

Viewers were subjected to a hard to describe mess of a series that is more watchable for it's kitsch value and what it could have been, than for what actually is? BINGO!!

Welcome the beautiful, completely baffling world of Star Maidens!

Banner for Pixis' Star Maiden DVD release with extras
www.animus-web.demon.co.uk 's Alistair McGown.

As someone who has written for a variety of television co-productions, I can say it's a bitch when the two countries have fundamentally different audiences and expectations. It is very difficult to find a middle ground where both are pleased. Sometimes you find that perfect balance and create something truly unique and memorable. And sometimes you don't find that balance and create something memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Which brings us to Star Maidens.

Star Maidens is no classic. It's also not a cult hit in the true sense of the word, because it's hardly been shown outside of Germany since it first aired in 1976-77 ans so has little by way of a loyal, rabid fanbase to keep the flame alive. The series does enjoy some notoriety in Germany, thanks to being re-aired in the late nineties during the rise of specialty channels.



The maiden run in the 70's also included transmission in Holland and briefly, New York, according to the collective memories mined at Alistair McGown's brilliant, and highly informative Star Maidens site.

They say we write the books or create the websites we want to see and Alistair's obsessive need to know more about a show with little to no fanbase has resulted in a treasure trove of information. Here's McGown's explanation:

There's not really an organised fan cult around Star Maidens, just me and a few other nutters as far as I'm aware. But maybe there's this occasional nagging thought at the back of your mind... 'That was brilliant wasn't it? It must have been? Wasn't it a bit... well, pervy?'.

...What was it then...? Ludicrous, ambitious, confused, infuriating, cack-handed, staggering, limited, inventive, cheap, hilarious, camp, sexy, lurid fun. Some of the time.

How can you not want to see more after reading that? What about after seeing costumes like the ready to rumble (or at least play beach volleyball) Security uniforms?

At first I thought they were gym or sauna attendants with a handy towel on their belt. But it turns out they wear a single glove on their belts for an undisclosed reason. Perhaps it's so they don't have to actually touch sweaty male skin when they womanhandle degenerate, x and y chromosomed reprobates. in keeping with their subordinate, eye candy role, Medusan mens' fashion tend toward shiny, billowy, blouse-like shirts with geometric, peek-a-boo holes cut out of key areas.

Catherine Bujold's Star Maidens site is also a wonder of collected info. A huge fan of Space: 1999 and Star Maidens design, Bujold has build a site a beautiful as it is informative. Much of the information shared cam e from one of these two sites. The show began in imaginations of Jost von Hardenberg and Co., WIR Frankfurt. Principle players in the company, Graf and Graefin Von Hardenberg, who's main claim to fame other than Star Maidens seems to be erotic films like Penelope Pulls It Off and Schwedischer Sommerwind (Swedish Summer Wind), a Lady Chatterley film.



You're getting excited about the possibilities now, aren't you? Read on as McGown tries to define Star Maidens this way:

Star Maidens is a hotch potch (sic) of ideas and influences - a series of conflicting dichotomies never resolved over its brief run: male sexual fantasy v feminist gender politics, comedy farce v straight science fiction, German humour v British humour and so on. Thus it was never likely to find an audience in the UK except among five year old kids waiting between seasons of Space:1999 (depending where you lived in the UK!)

Sooo good!

Von Hardenberg took its tongue in cheek sex farce to England's Portman Productions, but producer/director James Gatward (Elephant Boy, Castaways) seems to have tried to take the Series in a more serious sci-fi direction to compete with Gerry Anderson's popular Space:1999 series. (Interestingly, in the Aug. 28 - Sept. 3 issue of the Scottish edition of TV Guide found here, Ian Warner, identified as the owner of the company making the series, plays up the humour aspect).

Star Maidens comes by its Space: 1999 comparison honestly. In addition to the celestial body ripped from its orbit plot device (originated in Flash Gordon), both shows shared the services of production designer Keith Wilson, who brought a large number of his AP Films/Century 21 crew to help with the show. The similarity in the sets is striking with similar motifs varied mostly by a differing colour palettes (Space Maiden's grey and violet vs. Space: 1999's beige and orange sets )

The duplicate cockpits of Moonbase Alpha's
Eagle Interceptor and Star Maidens' Nemesis.

And duplicate sets as well. Looks like casual, space jumpsuits
are in style for the working class on both Medusa and
aboard Moonbase Alpha.

Without a character to provide context this set would
be equally at home on both Space: 1999 or Star
Maidens. This one happens to be for Star Maidens.

In terms of wardrobe, Space: 1999's beige and brown utilitarian, functional style is slightly different in approach to Space Maidens' bold colours and unlikely designs for costumes, but they still fit comfortably into each other's world. It's quite possible Wilson reused a great deal of material from the first season of Space: 1999 to overcome Star Maiden's limited budget. In each case, Wardrobe supervisor Dulcie Midwinter is another link between the two shows, though I don't know how much she contributed to the actual designs.

Care to play doctor with the Star Maiden's
medical robot or Space: 1999's Maya?

Though Star Maidens had few aliens other titular heroes, Designer Keith Wilson's medical robot is a lovely creation. It's a combination of familiar human elements combined with make-up and appliances that adds the same sense of grace and elegance that made Space: 1999's Mya so memorable. in fact, the hairstyles and glitteyr make-up favoured by the Medusan women can be seen to be the blueprint for Maya's appearance in Space: 1999's still to come second season.

