Reply to George S. Ford’s ‘A Counterfactual Impact Analysis of Fair Use Policy on Copyright Related Industries in Singapore: A Critical Review’

Ford’s ‘Comments (Laws 2018, 7(4), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/laws7040034, https://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/7/4/34)’ are biased by a partisan approach to the issues at stake and cannot be based on scientific evidence. The article “A Counterfactual Impact Analysis of Fair Use Policy on Copyright Related Industries in Singapore”, which Gibert and Gafelle wrote together nearly a decade ago, came under heavy criticism by George S. Ford from an organization named the Phoenix Centre for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies in an article ‘A Counterfactual Impact Analysis of Fair Use Policy on Copyright Related Industries in Singapore: A Critical Review’. (subsequently ‘the fair use study’) The Fair use study was peer reviewed by LAWS and supports the hypothesis that a more flexible fair use policy is correlated with faster growth rates in private copying technology industries and fewer negative consequences than copyright holders may desire to see. The findings of the Fair use study upset Ford as well as a host of different institutions advocating for copyright owners, such as International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations; Motion Picture Association; Publishers Association of Australia; New Zealand Society of Authors or Recorded Music NZ-RMNZ. Ford’s article, however, neither contains novel research, nor is it an effort to update this fairly dated analysis, which reflects data nearly twenty years of age. Rather, it is an unnecessary duplication of an old analysis with only some minor modifications, which serve to show that fair use is actually not beneficial to the economy. At the end of this peculiar exercise, Ford himself admits that this analysis is meaningless. The rest of Ford’s article consists of discussing potential limitations of the Fair use study, in a manner which suggests the authors had never disclosed them (which however they had) and thus is misleading. Ford’s most fundamental point of criticism is hinged on a supposed lack of evidence regarding the parallelism assumption, which he himself admits is impossible to offer. Contrary to Ford’s analysis, the Fair use study has the merit of being fully reproducible, which is not the case for Ford’s article. Also, contrary to Ford’s article, the Fair use study has the advantage of carefully drafted limitations and of offering genuine research insights.

The Homeric Power of Peckinpah’s Violence

Michael Sragow’s essay outlines the conflict between Warner Bros. and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) over the X rating that the MPAA initially gave to the proposed rerelease of The Wild Bunch in 1993. Sragow also discusses the film’s depiction of violence and how, in contrast to many other movies, the film is not self-indulgent in depicting it.

In the name of the nation: Media classification, globalisation, and exceptionalism

This article examines the relationship between exceptionalism and nationhood in media classification. The history of age-ratings is an international one, and the present challenges associated with digital media circulation are similarly international. We argue that the nation nevertheless provides an appropriate frame for understanding age-rating by attending to the ways national agencies have struggled to articulate the specificity of their work based on the specificity of domestic constituencies. Drawing on archival and ethnographic research, our central examples include the resistance of the Motion Picture Association of America to age-based film classification, the British Board of Film Classification’s examination of American films in the 1980s, contemporary Japanese videogame regulation, and the emergence of the International Age Rating Coalition. We argue that national exceptionalism is itself generalised and that media content regulation is less about producing national culture than about laying claim to a nation by differentiation.

A comparative study of the online film ratings of US and Chinese audiences: An analytical approach based on big data

Many movies have influenced many societies in various ways, but the factors that affect films’ ratings remain understudied. This article goes beyond examining a variety of factors that determine such ratings by focusing on the interaction effect of the country difference with other predictors of film ratings between the world’s top two movie markets, the US and China, using big data gathered from the Internet. The country difference significantly moderates the effect of predictors such as the film’s year of release, its Motion Picture Association of America ratings, country of origin, and its awards. Predictors such as whether it was adapted from a novel, whether it was based on a true story, its production budget, and its ‘star power’ exert the consistent main effects on film ratings across the countries. However, box office success and sequels were found to be insignificant predictors of film ratings. The article then discusses the implications of these findings and suggests directions for future research.

Rauchen in Oscar- und Lola-nominierten Filmen

Zusammenfassung. Ziel: Untersuchung der Häufigkeit des Rauchens in Filmen, die für einen Filmpreis nominiert worden sind. Prüfung der Assoziation zwischen dem Rauchen in Filmen und der Altersfreigabe der Filme. Methodik: Erfasst wurde für alle 81 Filme, die 2016 und 2017 für die „Oscars“ oder den Deutschen Filmpreis („Lolas“) nominiert wurden, ob geraucht wurde. Ferner wurde die Altersfreigabe der Filme durch die „Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der Filmwirtschaft“ (FSK) und die „Motion Picture Association of America“ (MPAA) erhoben. Ergebnisse: In 60 (74%) der 81 Filme wurde geraucht. In Filmen, die für die Lolas nominiert worden waren, wurde häufiger geraucht als in Filmen, die für die Oscars nominiert waren (p=0,037). Rauchszenen traten unabhängig von der FSK-Altersfreigabe der Filme auf (p=0,648). Während 22% der Filme mit Rauchszenen die FSK-Altersfreigabe ab 16 Jahren erhielten, wurden in den USA 63% der Filme mit Rauchszenen mit einer Altersfreigabe ab 17 Jahren versehen. Schlussfolgerungen: In drei Viertel aller untersuchten Filme wurde geraucht. Es wurde häufiger in deutschen als in amerikanischen Filmen geraucht. Das amerikanische System der Altersfreigaben für Filme legt strengere Maßstäbe an und führt dazu, dass Jugendliche Filme mit Rauchszenen seltener sehen dürfen. Eine Anhebung der FSK-Altersfreigabe für Filme, in denen geraucht wird, würde die Zahl der Rauchszenen, die ein Jugendlicher sieht, verringern und entspräche einer zentralen Forderung der Weltgesundheitsorganisation.

Violence at the Box Office

The negative effects of violent content in movies have recently been a hot topic among both researchers and the general public. Despite growing concern, violence in movies has persisted over time. Few studies have examined why this pattern continues. To fill this gap in the literature, we examine how Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) movie rating descriptors predict ticket sales of 2,094 movies from 1992 to 2012. We test the validity of three theoretical models: (1) the reflective model, (2) the reactance model, and (3) the market model. We find that violent content is linked neither to violence in the broader U.S. culture (i.e., the reflective model) nor to a psychological reactance by adolescents (i.e., the reactance model). Rather, we find, especially among PG-13 (parents strongly cautioned) movies, that violent content leads to increased ticket sales, suggesting that market demand (i.e., audience preferences) is responsible for continued violent content. We discuss the implications of our findings.