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The death throes of an industry

jacquesmattheij.com

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Re: The death throes of an industry

#61

Post by jiggy2011 »

jacquesm wrote: post #59
odnamra wrote: post #54

Wow. Simply, wow. I was literally 90% done with my Kill Hollywood RFS application when I saw Paul's tweet about this article and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Can anyone tell me that the Kill Hollywood is about making the world better and not simply about revenge? I just finished ranting like a lunatic on twitter (sorry Paul), but I'm going to try and be nice here. Keep in mind that you are attacking my very livel…

> You tell me we can crowdfund a $500 million dollar Avatar without using the hedge fund approach of a major studio, and I will change my mind. That's a key problem. And I don't pretend to have the answer but things will change whether you or I like it or not. That said I prefer Primer over Avatar, big budgets be damned.

I don't think the general public has the attention span to keep several hundred Primer type titles being released all year round in their consciousness.

I think the big "change" will be streaming videos over DVD/Blu-Ray rather than everything suddenly becoming an Indie movie.

Re: The death throes of an industry

#62

Post by jiggy2011 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #57
odnamra wrote: post #54

Wow. Simply, wow. I was literally 90% done with my Kill Hollywood RFS application when I saw Paul's tweet about this article and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Can anyone tell me that the Kill Hollywood is about making the world better and not simply about revenge? I just finished ranting like a lunatic on twitter (sorry Paul), but I'm going to try and be nice here. Keep in mind that you are attacking my very livel…

Capitalism is supposed to be a way of dealing with scarcity, not maintaining it in the face of its oncoming abolition by technology. You are a bourgeoisie screaming that the Revolution has come and you don't like its shape ;-). I agree with you, but moving to a post-scarcity bit-distribution model is, in its way, inevitable. After all, how much does the RIAA/MPAA claim as the "pirated" value of "their" content? As I…

post-scarcity? I think we've had that since VHS tapes.

The problem with this conversation is it always gets confused between "The MPAA are evil, let's kill them" and "let's abolish copyright!"

The only way I can see to kill "big content" would be to either reduce the size of the overall industry, or to break it up into smaller indie houses.

Neither of these seem plausible.

Re: The death throes of an industry

#63

Post by eli_gottlieb »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #62
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is supposed to be a way of dealing with scarcity, not maintaining it in the face of its oncoming abolition by technology. You are a bourgeoisie screaming that the Revolution has come and you don't like its shape ;-). I agree with you, but moving to a post-scarcity bit-distribution model is, in its way, inevitable. After all, how much does the RIAA/MPAA claim as the "pirated" value of "their" content? As I…

post-scarcity? I think we've had that since VHS tapes. The problem with this conversation is it always gets confused between "The MPAA are evil, let's kill them" and "let's abolish copyright!" The only way I can see to kill "big content" would be to either reduce the size of the overall industry, or to break it up into smaller indie houses. Neither of these seem plausible.

>The problem with this conversation is it always gets confused between "The MPAA are evil, let's kill them" and "let's abolish copyright!"

I'm not confused, I'm a socialist. I legitimately believe that wherever possible, false scarcity should be abolished in favor of real abundance.

Re: The death throes of an industry

#64

Post by [deleted] »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #57
odnamra wrote: post #54

Wow. Simply, wow. I was literally 90% done with my Kill Hollywood RFS application when I saw Paul's tweet about this article and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Can anyone tell me that the Kill Hollywood is about making the world better and not simply about revenge? I just finished ranting like a lunatic on twitter (sorry Paul), but I'm going to try and be nice here. Keep in mind that you are attacking my very livel…

Capitalism is supposed to be a way of dealing with scarcity, not maintaining it in the face of its oncoming abolition by technology. You are a bourgeoisie screaming that the Revolution has come and you don't like its shape ;-). I agree with you, but moving to a post-scarcity bit-distribution model is, in its way, inevitable. After all, how much does the RIAA/MPAA claim as the "pirated" value of "their" content? As I…

[deleted]

Re: The death throes of an industry

#65

Post by jiggy2011 »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #63
jiggy2011 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

post-scarcity? I think we've had that since VHS tapes. The problem with this conversation is it always gets confused between "The MPAA are evil, let's kill them" and "let's abolish copyright!" The only way I can see to kill "big content" would be to either reduce the size of the overall industry, or to break it up into smaller indie houses. Neither of these seem plausible.

>The problem with this conversation is it always gets confused between "The MPAA are evil, let's kill them" and "let's abolish copyright!" I'm not confused, I'm a socialist. I legitimately believe that wherever possible, false scarcity should be abolished in favor of real abundance.

Without wishing to get too sidetracked on this one, I think this is a fundamentally different debate.

There is a difference between suggesting that a certain industry may have seen it's hayday and suggesting a fundamental top down restructure of much of society.

It confuses me in debates like this because you have one set of people wanting to create new startups to displace hollywood and another wanting to kill IP altogether and they seem to act like they agree with eachother.

