05/17/04

LC040517
Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Pirates attack Hollywood. Not on the high seas, but with DVDs.

Barry Meyer>> Piracy connotes something kind of swashbuckling
and cool and anti-establishment when, in fact, it's theft. It
should be called shoplifting.

Val>> And then, a veteran civil rights activist takes on a new
crusade: saving the nation's biggest black-owned newspaper. And
preserving the colors of Los Angeles. A major new effort is
underway to save the city's freeway murals.

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> These days if a movie doesn't make money in a theater,
chances are it can turn a profit on DVDs. That's right. DVD
sales are the fastest growing part of the movie business. But
along with legitimate DVD sales is a growing black market and,
as NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Kaye tells us, studios are
preoccupied with pirates, and not the kind in the movies.

Jeffrey Kaye>> If you want to take in a new movie, one not yet
officially out on DVD or video, you could go to your local
Cineplex and pay to see it on the big screen, or you could go to
Santee Alley in downtown Los Angeles and buy a pirated copy of a
new film from bootleg movie vendors, all openly hawking their
illegal merchandise. The bootleggers' selection of DVDs is up
to date. For five bucks a copy, you can buy films currently in
the theaters, but not in the video stores. And if you're
curious about the quality, you can even get a free preview.
This vendor -- he wouldn't give his name -- says sales are
brisk.

Vendor>> I can sell all these in a day. I can sell about fifty
to sixty copies in a day. That adds up to three hundred dollars
in profit.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Santee Alley is just one outpost in a
mushrooming global black market of pirated movies. Hollywood
studios claim that film piracy costs them billions of dollars in
lost profits and threatens to undermine the economic foundations
of moviemaking. Barry Meyer is Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros.
Entertainment.

Barry Meyer>> I'm not saying that our industry dries up
overnight as a result of piracy, but I think slowly over a
period of time the amount of products that we make and are
willing to make investments in will decrease and contract if we
can't protect the product from theft. You would not grow as
many tomatoes if you couldn't sell them and protect people from
stealing them. It's just the basic economic fact.

Jeffrey Kaye>> There are various ways pirated movies get to the
black market. Some bootleggers sneak camcorders into theaters
and shoot the movie right off the screens. These can vary in
quality. We bought a bootleg DVD of "The Last Samurai".

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> The picture was blurry and it had Spanish
subtitles that couldn't be removed. Another source for bootleg
films is industry insiders, pirates who've obtained high-quality
film copies during some phase of post-production such as
editing. They've also gotten their hands on screener copies
such as those sent to Academy Award judges. Once obtained,
stolen films are often distributed globally on the internet and,
online, bootleg movies can be copied unlimited times, says
Christopher Johnson, a Los Angeles federal prosecutor involved
in several film piracy cases.

Christopher Johnson>> When that gets up on the internet or it's
acquired by a criminal group in some fashion, they can make
unlimited copies and sell those as the same type of movie format
that you would buy in the store.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Organized crime rings, seeing a low-risk,
lucrative market, are increasingly getting into the film piracy
business, say federal law enforcement officials.

Christopher Johnson>> You see them utilizing their distribution
chain which used to be used primarily for narcotics and, you
know, stolen property, things of that nature. They're now
finding that they can readily distribute vast quantities of
illegally obtained copy-written material and make their fortune
doing so.

Jeffrey Kaye>> But for millions of internet users, there's
little drama in obtaining pirated movies.

Steve Quazadas>> You know, there are lots of people who, you
know, trade movies like they do bubblegum cards.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Steve Quazadas is a computer security specialist
who dabbles in online movie swapping.

Steve Quazadas>> Trading movies over the internet used to be
the domain of hackers and underground people, but now it's
becoming more and more mainstream. It's becoming like
downloading music where people do it, you know, without
thinking. You know, there are some hardcore people who do
nothing but collect, but more and more people are casually just
downloading things here and there.

Jeffrey Kaye>> By accessing file-sharing networks, it's easy to
find a movie online. So Oscar-nominated film, "Master and
Commander", is that available?

