Here’s a Boing Boing post that includes a link to a longer article on Portfolio.com. The gist is an interview with Harvey Weinstein covering Hollywood’s take on P2P networks and piracy.
Certainly any solution to online sharing of digital content isn’t clear because currently that sharing is taking money out of the pockets of all involved, including your favorite music artists, filmakers and actors.
The problem is the recording industry (and now the movie industry) through the RIAA and MPAA are so hamfisted and stupid about tactics they’ve already lost the war and don’t even know it. The business model completely changed out from under their noses, they missed the bus and now are left shaking fists and filing lawsuits.
All this is accomplishing is creating a generation who not only know what the RIAA and MPAA are, but very actively hate both organizations.
Going back a number of years, consumers wanted high quality easy-to-access digital files with no restrictions on usage, time shift, media shift, etc. The “industry” didn’t offer consumers what they wanted because the industry saw easily copied files (with no quality loss) as a genie to keep in the bottle.
Consumers let the genie out of the bottle themselves, and now the creaking dinosaurs at the RIAA and MPAA have no idea where to turn. My guess is artists (particularly musicians) will continue to explore distribution techniques that cut the big guys out of the loop altogether.
This is already very prevalent, and I’m sure it scares the pants off the very groups that at one time held all the keys to entertainment market.
Weinstein in this interview shows just how out of touch he, and the rest of the entertainment industries (largely music and movies) really are. When asked by the interviewer if he sees any use for P2P systems, Weinstein answered, “No.”
Uninformed — really just clueless — moron.
David Kirkpatrick 