Thomas Edison: Cinema’s first movie pirater
Piracy is something the movie business has been trying to thwart unsuccessfully for years. But, it’s been so prevalent for so long that Thomas Edison – regarded as one of cinema’s founding fathers – was in on the act, even if he wouldn’t condone anyone attempting to do the same to him.
During the medium’s earliest days, exhibitors would regularly copy films made by other people and show them to an audience. Deciding that he didn’t want competitors muscling in on his turf, Edison protected his own copyrights by depositing his prints onto photographic paper with the United States copyright office.
The Edison Manufacturing Company protected its own content by submitting its films to the copyright office for registration because the relevant laws didn’t yet apply to motion pictures. Even though Edison had gone out of his way to prevent his own films from being copied, he had no issues whatsoever, effectively helping to bankrupt Georges Méliès after securing a copy of his pioneering 1902 production, A Trip to the Moon.
Captivating audiences across Europe, Edison recreated so many copies – which he actively profited from – that he siphoned away virtually all of Méliès’ earning power. As a result, the American market had been cornered, neutralising any chance Méliès had of encroaching on his rival’s turf.
In 1903, Edison sued producer Siegmund Lubin for copyright infringement at a time when the duplication and reproduction of films was a key part of the business model. The court took Lubin’s side by refusing to apply the existing copyright laws to the film industry, but upon an appeal lodged by Edison, it was instead decreed that motion pictures could be copyrighted after all.
In 1908, he founded the Motion Picture Patents Company to further his agenda, with the nine major studios that followed his lead dubbed the Edison Trust. Effectively holding a monopoly over motion picture cameras and their associated technology, Edison and his trust would try to actively prevent filmmakers from using any cameras to shoot any film if he hadn’t expressly given his approval, with Universal Studios being slapped with no less than 289 complaints.
The ruling put forward by United States v. Motion Picture Patents Co. in 1915 eventually placed more power in the hands of the filmmakers at the expense of Edison, though, ruling that “a patentee may simply enforce his right to exclude infringement, but he must not use his patent as a weapon to disable a rival contestant, or to drive him from the field, for he cannot justify such use”. Essentially, he couldn’t stop people from making movies simply because he desired dominion, which in turn led to an influx of creatives seizing the opportunity to enjoy an Edison-free career.
As for Méliès, little over a decade after Edison pirated his work into oblivion, his brother Gaston lost $50,000 after venturing to the South Pacific and Asia and was forced to sell the American Branch of the siblings’ Star Films to Vitagraph Studios, having failed to fulfil its initial obligation to a company that just so happened to be owned by Edison.
Méliès was already bankrupt by the beginning of the First World War, and a combination of having no money and being burned by his brother’s poor financial decisions saw him abandon making films altogether. In 1923, when Pathé assumed control of both Star Films and his studio at Montreuil, he was so incensed he burned all of the negatives on the property, losing the majority of his films forever. Edison may not have been solely responsible for Méliès’ demise, but he nonetheless played a major part.