Steve Quazadas>> Sure. You can just type "Master and
Commander" here and scroll down and you have "Master and
Commander".

Jeffrey Kaye>> Five different versions of "Master and
Commander".

Steve Quazadas>> Five different versions, some in different
languages, some in different qualities. Some people may want to
download the DVD.

Jeffrey Kaye>> And to download them, what do you have to do?

Steve Quazadas>> You just simply click on the link.

Jeffrey Kaye>> High-speed internet connections allow users to
exchange films at ever-faster rates.

Christopher Johnson>> When you look at the size of a standard
movie file, for a bootleg movie file, it's approximately six
hundred megs to one gigabyte in size. To move that file twelve
years ago would take 8.2 days.

Jeffrey Kaye>> And today?

Christopher Johnson>> Today with a three megabyte connection,
which is largely becoming the standard of fairly high-speed home
markets, it would take about forty-two minutes.

Jeffrey Kaye>> The film industry monitors internet sharing
sites and sends cease and desist letters to internet service
providers with instructions to contact users suspected of
illegally downloading films. U.S. law enforcement is also
gradually cracking down on movie pirates. Federal authorities
recently indicted Russell Sprague for allegedly obtaining and
copying Academy Award screener copies of such films as "Mystic
River". He has pleaded not guilty.

The Justice Department has also accused four employees of a
Hollywood DVD duplication company of copying and distributing
such recent films as "Matchstick Men" and "Kill Bill".
Attention to security is changing the way the film industry does
business. At production facilities, surveillance cameras and
searches are increasingly common to prevent film copies from
being smuggled out.

Prints of many new films are now made with so-called water
marks, invisible, digital tags that allow authorities to trace a
pirated movie to its source copy. Warner Bros. officials said
they could trace our bootleg copy of "The Last Samurai" to the
specific movie theater where it was shot on a camcorder. To
make the case that movie piracy is not a victimless crime, the
Motion Picture Association of America which represents the major
studios has introduced a public awareness campaign.

>> "The piracy issue I don't believe will affect the producers.
I mean, it does affect them, but it's miniscule to the way it
affects me, the guy working on construction, the lighting guy,
the sound guy."

Barry Meyer>> Piracy, I've always felt, is a misnomer for it
because piracy connotes something kind of swashbuckling and cool
and anti-establishment when, in fact, it's theft. It should be
called shoplifting.

Ramnath Chellappa>> And the industry has to first accept that
it is impossible to fully put an end to piracy.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Impossible?

Ramnath Chellappa>> It's impossible because the genie is out of
the bottle.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Ramnath Chellappa, a Professor of Information
Management at the University of Southern California, studies
film piracy. He argues that, to fight movie bootlegging,
Hollywood has to compete with pirates in the marketplace.

Ramnath Chellappa>> Can we do, for example, product
segmentation? Can we create a high-quality and a low-quality
movie? One version of the DVD with songs, with games, with all
the other paraphernalia that a real fan would want?

Jeffrey Kaye>> And that would be more expensive than the other
version which would contain --

Ramnath Chellappa>> -- which would contain the bare minimum
movie.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Although the film industry hasn't adopted that
model, it is trying to compete with movie swapping on the
internet. A coalition of five studios is behind a website where
movies can be downloaded for three to five dollars each.
Hollywood also hopes new laws will help fight piracy. Pending
legislation would make it a federal crime to possess a copy of
an unreleased movie punishable by up to three years in prison.

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> But even as they introduce new weapons in their
battle, Hollywood studios predict that revenue losses due to
movie piracy will increase in the year ahead.

Val>> Video piracy is an even bigger problem overseas. It's
estimated that ninety-five percent of all the DVDs sold in China
are illegal copies and that means not one penny comes back to
Hollywood.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> For more than seventy years, the Sentinel has given voice
to Los Angeles's African-American community. It was started in
1933 by a political activist and it reached its peak in the
sixties, but since then both readership and profits have
declined. But now it has a new owner and his name may be
familiar to you. Danny Bakewell is a successful land developer
and community leader. I asked Mr. Bakewell what future he has
in mind for this paper with such a proud past. Mr. Bakewell,
you are known for being very successful in land development.
Why on earth would you buy a newspaper, a lot of people would
say?

