SoaP Opera

“But it turned out when they said this movie was ‘shitty,’ they didn’t mean it ironically. They just thought it would be a piece of shit.”

-New Line marketing president Russell Swartz (from Dateline Hollywood)

Snakes on a Plane was marketed to be a crappy B movie, so crappy that it creates a following, so notorious that people would want to go to a movie theater, shell out some $s and see for themselves how crappy it could be. The very concept of the whole movie, from the crappy title to the crappy marketing strategy (or marketing strategy based on the crappiness of it all) ultimately did not spell out success in terms of revenues. If we were talking about fodder for sarcasm, then perhaps, the movie could be said to be a huge success.

Maybe the producers relied so much on the internet as a revolutionary form of media. The film itself created a strong following in terms of web content. Googling up “Snakes on a Plane” yielded 65,300,000 hits. Did the avant garde marketing successfully relegate “Snakes on a Plane” within the happy bounds of pop-culture? I guess so. But does that mean the New Line Cinema Executives can retire early and buy an island or two off the coast of Fiji? Hehe. I don't think so.

If you think about it, based on the premise of their marketing strategy, the ploy worked well, So well in fact, that maybe people started thinking that the movie was so crappy it wasn't worth spending $10 on. Looking at it another way, maybe it wouldn't have done so well were it not for the online publicity. In the end, what the producers achieved was just another topic for discussion. But then again, is it JUST another topic for discussion? Incorporating bloggers into their marketing strategy created an online macarena/ketchup song monster.

Look again at the figure above. 65 million hits!!! Try typing “Nacho Libre” in the search field and you'll get only 11 million results. Nacho Libre is a seriously funny movie, although it probably didn't gross as well as its producers hoped. What about “Austin Powers?” (who doesn't like Austin Powers?) Only 7.3 million hits.

Wow. That is brilliant marketing strategy. Perhaps if they venture into merchandise, they'd make a killing in sales.

Why search porn for free, when you can pay for it?

When Perfect 10, a soft porn publication which limits access to its porn collection to paying users, sued Google for infringement --- saying that in displaying images taken from its porn site in the search results of Google images, Google violated its property rights, and therefore should be liable to pay damages, --- the latter vigorously denied the allegations. Unluckily for Google, it lost, and was ordered by the court to desist from displaying images as thumbnails in its search results which have originated from Perfect 10's site.

We are not very big fans of porn (we prefer the real thing, hehehe) but somehow we find this decision inadequate, if not unconvincing. After a closer look at the facts and the peculiar circumstances of the case, we are of the position that Google should not be held liable for the acts complained of. Allow us to elucidate.

The images used by Google for its search results do not give users and viewers unauthorized access to Perfect 10's sites. How and why? Google browses through the whole Web for images which it may add or include in its search results -- it has every reason to do so, because more image results means better service as a search engine, which is its main and primary function. The images allegedly owned by Perfect 10 and used by Google in its search results, were taken from some other "third party" sites -- usually sites owned by persons who either have access to the site or have gained access to the site. These persons are usually authorized, paying users of the porn site since access is limited, and upon gaining access to the site, are free to view, save and download said images and other media either into his own computer or his own site online. Google is then able to gain access to the images in the latter situation, and these are the images which it uses as thumbnails for its search results.

We're not so sure, but "our friends say" (hehe, a.k.a. "rumor has it") that most porn sites share data, images and media, and oftentimes link to one another. However, there are also some who come up with original material, which may be viewed only by paying users. The copyright of the said material could be explicitly stated in the porn site itself, and the user is given notice of this upon gaining access to the "goodies" of the site. In this situation, a contract is actually perfected -- the user pays for the access to the site and its content, while the site allows access for monetary consideration, and subject to the conditions and restrictions of copyright and other IP-related conditions. In several cases, however, the user downloads the said images and posts them somewhere in the Web, usually in his own site or online photo album. This act could actually be characterized as infringement, because the user in effect made the said copyrighted images available to the public. When Google uses these images for its image search results, it may not be aware of its original source, or the fact that it is copyrighted. Only the paying user usually knows this. In effect, Google is not "privy" to the contract entered into by the user and the porn site. Therefore, it can be said that it is not bound the said conditions, and thus may not be held liable for whatever damage incurred by the site.

