Intellectual Property Law

Family Ties Actress Weighs in on Future of the Net

By Cynthia Brumfield

No major Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the Future of the Internet would be complete without hearing from...Justine Bateman, who played Mallory Keaton on 80s hit TV series "Family Ties." I got an advanced look at the written testimonies of witnesses who will appear before tomorrow's Future of the Internet hearing and, yup, Justine Bateman is one of the witnesses.

According to her written testimony (Word document here), Bateman says there has been a decline in Hollywood creativity since the repeal of the Fin-Syn rules in the 1980s and as a consequence of increased media consolidation.

When I started acting in the early 1980s creativity in TV and film was still rampant and innovation of ideas and performance were exalted. The demise of this creative setting is directly proportional to the increase of media consolidation, which is in large part due to the repeal of the financial interest and syndication rules. Now we have too many executives and too many notes given until there is no artistic voice, no point of view, and little entertainment value left in the projects we work on.

She likens traditional media outlets to a swimming pool that's been covered, a place where ducks can't swim (I'm not making this up.)

Traditional media is now like a pool over which a pool cover has been placed causing those wild ducks that used to swim around in your pool to go elsewhere. (True story about my pool. I?m sorry we don?t see those ducks anymore.) Those ducks now I?m sure have found an open body of water in which to swim, much like we content creators have been found open distribution on the Internet.

In all seriousness, Bateman and three partners have started an online content venture called FM78.tv hoping to bring innovative video content to the web. She advocates the passage of net neutrality legislation even though "I am a big fan of capitalism." She also supports the MPAA's efforts to stamp out piracy (although she doesn't add that sometimes those efforts run afoul of true net neutrality.)

Other witnesses at the hearing tomorrow include Stanford Law school luminary Lawrence Lessig, who reprises in written comments (PDF here ) his testimony from the FCC's broaband network management hearing last week, NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow (PDF here), Writer's Guild West President Peter Verrone (PDF ), who says he is "the only panelist to have written a film about a robot poker tournament in space Vegas in the year 3009 so I think my expertise in the area is unquestionable," and Christian Coalition VP Michele Combs (PDF).

Full post as published by IP Democracy on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).