Danny Bakewell>> Well, I think maybe the verdict is still out
on that, whether or not I was very wise or whether or not I was
signing my own obituary.

Val>> Well, put it this way. Did you buy it for business
purposes or for something --

Danny Bakewell>> -- well, I bought it for both. I think that
it's the natural extension of my life, my career, in terms of
being able to help people. I think the newspaper, particularly
the Sentinel, is a black newspaper that can really influence
black thought and act as a moral conscience of the African-
American community to a larger community is very, very valuable
and very, very important to me and many other people who live in
this community.

Val>> What do you see, though, as the particular approach that
the Sentinel is going to take to African-American communities?
Because the times have changed. It's not the sixties any more.
You know, it's not the thirties. How will this newspaper play a
role in today's life and culture for African-Americans?

Danny Bakewell>> Well, obviously, we have to get the
subscriptions out. I mean, the Sentinel has to be in every
African-American household in California and many even in the
nation, but certainly focusing on Southern California. We've
got to also be able to use the paper to connect the dots where
black people are living. At one time when the Sentinel was
founded, it was South Central Los Angeles. Well, black people
live in places other than South Central Los Angeles. South
Central Los Angeles is wherever black people live. We live in
Compton, we live in Inglewood, we live in Rancho Cucamonga, we
live in the Valley.

Val>> Riverside, everywhere.

Danny Bakewell>> The Inland Empire. I mean, wherever we are,
the Sentinel needs to be. I think that approach is really what
we're focusing on, to make sure that we are connecting black
thought with black life.

Val>> At the same time, there are issues that come along,
Clarence Thomas and so forth, that splits the black community.
The black community, you know, doesn't have this unilateral
opinion where everyone agrees with each other, so what are you
going to do when something really comes along that divides the
community and creates a lot of debate?

Danny Bakewell>> Well, you know, the Sentinel has to be able to
reflect and be a vehicle for the diversity of thought that
exists among African-Americans. We're going to have a hard-
hitting business section. We're going to deal with expanding
our family section in ways that track families. We're going to
make sure that we have hard-hitting editorials. We're going to
have new minds that will bring us opinion columns. We want to
have the Sentinel become also the paper for young people.

We want to cover rappers. Not the typical "bitches and whores"
kind of things that we all repel -- certainly I do -- but we
want to talk about putting a clean face on people who are
influencing the young people in a positive way. So we want the
religious section to really expand. We want to have a moral
conscience to the Sentinel. But at the same time, we want it to
have an edge.

The first official position that the Sentinel will take under my
leadership as publisher will be to endorse reparations.
Reparations for many people, you know, is a bit provocative.
It's kind of like, well, why would you want to do that? Why
would you want to be paid for something your ancestors did that
has nothing to do with you? The reality of life is that you
wouldn't understand that because your ancestors didn't have to
suffer through slavery.

You don't understand the impact that slavery has had on our
generation after generation to get us where we are today. It's
our position. It's a position that we think is justified, that
it's valid, that it's relevant. It's in honor of our
grandparents and our ancestors that we've never known who
suffered on our behalf to get here. It's also a tribute to our
future, to our children, to say to them that we remember and
recognize what they went through to get us here.

Val>> So you're saying the editorial page may have a strong
opinion, but you're going to cover both sides in the journalist
--

Danny Bakewell>> -- absolutely. We have columnists. As an
example, we have a gentleman who is a columnist who was a
supporter of Clarence Thomas. Probably out of maybe ten
columnists, he's the only one. The other nine would probably
speak of Clarence Thomas in ways that would not be suitable for
TV. But the reality is that we permit that point of view, even
though it is not collectively embraced, to be heard. I think
that's valuable. I think it's important because, even when you
have a diverse opinion, it provokes conversation. It provokes,
you know, thought. It provokes dialogue which ultimately
becomes healthy, I believe.

