All my life, I always thought a career in the creative industries meant that I wouldn’t need to have knowledge in business, finances, or economics. Since starting my audio studies this year, I have realised that is is not the case. More often than not (and especially in freelance work), being in the creative industries means that you are your own accountant, marketer and everything in between, at least until you are established enough to support colleagues to work on projects with you, or you have displayed yourself well enough that you are offered employment as part of a team. Once this happens, each person should be given a role within the group dynamic, which is established through contracts. Furthermore, in recent months I have also learnt that workers of the creative industries also need to have foundational knowledge on laws relating to their field and the sections of rules surrounding what they make and work on.
Before studying how contracts could help a brand, corporation or personal, I never understood why they were so important to make and abide by. So, in the last year when YouTube star Felix Kjellberg, aka ‘Pewdiepie’ was the centre of several media controversies that lead to network drops and broken deals, I did not comprehend the severity of what he had done. Once employed under Google and Disney, parent organisations of the companies YouTube and Makers Studio respectively, Pewdiepie was let go from these partnerships following negative media attention that arose from the use of foul and offensive language in his video gaming content. As the unconventional celebrity became the topic of dinner and party conversation, many of my friends and I thought the demonetisation of his videos and his general treatment by the big companies was a tad unfair, but when looking at the situation through an industry perspective, I can safely say that my personal opinion has been almost completely inverted. In an attempt not to give the personality more internet traffic, I have chosen not to provide links to his channel or videos. If you are interested in reading more about the actions of Kjellberg, you can read this article by the Wall Street Journal.
To the untrained eye, most people can claim that Pewdiepie had a right to post content of whatever matter he chose, because of the fact that he is a creator of ‘original content’ and therefore has complete rights and ownership over the videos that he uploads - but this is not entirely true. When looking at the matter closely (and with more knowledge on the subject), I was able to consider that because Pewdiepie uses the sharing platform YouTube to post his videos, they have partial ownership of his videos, and because he films himself playing games made by other developers, they also have partial ownerships of his content. These affiliations with Kjellberg’s videos meant that his actions - including paying a pair of actors to hold a sign that reads 'death to all jews' - reflected onto these companies, and as such they felt their branding was threatened when Pewdiepie’s joking and informal attitude went too far. Of course, this attitude was fine when Kjellberg was making them – and himself – a lot of money (in 2016, Pewdiepie was regarded “the highest paid YouTube star”, at $15 million), but once his channel began to produce undesirable attention, many began to take lawful action, with development company Campo Santo even filing for a copyright strike against Pewdiepie for featuring their game ‘Firewatch’ in one of his livestreams, due to his use of racist slang.
At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that copyright laws can be activated when it suits the needs of the owners, and can be more complicated than an outsider or a fresh face of the industry could ever expect. Is it possible that Pewdiepie’s actions could have been met with less force, had he been more knowledgeable about the contracts he signed (or in the case of Campo Stano, did not sign), with these companies, and the codes of conducts of the platforms he was using?
If there is anything that I have learnt from being a spectator of Pewdiepie's demise, it has catalysed thoughts of what I would do if I was in business with an individual of this personality. They have encouraged me to always make strong and clear contracts, however small the deal may seem. Similarly, this scenario has also inspired me to think about how I would react if I was ever accused of copyright infringement. Based on the negative feelings I have towards how Kjellberg reacted to his accusations, I am convinced that, should I ever be placed in a similar situation, I would do my best to stop and listen to the complaints being made against me. I think that the most important part of being on the internet - in any sense, but especially as a creative industry practitioner, is to accept that you cannot control the reactions of others, or tell them that their feelings are invalid - you can only listen to their hurt, and hopefully find it in you to apologise for being the cause, and maybe even taking the time to educate yourself to avoid it in the future.
The grey line between copyright infringement and compliance is, for the most part, fuzzy – until it’s not.
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