{"id":638,"date":"2014-11-02T10:32:37","date_gmt":"2014-11-02T15:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=638"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:24:53","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:24:53","slug":"an-open-letter-to-google-youre-killing-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"An Open Letter to Google: You\u2019re Killing Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

The motto of Google is, \u201cDon\u2019t be evil.\u201d\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve got a message for you, guys.\u00a0 You\u2019re being evil.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s intentional, but you\u2019re killing us.\u00a0 By \u201cus\u201d I mean the small group of independent film preservationists who try to make a living my preserving and presenting films.\u00a0 And there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s killing us more than anything else.<\/p>\n

YouTube.<\/p>\n

YouTube (which is owned by Google), has morphed into a Frankenstein-like creature that\u2019s made up of cat videos, people\u2019s reviews of other media, music, and bootlegged movies.\u00a0 It\u2019s become the global repository for everything that is cinema.\u00a0 People never seem to ask me whether something is available on video, on film, whether they can see it with an audience, nothing but this: \u201cCan I see it on YouTube?\u201d<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a problem.\u00a0 Google has an odd policy about YouTube, which is that anyone can post anything for any reason at any time and it\u2019s up to the original copyright owners to file a complaint to take it down.\u00a0 The amount of Google patrolling that happens there is pretty thin.\u00a0 Disney does it of course, but you have to be on it all the time.\u00a0 New videos pop up every moment.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve done some complaining… they often ask me if I\u2019m really affiliated with the project.<\/p>\n

Google seems to have the idea that the whole world will be better if everything that ever existed in the history of the world is suddenly indexed and available for download.\u00a0 A few years ago, Google was scanning books, copyright notwithstanding, and posting them for searching in Google Books.\u00a0 When some of the authors complained, there was a strange reaction that this was somehow stupid.\u00a0 After all, if the books are up and searchable, isn\u2019t that an advertisement for you to buy it?<\/p>\n

No, it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 And it\u2019s even worse for people restoring films.\u00a0 You see, the restoration of a film isn\u2019t copyrightable.\u00a0 Please don\u2019t email me and tell me otherwise.\u00a0 I\u2019ve researched it.\u00a0 If I add something to it, then I can copyright the changes, but only that.<\/p>\n

So if I restore an uncopyrighted film, spend hours doing it, release it on video to recover my costs, then it\u2019s perfectly legal for someone to rip the DVD and throw it on YouTube.\u00a0 A lot of people think this is great.\u00a0 It\u2019s cool.\u00a0 It\u2019s sharing a movie with the world, opening up the audience.\u00a0 And, to a certain degree, that\u2019s true.\u00a0 It is giving publicity to the work.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s free.\u00a0 And it encourages people not to buy the work, which means that sales go down, and suddenly you\u2019re not making it on the razor-thin margin of sales, but you\u2019re still reaching the same number or more people than you reached before.\u00a0 They\u2019re just not paying for it.<\/p>\n

Sure, I hear you say, there are people who will find out about your work on YouTube and buy it just to show support.\u00a0 But I\u2019m finding that that\u2019s about 1 person in 10 to 1 in 20.\u00a0 Five to ten percent.\u00a0 90%-95% just look at it and say, \u201cWHEE!\u00a0 IT\u2019S FREE.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m just a bitter whiner punk, right?\u00a0 Well, don\u2019t believe me.\u00a0 Ask people like Paul Gierucki, David Shepard, Kevin Brownlow or Dave Stevenson.\u00a0 They\u2019ve all had to curtail or stop their releases because of YouTube.<\/p>\n

And Google is generous enough to let us share ad revenues with people who post films.\u00a0 That\u2019s wonderful. We can post our own stuff and hope we can make money that way.\u00a0 Except no.<\/p>\n

The most popular person on YouTube has some six billion views, with an annual income of $4 million.\u00a0 This equates to about $ .0006 per view.\u00a0 That\u2019s for dude-boy video games and YouTube Poops that are amazingly popular.\u00a0 Let\u2019s assume, for the sake of argument, that we apply that to a bootlegged version of Seven Chances <\/i>that appears on YouTube.\u00a0 It\u2019s got 40,500 views at this point.\u00a0 I\u2019m not supplying the link because I fear that some of you will watch it.<\/p>\n

I spent about 80 hours just fixing the color sequence for this film, and Kino paid me about $250 for my trouble. (They apologized for this, and they were very nice, but they said they couldn\u2019t afford any more.)\u00a0 The bootlegger has taken this film, which I\u2019ve got to say is probably among the most popular silent Blu-Rays, and he\u2019s earned a whopping–get this–$24.68.<\/p>\n

And let\u2019s assume that maybe one in ten would otherwise have bought the film if they couldn\u2019t get it for free… that\u2019s 4050 copies sold.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure Kino would LOVE to have sold that many of this disc set.\u00a0 I\u2019ll bet it didn\u2019t sell anywhere near that.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m on the topic of Seven Chances<\/i>, let me take this opportunity to rant a bit more.\u00a0 Not only does Kino make no money off this, but the print on YouTube is horrible.\u00a0 <\/i>The uploaders used a compression technique that makes the film really dark, so that you can barely see the color in the sequence I restored, and a lot of detail is missing in the rest of the film.<\/p>\n

I think this really does Seven Chances <\/i>and silent film in general a great disservice.\u00a0 By featuring inferior copies on YouTube, we\u2019re perpetuating the idea that silent films, and old films in general, look bad.\u00a0 People almost invariably feel that it\u2019s due to bad old technology and not bad\u00a0<\/span>new compression techniques.\u00a0 This perpetuates the idea that old films are inherently boring and not worth seeing.<\/p>\n