Val>> Now you've been a community leader for a long time. To
what extent will the paper reflect your personal point of view?

Danny Bakewell>> Well, obviously, the paper will ultimately, I
think, represent the kind of moral position that I believe is
important and that I've always advocated on behalf of the
community. I mean, defending the rights of African-Americans,
making sure that we're taking morally sound and grounded
positions that elevate the quality of life for the people who
live here. I mean, ninety-nine percent of the people who live
in the community are honest, God-fearing, decent people who many
times don't get our just due by the massive, you know,
publications that proliferate our community.

The Sentinel is going to be one that we think is going to
present a point of view that we think is good and wholesome.
Everybody may not agree with it, but it's going to have that
point of view. But it's also going to entertain points of view
from people who may not agree with me. The Sentinel is not
going to be a vehicle to have my words heard each and every day.
That is not what we're doing. This is an institution that is
going to reflect the community that supports it.

Val>> Danny Bakewell, we wish you all the best. You've taken
on a big job, and congratulations.

Danny Bakewell>> I need all the help I can get. Thank you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> Murals may be painted on concrete, but just like
wallpaper, they can age, and Los Angeles's murals have plenty of
enemies: sun, pollution, earthquakes and cracks and, of course,
graffiti. But as Vicki Curry tells us, there is an ongoing
effort to make sure that Los Angeles's rich mural heritage
doesn't fade away.

Vicki Curry>> They're so much a part of the Los Angeles
landscape that they blend in with the palm trees and skyscrapers
of urban life, vast and vibrant murals adorning scores of
neighborhoods, turning walls, bridges and freeways into an
ongoing canvas of color.

Pat Gomez>> We estimate there are over two thousand murals in
the city of Los Angeles. There's this enormous, wonderful art
form in the city. Many of the world-renowned muralists are
working here in Los Angeles, so they really are cultural
treasures and they become icons in the community.

Vicki Curry>> It all began with the Chicano murals of East Los
Angeles inspired by the likes of Diego Rivera and David Alfaro
Siquieros. Within the art, there was always a political
statement.

Pat Gomez>> It's such a wonderful, democratic art form. I
mean, with the murals, it creates galleries in the streets where
the words reflect important events, thoughts, movements. Pretty
much everything that is going on in a very, very dynamic city,
you will see in some mural or another on the streets of Los
Angeles. Everything is reflected on the walls.

Vicki Curry>> Now Los Angeles's murals are in trouble. Even a
drive-by observation shows how years of exposure have taken
their toll.

Jerry Podany>> It's very difficult to protect public works of
art and still have them visibly and physically accessible to the
public, so they suffer a great deal.

Vicki Curry>> The murals are hurt by the very things that make
Southern California unique. Sunlight breaks down and fades the
colors. Seismic jolts lead to cracks and water damage. Many
artists don't have the money or experience to prepare the wall
or use the best materials, but the biggest enemy is graffiti.

Nathan Zackheim>> People come and intentionally destroy murals
and they do that more than they ever have. They used to respect
them, but now they don't respect them because of the zero
tolerance. They know or they suspect that a work of art will
not be painted out as quickly as the tags on a regular concrete
surface, so they zero in there because the whole game of
tagging, apparently, is to see how long the tag stays up.

Vicki Curry>> When tagging became a problem, the city often
responded by just painting over the graffiti even if it meant
painting over the mural.

Chris Stavroudis>> Any paint on top of a mural that's not
properly protected is inherently difficult to remove. The
murals done in acrylic paint are basically the same chemical as
the paint that's been put over top or the graffiti, so
separating the two is problematic, when it's even possible, and
usually there is some damage done to the original in the
process.

Vicki Curry>> Lately, the city has started trying to save the
murals. The effort includes a $1.7 million dollar project
funded by Caltrans to restore freeway murals, but often it's too
little too late.

Donna Williams>> You know, if you drive your car around for ten
years and you don't bother to wash or wax it, I think we all
know what it will look like. To some degree, I think that's a
problem with public art is that it's neglected. It's becoming
more of a part of city budgets, but in the past, a lot of these
murals have been put up without any kind of endowment for their
future care.