Some of Keith Wilson's designs for the show can be seen here and his website (www.keithwilson.com) has many examples of his extensive film and television work.

Space1999.net has a lovely portfolio of his work here. they also have an informative interview about his work on the show here.

As a boy hitting puberty in the late seventies, I'd like thank Mr. Wilson and Mr. Anderson for fashions like these!


No one messes with Medusan Security.
But what's with the gloves?

Is that a nurse's uniform or bandages?

You can defend my planet from
UFO invasion anytime!

Futuristic figure skaters?

In the future bathing that fit are considered unhip.
And speaking of hips...

Despite the eye candy, the show is mess of conflicting ideas, jumbled scripting and pedestrain direction. But there are other things to admire besides the scenery. The soundtrack by German band leader Barry Lipman is uniformly groovy. Gareth Hunt as a childlike manservant who thought this whole 'escape thing' would be a fun little joyride, shows little of the crusading spirit he would soon bring to bear as the rebel leader in Britain's still populat Blake's 7 series. Yet his "owner" Flavia dotes on him like a pet and there is a hint that they share a deeper relationship.


In the Prisoner series, a giant bubble was a way to
prevent escape. In Star Maidens, its a very unlikely
and awkward route to freedom.

Gareth Hunt in the later role would make
him famous, Blake of Blake's 7.

Star Maidens hammers you over the head with the central role reversal theme and yet they don't carry it out to its natural conclusions. How does Medusan Society work. Not only are the women outfitted inappropriately for their jobs, but there is a class of woman who actually do meial labour as well as the men. How does that work? Perhaps, since we only ever see upper class, extremely attractive woman and their literal manservants, they eliminate anyone old or ugly (shades of Logan's Run).

Questions like this abound and remain unanswered for the most part. Star Maidens rarely explores its central conceit, and certainly never traverses new ground but some of the ideas do stand out.

Fulvia and Octavia utilizing a 'nightmare cannon" so Shem and Adam see their faces everywhere is neat idea with some filmic impact. At one point Octavia hooks earth girl Liz up to a 'Sexometer' to find out why she's not attracted to Medusan men (shades of Barbarella and Duran Duran). Liz imagines various animals in place of the hunky bodybuilder visuals Octavia plays and destroys the machine. At one point, earth scientist Rudi finds Medusa's poisonous rain is eroding the support structures of their city but naturally, President Clara and Octavia refuse to listen to a man's theory. In one late episode, the President lies near death and most of the people of the planet are "sympathy dying". A spine-tingling concept but the story veers away from it at the end.

Have I mentioned I dig the Security outfits?

Most modern reviews of the series single out two episodes as particularly praiseworthy and each seem to represent the extremes of what the series tried to be; one is a comedy on gender roles while the other is harder science fiction oriented tale. Episode Seven, "The Perfect Couple" finally plays with the comedic power of the show's premise. Fulvia shacks up with Adam and plays breadwinner while possibly closeted-lesbian, feminists steal Medusan technology to further their cause. Episode Eleven, "Creatures of the Mind" is played as straight science fiction. Liz is trapped in the planet's computer archives with whispering, ghostly voices who turn out to be robots programmed for emotion who need a companion to ease their loneliness.

To offer a feel for the series, here is a terrific Youtube remix that sums up Star Maiden's first episode to a moody, techno soundtrack.



Again, I can't recommend highly enough the two most phenomenal sites for Star Maidens info highly enough:

Alistair McGown's Star Maidens site is so good he provided most of the extras for the German DVD release of the series. Check out his analysis of Medusa's fashions on his Fashion Pages.

And fellow Canuck Catherine Bujold's love of all things Space:1999 and Star Maiden's spurred her to create this terrific website and convert her entire house into a stylin' Moonbase Alpha!

You can find modern reviews of the series here, here and here.

Coming up next, we'll be taking a few detours before continuing our Sci-Fi World Tour.

But after cleansing our palette with the schizoid German-English co-production Star Maidens, I think you're ready to discover how the same books by Poland's most famous science fiction author, Stanislaw Lem, inspired completely different outings from our Hungarian friends.

Get ready for the wonder that is Pirx!

END TRANSMISSION

Sci-Fi World Tour Stop Two: Germany's Raumpatrouille

Welcome to the rebellion.

Though our first stop on our Sci-Fi World Tour, Australia's Phoenix 5, has yet to be collected on DVD, you can check a small review of it here at Black Hole DVD Reviews. They also have a review of the long-awaited DVD release of a show created in the next stop of our tour, Germany! Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol), the fantastic adventures of the Spaceship Orion is a show I was turned on to a year or two ago. Now this is a series with production value and truly happening sixties design!

What seems like a fairy tale today may be reality tomorrow. Here we have a fairy tale of the day after tomorrow. There are no more national states, only mankind and her colonies in outer space. We settle on stars far-off, the bottom of the sea is developed as living place. With what are today unimaginable speeds, the starships of tomorrow transverse the Milky Way. One of this starships is the ORION, a little piece in the giant security system which protects the Earth from outer space threats. Let's accompany the ORION and her crew at their patrols-service on the edge of infinity...

If you're anything at all like me you're wiping up drool with your sleeve right now. Sadly, all that production value came at too steep a cost and only seven adventures were ever filmed. But that makes these few episodes that did get made all the more precious! If you're seeing spans of black on this post, its because my embedded Youtube vids are taking a while to load lately. Rest assured, patience will be rewarded.

