Request for Startups: Kill Hollywood.

Why not a startup that focuses on user-generated funding that releases movies into the public domain? In the age of digital media, everything is a fixed cost. Once the initial investment is paid for, distribution is free. Give producers, indie or otherwise, a platform to ask for money and promote their shows. On the user's side, offer options like direct donations and subscriptions. Give them the choice to say "I'll pay 30$ a month. Recommend me shows and split my subscription among them"

Even in a world of exclusively free (as in beer) software, programmers can exist and make money in a variety of ways; for instance, writing custom software for businesses, giving away ad-supported programs, or selling access to server-side applications.

Your comment is excellent and made me consider whether an analogous situation could arise with the arts. Clearly it's important to have dedicated, full-time artists, just as we need software engineers. And both professions take a lot of study and practice.

I think professional artists could exist even when they can't sell their end products. For instance, they could be consultants contracted to produce informational or promotional videos for a business. Such consultancies may even create and give away short entertaining movies or something to raise brand awareness and attract creative talent, in the way that software companies often contribute to open source projects.

Additionally, a serial-type scenario could work, where an artistic group is paid up front on a periodic basis to continue telling a story.

So I think in the hypothetical situation where all art is free (or at least freely reproduced and distributed once its been created) it's still possible to have professional artists creating high quality work. Certain things, like $100MM summer blockbuster movies (unfortunately) might not work, though.

The Apple TV (if it's real) would definitely facilitate this. Imagine the opportunity to build apps that compete directly with television programming, on the same device.

Awesome quote. But IMHO a better and more accurate point to make about composers and musicians 200 years ago, was that they produced, and produced, and produced. Being a composer or musician was about composing and performing. Artists had ownership in the abstract (that is authorship was important to the 19th century audience), but a musician being payed for a composition or performance was not significantly different to a baker being payed for his bread.

You go back further and find Bach writing masterpieces on a daily basis which he could only assume would be performed once or twice, put in a box, then thrown out when his successor took over.

PG is not using 'killing' in the sense of "finding ways [entertainment] that people prefer". To quote:

"The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise."

Trying to do things better than the next guy is a positivistic approach that I would applaud; excoriating a straw-man enemy with prejudicial overtones is tyrannical - especially when coming from a person in a position of power. The sentences I quote above could apply to ANYTHING: Washington DC, the banking industry, the VC industry.

The content from "Hollywood" forms the bulk of what people who file-share or pirate want. If there was no "Hollywood" there would be no piracy problem because there would be precious little content worth chasing after. As noted elsewhere, good content costs money - not because of copyright - but because it takes a lot of time, craft and people to perfect something. Anyone who has worked in the commercial creative arts knows this; espc. that the last 10% - the part that makes something really 'commercial' - takes 50% of the time and budget.

PG has a problem with this. A problem that apparently boils down to the fact that this creative work happens under the auspices of "Hollywood". What he is wishing for is that those 'creatives' would somehow come under the control of the tech-media universe instead:

"There will be several answers, ranging from new ways to produce and distribute shows, through new media (e.g. games) that look a lot like shows but are more interactive, to things (e.g. social sites and apps) that have little in common with movies and TV except competing with them for finite audience attention. Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're serving the movie and TV industries. Microsoft seemed like a technology supplier to IBM before eating their lunch, and Google did the same thing to Yahoo."

Come under the control of the tech-media conglomerates where I am sure they'll be much better treated:P

Trading one master for the next doesn't solve any of the problems of the creative individual in modern society - and THAT's the real problem I have with the PG post. A much better realization would be to say that if we could find a better way for the internet to equip and reward talented individuals so that they could exist outside of production systems - THAT would be a real accomplishment - and we wouldn't be stuck in the middle between the copyright and piracy.

I do applaud some commenters on this thread for sketching out some solutions that do try to mind the individual approach. But, as lovely as the Louis CK example was [as an example of doing a successful commercial production outside a ready system], it's telling that just as there was not a shred of organized old-media involved, neither was there a shred of organized new-tech. What made the Louis CK production successful was talent, time, craft, money and people.

And I will lambast PG and whomever else would ever suggest that those things need to be 'taught a lesson'. The way forward isn't by taking oaths to new Dons - it's by finding a way in the anonymous pool of the internet to treat each other as a worthy community.