I can only stand and applaud. Simon Houpt’s Golbe and Mail article, ‘H’ For Hypocrisy, is a clean breath of critical fresh air. He points a steady and damning hand at the MPAA and Hollywood, spelling out what we have long intuited but could not put into words.
The system may have started out altruistic, albeit hopelessly conservative and nationalistic, but now it’s just broken, serving only Hollywood’s bottom line. And I don’t say Hollywood meaning to include the world film industry at large. No. Just Hollywood.
Houpt says the ratings system is used to push mainstream Hollywood fare, while steering us away from independent and international movies. Yes to violence, no to sexuality (especially gay and female). He says thoroughly rinsed ‘R’ rated theatre releases (gotta dodge that fatal NC-17) are remarketed to us as uncensored DVDs. Can’t argue with that. So they make money off the movies twice. “Director’s Cut”, anyone?
A very well written article by Ken Fisher on Ars Technica goes into detail about the whole DRM scam, which highlights the point- it’s not about protecting art. It’s about controlling access. Pushing their product. Selling our rights back to us. In short: it’s about money.
Fisher goes on to say that DRM is about making us pay for product. The artist, while obviously having a vested interest in selling more legitimate copies, has been statistically proven to really not actually lose very much to piracy (or the much less alarmist ‘file-sharing’). People who file-share rather than pay would not likely buy the product in stores anyway, so it’s not a lost buyer. Just a gained fan who might become a buyer. Studios, therefore, aggressively pursue Digital Rights Management as nothing more saintly than new revenue stream. It’s clever but short-sighted.
What studios choose to ignore is the real opportunity inherent in the fact that people love to possess the Genuine Article. If I am a fan, I will buy the product. On the largest scale this means that the industry actually gains in an environment where product can be shared. If I have access to movies and music, I will be much more inclined to become that most sought-after consumer- the collector. A thriving, flourishing industry is one where everybody’s doing it. And the best way to get everybody involved is certainly not to restrict access. iTunes showed the world how to do this simply. Make it cheap and easy. Make it more convenient to buy than to pirate. And now Apple all but controls the online music industry.
There is no such thing as truly protected material. There is no way to show a movie without also being exposed to copying. Teens did it in the fifties with the radio and their reel-to-reels. They do it now with their on-board HD recorders. If something can be played, it can be copied. The only question is the quality of the copy. High-Def has already fallen. It was a foregone conclusion. I’m not even surprised at the time frame. As soon as distribution became big enough to make the effort worthwhile, someone went in and hacked it. Blu-Ray can’t be far behind.
Obviously DRM is broken. The brick-and-mortar model of selling entertainment is broken. The frantic, slow-moving behemoth labels are broken. While the number of entertainment consumers has never been higher the studios have never been more scared. With Pandora so far out of her box she’s forwarding her mail, one has to wonder just how long they will insist on beating this dead horse. <- mixed metaphor included free of charge.