A terrific taste of this amazing looking series is contained in this Youtube Remix of the music.



Did you catch the futuristic dancing? Want more? How could you not? It's too awesome to waste words on. We can thank Youtube once again for this little piece of future joy.



Oh the dancing! That's how people thought dance clubs of the future would look. Prophetic, huh? It turns out they were right! Here's a quick tour of Orion, a German club based on the series.



Starlight Casino, the extensive German home of Raumpatrouille fandom, has a page in English for the uninitiated. Click the banner below to visit. And yes, those are giant goldfish swimming above the club.

The German home page for the Starlight Casino is here. You can also find more Raumpatrouille awesomeness here, and here, and you can buy the soundtrack here or download it here. Where Phoenix 5 was sunk by a low budget and being aired against adult sci-fi shows like Star Trek instead of the kid shows it was designed to compete with.

Leave it to the Germans to out-cool the Aussies. Then again, they co-produced Star Maidens with Great Britain so perhaps we shouldn't give them a free just yet. So let's program our auto-controls for the European system and pay a little visit to an unlikely combination of English and German sensibilities.

See you there.

END TRANSMISSION

Sci-Fi World Tour Stop One: Australia's Phoenix 5

Welcome to the rebellion.

An Imperial informant has brought Micheal Pinto's Fanboy.com to our attention. This spy droid is proving to be a reliable, if extremely opinionated, source for dang funny and fascinating intel from the world of sci-fi and animation going back back decades. He writes well too and I suspect, can fluently make funny, snarky comments in over six million intergalactic languages.

Inspired by his recent intel on those sci-fi loving Australians, we have decided to start our Sci-Fi World Tour of unique sci-fi shows whether incredible and unfortunate.

Take three attractive Aussie actors, dress them up in psuedo-Star Trek uniforms, team them with a walking garbage can, stuff them onto a bridge set so tiny they have to face away from the camera and shuffle just to get by each other (The bridge doors opens up to reveal a long hall set. Why not just use the entire space for the bridge so they breathe?), toss in a jazzy, 70's theme with shots of our heroes running and jumping and then stop everything with a script so slow it creates it's own black hole event horizon, dragging all time in the episode to a slow crawl wherein every minutes feels like an eternity, and you've got...

...Phoenix Five!

The fatherly Captain Roke (that is, if your father was a dick who'd let you blithely walk into near-certain death because you've "got to learn!") presides over a crew consisting of the hot-headed and arrogant (but extremely polite) Ensign Adam Hargreaves, the lovely, sensible (and therefore generally ignored) Cadet Tina Kulbrick and a lumbering, robotic cross between a garbage can and a popcorn popper named Karl (Karl?!) who speaks like a tape recorder with dead batteries.

Truth is, the show seems rather charming, though the entertainment value is a little hard to spot from the episode Pinto found on Youtube and re-posted here. But the opening credits do rock in a groovy kind of way! I dare not to frug in your bell-bottoms on your shag carpet as they play! This definitely goes on my all-night dance party mix CD! If you see spans of black below it means the Youtube vids I've attached are taking their time loading. Give it a minute. It's worth it.

A terrific write-up on Phoenix 5 and its immediate predecessors, The Interpretaris and Vega 4 can be found here at ClassicAustralianTV.com. That's where I got all these pics. They have a list of episodes and synopsis' here along with more photos.

Can we get a shout out for the all the Space Ladies in the house?!

While the budgetary restrictions are evident in the low-fi special effects they do seem to have had a great time with the costumes and make-up effects. Some real imagination is displayed in aliens like the gents below.

I dub thee, Mr. Aspar Gus, Artie Choke, and Dr. Blueberry.

Though Phoenix 5 has yet to be collected on DVD, you can check a small review of it here at Black Hole DVD Reviews.



This show should not be confused with Manny Coto's (Tales From The Crypt, Outer Limits, Star Trek Enterprise, 24) Odyssey 5 series on Showtime starring Peter Weller. According to Sci-Fi Wire by way of Akasha's Guide to Sci-Fi and Horror on the Net, it was Showtime's second highest rated series at the time and their number one show in the male demographic and with adults 25-54. Showtime was so excited buy the seriess performance it didn't bother renewing it for a second season.

There's something a sci-fi show that's so thoroughly a product of its time, budget and cricumstances that you can't help but fall in love with it despite the cheese factor. Phoenix 5 has officially inspired me to take a Round the World tour of unlikely sci-fi shows from across the Globe, with a healthy serving of the old fromage!

Round and round we'll go and where we'll stop not even our astromech droid knows!

Strap yourselves in!

END TRANSMISSION

Dang! We Gave Them An Inch.

Welcome to the rebellion.

Before we return to our regularly scheduled genre programming, here is a follow-post on creative copyright issues from my writing blog, starkravingadventure.com. This time it's the writers who should beware!

Leave it to Google to fight a War on several fronts.

As my last post on the U.S. Orphan Works Bill discussed, Google is one of the many companies eager to leap over copyright and artists' rights to gain control of all informati-- er, artwork and out of print works to disseminate as they see fit. If they believe they will make enough through advertising it will all be free. But if that doesn't seem like enough of a return to their stockholders, they'll start charging whatever the market will bear.

But hey, their backing of the Orphan Works Bill covers artwork, design and illustration. Surely, there's nothing for us writer's to worry about yet, is there?

Judge for yourself.