Re: The death throes of an industry

#66

Post by odnamra »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #57
odnamra wrote: post #54

Wow. Simply, wow. I was literally 90% done with my Kill Hollywood RFS application when I saw Paul's tweet about this article and it stopped me dead in my tracks. Can anyone tell me that the Kill Hollywood is about making the world better and not simply about revenge? I just finished ranting like a lunatic on twitter (sorry Paul), but I'm going to try and be nice here. Keep in mind that you are attacking my very livel…

Capitalism is supposed to be a way of dealing with scarcity, not maintaining it in the face of its oncoming abolition by technology. You are a bourgeoisie screaming that the Revolution has come and you don't like its shape ;-). I agree with you, but moving to a post-scarcity bit-distribution model is, in its way, inevitable. After all, how much does the RIAA/MPAA claim as the "pirated" value of "their" content? As I…

Bourgeoisie? :) I worked my way up from nothing and my perspective is simply that of someone who has seen the industry from several different angles.

Also, like any sane person, I believe that pirates are only frustrated consumers (I know I am).

But where does that leave us... how do you keep humanity entertained while "software is eating the world."

What does that technology look like? For distribution, is it an open standards network of p2p+affiliate marketing+an index fund? For creators, will it be a cost equalizing combo of reality-emulating audio engines and photorealistic cloud rendering of user-friendly 3D modeling? What happens to the concept of celebrity (celebrities = risk mitigation for movies)?

I personally think it's important to step back and think about the user experience of a movie. Can you succeed in delighting users and negating Hollywood at the same time?

Re: The death throes of an industry

#67

Post by odnamra »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #61
jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You tell me we can crowdfund a $500 million dollar Avatar without using the hedge fund approach of a major studio, and I will change my mind. That's a key problem. And I don't pretend to have the answer but things will change whether you or I like it or not. That said I prefer Primer over Avatar, big budgets be damned.

I don't think the general public has the attention span to keep several hundred Primer type titles being released all year round in their consciousness. I think the big "change" will be streaming videos over DVD/Blu-Ray rather than everything suddenly becoming an Indie movie.

Blu-ray's introduction happend after digital distribution, and it's already 2/3 of the size ($2 billion vs. $3 billion). The people of the world still like physical disks. Give it another decade.

Re: The death throes of an industry

#68

Post by odnamra »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #49
api wrote: post #38

I think there's a larger picture here. It's time to declare war on middlemen, period. There are producers and customers. There is no place for anything else in the 21st century. Here's a startup formula for you all: 1) Identify a place where a middleman is taking a cut or gate-keeping an industry. 2) Design a system, technology, or service that either eliminates the middleman entirely or replaces it with something fa…

To be honest, most of what I see startups doing is creating middle men, not destroying them. In fact in most cases that's all startups are, someone trying get between a customer and something they want. Hopefully adding some value on the way. Facebook: Want to talk to your friends? Talk through us. Dropbox: Want your files? Get them from us. etc etc If startups were serious about decentralizing anything they would be…

You are saying exactly what I just said to another reader. Replace distribution with an open standard that has an embedded financial model, then we might have something interesting. Everything else is just a different middle man.

Re: The death throes of an industry

#69

Post by jiggy2011 »

odnamra wrote: post #68
jiggy2011 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, most of what I see startups doing is creating middle men, not destroying them. In fact in most cases that's all startups are, someone trying get between a customer and something they want. Hopefully adding some value on the way. Facebook: Want to talk to your friends? Talk through us. Dropbox: Want your files? Get them from us. etc etc If startups were serious about decentralizing anything they would be…

You are saying exactly what I just said to another reader. Replace distribution with an open standard that has an embedded financial model, then we might have something interesting. Everything else is just a different middle man.

"Open standard" and "embedded financial model" are kind of mutually exclusive.

The whole point of an open standard is that it allows anybody to compete in a particular market, e.g browsers or word processors.

As soon as you have an open standard for distribution, you basically have something like bit torrent where the content producer/rights holder is in the same marketplace as the pirates or anybody else wishing to redistribute the same content under different terms (i.e free).

Re: The death throes of an industry

#70

Post by vibrunazo »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #69
odnamra wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying exactly what I just said to another reader. Replace distribution with an open standard that has an embedded financial model, then we might have something interesting. Everything else is just a different middle man.

"Open standard" and "embedded financial model" are kind of mutually exclusive. The whole point of an open standard is that it allows anybody to compete in a particular market, e.g browsers or word processors. As soon as you have an open standard for distribution, you basically have something like bit torrent where the content producer/rights holder is in the same marketplace as the pirates or anybody else wishing to…

Only if you assume the financial model depends on that open standard. For example, try to make money by distributing media using an open standard for distribution. Then I agree with you.

But you could have an open distribution model that is compatible with a parallel financial model. For example, fund an art project on kickstarter and then distribute it using an open standard. Or distribute your for free game in an open standard then charge for players to play in your server which has exclusive closed data that they might care for.

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