Boycotting Hollywood
aaronmoodie.com
aaronmoodie.com
Here's why I haven't been to a movie in well over a year:
...Four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children's book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.
http://www.gq.com/entertainment/movies-and-tv/201102/the-day...
SOPA/PIPA just sent me from being indifferent about moviemakers to actively opposing them. And it goes deeper than just boycotting. I intend to donate money to campaigns of politicians who were always against these bills and to the EFF, the ACLU and other watchdogs that did a good job bringing it to our attention.
Here are Roger Ebert's 20 best films of 2011: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2011/12/the_best_films_of_20...
Here is the AV Clubs 15 best films of 2011: http://www.avclub.com/articles/best-films-of-2011,66423/
Saying that 'all Hollywood is shit and should be destroyed' based on mass market crap is as purposefully naive as saying that the entire music industry is only producing the content you hear on Top 40 Radio.
Hollywood (the major studios) is not film just as the major labels are not music. They represent a period of less than 100 years where vast amounts of money could be made off of art by middle men who market it. That period is over but they don't want to give up "their right" to that money. Who would? But instead of going peacefully, they will do a "scorched earth" all the way down, making everybody pay for the fact that the times have changed and no one needs them anymore.
Note most of these films are from small studios, but the majority of these are distributed by Sony Pictures Classics or Fox Searchlight, etc, which if evil 'Hollywood' didn't get involved most of these pics wouldn't be able to be seen at your local town cinema, let alone maybe even get the money to be produced.
So to say that Transformers 3 is Hollywood because it sucks, yet The Descendants is isolated on it's own non-evil island away from Hollywood is a bit silly.
No, unfortunately it is not "a bit silly". The content industry MUST finally get control over the Internet to survive. I am convinced they use SOPA etc. not to fight piracy at first but to ultimally destroy Youtube (Google) and other competitive independent video platforms which will surely make the whole movie industry obsolete in the future.
Why? Because even NOW private people have become high quality movie producers. The first movies with Star Wars quality have already been made by private enthusiasts. Look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Revelations
This movie is really competitive to the Star Wars series and was made 2005 - seven years ago! It is obvious that coming professional movie producers don't need middle men in the future at all.
I am not against the content industry but their attempt to use SOPA et.al. to do collateral damage by establishing a global censorship infrastructure which would ultimately destroy our precious fundamental human right of free speech cannot be tolerated at all.
Of course it is my experience that people who pirate content won't listen, but at least I try. To people who pirate, it's sort of like a single vote in an election... what does it matter if one person does or doesn't do it?
And FYI, I don't work for Hollywood, but my wife is an independent filmmaker (award winning in several major film festivals) and she invested her hard-earned money to complete her film -- as did her producers and their parents, etc.
When people steal her movie instead of watching it on iTunes or Netflix for a minuscule charge (and many people do indeed watch it illegally), then it's not any different than taking money (even if it's pennies per person) out of our pockets. Plus, her value as a director cannot be accurately measured because industry analytics don't include pirated content, and that makes it harder to prove her worth when she tries to line-up investors for her next film.
I thought you had a good comment until you got to this part. This tripe, shoveled by the mouthful out of Hollywood, is way too simplified to be meaningful. I'm so sick of hearing this without any thought to the other side of the piracy coin: access and exposure; or the side of the coin (people who would not have paid you a penny under any circumstance).
I honestly don't know if piracy reduces or increases film revenue (it appears to have helped the game industry and put Windows on 90+% of desktop computers worldwide), but it is this mantra that has led to crap-feats like SOPA and PIPA. A balanced conversation about it (and not one saying "piracy is all gain thanks to exposure") would be refreshing.
EDIT: And for the record, I don't pirate. If I can watch it legally, I don't watch it.
EDIT2: I don't care about being downvoted, but I feel like there is an argument I'm missing. If you downvoted me (or feel like doing so), let me know why. I Prefer to have my worldview challenged so I can change or expand as needed.
I think Amazon's content delivery "system" as it stands, now, is a wonderful answer to this whole issue (you buy it, you can download it, and it also sits on your own S3 account accessible by all of your devices!).
Either way, Hollywood needs to innovate (or be disrupted) in order to turn all of those people pirating into monetizable consumers (I really do think that is possible, too).