According to the New York Times, Google has just cut a $125 million dollar deal with the Author's Guild for the rights to digitally publish all out-of-print books. The deal covers Google's ass over it's scanning of over seven million books for its digital coffers the past few years with no effort to pay author's royalties.. a definite infringement on their copyrights. The Author's Guild accepted the money on behalf of (presumably) all authors.

Was the Guild empowered by every author infringed upon to make this deal? It's unlikely but they have been around since 1912, defending their membership and the rights of writers so they seem legitimate. Except the deal covers exclusive to ALL Out-of-print fiction. ALL of it. For 125 million bucks, paid to a guild that boasts all of 8000 or so members.

Let's face it, the money seems like chump change to me and I'm not alone. Just check out Gawker.com, who leaked an Author's Guild Memo about the deal here. Over at The Fiction Circus, Miracle Jones summed it up nicely:

This laughable, ludicrously small price is the kind of price that somebody would only offer for something that they didn't actually own.

Now Google gets to fight off future efforts to protect a copyright work they use without permission by saying, "we paid the Author's Guild". Sue them. It gets even better. Not even half of that money is going to actual authors! Apparently only $45 million will be disseminated among the membership ($60 to $300 each!... IF they jump through extensive hoops to attain it. Hey, hey, at last we can give up one of our three jobs and retire Mama!) The rest is likely going to all the crusading lawyers who negotiated this glorious act of thievery and perhaps the Guild itself.



The Times article in question naturally doesn't bother to follow-up and ask any of those sorts of questions. They simply ignore the bull**** aspect of it and use the decision as an excuse to fly into a gushing celebration of the future of the digital book. You'd think the Times (being written by WRITERS and all, many of whom publish books based around their reporting) would pick up on the fact that its their own rights which are being so thoroughly trampled in front of their noses.

Think it won't impact author's much? Well, here's just one scenario to consider: what happens when a writer's book is out of print for a time and they negotiate a deal with a new publisher to bring it back into print?

Probably dick all.

Google now has the "exclusive" right to publish that baby. Too bad. So sad. It's possible some arrangements could be made but I find it hard to believe Google won't want a piece of pretty every book they can get their hands on. Once again, the rights of creators to negotiate for the use of their work and earn fair market value for it is compromised.

Check here for Miracle Jone's entertaining initial response to the announcement and here for his thoughtful follow-up.

And the small but mighty Author's Guild hasn't stopped there. According to their website, the AG have managed to convince Amazon to allow author's to decide whether the new Kindle 2's text-to-speech (TTS) software will be allowed to read its books aloud. Or as Jones, (today's Stark Raving, blogger de jour) put it here:

In an effort to retain good relations with the mysterious "Author's Guild" that supposedly represents the world's fiction writers, Amazon has decided to go ahead and let the rightsholders of Kindle books decide whether or not to allow the Kindle to read books aloud in an uninflected, demonic robot voice.

Jones diatribe against this announcement is misguided. While on first look this may seem to be that is unfair to limit that use. But consider that the audio rights to a writer's works are a separate revenue stream. Books on Tape, for example, are generally a completely different negotiation straight from publication rights. Amazon wanted those rights for free. The Author's Guild announcement sums it up quite clearly for its membership:

For most of you, Amazon's announcement means that it will now respect your contractual right to authorize (or not) the addition of computer-generated audio to your e-books sold for the Kindle. We will be sending recommendations to you shortly on your TTS audio rights.

One important consideration in those recommendations will be to ensure that visually impaired people have access to this technology. Book authors have traditionally authorized royalty-free copies in specialized formats intended for the visually impaired, and copyright law provides a means to distribute recordings to the blind. We can work this out.

A more compelling argument against can be found here at Librarycopyright.net. But I find the Guild's position here much more defensible though it's still questionable how the Guild can be represented as the negotiating body for every author, even when the majority non-members. But they do seem to be serving the needs of their members in this case.

And in the case of on-line databases like Nexus-Luxus, Factiva or ProQuest... where they are monitoring the Supreme Court's Decision to hear the case of freelance writers who complain there are not enough safeguards for writers of unregistered works (a registered copyright is necessary to bring a case of infringement before the courts but that fails to recognize innate copyright protections currently supported by law). The summation can be found here, on the Author's Guild website.

They're coming at us from every which way.

END TRANSMISSION

If You Give Them An Inch...

Welcome to the rebellion.

We rebels must be ever watchful of the Empire's quest for dominance over the universe. This is a mirror post from my television writing blog, starkravingadventure.com.



The Writers Guild of Canada presented before the CRTC Board on New Media this week. They articulated their points in as clear a manner as we've seen so far (other presenters should take notes). And they were still treated a bit like bewildered children by a Board run by a man who publicly declared who has no interest in most Television and Radio. (Seriously. Read the interview that started the outrage here. The response in the arts community? John Doyle's January 22 column in the Globe & Mail will give you an inkling. As will the follow-up post featured on Denis McGrath's blog later that week.)

Like any member, there are things I sometimes wish the Writer's Guild would get around to addressing, most notably inequities in the contracts for kids and animation writing. But truthfully, I am a big fan. They're a dedicated group who do a great deal to defend and expand the rights of writers and artists in general. And they've been working away on multiple fronts for the past couple of years both within our industry and with the various levels of Canadian government. I think they've done a pretty good job of keeping our rights from eroding in the mercurial, shifting stands of this country's broadcast and production industry.

