The music industry price-fixed their CDs, focused solely on formulaic hits, refused to license music for downloads, crippled CDs with DRM, and then declared that "piracy" was responsible for its drop in sales.
Now the movie industry is chasing the same rabbit into the same wood-chipper: a raft of summer movies of great and overwhelming crappiness; insulting ads before movies and DVDs; searches and surveillance at cinemas, crippled DRMware technologies like Blu-Ray and DVD-HD; even tens of millions to be spent on a private DRM laboratory to come up with better ways of screwing people who choose not to pirate their media.
In a year or two, when studio revenue is circling the drain, will these execs look to their own greed, thuggishness or contempt for their customers when trying to explain their imminent demise? Be assured that they will not. No, these regulation-loving crybabies will spend the rest of their days whining about "piracy" and never once will any of them dare to think that people stopped going to the cinema because they resented being searched at the door.
Great rant. It's too bad the U.S. entertainment industry seems to be following the U.S. car industry in sheer willful blindness.
Statist!
(alternately:)
These economic actors will be sorted out in time. Meantime enjoy the crappy movies and music, which are actually good because the market created them.
Posted by: roy edroso | November 11, 2005 at 11:12 AM
Actually, many writers within the entertainment industry have taken issue with Sony's practices and have reached out to educate their audiences, perhaps none more so than Jason Gross at PopMatters.com. But Pitchforkmedia.com's coverage of this, along with that of lesser known sites and blogs have gone a long way to build critical mass.
More disconcerting might be Stewart Baker's comments which can be found here.
Posted by: J T. Ramsay | November 16, 2005 at 09:34 PM
I posted a few days ago about the 'Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.' It seemed to work favorably for the movie industry big-wigs, insofar as it would nearly obliterate potentials for piracy. But it also gave parents and corporations (to some extent) the possibility to EDIT movie releases extensively. Which is completely ironic and totally defeatest to their point, if you ask me! :P
Hey, would you update your link to me already? My URL got stolen, so at the moment, you're linking to a commercial porn link under 'news and views from philly.' :O
It would be funny, except it's my name!
Posted by: marjo moore | November 23, 2005 at 04:07 PM