AND THAT\u2019S EXACTLY WHAT WE PRESERVATIONISTS ARE FIGHTING AGAINST.<\/p>\n

Not only is Google depriving us of income that we might otherwise get, the are also poisoning the well for new people giving these films a chance.\u00a0 The vast majority of the bootlegged features are exceptionally dark and blurry, and this is often noted in reviews that we see on IMDb.\u00a0 Sometimes for good movies.<\/p>\n

Let me clarify that Seven Chances <\/i>IS copyrighted, and that one of the bootlegged versions has been up for two years from the time of this posting.\u00a0 It\u2019s got the copyrighted score on it.\u00a0 Imagine how much easier it would be to bootleg someone\u2019s restoration of a public domain film.\u00a0 That\u2019s not even against Google\u2019s rules.<\/p>\n

Look, I appreciate free as much as the next guy, but the market here is dying.\u00a0 At one time, you could try to sell films to TCM, but they\u2019re becoming increasingly insular due to costs, and they still have zillions of films from the RKO, MGM, and Warner library that they\u2019ve never aired.\u00a0 Why should <\/i>they license films from outside?<\/p>\n

That leaves Google.\u00a0 I\u2019d love to see Google spend some of its dripping billions on putting non-junk on YouTube.\u00a0 If YouTube is suddenly the cultural repository of all video not on NetFlix, then can it at least look good?\u00a0 Can you find collectors, historians, archives, and preservationists who will get you good prints instead of stuff that\u2019s reviewed as \u201cbad, and I couldn\u2019t read most of the titles\u201d?\u00a0 Throw those people or organizations a check.\u00a0 After all, they saved good copies of the films in the first place.<\/p>\n

I suppose we can consider archive.org, but their stuff, with a few exceptions, looks even worse than YouTube.\u00a0 It\u2019s even more lax in rules than YouTube, with blatant violations like an uncut Dracula<\/i> and the Metropolis <\/i>restorations with complete Kino titles.<\/p>\n

I know that a lot of people seem to think that restorations happen like magic and are pretty cheap to do.\u00a0 I used to be in the computer animation business and we\u2019d have a similar problem: guys would come in and request substantial changes, then come back in 5 minutes and ask to see them.\u00a0 Hence our motto: \u201cAll computer rendering takes place in zero time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since I do this professionally, I\u2019ll outline what I\u2019ve done on my NFPF restoration of King of the Kongo<\/i>.\u00a0 I get a couple of requests a month to put this on YouTube, and about two per week asking for the Dr. Film <\/i>episodes.\u00a0 Then they don\u2019t understand why I answer, \u201cI can\u2019t afford to put them on YouTube.\u00a0 Once they\u2019re on YouTube, they\u2019re valueless.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n

I don’t have another job to fall back on for the money I lose on this. \u00a0And if I did have another job, I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the work I do now. \u00a0Here\u2019s what went into King of the Kongo, Chapter 10:<\/i><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. About $6500 of lab work, including scanning and archival film recording.<\/li>\n
  2. Breaking the film down on a shot-by-shot basis to fix contrast and brightness issues (about two days of work plus about two days of computer rendering time.)<\/li>\n
  3. Stabilizing the film on shot-by-shot basis to make the image stable enough to do lip sync.\u00a0 (about 4 days of work plus a couple of days of rendering.)<\/li>\n
  4. Synchronizing the sound.\u00a0 This is a technical disaster that I could go on about for hours, but let\u2019s just say it was about a week.<\/li>\n
  5. Getting everything moved.\u00a0 The sound discs moved from Michigan to Indianapolis, to Virginia, to New Jersey, back to Virginia, and back to New Jersey.\u00a0 This was all hand-carried to avoid damage in shipment. The film went from NY to Indianapolis, then hard drives went back and forth.\u00a0 The logistics are a nightmare, with about 5-6 people involved in it.<\/li>\n
  6. Restoring the credits.\u00a0 Again, a long, long explanation, but a lot of math and about 4 days of work for 45 seconds of footage.<\/li>\n
  7. De-noising the picture.\u00a0 Using a special statistical analysis program, all 30,000+ frames of the film are analyzed to remove suspected dust.\u00a0 About half of these are false positives and must be cancelled by hand.\u00a0 This takes about two weeks.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now, I did get an NFPF grant to cover this.\u00a0 They covered the lab expenses.\u00a0 Everything else I did myself.<\/p>\n

    So am I going to put this all on YouTube for free?<\/p>\n

    Am I going to produce more episodes of the Dr. Film show and post them for free?\u00a0 (Maybe even one with the Kongo <\/i>restorations.)<\/p>\n

    I\u2019d love to.\u00a0 I\u2019ll do it when Google sends me a big check to cover my heating bills for last winter.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure not going to make it back in Blu-Ray sales.<\/p>\n

    <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The motto of Google is, \u201cDon\u2019t be evil.\u201d\u00a0 Well, I\u2019ve got a message for you, guys.\u00a0 You\u2019re being evil.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think it\u2019s intentional, but you\u2019re killing us.\u00a0 By \u201cus\u201d I mean the small group of independent film preservationists who try to make a living my preserving and presenting films.\u00a0 And there\u2019s one thing that\u2019s … Continue reading “An Open Letter to Google: You\u2019re Killing Us”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[70,170,137,17,169],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","tag-blu-ray","tag-bootleg","tag-film","tag-preservation","tag-youtube"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions\/640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}