Decades ago, writers, actors, directors, and other creators were essentially shut out of any significant video and DVD earnings when those new platforms came into being when negotiating producers wanted to adopt a "wait and see" stance. We've been waiting ever since. Eventually the web will become more effectively monetized and if creators don't get in on the ground floor to protect our rights to our own work content and to make a proper living, we'll never catch up.

It's hard to get any attention on this topic beyond the Internet boards. The Globe And Mail coverage is buried in their Technology section. Not in Business. Not in the Arts. Not in World News. This is pretty typical of any media coverage of this topic. But these hearings affect all of these areas and more, so it's worth keeping up to speed.

Today the Guild asked the CRTC to consider the internet as part of the broadcasting landscape and force the ISP providers and Cable companies (who are in a protected industry) to, among other things, contribute to a production fund for online content. A little something back for their right to play in this country's digital sandbox without US competition. For their part, the companies are once again fighting to do less and less for this incredible right. The essence of the WGC presentation is summed up here, once again in Denis McGrath's blog, Dead Things On Sticks, one of my few must read sites.

Some key points:

• The WGC thinks that any content levy could easily be absorbed by the ISP's -- because it proposes exempting smaller ISP's who might have trouble paying. Driving an increase in bandwidth due to increased demand for video traffic will increase the profits of the ISP's -- who already charge more for people who download more heavily. It's in their interest to drive people to download more so they can charge more.
  
• Fund could fund Broadcaster add-ons for existing shows, or all-new shows for the internet only.
• ISP's are trying to pull a bait and switch. They are not broadcasters, but they are part of the broadcast system, and they are trying to avoid their responsibilities to contribute to that system like every other player in the system.
• CanCon on the internet should be defined as 75% of the money spent in Canada, and the top 5 creative positions going to Canadians (recognizing that diff projects might have different creative needs, ie: a designer not a director, a writer who also codes, etc.)
• Proposing a system by which new web-broadcasting ventures could "opt in" to a voluntary CanCon cert. system where they would then be able to access funds for new media production. Let's call this the "Jim Henshaw point." :)
  

I think it's more than possible for reasonable people to disagree about an ISP levy. But not from a position of dishonesty about how the Canadian broadcast system truly works.

Like the broadcast system, ISP's are protected telcos and cablecos who are shielded from competition. They receive regulatory advantage every day they operate. The question is whether they should be made to give something back to the system.

It's not a perfect plan, but it's an attempt to take a first step forward. The full presentation can be found at the WGC website under, "WGC, the CRTC & New Media".

So why should you care?

Because, if you give them an inch...

ISP providers, cable companies and broadcasters are businesses. And as businesses their bottom line is their guiding principle, not fairness and the rights of their customers or the artists who work with them. Most will make an effort to appear fair but still are looking for things to be a little bit more fair for them than they are for you. And if they get that much, how about a little more?

Some people are up in arms about this. They're worried about keeping the internet "open and free" and worried that making ISP's pay for their privileged, protective status will create a form of censorship and limit their opportunities to produce material for those same companies. But the truth is, you won't have any opportunities to create and make money if we don't set up some ground rules that everyone has to abide by.

Democracy and the capitalism are not the same thing. In truth, they are opposing forces. One involves active citizenship and working together to support everyone's basic rights. The other is about making money. Supporters of capitalism liken it to Darwin's survival of the fittest. But Darwinisim isn't about competition. It's about each species having the opportunity to adapt. Some do, some don't. But they all have the chance too. Evolution isn't a battle, it's a natural progression for each and every species on the planet. Capitalism is about conquest; control of as much of the market, its products and capital as possible.

Now, I want to make clear, that I am referring to the companies, not to everyone who works within them. Some of my greatest allies in developing new shows and striving to put out something really good have been network executives. People who believe in doing something great. But they still face the challenge of doing it in an environment that doesn't foster creativity, but rather fosters a drive toward higher profits.

In an earlier post on the CRTC New Media, McGrath (and I promise to link to other sites besides Denis' soon!) kindly shared an e-mail comment that included a link for the Lobbyist's Registry Search Engine, which lists the large number of meetings between the various private broadcasters and cable giants and the CRTC's Chairman, Vice-Chairman and secretary General over the past several months. It's a safe bet they're not doing this to shoot the breeze over the latest Jason Statham movie (which was wicked cool by the way).

I had never heard of the LRSE before. But it's much harder to take on a Pollyanna, "It's going to be all right" attitude after finding real numbers to back up my concerns about these hearings. For a world hard-wired into so much information, it's incredible the lengths people will go to avoid actually asking questions and seeking out the truth. Myself included, sadly.

A little overwhelmed? Me too. Let's paws fur a moment and
enjoy a fuzzy, digital hug from this determined feline.
Hang in there baby.

It's sad this isn't a bigger deal in the public's eye. We lazy bastards tend to let politicians and corporations do what they want. But don't mess with our addictive entertainments.

Remember the furor back in 1995 when it was discovered our cable companies were negative billing? People were angry Rogers were foisting extra channels on them and charging for them without asking. You had to show up in person at a Rogers' Cable outlet to cancel and also had to pay for the time you had the unwanted channels. I believe they introduced actual legislation in most provinces to make negative billing but variations on it still crop up from Shaw and Bell and other corporate giants. (In Shaw's case, it was a free preview of other channels that they "assumed" you wanted to keep if you didn't call and say, "Thanks, but no thanks."). Negative Billing is illegal and such a nasty term, but if we define it as a simple loss leader preview period? That's just fine, thank you very much.

