Jump to content

The Media Industry is at that awkward age


saint

Recommended Posts

This is a reply to a post I saw on tech dirt

 

The comment hits the nail right on the head ...

 

 

I see most of this copyright bru-haha as kind of like hospice care for the entertainment industry, while it dies kicking and screaming.

 

The sheer volume of free entertainment produced by people just for their own satisfaction is growing fast, and a small percentage of it is actually very good. We're not far from the point where a lone amateur with an ordinary computer will be able to turn a script into a studio-quality feature movie with completely realistic human characters and voices.

 

As more people get their hands on that technology, the small percentage of high quality free material they generate will consume more and more of people's entertainment time, until at some point studio-produced movies and television won't have a big enough audience to remain profitable, and the industry will die.

 

Similarly, musicians are gradually getting wise to the fact that a recording contract isn't a ticket to the big time, it's a lottery ticket; the prize is the big time and the price is giving up the rights to their own work or even their own names. Eventually the amount of great music available for free will destroy the market for recordings. Recordings will continue to do what they have always done for musicians -- induce people to go out and pay to hear live music -- but without the horde of blood-sucking leeches in the middle.

 

Even after the business of producing new entertainment withers to nothing, the huge backlog of rights-industry-controlled material will still be worth protecting for a long time. It will be several decades until enough Baby Boomers and GenXers have died off and the value of that backlog shrinks to the point where buying legislation to protect it is no longer cost effective. Without wheelbarrows full of money rolling from Hollywood to Washington DC, the voices speaking up for copyright sanity might finally be heard.

 

Gonna happen, yes. Gonna take a long time, ooooh yeah.

 

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110415/01524013905/why-does-entertainment-industry-seek-to-kill-any-innovation-thats-helping-it-adapt.shtml#comments

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...