Reintermediation

Jon M. Garon, Reintermediation, 2 Int. J. of Private Law 227 (2009). The digital revolution has interrupted traditional supply chains and wholesaler relationships with manufacturers and retailers, companies are developing new methodologies to create supplier loyalty critical to control of market share. This article documents the leading strategies being utilised by companies to reassert their relevance in the value proposition for their clients and the consequences of these new business models on intellectual property law, privacy rules and influences on judicial contract interpretation. In Philip Evans and Thomas Wurster\u27s bestselling book, Blown to Bits (Harvard Business Press, 1999), the authors postulated that the inverse relationship between the richness and reach of content was eliminated by the extremely low transaction costs associated with providing consumers highly rich content through digital media. Successful companies have employed reintermediation, the use of proprietary sales channels and exclusive intellectual property-protected techniques to establish brand loyalty, enforce brand exclusivity and command market-share

Content, Control, and the Socially Networked Film

The influences of digital distribution of content have begun to redefine the music industry in a highly-visible battle between record producers and consumers which has left musicians standing at the sidelines. Given the high cost of production and relatively limited number of theatrically distributed feature films each year, motion picture producers are exposed to much greater risk from digital piracy than other media. At the same time, changing technology has created new opportunities for film producers, filmmakers and audiences to interact. These same trends may grow to subsume the traditional notion of prime-time television entertainment as well. All the parties involved in filmmaking must reinvent the production and distribution methodology under the pressure from digital piracy, smart phones and personal video players, YouTube, and social networks. This article reviews the technological influences that have transformed the motion picture and television industry. Based on these influences, it recommends approaches to the business and contractual arrangements to allow filmmakers and producers to succeed in the modern, digital environment. In particular, the article outlines new contractual arrangements to allow filmmakers to directly interact with curatorial audience — technologically savvy viewers who collect, blog, share and influence opinion using the modern social-networking tools

Revolutions and Expatriates: Social Networking, Ubiquitous Media and the Disintermediation of the State

This article explores the modern disruption of the state as the territorial control over its citizens and the restructuring of these social structures caused by social media and the unmediated communication of the digital age. Nowhere has this transformation been greater than in the Middle East, a region shaped by arbitrary political expediency and under tremendous popular pressure to redefine itself. But these transformations are not merely the populist uprisings of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria; they can be seen in economic transformations of Asia and economic harmonizations between Europe and North America. In all political, economic and social spheres, the role of social media and non-mediated communication has systematically reduced the role of the state and empowered a new network dynamic that will define the coming decades of the Twenty-First Century. A survey of Diaspora literature, however, suggests that while social media and Internet-age communications tools expand the role of Diaspora communities, they are quintessentially a tool. Some expatriate communities are engaged in peace building efforts and economic development while others are less tractable and using these tools to fund or promote armed conflict. These communities themselves are heterogeneous, so any generalization oversimplifies the community and its internal conflicts. The relative power of the state and the expatriate community are shifting away from the state – sometime evoking additional conflicts. Whatever the role, the significance of the Diaspora will increase and play a more significant part on their former homeland. The role will be determined by the conditions and the community

Localism as a Production Imperative: An Alternative Framework to Promoting Intangible Cultural Heritage and Expressions of Folklore

In the United States, the policy of localism – the legislative goal of fostering local community expression and competence to deliver local content – finds its home in the Telecommunications Act rather than either the Copyright Act or Trademark Act. Other nations have introduced values of localism into trade policy, content distribution rules, and international efforts to protect intangible cultural heritage and expressions of folklore. Jurisdictions in every continent are struggling to address the pressures of globalism through efforts to protect indigenous peoples’ and minority communities’ languages and culture. These efforts take many forms. Nations have introduced efforts to protect these interests into trade policy, content distribution rules, and the legal regimes of copyright and trademark. Some jurisdictions, for example, emphasize the need for historical preservation of particular culture and content. Other jurisdictions emphasize localism to promote domestic employment and economic growth. At the same time, however, other regulators are cloaking governmental censorship under the guise of protectionism. These efforts assume, arguendo, that some model of protectionism is necessary to assist these communities. Because there are many different types of intangible cultural heritage – local languages, tribal customs, religious traditions, folklore, styles of artworks, etc. – this assumption may be counterproductive. Particularly in our increasingly networked, global information community, assumptions of territorial protections must be reconsidered. This article reviews the underlying societal imperatives reflected in a policy of intangible cultural heritage and the intellectual property-like regimes being developed to protect these interests. It contrasts UNESCO efforts with more narrowly tailored efforts of WIPO and juxtaposes those approaches with the localism model developed under the FCC. While aspects of the WIPO protection efforts focusing on trademark-like and trade secret-like protections benefit the people and cultures these policies hope to serve, additional copyright-like protections will likely do more harm than good. Instead, global public policy will be far better served through emphasis on localism’s attributes of developing human capital to improve the quality of content being produced and encouraging local communities to focus on the content of their own choosing. http://ssrn.com/abstract=168717