People freaked and the media jumped on it. We had a government listing through scandal after scandal, a deteriorating environment, and the thing that got us to take up arms was that we didn't get to choose which cable tier to overpay for ourselves. The outcry was so great the mighty, corporate giant backed away. It can ignore and conquer anything but bad publicity spin. I wish I could say that since then I have seen signs that we learned to be more aware of how our government and a corporate mentality that puts the rights of business and lobbyists before individual citizens. But I can't. And that's too bad.

Because, if you give them an inch...

Last week's brew-ha-ha over Facebook's new policy of owning everything you ever posted there made the New York Times. When confronted with thousands of angry members after being caught insisting that Facebook now "owned" every image, note, joke, story, poem, personal detail and picture anywhere on the site, for eternity.

Facebook backed away, insisting they simply worded things incorrectly and merely wanted to ensure they have the necessary rights to carry and allow users to pass along their own information. Sounds a bit pat. Years ago Facebook users reacted to their Beacon application, which passed their shopping habits along to other sites. So let's face, this attempt to own our info is in line with their business model. A brief update on the fiasco can be found here at the MSNBC news site.

It's debatable how well Facebook's backdoor ownership claims would have stood up in court but it's highly unlikely the words were incorrect. Lawyers spend a lot of time creating these documents to defend against every possible outcome of a legal battle. You can bet they meant exactly what they said. They simply got caught. Most companies who try this don't get challenged in so public a forum. According to the Chicago Tribune article here, Facebook is working the spin machine even now, calling for User suggestions in drafting a new site "Bill of Rights and Responsibilities". Facebook saw an opportunity and went for it, simply because they thought they could. And now they're working to change public perception about them.

If you give them an inch.

How about the world of comics? Last year, Tokyopop, a US publisher of manga and manga styled graphic novels, introduced a Manga Pilot program designed to seek out young, hungry creators so eager to get their work published that they would sell all their rights to Tokyopop for a song. One of the most vocal opponents of the contract was Scott Pilgrim creator, Bryan Lee O'Malley.

O'Malley was riding the wave of interest in Scott Pilgrim that led the casting of Micheal Cera in the title role for the film adaptation that starts shooting soon in Toronto. It's under the direction of Sean of The Dead's Edgar Wright (It's very indie. They even cast through "Craig's List.). So O'Malley's roar was heard across the comic blogosphere. You can find his summation of the contract's dangers here at his blog. Any post that starts off with "It's like Satan wrote it, " you know is gonna be good readin'!

Tokyopop's contract is actually little different from the one offered creators by Zuda.com, a digital comic site sponsored by DC Comics. Zuda wants all the rights and none of the liability. More commentary followed from various comic creators and journalists. For those of you not up on comics, a collection of them can be found here, at the Newsarama blog, here at Tom Spurgeon's Comics Reporter site, at Heidi MacDonald's Publisher's Weekly blog, The Beat.

Like the Facebook flap, horrified reactions to the contract came from all over, even from the Savannah College of Art and Design, who removed Tokyopop from their list of publishers invited to present at the school. According to this blog post, one professor declared, "We want our students to get jobs, not raped." Niiiiiice.

If you give them an inch.

I can also point down south to the land of the freefalling and home of the bravely facing financial ruination for another example of what happens when we trust large corporations like banks to run themselves. I'm not talking about the current Financial Meltdown, turn on your TV's for news on that. Suffice to say, I echo writer Steven Grant's frustration, as shared in the bottom halves of his recent Permanent Damage columns.

For decades – I mean decades, without hyperbole – it's been an open secret that the job of regulatory agencies in the American government has been to collude with the businesses they're supposed to be regulating. It has always happened to some extent, but the Reagan administration pretty much made it mandatory, where they couldn't abolish regulation altogether. (The recurring Republican chant calling for deregulation and the end of regulatory agencies is predicated on the utopian notion that competition is the ultimate form of regulation, and that in a post-regulatory world with no rules everyone will cheerfully follow the rules. AKA "caveat emptor.") The SEC's non-testimony before the House as to why they ignored whistleblowers and let Bernie Madoff's investment operation (other brokers with similar cons keep being discovered in the wake of Madoff) go unchallenged until Madoff crapped away (according to him) fifty billion dollars just underlined what's been clear to everyone who has followed the market for the last 30 years or so: the SEC seems to think its real function is to be in bed with the financial markets. Not that this is any surprise, but the testimony also made it clear they're in no hurry to be part of the solution, seem in fact dedicated to letting it all blow over so the urgency for a solution fades away.

As you can see, people are angry about the financial crisis. And they're talking about it; many with more insight than me. But not enough people are talking about the insidious Orphaned Works Bill currently being railroaded quietly through Congress as the country is distracted by supposedly bigger worries. But the Orphaned Works Bill should be big news indeed for all artists, because it's designed to remove your innate right to a copyright on your work.

If you give them an inch...

Right now the Bill is limited to visual works, but it creates a huge opening to pry away the rights of writers and other artists too, all the while defying and making a mockery of worldwide copyright laws. Let me tell you a little about a Bill motivated by pure greed and arrogant, tunnel-vision philosophy grandstanding as a battle for freedom. People may think i am overreacting to this Bill, but give a listen to this Youtube overview of the some of the problems. It includes a portion of last year's interview with Brad Holland of the Illustrator's Partnership, an ad hoc group that has been opposing the Orphan Works Bill for over two years. Then I'll share my other concerns.



