Is There No Limit to Their Stupidity?
No, not politicians this time, but big business.
According to a report in The Stage, lawyers for the Sunday Times have ordered an actor either to pay £400 a year or remove from his website a Sunday Times review of an Edinburgh show in which he appeared.
Legally, of course, they are quite correct. News International, the group which owns the ST, owns the copyright in the review and they are perfectly entitled to charge whatever they want for its use or to prevent anyone reproducing it. No one can argue against that, and it is quite proper that there should be this kind of legal protection for the use of intellectual property.
But how silly! The ST reviewer will have received a free ticket for the show and, possibly, been given back-up material. (S)he then reviewed the intellectual property of the writer (the text of the production) and of the company and its members (the actual production, including the actors’ interpretation), so, without them, there would be no review - which is why the work of the critic is seen by some in the profession as being parasitic.
(I think that’s wrong, but that’s beside the point in this context.)
Yes, the actor concerned should have cleared it with the ST before putting it online (out of politeness, regardless of any legal requirement), but for a spokeswoman for News International to tell The Stage that the re-publication of content from the corporation’s newspapers without permission is illegal and the issue is managed on a case-by-case basis, is frankly pathetic. It’s the action of the playground bully, only legally sanctioned - “you didn’t ask our permission, so we’re going to give you a good kicking”.
But it has wider implications. Legal advice given to The Stage says that it would have been safer for a link to be given to to the ST website or for short quotations only to be reproduced.
I was at a theatre recently where a Times review of a forthcoming touring show was reproduced in full in the foyer. Will the lawyers be chasing them? They’ve got two targets there: the theatre and the visiting company.
In our production of A Cold Coming in South Shields recently, we plastered reviews from the Shields Gazette and Northern Footlights all over the theatre. Would they charge us? Of course not, because it’s also good advertising for them.
A recent national tour of a play which originated locally used a substantial proportion of my review of the original production in all its publicity, including a huge reproduction of it in the theatres’ foyers. Did it even occur to me to charge for it or demand that my permission be asked? Of course not, because it was good advertising for the BTG.
Reviewers depend on theatres, companies, writers, directors and actors for without them they wouldn’t have a job. Theatre, companies, writers, directors and actors depend on reviewers to attract audiences. It’s a mutual dependency and one can only hope that it was the lawyers, with their typical tunnel vision, who originated this example of stupidity and not the journalists, for if it was the latter, then perhaps companies should consider whether it’s worth having a Sunday Times review at all!
May 13th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Obviously the actor in question needs to become an international star but to refuse News International all interviews and viewings - if there is then any media left over that is.