Vicki Curry>> But this new crusade is raising questions. Who's
responsible for maintaining a mural and what's involved?

Jerry Podany>> To clean them and to patch them goes a very long
way in long-term preservation of these objects and certainly
makes a lot more economic sense than waiting thirty years until
the mural looks absolutely horrible and then assuming we can
restore it back to its original state.

Vicki Curry>> Some experts say that no mural was meant to last
forever. By the very nature of the art form, it's meant to be
temporary.

Jerry Podany>> A mural can disappear within a year if there is
some catastrophic failure or natural disaster or it can outlast
all of us if it's properly cared for, so there really isn't a
particular amount of time that one can assign.

Chris Stavroudis>> In a way, they are not permanent. The
materials simply won't hold up. Buildings are torn down.
Certainly if a mural is either resonant with the communities
strongly enough, it becomes a work of art or if, just by chance
it survives long enough intact, it becomes important just
because it survived.

Vicki Curry>> But there's a growing belief that modern
technology can make a mural stronger and able to survive much
longer.

Nathan Zackheim>> It's an inexpensive treatment and that mural
could last -- don't laugh, promise? -- fifty years? A hundred
years? Two hundred years? Five hundred years? Two thousand
years? Why not?

Vicki Curry>> For the moment, they are slices of the Los
Angeles landscape that are in dire need of help. That work is
usually done by an art conservator, but conservation is very
different from restoration. Conserving means saving as much of
the original painting and materials as possible. Restoring can
be done with just a fresh coat of paint.

Jerry Podany>> There's always that temptation to say this is
part of our community. We want it to look good. It's cracking.
It's peeling. Why not just come in and repaint it? Why not
make it anew again? Why not touch it up in certain areas or
completely repaint it? The difficulty, of course, is that this
is a unique work of art created at a certain moment in time.
Changing it changes that moment in time, so we lose a certain
amount of historical value of the object.

Vicki Curry>> Traditional conservation methods don't apply to
outdoor art and, when the damage is extreme, experts have
struggled to find solutions.

Chris Stavroudis>> The way we're cleaning these is to glue on a
piece of canvas as part of the mural. When it dries, rip it off
and basically split the paint.

Nathan Zackheim>> When we started to take them off the wall, we
found that they were disintegrating. They were painted on
butcher paper many years ago. So we peeled them off the wall by
adding water behind them and just rolling them off the wall on
pieces of plastic PVC pipe.

Vicki Curry>> None of these techniques could have been used
without the consent of the artist.

Chris Stavroudis>> If the artist says it's okay, it's fine.
But without the artist's approval, this kind of a treatment
couldn't be tolerated. It would be vandalism.

Vicki Curry>> Which is why many artists are actively involved
in restoration. Willie Herron has previously worked on his own
to maintain his murals.

Willie Herron III>> I just became very knowledgeable on how to
do it and still preserve my natural brush stroke from, let's
say, the late sixties and the early seventies. I kind of share
the conservator's perspective that it's a more important work of
art to preserve it and conserve it the way it was originally
painted. It is my own work of art and it's nice to see the
layers come off and to see that my piece is still underneath it
all. It's a great feeling.

Vicki Curry>> Regardless of their condition, the murals of Los
Angeles are part of the city's fabric and conservationists say
that it's a part of urban life worthy of saving.

Pat Gomez>> In years from now, people will look at this as
these were descendants of the city, so it really is ensuring
that this form and these works which are so important as art
works are going to be around for people to enjoy.

Val>> The city has taken an important step in maintaining these
murals. They've created a computer databank of all the murals
in the city, including information on the artists and the
materials used to paint them, and that's very important when it
comes to maintaining or repairing these works of art. And
that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and
Times, thanks for watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, caught on tape. Cheating in
handicapped parking. We'll ride with the taskforce that's
handing out some stiff fines.

>> It's my dad's. I just drove him to court this morning and
it happened to be in his car.

>> They always have an excuse, they always have an excuse.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.