The complete version of this interview can be found here. The genesis behind this bill was to free up ancient works of art and photos that have no known, long dead, or untraceable copyright holders for use by museums, libraries, educational institutions, historians and documentarians.

This sucker stinks for a number of reasons.

*First and foremost, it removes an artist or creator's innate right to copyright and his ability to profit from his labor. In short, it takes away our ability to make a living. these rights are internationally recognized across the world. Therefore active use of the Bill could violate copyright laws in other countries, including Canada.

*The Orphan Works Bill sets out no governance for the copyright protection. It will not be carried out by the US government copyright office. The Bill calls for private companies to arise to take care of such registration. There is no limit on the number of companies that may offer this service. So If I have a thousand companies to choose for registering my work, a "reasonable search" of five companies does not include one I registered with, I am out of luck in defending my rights.

*Canada has a similar law but their registry and search office are centralized. It's a one stop shop. You register there and if you have a work that is questionable, they do a search for you as long as you can show you have done your own, initial due diligence. According to this list, only about 222 licenses for Orphan Works have been granted since 1990. I think this is in part, due to the fact that having a single registry makes it easier to locate a registered work.

*This would effectively remove our immediate copyright to our work and the right to profit from it into our old age and removes the right of our spouses and immediate family to profit from it after we are gone.

*Use of my "Orphaned Work" work is free. And extremely low limits are placed on how much I may be legally awarded if I do discover infringement. It's most definitely not enough to make hiring a lawyer worthwhile. Last I read it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $500. Once again, this heavily favors the defendant and makes copyright breach an affordable thing, especially for well-moneyed transgressors, like for instance, Google.

In a comment at Alas, A Blog last October, Paul summed his concerns regarding the above.

I was opposed to the bill that died for a few reasons. First, it defined making a “good-faith effort” as looking in some yet-to-be-created for-profit registries, so everyone currently holding a copyright would effectively have to re-register it. Second, it didn’t define (although it obviously could have) any kind of escrow requirement for reasonable royalties; instead, anyone whose work is taken has to sue in federal court, and can’t recover attorney’s fees. Third, and possibly worst for me, the citation requirement in the law, as written, works against the creator because, when I see a something published with the creator credited, I tend to assume that they were appropriately compensated for their work and approved of its use. With the orphan copyright act as written, there’s nothing that would stop whoever darn pleased from using ostensibly orphaned works in contexts that their creators would never have given permission for (imagine some neonazis with that archive of pictures from the Holocaust museum, complete with “courtesy of …” at the bottom of each picture).

*As Paul cited above, the use of my work may be used in support of something I do not agree with. His Holocaust example is extreme yes. But it brings the point home.

*I have to actually discover the infringement to gain any possibility of payment, even if it's been done somewhere a continent away.

*This affects all visual artists: illustrators, photographers, animators, videographers, filmmakers, etc.. And once this is passed, can adding the written word to the list laid open by this Bill be far behind?

And on it goes. If you give them an inch...



Many would argue that we are being paranoid. Mostly people who can't see any monetary value in art of any kind. But there is big money to be had. The mere fact that two of of the country's largest media companies, Google and Microsoft, have lent significant support to the lobbying of this Bill begs the question, "What's in it for them that they're spending so much time and money on this?"

Well, let's see, could it be that Google wants to weaken copyright legislation to avoid lawsuits against their attempts to use copyrighted material? In Orphan Works roundtables held by the US copyright office they admitted they plan to utilize as many as one million Orphan Works.

Google maintains its dominance in the information world by providing everything it can get its hands on at the touch of a button, including, potentially, our work. Google suggests that most authors in question "won't care" about them appropriating their work and that authors coming forward to claim their works once Google has grabbed them up would prove to be "extremely inefficient for us." They went on to admit that too many copyright claims against them may result in a change in our business practices, which could result in a loss of revenue for us or otherwise harm our business." See here for more details.

And what about Microsoft's interest? I believe it's they want to sell or license the works themselves. Two of the largest distributors of photographs, motion picture and video images are Getty Images and their biggest competitor, Microsoft-owned Corbis. If Microsoft can get access to copyright free images, they can make a great deal of money. And unlike the poor shmuck artist they profit from, they have the money and the reach to defend their profits in the courts. Don't underestimate the money to be made here. Increasingly, it is the people who hold the information and the content that are raking in the dough. According to Fortune, as of 2008 Hellman & Friedman hasn't lost money on an investment in a decade and they spent 2.4 billion dollars to acquire Getty Images. You can bet they expect that investment to return heavy dividends.

Wonder who Google has partnered up with to lobby for this Bill? Getty Images. The cirlce is complete. Here's a brief summation of that connection from www.changethethought.com's Orphan Works update page.

The really huge crux of this, is not that they bill seeks to ‘PRESERVE’ or allow use for the libraries…at least not in the larger picture. This is only about making money from searches, the sale of Orphans, and the registration of images. They are killing the goose that laid the golden eggs…many artist will be searching other means to support themselves if it becomes impossible to protect their artwork from theft and the small artists will be the most likely target of infringers.