The "every copy pirated is a penny out of my bank account" is too simplistic. Note that the argument wasn't even the more reasonable, but still too simplistic, "every copy pirated is a penny not put in my account".
I'm not asking anybody to give their creative works away for free. I love good content, and I'm willing to pay. I also am willing to not watch what I can't get legally and (by my consumer definition) reasonably. But framing this argument as "pirates are stealing out of my bank account" has allowed large media companies to shove insane, unconstitutional crap through congress.
As a result, when I see those simplistic arguments, I'm going to ask for a little more thought out of them. If a content creator is willing to at least talk through the complexities (better would be an honest analysis), I'm willing to listen. Anything else, IMO, is repeated propaganda from an evil source (the studios being the source, that is).
You are basically focusing on the fact that there is a small minority of internet users who are downloading your wife's movie illegally. You are so fixated with pirating that that you are not completely focusing on efforts to make your wife's movie available to new mediums in the U.S. and around the world.
In fact you are so one sided you fail to explore the possibility that viral distribution might help you. Some indie directors are in fact trying to get their movie to spread via BitTorrent and other mediums to drive sales and gain more awareness. Wihtout the internet where would Trey Parker and Matt Stone be?
Either way, saying someone is pirating your movie as an excuse to burn down the internet is short sighted.
As much as I hate piracy, it really might have the opposite effect for indie artists. It might make her more popular since indie artists DO NOT have massive marketing budgets.
So you're saying that they should give in and accept that people are going to pirate and use it to their advantage? Does that not seem defeatist?
The War on Terror.
The War on Drugs.
Now, the War on Piracy.
I don't equate your wife's efforts with Hollywood's. They are socially malignant incumbents. She is a creative entrepreneur. Similarly, you shouldn't equate your wife's struggles with these institutions'.
Also, as a filmmaker, does your wife take more joy in having her product seen and appreciated by as many as possible, or by gaining as much profit as possible?
If your wife cant make a living by making films, because people rather copy than pay for copies, she should change her job, because people obviously dont want to pay her for what shes doing. This applies to any other job that gets obsoleted by time and technological advances, there is no reason there should be an artificial exception for films by making laws that simulate the 1950's.
> it seems to me that reducing piracy makes sense as part of a larger strategy.
To me it seems accepting being bullied into obeying and doing exactly what they want. They want people to stop copying, if everybody stops copying, they won. It means that democracy is worthless and that Hollywood gets the final word of how laws are gonna look like, what will be accepted bahavior and what wont.
Hollywood (and you and your your wife) are pushing for keeping copying illegal because you make more money if it stays illegal, but we as a society at large have not yet agreed that copying indeed _should_ be illegal. Many people copy your wifes movies because they do not consider it morally wrong. Your argument to change their behaviour amounts no nothing more than "stop copying yourself, my wife tries to make money selling copies."
> Of course it is my experience that people who pirate content won't listen
I dont have to listen to you the same way you dont have to listen to me. The whole society has to agree whether copying is right or wrong, whether it is objectionable or not, and agreeing usually works through a majority vote. Your wife and Hollywood most certainly dont have the majority on their side, which is precisely why they resort to bribery like democracy never existed.
Although laws currently do exist making copying illegal, the society has not agreed that it is indeed wrong. The laws have been purchased and aggressively pushed from the top down, not decided and agreed upon democratically. It is not the behavior of the people that is wrong, it is the laws that are undemocratic, unjust and wrong, because they do not reflect the natural sense of right and wrong the people have, which should be the basis of any law.
The sole fact that your wife tries to make a living by relying on non-copying does not somehow automatically imply that copying should be wrong for the sole purpose that she can make a living. Maybe your wife simply made a bad career choice. Dont try to retrofit the society to your wifes career choices. Otherwise you also could push a car ban (obligatory car analogy) so your wife can make a living by making horse carriages.
For the sake of completeness: copying is not stealing. It is copying. I know it is hard to grasp for you (and Hollywood), because repeating "copying=stealing" makes your wife (and Hollywood) money.
> When people steal her movie instead of watching it on iTunes (...) it's not any different than taking money out of our pockets.
