Hollywood Will Need To Accept File Sharing
from the eventually dept
Mary Jaekl writes in sounding surprised that somoene else in this world agrees with me on my opinion about file sharing. The link is to the latest I, Cringely, talking about why the entertainment industry will eventually be forced to accept file sharing because otherwise they’ll go out of business. He talks a little about the study we spoke about a couple weeks back saying that digital rights management would never be effective in killing file sharing. It still surprises me that this is so confusing for some people. The argument against this seems to be that there isn’t any business model for Hollywood to except file sharing. My argument is that if they don’t, there isn’t any business for them, no matter what business model they want to hang on to.
Comments on “Hollywood Will Need To Accept File Sharing”
Post Hollywood Era
All right, so let’s suppose techies get their wish, the Hollywood establishment is overthrown, and all the big labels go bankrupt.
What will fill their place? Thousands of amateurish, low-budget music and movies made with home computers.
Techies of the future will lament about the “Golden Era” of big labels, back when “true works of art” like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars made High Art of computer technology; “nobody makes movies like that anymore”.
Re: Post Hollywood Era
i dont think hollywood is going out of busines real soon. sure a few geeks are sharing dvd’s thru the internet, but is that much different to sharing vhs movies ? the majority of people dont have high bandwidth connections or know how to find movies or the patience to dl them & then watch them on a 15 or 17″ screen. in fact most people will buy a cheap dvd player & rent or buy cheap dvd movies. you dont need any special computer “skills”, its just like a cd player. just as vhs/beta proved a boon for hollywood, so will dvd’s. the big thing is the price point for mass takeup. also releasing all your back catalog helps too. with china spitting out thousands of cheap players & dvd’s continuing to drop in price, the next extinction will more likely be most of the movie theatres.
Re: Post Hollywood Era
errmmm, some of us would like to see the big corps go away. I would suggest that most of the original,”true works of art” are actual produced by the “thousands of amateurs” in this world and that, the big corps just re-release the same old stale pap, time after time, to relieve you of your hard earned cash for the least effort.
we are entering a time when the individaul can produce and release orginal material from home to the world. without the need for a bunch of no-talent middle men who offer no worth,but to market something and make money from somebody elses work.
using star wars as an example. I am a fan of the first three films. they were original and given the budget and technology of the time,they are exclellent. The latest films are shallow, the scrips are appaling and predictable. the only saving grace is the FX (which are good). they are just a money making excersise using an established format. The next film in the series finishes with evil winning the day. This will probable be the last star wars film G Lucas makes. one of the biggest debates at present is whether they will stick to the original story as “HollyWood will not fund a film were evil wins the day” and the American Public will not wont to see such a final to the series.
I hope they fall soon. we will see a new age of artistic development which will be some relief from the run of the mill, middle of the road, upset nobody crap available now.
;p
Re: Re: Post Hollywood Era
I would suggest that most of the original,”true works of art” are actual produced by the “thousands of amateurs” in this world and that, the big corps just re-release the same old stale pap, time after time, to relieve you of your hard earned cash for the least effort.
I would certainly agree with you. Had Dorpus taken the time to check when it came to Star Wars, George *WAS* an amateur when he made up the original three in the series, and he didn’t have much money but he shot a fairly decent movie on a shoestring budget. That is most likely why the original three are better than the new ones, the technology wasn’t there but the story was (though I did like STE2, it was an improvement over the crappy story in STE1.)
I don’t want to see the majors fail, I want them to be treated a little more fairly when it comes to business. If they wish to stand by a lousy and out-of-touch business model, there should be no guarantees of success, unlike their current treatment in congress. The problem with large businesses, whether it be the Major Music companies, Major Motion Picture companies, or Microsoft or IBM is that they all stifle creativity and inguinuity. Why make your product better or run leaner and meaner if you have so much fat that you cannot see your toes?
Re: Re: Re: Post Hollywood Era
No, I don’t think it could be argued George was an “amateur” by the time he made the first Star Wars. One could say that of earlier works like “THX-1198”. The first Star Wars movie may have had a modest budget by today’s standards, but it was certainly expensive by the standards of the day.
As for the argument that amateurs can make better movies than big players, I have seen enough “grass roots” movies or music that was dull, poorly made, lacking polish. There are benefits of having larger talent pools work on the same project, for larger budgets. Techies tend to be the worst artists, because they obsess over technical details and not enough on good storytelling.
Re: Post Hollywood Era
Boy it would be a real shame if ‘Hollywood’ were to start churning out movies with thoughtfulness and emotion/sincerity instead of just masking any juvenile piece of trash with multi-million dollar special effects. BOY THAT WOULD SURE SUCK. You know there IS A REASON they call ‘Wizard of Oz’ the movie that broke hollywood. Movies used to be cheap to make. Now everyone thinks they have to be bigger and better than the next guy. Maybe that same logic is why american cars suck so bad too….