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The Screenwriter in Cyberspace
By Charles Deemer

Column #6 - Online Screenplays

The most popular specific area of The Screenwriters and Playwrights Home Page is the online screenplays page. In the month of November, for example, this area received 2,292 hits (of almost 59,000 for the site), making it even more popular than the "What's New?" area of my site (1,630 hits).

To be sure, reading screenplays carefully is one of the best ways to learn craft. For this reason, the screenwriting publications I most recommend are those that publish screenplays, such as Scenario, or that excerpt large sections of screenplays in their articles, such as Creative Screenwriting journal. (For examples of this, see my journal articles "The Screenplays of Quentin Tarantino" and "The Rhetoric of Action").

The Copyright Issue

The popularity of online screenplays, however, is also raising new legal issues in cyberspace since most sites that post screenplays do so without the permission of script copyright holders, which are usually the movie studios that produced the script.

This issue came to a head last fall when the September 21, 1995 issue of the online 'zine Interactive Week began a story about "Script Emporium," the most comprehensive screenplay website at the time, with the words, "In cyberspace, no one can see you plagiarize." After criticizing webmaster Ken Atwell for breaking copyright law, the article went on to predict, "Of course, it shouldn't be long before the studios' lawyers go after this site, and Disney will probably lead the charge."

This threat bothered Atwell enough to quickly close down "Script Emporium," leaving a vacuum where a very popular site, legal or not, had been providing a very popular service, making screenplays available in cyberspace.

Drew's Scripts-O-Rama

Now Drew Feinberg is filling that vacuum with a new site called Drew's Scripts-O-Rama. Feinberg hopes to artfully dodge the copyright issue by posting no screenplays at his site but rather linking to screenplays that others are posting.

And indeed, instantly this site (which is available in both table and nontable formats) has become the most comprehensive screenplay site in cyberspace, the very spot once held by "Script Emporium."

Copyright For Laypeople

The copyright issue itself is not as simple as it sounds - at least to my layman's ears - and raises many challenging questions. Cal Pryluck, who is in the Radio-TV-Film Department at Temple University, summarized the issue for me:

"When you buy a book you are getting a physical property with the implicit license to read the book. Or give it to someone else to read.

"You are not buying anything else in such a transaction. You are not buying the right to use the words, ideas, structure, characters, etc. in any way other than to read. The distinction is between the physical embodiment (the book) and the intellectual content. When you buy a book you are buying the former but not the latter.

"The ruling principle is that a copyright is divisible so that separate rights can be sold in anyway that can be described. Thus, Mickey Mouse t-shirts are protected under copyright (and other ways too complicated to explain in a few words). This principle underlies the 700+ products franchised for a successful picture.

"But the whole range of law covering cyberspace is currently murky. In general, all works (including the one I am writing) are protected by copyright at the moment the words are entered on a keyboard. "Creative works are born with copyright" is a slogan that describes this part of the United States Copyright Statute of 1976.

"Receiving an electronic communication is NOT similar to obtaining a book where you have obtained a physical object.

"Strictly speaking the re-transmission of an electronic communication is a violation of copyright unless you have specific permission to re-transmit. (By the way, I hereby give you permission to use the material I am now writing in connection with electronic transmission. I reserve all other rights. I may want to make a t-shirt from these words of wisdom.)

"If you make an electronic copy you are in violation of the copyright law, just as you are when you make a photocopy of a book."

There are "fair use" exceptions to these principles (see Pryluck's copyright site for deeper exploration of the issue than you'll get here), providing opportunities (such as certain educational settings) when copyrighted material can be photocopied - and presumably electronically copied as well. But certainly a popular website does not satisfy these criteria.

The Electronic Library

In fact, by the expanded definition of "copying" above, is an electronic library even legally possible? Apparently not - unless perhaps only a certain number of "transmissions" of a single entity are permitted within a given timeframe (i.e., this screenplay can only be loaded once every four weeks!). Or does the very concept of "fair use" demand reevaluation and redefinition within the context of cyberspace?

This entire issue could be resolved if studios took the lead in expanding "fair use" to include screenplay libraries at their various websites. Many movie studios are online and many provide filmclips and other teasers of their current projects. Why not provide script libraries of their past projects? What an extraordinary gesture of good will this would be - and what a contradiction of bottom-line corporate thinking. On the other hand, more than one produced screenwriter has told me s/he would be delighted to see his/her scripts online - and free to read.

In the meantime, legal or not, websites are providing access to contemporary screenplays and many students of screenplay craft are accessing them. Others, like the new "Scripts-O-Rama" site and even my own screenplay area, are providing links to sites that clearly are breaking copyright law. How this issue finally gets resolved probably will be determined by what damages, if any, studio lawyers decide are actually at work here.

Also in the meantime, I am writing the studios and suggesting that they provide free libraries of scripts online. I hope many of you do the same.

--Charles Deemer

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Originally appeared at the Hollywood Network.