To anybody else not making money by relying on copying prohibition, this should read:
> When people copy her movie instead of watching it on iTunes (...) it's not any different than not putting money into our pockets.
The only reason why your above sentence sounds the way it sounds is because saying so makes your wife (and Hollywood) money. Otherwise it almost certainly wouldnt.
Maybe people aren't aware of the consequences of their actions and have a notion that all filmmakers are swimming in money anyways. If they knew the truth, maybe they would buy rather than copy (see, I said copy).
> The only reason why your above sentence sounds the way it sounds is because saying so makes your wife (and Hollywood) money.
You are saying this as if there was something wrong with that.
The question whether copying is right or wrong has nothing to do with the amount of money filmmakers are swimming in. Person A sending a file to person B against the wish of author C is either wrong in itself or not. The only way to find out is a vote. Lets vote on copyright.
> If they knew the truth, maybe they would buy rather than copy
Whether somebody buys a copy or makes it himself also isnt up to debate here. The question is whether copying itself against the wish of the author should be illegal or not. Copying can be legal and you'd still have people buying copies to support the author. I can copy but I still buy. The legality of copying doesnt exclude buying.
> You are saying this as if there was something wrong with that.
It is wrong that action X (people exchanging information) is artificially made illegal so somebody can make money by providing service X. It is basically outlawing DIY. I think that this is wrong, you maybe dont. The only way to find out whether this should be illegal or not is to collectively vote on it, not by bribery behind closed doors.
If the majority decides that it should be illegal because they value the influx Hollywood output more than personal freedoms, I'd accept that even though I personally think it shouldnt be so. But what I certainly wont accept as a behavioral guidance are "deals" made between a few influential stake holders and bribeable politicians who are essentially circumventing democracy. As long as I know that my fellow citizens, my friends and family dont consider copying wrong and objectionable, there is no reason for me and anybody else to blindly obey a purchased, undemocratic law like a serf and like feudalism never ended. The only outcome I'm personally willing to accept is a community vote. Lets vote on copyright.
Voting on morality is not a good idea. I refer you the common persons understanding of morality in the past centuries.
The moral strides we have made in the past came from reasoning about morality and imagining ourselves in the position of somebody else.
Exploiting a minority to serve a majority is an expected outcome of collectivized morality, but not one that anybody should wish to gain.
Who is then gonna decide what behavior is OK and whats not OK? Who is gonna decide if filesharing is OK or not OK?
You have to answer the moral question for yourself, and convince others of your position using rational arguments. The argument that it feels right to you and your peers isn't very strong, an argument derived from first principles or maybe utilitarian or consequentialist perspectives would me more convincing.
One of the first principle that I hold is that the products of an individuals labor should belong to the individual and she should have control over it, regardless if it is a wooden spoon or a work of art.
This is not a legal question of interpreting an existing law. The law itself should be rewritten in a way that makes the biggest possible number of people OK with it.
> One of the first principle that I hold is
I dont. Now what? We're back to deciding whose first principles should count. The only way to get a set of generally acceptable first principles is to vote on them. Again, you cant circumvent democracy.
You can, you should and we do. For example, the US is a republic and not a democracy. People have unalienable rights that cannot be voted on.
Even if 80% of Americans would like to re-institute slavery tomorrow, it would be wrong and illegal.
In common law countries like the US, UK, Australia, and Canada, this has not historically been a principle of our societies, and has never been a part of our legal systems. Copyright is a purely statutory concept that does not relate to any moral law. That's one reason why, in the US, we have fair use exceptions for criticism, education, news reporting, and research.
Strangely, although civil law countries often declare a moral right of the individual to control the fruits of their labor, the law stomps all over that moral right with many exceptions to copyright: http://www.iuscomp.org/gla/statutes/UrhG.htm#I6
Because it yields a situation which the largest number of people is OK with. It maximizes the satisfaction of the people with the legal system.
> We don't hold referendums on every other issue.
We not doing something does not mean that we shouldnt. We absolutely should have more referendums.
> I'm not sure you'd like a world where politics was entirely reduced to the lowest common denominator
I'm sure I dont want to live in a world where laws directed against the population can be purchased by a few uberrich stake holders, where laws binding for everyone can be decided behind closed doors, without any legal way (other than useless protesting, campaigning, begging, etc) for the population way to get rid of unjust, bad laws and corrupt politicians.