Do an internet search for GOOGLE,YAHOO, PICSCOUT + orphan works bill. How did they wind up giving testimony?
Microsoft (who was courting Yahoo) - who incidently owns Flikr.com (image selling sites)-(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/microsoft_yahoo) and they (microsoft) are already working with Pic Scout (who was mentioned to me by my reps aide yesterday as a potential ‘REGISTRY OWNER’) (http://www.cgi-java.com/article.cfm/id/256275)

MICROSOFT hired Jule Sigall who was the man that wrote the ORPHAN WORKS REPORT while he worked for the COPYRIGHT OFFICE.
(http://research.yale.edu/isp/a2k/wiki/index.php?title=Jule_Sigall&printable=yes (Tech Law Journal’s owner Mr.Carney wrote, “The primary author of the report, Jule Sigall, subsequently went to work for Microsoft. See, story titled “Jule Sigall Joins Microsoft” in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 1,510, December 27, 2006.”)

The reason everyone is fighting over the images are the millions/billions in ad sales resulting from the online searches…Google is the current leader and is now courting Yahoo themselves. Besides the millions or billions of dollars that would be generated from the ad sales, these giants will also make additional money off registration and searches as well. “Companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the backs of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising revenue and IPOs. Google takes the position that everything may be freely copied unless the copyright owner notifies Google and tells it to stop. ” That sounds familar….http://news.softpedia.com/news/Microsoft-Attacks-Google-For-Copyright-Infringement-48665.shtml & (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24543408/page/3/ )

Google is hooked up with Getty (images sales again) and AOL (Shawn Bentley went from the US gov. to work for time warner - owner of AOL - as VP of IP and Global Public Policy after he worked in the senate and “helped write are among the most important laws in the intellectual property world: the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act; the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the American Inventors Protection Act, the Patent Fee Integrity and Innovation Protection Act, the Anti-Counterfeiting Consumer Protection Act, and the Trademark Dilution Act, just to name a few.” http://thebloodofpatriots.com/rag/?p=25

Then there’s apple fixing to jump into the mix? (http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2008/04/is_apple_about.php)

Also, any artist that uploads any amount of art onto free sites better be taking a really good look at their policies and finding out what they are up to. Artwanted’s policies already state your art goes right onto Google and WITHOUT CREDITS/COPYRIGHT INFO.

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1095637

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/20/opinion/20lessig.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

http://www.techlawjournal.com/topstories/2008/20080507.asp

This bill will put many small artists out of business - we fight infringement daily NOW with the current laws. Removal of the penalties currently in place will open all artists up to constant infringement. Who has the time to spend hunting for infringed work on a constant basis? Oh, but don’t worry, because now, for a fee there are IMAGE SEARCHING sites springing up offering to let you find infringed copies/potential orphans - for a fee.

For more information on the Orphan Works Bill, check out the SAA Orphan Works Blog. Once again, the full interview with Brad Holland and more links can be found here. There are also arguments for and against here, here, and here. The Youtube video above came from this page, and is accompanied by ways to act against the bill now. At least one prominent artist trade group, the American Society of Media Photographers, has changed its stance after helping to defeat an early version of the bill last year.

People may think we're paranoid for trying to keep our footing on this slippery slope. But we've closed our eyes, clicked our heels together and wished for a fairer deal too many times to assume anyone else is going to watch out for our interests.

If you give them an inch they'll take a mile. And once they've taken that mile, what's to stop them from pointing to the horizon and saying, "I want that too, and everything beyond it. Forever."?

Just us.

Spread the word to your Member of Parliament and ask them to encourage an official Canadian protest. Then spread the word and ask all your US artist friends to go to this website to find out what they can do.

Spoiling for a fight? It's time to
stand up and be heard cool cats.

END TRANSMISSION

Don't Mess With Cosplayers, Man

Welcome to the rebellion.

We've talked about cosplay before in posts like this one. Cosplay is often the thing most pointed to by outsiders as an excuse to diss the fan experience in general. Trekkers are always pictured in their Spock ears, Star Fleet tights or Klingon uniforms. Star Wars fans are all pictured carrying lightsabers, hair styled in Leia buns or breathing heavily out of Vader masks. And superheros able to leap line-ups in a single to have a creator sign their latest graphic novel are all perfect camera fodder for TV, magazine and blog coverage.

But as I slowly learn more about the people I find cosplay to be a public display of exuberance and joy that I thoroughly admire. These are often the shyest of people who get to come out of their shell by talking courage from being a fictional character. If you take them with a sense of play and never assume they actually are the person they're portraying. you'll get along fine.

But if you think cosplayers aren't not tough check out Champion welter weight kickboxer Yuichiro Nagashima. Not only is he a champion welter weight, he also happens to be a crossdressing otaku cosplay fanatic. See if you can pick him out on this fight card from a few months ago.

I suspect that the strength and joy cosplayers derive from working on their costumes and creating their characters often helps them excel in other areas of their lives. Or at least, it gives them the chance to meet others who chare their passions and to feel a part of something. Yuichiro here aspires to be as strong and capable as characters like Vita, the fiery, red-headed Knight of the Steel Hammer from the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha anime.

I sometimes lament that I seem incapable of being so thoroughly dedicated to a single subject that I can be considered a true fan. Compared to the fire of some fans on the message boards I am practically a cold fish. Partially, it's because I don't seem to have the time to spend much time on the boards. When I do go there's often some interesting chats to comments on but I am usually well behind the conversation, commenting on things said and dealt with months before. Sigh.

But the confidence Yuichiro takes from his cosplay is pretty inspiring, doncha think? He's used it to take himself to the top of a challenging profession. Who am I to argue with that?

END TRANSMISSION.