Live data from Hacker News

New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

wired.com

111–120 of 135 posts

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#111

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

My question is how much damage to society will Hollywood do before collapsing? Putting a "Strong IP Enforcement" regime in place could cripple the USA for decades, for example.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#112

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

Hollywood does have a very important role that isn't subject to disruption by technology. Hollywood is the home of the "star" system. Stars sell movies these days. Be them writers, directors, models, or guys with funny voices, the market want to see famous people on screen.

Whether it is Paris Hilton or Bill Maher, stars are the people who rise to the top of the system and become household names. The various media wings need a place with a critical mass of famous people. That happens in LA, and to a lesser extent in New York. Look at Vancouver. Lots of films, lots of money, but none of the media associated with LA's star system. The physicality of this system means it is resistant to disruption by technology. Hollywood will be king for a long time.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By Hollywood, people here mean the big studios/distributors, that is, the companies who provide the cash, not the production companies that film the stuff.

Through a system of billing specifically set up to make the production company end up deep in the red while the big "studio" rakes in the profits. AKA Hollywood accounting. The system is rotten to the core, and copyright as a concept has been broken since the day someone could drop a couple of 100s on the table and walk out the door with the digital equivalent of a printing press. Copyright basically hinges on the ac…

Copyright died the year that xerox machines got installed in public and college libraries. Everything since then has been attempts to unring a bell, and maybe stuff a genie back into a lamp.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#114
post #92

Hollywood is an industry that should be very vulnerable to disruption. Even if we ignore the whole digital distribution aspect, there's so much bloat in the overhead cost of producing a film. Everything about the industry is based around croneyism, various inside deals made between established independent contractors on short term contracts with all sorts of padding. Plus overhead for safety & insurance, lots of manu…

No need to shoot on location? This is how it was done in the studio system from the early days through about the 1970s. The studios were more dominant then. I agree some aspects of film are ripe for disruption but many aspects have already been disrupted multiple times over the years. I'm in the medical industry, which is another field that tech newbies think will be fixed real soon now as hackers turn their attentio…

Rarely to random people say: "Hey, that looks like a good industry to disrupt!" It usually comes from the people that actually work in the industry and have experienced the inefficiencies first-hand. They then work with outsiders to actually implement solutions.

I work in med-tech on the tech side. Every CEO of the small companies I deal with have 15+ years in medicine. Almost all of them have experience in both the practitioner and administrator roles. From my experience, these arrogant outsiders you speak of either don't exist or make such an insignificant impact that you'd have to put effort into actually finding them.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#115
The MPAA is not "Hollywood" and had not been so for a long time.

MPAA current members: Sony, Disney, Fox, Universal, Warner and Paramount.

Netflix is not a member. Lionsgate is not a member. You tube is certainly not a member. The MPAA therefore doesn't represent the content industry let alone all of Hollywood. Those writing about the MPAA (Wired) should not take its word as representative of anyone other than its FIVE backers. And some of those (Sony) aren't exactly happy with them these days.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who will they side with? Google or the people who keep killing their favourite movie streaming and Torrent sites?

I expect the US population that cares about torrents is practially nil, though that is based personal bias.

If that population is practically nil, then what's the problem with torrents/pirating?

Nobody doing it: no loss to the studios.

Even without knowing exactly, precisely how many people int he USA are torrenting and pirating, the studios seem to think it's a Great Big Deal, and are willing to splash out a lot of cash, and a lot of good will to get torrenting stopped. That would seem to indicate that the US population that cares about torrents is actually pretty large.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#117
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is a joke. This would be terrifying. The MPAA are trying to stop google from fairly distributing pages they disagree with. Google is net neutrality and should act as a dumb pipe utility in the sense that it returns the most relevant info based on your search. If google returned empty pages for something it didn't agree with, the implications would be appalling. Google should do during the spectrum wars…

I agree Google should return the best response to your search and not cut things out for bargaining points, but "dumb pipe utility" is incredibly off.

Google deliberately decided to downgrade the torrent sites ... so they lost all pretense at neutrality.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They are a private company, they can do whatever they want on their site (also known as the iOS censorship apologist argument)

Because they very much have to toe the line of being "neutral" in their search results as to not enable all the sanctions/remedies that other search engine competitors (like Bing) to have merit. Were they to overtly use their position to "punish" the content companies in this way, they would be jumped on by regulators everywhere for abusing a monopoly power.

Torrent sites downgrade, as searching for torrents were exactly that. Punishing arbitrary sites for no good reason.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#119

The MPAA is not "Hollywood" and had not been so for a long time. MPAA current members: Sony, Disney, Fox, Universal, Warner and Paramount. Netflix is not a member. Lionsgate is not a member. You tube is certainly not a member. The MPAA therefore doesn't represent the content industry let alone all of Hollywood. Those writing about the MPAA (Wired) should not take its word as representative of anyone other than its FI…

Uh... Under whose definition are Netflix or Youtube (Google) part of "Hollywood"? The term has always been used to refer to the industry formed by the big traditional studios which were founded in the early part of the century in the Hollywood/Burbank area. Lionsgate might qualify (and I don't know why they aren't in the MPAA), but then they haven't even been around for two decades yet.

The MPAA is "Hollywood" for sure, inasmuch as that term has any meaning at all. I simply don't understand what point you're trying to make.

Re: New Court Evidence Reveals Hollywood’s Plan to Smear Google

#120
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

while i can this form an emotional point of view I would call this highly unprofessional. nevertheless hollywood does everything to abolish itself producing only comic/computer game adaptions or se-/prequels.

Yeah, I assume everyone is joking or something. Do we really want google to set such a precedent? Killing pages of things they or their affiliates dislike. Scary.

This was a joke ... kinda. But since MPAA asked google to downgrade into oblivion some results. And got it without court order, this means that downgrading all results for a movie for "just because" is pretty fine too.
Post reply on HN