It could maximize the number of people satisfied with the legal system, assuming they are rational. The gain of satisfaction for the may majority comes at a steep price on the satisfaction of the minority and has lead to much suffering in humanity.
The "first they came for"-quote is thrown around in this thread without much care. It should be noted that they came for the minorities.
What about someone decompiling someone else's app and putting it up for sale on the Android market. Is that wrong?
What about hacking into someone's server and copying their source code and design documents and using it to build a rival service?
What about selling software which contains GPL code and not acknowledging it or providing the source code?
No, I do not typically profit from piracy. When I purchase a kids' movie on DVD, Hollywood says that I have only purchased a "licence" to use the movie. When I then rip the movie to avi's (no complex decoding required to view) and copy the files to two old laptops so that my kids can watch the movie in the car, Hollywood says that I am a pirate -- that I am stealing their movie.
Not only does this process cost me time (and thus money) and aggravation, I also get the benefit of being labelled a criminal. At least the kids are happy.
http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html
I don't think anyone realistically considers format shifting as copyright infringement, other than opportunistic executives. I'm not aware of anyone being taken to court for format shifting.
Oh, and I'm not sure if your 'profitable discussion' pun was intentional or not, but I enjoyed it anyway.
Hollywood has also fought to force other countries to outlaw fair use. Here's an example:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/05/us-in-2005-l...
So yes, it is quite clear that Hollywood considers ripping a DVD to be criminal activity.
We can still make a difference, and a lot of people are fallaciously trying to rationalize a(n active) passivity in a discussion where the questions and answers aren't black and white.
Before Kickstarter, it was actually possible to support a person's work by buying their product. Still is.
- If I can choose between watching them now illegal and buying a DVD which will be released in half a year, guess which option I'll eventually choose? If the dvdrip is already going its rounds, why not release the movie online? If you are indie productions, you are not bound to all those country-releasing restrictions, are you?
- Say if I'm interested in a movie from Iceland. I am so not willing to pay 30-40€ for a single movie DVD just because of shipping/handling costs etc. I, however, would happily pay around 15 bucks for watching it online or dl it somewhere digitally but LEGAL. The motto should be if YOU want to watch it, no matter where, you can do it NOW, LEGALLY, for say 10 bucks. That I'd do without any second thought. But seems like the idea of that hasn't gripped on within the indie movie world. I don't want their DVDs no more, if I really would want that physical medium I could easily burn that disc myself (if the movie is available in high enough definition), I don't wanna pay 10+ more bucks for that. Plus, If I like a movie, I will most likely buy their poster or something, so they even get around 50 bucks more for that.
As for cinemas: I frequently (about 1x a week, depending on which movies are in cinemas) visit our local arthouse cinema, and while the selection here in Switzerland is incredibly good (yet sometimes about 2 years after the releases.. but better late than never I guess), the tickets costs about 10-15€ which is hell-a lot, especially comparing to Germany where I've been to cinemas for 3 bucks. I don't mind though, I like the cinema atmosphere with the comfy seats and the big screen.
They want to stop people from taking things that cost them a lot of money to make without paying for them.
It's that simple. They want people to either abstain from using their product (not ideal) or pay them for the use of it. This is what every business on the planet wants.
Instead, they invest billions of dollars making things that are in massive demand. They employ millions of people whose livelihoods depend on these products getting a return. They have a moral and legal obligation to protect the interests of their investors and their employees. Although 10 million illegal downloads is not 10 million legal sales lost, it is, without a doubt, some sales lost, and there are many billions of illegal downloads annually. These companies have moral and legal obligations to push for better enforcement against this illegal activity. And they do not have the answer to how to go about that effectively without causing problems in the process. It does not make them malicious people by default. Everyone on this forum knows that there is no perfect solution, and maybe it is a pointless pursuit, but it is just silly to act as if this massive industry, lead by people who feel every bit as responsible for their employees' families having food on their table as any other company's leaders, is supposed to just sit there and watch people illegally take their product without paying for it and do nothing.
