We live in Pottersville; thoughts on It's a Wonderful Life

 

 

Last Christmas, I scratched It's a Wonderful Life off my to watch list. It took me awhile, I suppose it was a combination of never being on TV when I was free at Christmastime and a case of absorbing much of the film via cultural osmosis due to the staggering number of other media spoofing, parodying and tributing the film. I learnt about the key plot twists as a child thanks to the Simpsons and an episode of Johnny Bravo. I was surprised to learn that the bits everyone knows about are only a fraction of the film, and that I still really enjoyed it despite popular culture spoiling nearly every key scene. Initially Jimmy Stewart's performance stunned me since I had been under the impression that his aww shucks and golly gee dialogue and put upon but dogged demeanour combined with that semi-warble line delivery was a product of exaggerated spoofs and not the performance of a Hollywood leading man.

It's a great film, has a good moral, the cast plays their roles excellently, I didn't feel its length and this is nothing new to anyone whose seen the film. All I'll say on that is that if you were like me and were in no rush to see it, give it a go, it'll be a pleasant evening. 

So, with that out of the way, the reason I'm talking about this movie is politics. The film was controversial on release wayback in 1946, the FBI in an early move in the second Red Scare investigated the film on suspicion of it being Communist propaganda. 

There is submitted herewith the running memorandum concerning Communist infiltration of the motion picture industry which has been brought up to date as of May 26, 1947....

With regard to the picture "It's a Wonderful Life", [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a "scrooge-type" so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.

  [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters. [redacted] related that if he made this picture portraying the banker, he would have shown this individual to have been following the rules as laid down by the State Bank Examiner in connection with making loans. Further, [redacted] stated that the scene wouldn't have "suffered at all" in portraying the banker as a man who was protecting funds put in his care by private individuals and adhering to the rules governing the loan of that money rather than portraying the part as it was shown. In summary, [redacted] stated that it was not necessary to make the banker such a mean character and "I would never have done it that way."

https://web.archive.org/web/20111229215857/http://www.wisebread.com/fbi-considered-its-a-wonderful-life-communist-propaganda#memo1 

 Which is of course total nonsense. Yes, Mr Potter as portrayed by Lionel Barrymore is an absolute scumbag who you're supposed to hate with vehemence, but Jimmy Stewart's character is also a banker. The film isn't Communist at all, Capra the director of the film is throwing his weight behind small scale community oriented capitalism. Bailey Brothers Building and Loans is a bank and its importance as an institution in the town and the hope it provides to the residence of Bedford Falls is salvation through capital investment, the homes they're building and enabling the community to buy come from those investments. 

Potter and Bailey are opposed ideologically, but it's an ideological divide within, the logic of capitalism. Potter represents old monopoly capitalism, he spends the film trying to destroy the Bailey Brothers because they are the one sole form of competition in the area, so he as the big established capitalist uses every advantage he has to break the rival bank, and when that fails he just steals from them to try and deal the killing blow. I think what really got the FBI and its informant [REDACTED] ornery was that Potter, the villain, is representative of the American system, he's the typical capitalist and so criticism of how he acts and behaves is criticism of officially sanctioned America. He also doesn't face any punishment for his many morally and ethically dubious but often legal actions. I don't know if Frank Capra was consciously aware of just how damning that is a judgement of American society. The film shows us that the established powers in America can use that power to crush the good in society out of personal spite or paranoia over a potential competition, and they can do that with impunity. 

The real tragedy is that in the real world, the Potters won.  Credit Unions, community and co-operative banks still exist in the present and some have grown to some size, but compared to the banks' ala Potter? Pebbles next to mountains. The successful stakeholder initiatives increasingly morph into or sell to the big banks, which are now so big and concentrate so much capital that they can plunge the whole global economy into recessions when they screw up. And closer to home, the Potters won the battle for the film. 

It's a Wonderful Life didn't just annoy the FBI, it did poorly with the critics and was a box office disappointment. It languished in obscurity and was such a low priority that when the copyright was up for renewal in 1974 it was botched, pushing the film into the public domain.  Thanks to that clerical error that led to the film's eventual rise to classic status and beloved fixture of American holidays. TV stations could air the film in exchange for royalties to the owner of the copyright of The Greatest Gift, the 24-page source material, which still made it much cheaper to show than most alternative films. This also probably played a role in why the film is so widely referenced, parody is protected under the doctrine of Fair Use, copyright can still provide grounds for offended rights holders to make it not worth the trouble.

Republic Pictures used its ownership of the copyright to the source material to clamp down further on the distribution of the film, effectively forcing it back into copyright. Republic Pictures had closed down in the 1960s and was revived in the 80s due to business restructuring, shortly after reclaiming It's a Wonderful Life they were folded up into Viacom. No one who worked on the story or the film is connected with the royalties and fees that are accrued by the film today. The cinematic community has been robbed of the film thanks to the power of large corporations to influence the legal system of the United States with their large law firms and lobbying agents. 

I suppose It's a Wonderful Life has some solace for us, in the film Potters triumph as bleak as it is not the end of the struggle, George Bailey doesn't give into despair despite the many trying obstacles, he earns his happy ending and we can too.

On Time and Being in the public domain

 

Pay special attention to the year 1929 listed at the bottom

 

Warning to enjoyers of classic media, I've noticed a dirty trick by several bad actors to keep older works under control of estates and corporate departments. In the United States of America, copyright still works differently than in most of the rest of the world. The year of release is the most important aspect for determining if a work is or is not still in copyright. As the year's tick by and more and more popular and well remembered (still able to generate profit) works fall into the public domain, I'm seeing what I guess can be called retroactive release date extensions. 