Take Back the Night: Why an Association of Regional Law Schools will Return Core Values to Legal Education and Provide an Alternative to Tiered Rankings

The system of legal education is fundamentally broken not because of the legal education produced, but because of the social and economic cost to the students and the public. The students have too few price choices and far too much debt while the public has legal services that are too expensive to provide meaningful representation for a significant portion of the population. Moreover, as preferred pedagogical and institutional choices have evolved into baseline accreditation requirements, the ability to reach a broadly diverse group of law students has been stymied. The public is being priced out of legal services, and the racial disparities threaten the credibility and stability of our legal system. This article traces the roots of these problems from the social monopoly which dominates legal education and suggests that an alternative to the ABA and AALS be created with an explicit on new criteria separate from the ABA\u27s mandate of minimum competency and AALS emphasis as a learned society. Emphasizing the roles of law schools in their practice region, the article suggests that a member school in the Regional Association would organize itself around the following five core principles: Diversity: Promote diversity to diversify and broaden the profession to the greatest extent permitted by law. Price Sensitivity: Control costs to financially enable graduates to better serve the profession. Student Learning: Focus on student learning and competency upon completion of law school, including a strong emphasis on experiential learning. Applicable Scholarship: Emphasize meaningful scholarship tied to the needs of the profession and society. Regional Engagement: Promote ties to regional institutions including state and regional bar associations and state Supreme Courts

Digital Hollywood 2.0: Reimagining Film, Music, Television and Publishing Distribution as a Global Artist Collaborative

Jon M. Garon, Digital Hollywood 2.0: Reimagining Film, Music, Television and Publishing Distribution as a Global Artist Collaborative, 21 Mich. St. Int\u27l L. Rev. 563 (2013). The seven largest U.S. motion picture distributors control as much as ninety percent of the U.S. domestic box office and the majority of the global theatrical box office revenues. This economic dominance in gross revenue, however, undervalues the success of financially and artistically successful works budgeted for smaller audiences. Similar economics also drive music and publishing economies. Measured solely from gross revenue, the Hollywood model of distribution dominates most markets around the world. Lower budgeted projects, however, may have much higher returns on capital investment and allow the creative artists to engage more targeted audiences. When more appropriate measures of success are utilized, a different picture emerges. European productions represent a significant amount of content and although Hollywood continues to achieve a disproportionate amount of gross revenue, the European productions continue to achieve profitability and audience acclaim. The same is true elsewhere. India, for example, “has a thriving film industry, both Bollywood films, the Hindi blockbusters coming out of Mumbai film studios, and regional films made in regional languages dominate the Indian box office leaving less room for Hollywood films.” South Korea, Nigeria, Hong Kong and increasingly China all have strong attendance of regionally produced films despite the competition with U.S. product. This article will analyze the legal strategies and business models utilized by the new film distribution companies and contrast these with the models working for Bollywood, online music distribution at Apple, and e-book strategies at Amazon and Google. These strategies include social networking and community development at the inception, production and distribution stages of the content. Distribution 2.0 begins with crowd-funding and related strategies to engage the audience before and during production to build interest prior to distribution. It analyzes current financial structures to assure a healthier economic relationship between participants, producers, and distributors in order to create a sustainable business model. It then looks at the distribution strategies to emphasize the ability to use social networking and communities of interest to build and sustain audiences and rethink pricing strategy. This article will address the financial regulations, intellectual property laws and contracting strategies that interfere with existing models and articulate the potential best practices for the next generation of narrative and documentary films. The model also creates a platform for shorts, episodic content (e.g., series television) and music