Yes, we all want to make sure legislation like SOPA does not pass. But declaring a war on them is not going to help find amicable solutions. Saying you do not like their proposed solutions and then going back to business as usual, not proactively joining the conversation for how to reduce piracy, is not doing anything at all to keep the internet safe from the flawed solutions that they will continue to propose out of obligation to their shareholders and employees.
If you really want to protect the internet, the two best things you can do are stop pirating things you didn't pay for, and start contributing ideas and solutions to the issue of piracy that have as few unintended consequences as possible.
One thing I've learned about HN, through the school of hard knocks is that the word "moral" is probably the most reviled word on this forum, in any context, except maybe customer service (see: AirBnB).
So, which that very sympathetic entry, let me say that I very seriously doubt they have either moral or legal obligations to fight piracy. The studios, distributors, et al, have fiduciary obligations.
Also, it's interesting to look at the alternatives. Here's an independent film by a good friend, http://severny.com/on/SYNCHRONICITY.html.
I'm pretty sure a content business does not see the first scenario as an option at all, not just "not ideal".
> the two best things you can do are stop pirating things you didn't pay for, and start contributing ideas and solutions to the issue of piracy that have as few unintended consequences as possible.
Make it more convenient for somebody to purchase your product at a saleable price than to steal it. Torrenting et al are far from frictionless, see Netflix for example. If you cannot produce and sell your product for a price that the market will bear, you will (and arguably should) fail.
As an aside, I see no evidence quality film production will cease to exist with the current studios, so it's not like this is an all or nothing thing.
If a bully starts punching kids on the playground, regardless of whether he was hit first, the first priority of society is to take him down. At risk of hyperbole, many insurgents have legitimate points - they just express them like retards.
This isn't saying fire everyone employed by "Hollywood". It means re-structure the institutions so they work with modern society instead of regularly attempting to counter-act human progress.
Rather than try and legislate their relevance, I think the entertainment industry needs to find alternate sources of income and adapt to the system. Whether this means becoming more service oriented (with convenient streaming based subscriptions) or focusing on theaters and merchandise, but something needs to change.
Non-commercial, non-profit file sharing should be legal (having it be a felony is just ridiculous) and it doesn't make sense to try and control the web to restrict what a technology is good at. Unfortunately this issue starts with fixing copyright - which at the moment seems to be impossible.
But I think you're missing the point. You believe the problem that needs to be solved is stopping piracy by enforcement.
Others, pg, myself included, believe piracy is not actually the problem it's a symptom.
The problem is convenience.
The studios either because they are stuck in the past or because they are contractually obligated to theaters, cable, TV, DVD stores, and foreign distributors, are not making it convenient.
There's no reason the studios individually or better yet, collectively, couldn't make all the content they represent available, on the same day it premieres, online, WORLD WIDE, for a reasonable price. There's also no reason they couldn't run world wide commercial sponsored channels of older content, online, world wide. If they did those they'd make billions.
Instead they are stuck in the past. Theaters first = incentive to pirate. Not released in my country yet = incentive to pirate. Can't play on any device I own = incentive to pirate. Can't transfer from device to device = incentive to pirate. Shitty quality streaming = incentive to pirate.
The solution is to REMOVE THE INCENTIVES TO PIRATE.
I understand the theaters would be upset. I understand the cable companies would be upset. I understand their foreign distributors would be upset. I understand DVD stores would be upset. TOO EFFING BAD! The world has changed. The studios need to face the world as it is now, not try to legislate it back into the 90s. That's not going to happen. As hard as they might try technology and the world move forward not back. They need to swallow that pill and embrace reality. Make it convenient and most people will stop pirating.
> There's no reason the studios individually or better yet, collectively, couldn't make all the content they represent available, on the same day it premieres, online, WORLD WIDE, for a reasonable price.
I understand how you could come to this conclusion but that's just false. Two years ago I started a streaming music company knowing pretty much nothing about licensing laws. Now, after working with one of the best music licensing attorneys available and reading an annoying amount on this subject, it is clear that if you intentionally set out to create an industry that was impossible to maneuver legally, you could not do as good a job as the current music industry. And, I know it's the same for the film industry, which is further complicated by the fact that nearly all films also have music in them.