If you look at the screenshot above, you will notice that the classic air ace film Wings is available for purchasing or rent on YouTube. You may also notice the year listed is 1929. This is not the year Wings was released. It was in fact released in 1927, why the discrepancy? Well, American works released in 1927 or earlier are now in the public domain. Whereas 1929 works at the time of writing are still in copyright. This isn't a little white lie either, I've received take down notices by companies using this false redating, and on at least one occasion while I was compiling evidence for my challenge I noticed that the English language wikipedia entry for the film in question had also mysteriously had new dates, this has since been corrected.

 

So, what can you do about this? Well, like all other forms of copyfraud we can't stop the perpetrators from doing this, we can however challenge and expose this. While wikipedia can be edited by anyone, there are several definitive databases that cannot be tampered with. For American film's I always check the American Film Institute which lists the release dates and premieres of every commercially released American film. For example, the entry on Wings clearly shows multiple screenings in 1927. For British films, the British Film Institute also fulfils this service.  So be vigilant, if in doubt check at authoritative sources.

Public Domain 2024, or why is Steamboat Willie still being flagged when I upload it to YouTube?

 

Yes, after Millions of dollars in lobbying efforts, after two decades of delay, Steamboat Willie the first animated short starring Mickey Mouse is finally public domain. Many have rushed to upload the short to their video platform of choice, which is of course YouTube. And yet many are finding that their videos are being claimed by the Disney corporation anyway. What gives? Well, as someone who uploads public domain material to YouTube regularly, including Steamboat Willie, nothing has changed.

There are two types of copyright triggers on YouTube, manual, where someone actively makes a claim and the much more common automatic flagging system which scrubs through whatever you upload to YouTube as part of the upload process, usually after the SD version is ready but before HD if that is applicable. And after uploading, your video will be subject to periodic and random checks for the rest of time. If you've ever received an e-mail out of the blue informing you that a video you uploaded ten years ago has been blocked in Greece or cannot be monetised because of a claim by a company in Australia, that is usually why that has happened.

This is an automatic flagging. Neither automatic nor manual copyright claims, blocks and strikes do not have legal standing and are not in themselves evidence of anything. But this is especially true of automatic versions when a work's copyright expires. All they mean is that someone - and it's important to remember that this could be anyone - has made a copyright claim on some material and either consciously made it against your upload or the automatic system thinks your content is a match for what's in its database to check for. So, once material has been added to the system to check it stays in there, it's up to the submitter to make changes and there is no obligation for them to do so nor sanction if they fail to do so. 

Last year, Disney was blocking my upload of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit's Trolley Trouble's. I disputed it and to my surprise, instead of running out the clock or trying to intimidate me into dropping the issue, they promptly responded and dropped the claim. A while ago, YouTube informed me that my channel could qualify for partnership, as part of the sales pitch it was keen to stress that I could make use of its checking system, simply upload my video to it, and it would take care of all the rest for me. I think you can see several of the potential openings for abuse right there.

Why such a boon for shady dealers and outright committers of copyfraud? Well, it's not YouTube's fault, well not exclusively its fault. It's the fault of Intellectual Property legislation. In particular the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the dreaded DMCA. Under the DMCA system, YouTube and all other websites operating under jurisdiction of the United States of America have to take allegations of copyright infringement at their word and act to remove it. This leaves it up to the user to challenge it if those complaints are unfounded. And sites aren't even obligated to provide you the means to challenge it. YouTube gets lots of criticism for its copyright policies, but I will give it the barest slither of credit, it does allow users to make a challenge in the case of abuse, from what I've seen other websites just act and then ban the user or send them a warning. YouTube's process is extremely flawed, especially if you don't have a lawyer on retainer, but it has a process.

If you're curious why websites behave this way, it's because that's a requirement of the `Safe Harbour` protections. So this is a compromise between big media companies and big tech companies. YouTube and all the big online media sharing sites are full of piracy, but they rarely face any legal consequences, because the liability is transferred to the anonymous individual users. This aspect was key to what made that lawsuit by the channel Business Casual so surprising, the alleged actions of YouTube as a company risk losing that Safe Harbour status and would put them at risk of direct litigation for copyright violations and other activities by the company and its administration. So, it will be interesting to see how that class action lawsuit they're building plays out.

But back to the Mouse, because of how 'Safe Harbour' works there is no attempt at evaluation or judgement, it is a simple as Step 1: Report and Step 2: Remove as an automatic function, this means that the copyright claims on YouTube videos don't matter beyond restricting and annoying some people. The system by design eliminates evaluation and judgement of merit until other parties take further action. My upload of Steamboat Willie is blocked in several nations, and according to YouTube the claim is made by Disney, but I won't have any proof that Disney is in fact behind the claim unless I proceed through the dispute process up to a point where YouTube enacts a "contact the claimant" option and gives me an e-mail address, that is how little effort YouTube takes in verifying the identities of the entities that claim their legally protected material is being harmed by its service. Oh, and for extra fun, even when you win a dispute, there is nothing in place to stop the same content being claimed, nor being claimed by the same people you fought off last time. Warner Bros, are pretty infamous for repeatedly trying to re-claim their former properties to take just one example. What determines the copyright status of works is legislation and case law. So, if you live in one of those countries that keeps blocking the Mouse, you need to look at your own nation's legal codes; does your nation have the "rule of shorter term" for foreign works? Is the work still in copyright in your territory, and if so in what fashion and to whom is the representative? A company arbitrarily actioning what is often an automatic response does not mean anything.

Addendum

On the 13th of March, Disney failed to escalate my challenge copyright dispute over the content of the video, during the dispute period Disney did however remove its region blocks and changed to what's called an "ad grab" copyright claim. That's the claim that doesn't affect the upload but does monetise it for the claimant. So, looks like we have clarity, Mickey Mouse the character is public domain world wide.