Google is merely a search engine. With the vastness of the world wide web, Google plays a vital role in making surfing the Net easier. Instead of surfers and users endlessly typing urls and website addresses, Google makes things significantly more convenient by providing the links to the said sites, images and the like, and all the user has to do is click. Yes, it is possible that porn sites such as Perfect 10 are prejudiced by this, especially because its paying users, perhaps in the desire to make the most of what they're paying, download or find a way to save the images and other media to their own computer or online database. It is usually through these sites that Google is able to acquire the said images, and use them as thumbnails in the search results. Given this scenario, if there's anyone guilty of infringement or of making the copyrighted images available to the public, it is the user who was able to access the site and afterwards posted the images online, not Google. That user was the one aware of the conditions imposed by the site, not Google. Google is not there to showcase porn like the porn site does... We think its function is to merely let the viewing public know that such an image exists, and may be found somewhere on the Web.

We believe the decision of the court in this case sets a dangerous precedent.

Fair use

The World Wide Web is an easy target for cynicism --- and rightly so.

Admittedly, there are some areas where rights are better-defined and value judgments are less in dispute. For instance, notwithstanding all the loopholes and the absence of laws to prosecute offenders, any rational man would say that cybercrime, in general, is not to be condoned. Or that online pornography is offensive to human sensibilities.

But fair use tells a different story. It involves the weighing of conflicting freedoms that may be hard to reconcile. And since it pits a copyright owner’s proprietary rights against a supposed societal benefit (i.e. proliferation of knowledge), it is hard to tell which is more important --- private rights, or a generalized gain. Restricting a copyright owner’s private rights may stifle his desire for creative pursuits; penalizing the use of links to access copyrighted material on the Web may mean a concomitant loss of Internet freedom. Taken together, these restrictions and infringements, coupled with the precedents they create, may add up to a considerable loss of information liberties. In the Internet, where the concept of freedom is built into the very idea of learning beyond frontiers, any attempt to restrict it will surely be resisted.

All told, the Internet serves up a premise that is hard to refute --- that powerful as it is dangerous, the vast and intriguing landscape that the Internet has introduced for us must be embraced in its entirety, with all its complications and implications --- the informative and the destructive, the picturesque and the pornographic, the legal and the not-so-legal.

Depending on which side you’re in, the World Wide Web may very well be “Tragedy of the Commons” at its worst, or information technology at its best.

asl?

'The internet is a vast and confusing place, where is a little girl to go?"

- Major Motoko Kusanagi, Ghost in the Shell

The internet is a virtual world which transcends boundaries of culture, religion, countries and thought. It is a parallel universe where each transaction, each reality has its virtual counterpart. In this virtual sphere of existence, rules and and norms applicable to the material world may not necessarily be efficiently operationalized in online transactions or inter-relations.

Electronic commerce laws try to establish rules and norms to govern online transactions, but despite the attempt to create a virtual government, the long arm of the law cannot reach every nook and cranny in this infinite universe of 1s and 0s. The concept of government and its functions cannot easily be constituted in a realm where everything is virtual. Who will be governed, how will they be governed and most importantly, who will govern them? Personas over the internet are represented by a mere succession of numbers (IP addresses). These IP addresses can easily be masked and merely point to a general location. Any attempt to discover the identities behind IP addresses tread dangerously on the right to privacy. Existing as it does in the virtual sphere, there are no clear cut territorial lines delineating jurisdiction.

Take one of the 3 inherent powers of any sovereign --- taxation. In ordinary transactions, especially transactions involving services, the situs of the transaction is paramount. The tax situs is the place where the service is rendered. What is the "place" where service is rendered in purely internet-based transactions? Sections 23 of the e-commerce act and Section 33 of its implementing rules try to address this virtual dilemma by pointing to the originator/addressee's "place of business" or usual/habitual residence. But this again begs the question, "Which address?" "Places" in the internet are merely represented by numbers. These numbers are easily masked. Not all businesses have brick and mortar offices and a lot merely exist unregistered in virtual space. Another issue would be the source principle of taxation. How does one tax a resident German national who sells webpage templates through a website whose domain name is registered in Tanzania? If the BIR cannot even efficiently collect taxes in the real world, the possibility of taxing online transactions proves to be a herculean task.