Both of these industries are filled with extensive legal requirements, many of them labor laws, union regulations, licensing restrictions and more, designed to make sure that artists and other people are not exploited. For every movie you make, not only do certain players in the movie have certain rights, certain royalties owed, and so forth, but then there is music in it. That music has a copyright owner, a publisher, and so on. They all have different rights, and many have assigned those rights to others for management, and this information is not easily located all of the time.
There is no cookie cutter way to license everything you need for these films in one stroke of a pen world wide. In some countries, even the publishing rights owners themselves cannot waive or change the mandatory rates to be paid for the use of their work. And, as a company putting out a world wide film, you have to know all of these laws for all of these countries. And then to do what you've proposed you have to make the movie available in every weird new format that comes out every other week, you have to forego release schedules that actually allow you to build buzz and execute a marketing plan that maximizes the ROI for your investment, and so forth.
So, there are about a million reasons why what you described is impossible. And then, at the end there is that one last incentive to pirate that will never be gotten rid of - charging money, which they cannot avoid.
All things being equal, you don't think these people want to make their product more convenient to have? I know a ton of people in the industry who try to put their content anywhere they possible can. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter how hard they try, it's never going to compete with free, and these people deserve to be paid for their work.
But in my opinion the big content distributors should be fighting to change the agreements and laws that shackle them -- not crippling the internet to accommodate them.
Louis C.K. has already made the case for us. You do not need to change _anything_ to get people to pay a reasonable amount for quality content. They will pay even when they can get it for free. He has already made a few million charging $5 for a non-DRM, easily pirated copy of his comedy special.
It shows the way forward: make it convenient, make it good value for money... and we will come.
Many thousands of great bands are on Bandcamp with name your own price music for sale that is super easy to download, and most make next to nothing on the service. It was mostly the marketing that Louis CK did well that made him successful, and he has resources that 99% of people don't have.
To address the point of distributors changing the laws that shackle them, if you've ever tried to make changes against a union, let alone half a dozen unions, you'll know why that's not possible. They can make almost no headway against unions as powerful as the Screen Actor's Guild, and they cannot hire A List actors without using SAG workers.
In fact, maybe the best approach to killing the problems with Hollywood (not the industry itself), is to create a platform for studios to hire non-union film professionals, to source music fully owned by the original artist, which comes with boiler plate licensing and employment agreements that are designed for the digital world, with proper 21st century royalties, etc, and that provides a turnkey distribution platform that can put your movie on nearly any country's most popular movie viewing website on the same day.
But that kind of production only takes you so far. It tells us nothing about the feasibility of using the same model for a film noir, or a special effects blockbuster with recognizable stars.
From an outsider's perspective it looks like the major distributors are getting exactly what they deserve. Thanks to regulatory capture, they (the MPAA/RIAA/etc.) are the ones responsible for the tangled web of international regulations. If they really wanted a streamlined international system, they'd be arguing against things like ACTA, SOPA, the diplomatic browbeating of Spain into passing Internet censorship laws, etc.
See my comment above for what a true disruption in film might be based on this issue.
The studios job is to make money for their shareholders and artists. The best way for them to make that money is to work to get rid of these restrictions they are under so they can distribute these products without these problems you mentioned.
To me this is practically a horse and buggy (the studios) vs the automobile (the internet) type issue. I'm sure some people complained "you can't go supporting cars! I'm livery will go out of business". Well too bad for you. Make a change or be left behind. The world doesn't care about your union agreements or any others.
I also don't agree you can't compete with free. You can! How else do you think iTunes Music Store has been kicking butt even though all the music can be had for free? It's unlikely piracy sites will ever get to the level of convenience that is something like iTMS. The studios have the opportunity to do the same with movies. If their past agreements shackle them to failure boohoo to them. They're not going to get people to stop pirating as long as they continue to keep adding more and more incentives to do so by making legit ways of accessing content painful, frustrating and limited.
The only solution that I can imagine is some sort of DRM like what Apple uses in the App store allowing Users to have lifetime access to the content that they purchased. The DRM acts as a replacement for Regional restrictions allowing world-wide usage with the authentication of purchase handled by computers. Unfortunately the tech community is so fanatically adverse to DRM that they fail see how it can benefit the studio/customer relationship and a large company will have to just implement it and take the risk it gets accepted in the marketplace.
As far as I understand, that is the game and this is the lens we through which we see the solution or ignore there is a problem.
