Two related and interesting items get slashdotted today:
One, a 6-page Vanity Fair article on piracy in which details the movie and record industries’ losing battle against downloading. Remember those awful anti-piracy commercials that they used to lecture you in movie theatres, where you had clearly just paid them their damn money?
Another P.S.A. argues that people who buy pirated films are hurting Hollywood’s ordinary folks, the humble artisans who toil backstage building pedestals for the stars. The M.P.A.A.’s case might have carried more weight had it not featured the heartfelt testimony of Ben Affleck, a man who was paid $12.5 million to star in Gigli.
Turns out a combination of preaching to the choir and sueing everything in sight and even being able to strong-arm foriegn governments into acting in your interest against those nasty non-American hosts won’t stop the future especially when the future involves more people than could ever be sued easily getting stuff for free. And some industry executives are finally starting to see that:
Among the few senior entertainment executives who have been able to absorb this seemingly basic aspect of human nature is Anne Sweeney, president of Disney–ABC Television. In her keynote speech at the October 2006 MIPCOM audiovisual-content market in Cannes, France, Sweeney broke ranks with her boardroom peers to make a bracingly pragmatic statement. “Piracy is a business model,” Sweeney said. “It exists to serve a need in the market—consumers who want TV content on demand. And piracy competes for consumers the same way we do: through quality, price, and availability.”
Which leads us to our second item of note: with most Americans only somewhat aware that they are in the middle of the VHS/Beta wars of our time and with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players still in the insanely expensive generations, the security on both super-discs is already cracked. Now you can easily copy and disseminate a higher quality picture than ever before!
Arnezami, a hacker on the Doom9 forum, has published a crack for extracting the “processing key” from a high-def DVD player. This key can be used to gain access to every single Blu-Ray and HD-DVD disc….
AACS took years to develop, and it has been broken in weeks. The developers spent billions, the hackers spent pennies.
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My favorite part of the Vanity Fair article?
…George Lucas came out with the startling announcement that his company had decided that making feature films was now “too expensive and too risky” in the current climate…
I know stealing is a sin, but I can’t condemn anyone participating in a mega-trend that starts prodding Lucas towards a dignified obscurity. If he never makes a feature film again, perhaps we can pretend the last round of Star Wars never happened and remember him only for the good times.
Well the Galactic Gasbag isn’t going to make any more movies I think our work here is done, internet movie pirates. *As she surveys the smoking ruins with arms akimbo and a look of weary pride*
We can all go back to regular theater attendance accompanied by abundant popcorn purchases.
“…George Lucas came out with the startling announcement that his company had decided that making feature films was now “too expensive and too risky” in the current climate…”
I remember when DVDs were new and George Lucas said he’s never release any of the Star Wars movies in that format because of the danger of digital copies. So much for that…
Make a decent movie, sell the DVD’s for a decent price, people will by. Make a crappy movie (Gigli?), charge too much for DVD’s? – no sale…
(Honestly, the music biz is at least as stupid. Buy a whole album – 1 or 2 good songs – $17? WTF?…)
Besides, these days Lucas makes a huge amount of money on the technical side with Industrial Light and Magic and such. He will be rich regardless…
George Lucas is a fucking drama queen. I wouldn’t get my hopes up that he’ll actually stop making ridiculously shitty movies.
[...] Posted by Evil Bender on February 13th, 2007 As a pirate-lover, I don’t have much use for those who call people who merely steal movies and are annointed real pirates. But as Kyso points out, anything that makes George Lucas stop making movies can’t be all bad. [...]