The Mantra of Doom - “Rights Systems” in Everyday Life before CopyRight^®
by Robert Carter

I have worked as a lawyer in film and television for 20 years. As a result, I believe that in a film or television distribution company, the happiest person is usually the receptionist. Comforted by the glamour reflected on her by association with the product, the receptionist can afford to be nice to everybody. And she’s paid to. But everyone else suffers, by different degrees. Their suffering is directly proportionate to their working proximity and dependence on a monster. A slow-moving, ill, monster which confuses everybody, feeds them inaccurate information and constantly lets them down. This monster is called the “Rights System” – a combination of a great body of dusty contractual paperwork created a long time ago – some of it not clear or in the place where it should be – added to daily by new growths of paper, whose illness is made worse by an incomplete, cumbersome and very expensive computer database which never worked and has lain abandoned since anyone can remember. Generally speaking, the Rights System doesn’t work and its illness is contagious.

Two groups of people suffer the most. The sales staff and the legal staff. They suffer because their working life, their success or failure and their colleagues’ perception of them (particularly the perception of the MD) is conditioned by this monster. And they face the monster every day of their working lives.

One can usually recognise the sales staff. On the surface, they are poised, elegant, with bright eyes, good complexions, eager, friendly expressions. Lots of lunches, lots of dinners, lots of trips to the South of France. Lots of fun, dietary concern and many gripping stories of deals won against all odds. They are usually tanned. They have time to go to the gym. They lead lives full of drama, but there is also tension… and annual sales projections… and deadlines … and, if you peer closely, a lurking pallor under the tan.
You can also pick out the legal staff. Those grey, tired, wan and hapless people buried in paper in the back offices. Feeding the monster, trying to keep track of the paperwork, trying to operate the “Rights System” and trying to pretend it works. Taking the blame. Worn down and worn out by constant demands, ultimata, frustration, pursed lips and sulks from their tanned friends in Sales. But the more they feed the monster, the confusion grows and the slower it gets…

… and the slower it gets, the more the greying legal staff worry and the more the sales staff pale – and then blame the legal staff. “Can I sell it? Can I sell it? I need to know now!” This becomes a mantra of doom, chanted with gritted teeth daily in front of the ailing monster’s screens. “Did they have a matching right? Did they? What for? What? I’ve already sold it!” Fulfilment of annual sales projections requires licence contracts. Licence contracts grant rights… and contain indemnities. The legal staff knows that they must be seen to help the sales staff. But if the Rights System doesn’t work, they risk granting rights they never had, have expired or have been granted to someone else. They can’t give the sales people their lifeblood – accurate information. Put simply and brutally, they can’t do their job. Without quick and accurate information, sales slow down, sales are lost, mistakes are made, legal claims appear – usually in a panic ‘phone call from a broadcaster in the U.S. at 6.30pm on a Friday night before they transmit on the network the following day.

Eventually the monster’s illness reaches everyone and demotivation sets in, people shrug, become complacent, blame others, give up, leave. Become receptionists, if they’re lucky. Sales and Legal stop talking. Sales gives up and sells anyway. Legal picks up the pieces. Sales hate Legal. Legal hates Sales. Misery.

Don’t let it happen to you.