Clay Shirky: Why SOPA is a bad idea http://www.ted.com/talks/defend_our_freedom_to_share_or_why_...
Effectively only professionals would be allowed to create any content on the internet. It is fare to say that the internet would be broken if Hollywood gets what it wants.
But "Hollywood" is a misnomers that will inevitably throw innocent people under the bus in the crusade against the abstract concept of the entertainment industry. I also think it would help the campaign tremendously from a PR stand point not to be so abstract as to inculpate a vast industry - imagine the reaction here, if they made as broad generalizations against the tech industry.
They let you subscribe to vouched-for indie films.
I don't think the MPAA will stop no matter how successful online video services are, because they could always be making more, in their minds, if they only had "the tools" to stop online piracy. That these tools amount to sledgehammers that could, whether by accident or abuse of power, stop legitimate uses of the internet is not important to these people. This is what we are protesting.
Do I think copyright and rights management are all kinds of messed up? Hell yes I do, but that's why it requires innovation FROM US; Hollywood will die off if we encroach using a legitimate business model - it sucks that it took this long for everyone to realize that Hollywood needs to be disrupted just like every other industry the technology industry has disrupted. I believe Amazon is having a go at it?
It really stinks that this whole thing has come down to us needing to defend our rights on the internet - but I can't help but feel that Hollywood's response is a leveled reaction to something many people are not respecting (that is, paying for the content).
The problem is two-fold here, Hollywood isn't innovating and internet citizenship is not being respectful. It has been Hollywood's shortcoming in not being able to figure out better ways of making content easier to access online over the pirated version; and people aren't respecting the boundaries (due to Hollywood's inability to innovatively respond to distribution on the internet) of fair economic trade in the digital medium.
These next two to five years will define both the internet and the entertainment industry for the next 50-100 years IMHO.
The fight is really about control. The internet allows, for the first time, independent amateurs to command the same ability to create and distribute as the major media companies. And that scares them, it scares them immensely because it means that you just might not need them as gatekeeper and distributor. Which means that that will not remain attached to your wallet, receiving payment for all the content you consume from them.
Watch this TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/defend_our_freedom_to_share...
It is only 14 minutes long, but it will put a lot of what the real reason for all this attack on the internet is about into perspective.
Oh please.
I suspect Hollywood has problems with internet-distributed small time indie productions when their distribution costs are being subsidized by their file host, via ad revenue generated by providing downloads of pirated Hollywood movies.
If small-time indie productions can't afford to pay for their own bandwidth, maybe they need to fix their own business model.
Consuming their products either way, is just the same. The money ends up in their hands.
But for a boycott to be effective, you need to create awareness to generate real-world actions. Otherwise, only the tech-savvy ones will do something, and the boycott won't reach the scale needed.
Anyway, I don't believe that a boycott is a good alternative. That would hurt mostly to the weakest links of the chain; employees who work for little money, and the big companies won't hesitate to fire, if they feel the need to keep their numbers fine, just to don't make their shareholders angry.
Let's remember that we are in the middle of a nice tech-bubble here, most of us making some good money, but the rest of the economy is in really bad shape. I don't think this is a good time to push them to swell the ranks of the unemployed.
I'm having sort of a dilemma here... I have to meditate it a bit longer.
If your main concern is defense of liberty, if I may be so bold, then now is most definitely an appropriate time to start a boycott.
And this is one reason I reckon piracy is popular and less money is going to media producers. Our money has different places to go now, compared to before. Some things like fuel have massively increased in cost. One simple example is the internet its self. We have to pay for a connection, which means 2 less CD's per month. More of our money goes on things like video games. Fuel, gas, and electricity in the UK for example have almost double in the last 5 years or so. Dunno the total cost there, but its is in the £1000's. So if the media people what to know where their income has gone, a big chunk of it is with the energy producers. The money has simply shifted elsewhere. Maybe if fuel costs went back to 2002 levels, money money might get spent on movies, etc.
But, we still want our opium. The opium they fed us in the first place.
I think artists and media companies have to accept that the gravy train has derailed and they have to make less millions than before when they had it good. And frankly, these people have been obscenely over paid for decades. Isn't $5m OK any more? Does it have to still be the historic $10m?