

Hollywood and the Internet: There will be blood - davidw
http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=10733002&amp;subjectID=526352&amp;fsrc=nwl

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hobbs
One disappointing thing from the article is that they state that Hollywood
loses billions a year to piracy - as if it were an established fact. Sure,
there's billions of dollars worth of content traded via piracy, but it's
debatable how many of those dollars were lost to Hollywood.

Otherwise I have to say this article is one more example of why I love The
Economist. You'd never see a publication from, say, a Time Warner company
chiding Hollywood for being stupid. I started reading The Economist in the
90's because it was the only news outlet that didn't have weekly in-depth
coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial or Monica Lewinsky. I've never looked back.

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daniel-cussen
To say that Hollywood loses billions of dollars a year is not only true, but a
gross understatement. The figure is actually about 1,000,026,000,000,000 (one
quadrillion, twenty-six billion).

The reason is that, a few months ago, my six-year-old cousin filmed a skit in
drama class and planned on selling it to my parents, who told her they were
interested in buying it. My Dad once told her he had a bajillion dollars, so
she figured a quadrillion would be a drop in the bucket. Unfortunately, before
the transaction was completed, my cousin's unknowing mother found the DVD and
sent a copy to us, causing my cousin a quadrillion dollars in lost revenue.

When she found out, she cried. I had to give her a lolly-pop to console her.

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edw519
The article misses the entire point. Why aren't people watching TV, going to
the movies, or buying DVDs as much? Because they are on the internet doing
other things. This is a seismic shift they cannot change. They should embrace
it not by putting the same old fare on a new medium, but by getting into new
web-based businesses.

Faster horses couldn't have stopped the advent of the automobile. And people
don't want the one-way communication of movies on the internet any more than
they want it from the big screen.

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mercurio
While I understand the point you are making, I think you are underestimating
the value and appeal of Hollywood's traditional offerings. Just look at the
amount of movies and TV shows shared using bittorrent.

Humans really really like stories. This has been true for literally thousands
of years. Dramatic storytelling and sport have been the prime form of
entertainment in all human societies since the dawn of time. Think of
storytelling shamans, greek drama, elizabethean theatre, hollywood
blockbusters. I don't think the demand for this "one-way communication" will
be going away anytime soon.

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pchristensen
...but the willingness to pay for it might. That's why we have sequel overload
- rather than risk a new movie, they just copy one that people have always
shown willingness to pay for (Shrek, Pirates, etc)

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mercurio
yeah, the willingness to pay is dropping. Its already disappeared for music
(but itunes is changing that).

Figuring out what the audience will like exactly is a different (and
difficult) problem. I'm sure there were a lot of greek tragedies that flopped.

If movies don't make money, they can't be made. So people don't get to watch
them for free off the pirate bay. Hollywood needs to find ways to charge for
and deliver content in a way that people are willing to pay for and consume.
What they don't need is to go off and start trying to find crazy ways of
making money on the internet. At that point they are no longer satisfying a
basic human need, and there already are a million people working on
"monetizing" the web.

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edw519
For the past 100 years you had a choice. For one way communication, radio, TV,
movies. For two way communication, telephone. (I'm not even counting the books
and letters for centuries before that.)

For the first time in human history, we have a medium that offers audio,
video, text, and 2 way communication with (almost) anyone else in the world.
People seem to like it. Any wonder they're abandoning everything else in
droves to use it?

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mercurio
I don't think the mode of delivery changes the passive nature of the activity.
A movie downloaded and watched from the pirate bay is no more 'two-way' than
one seen in a movie theatre. I read your original comment to mean that because
people can do many interesting things on the internet, they will give up
traditional 'one-way' things like movies and tv shows. My argument was that
there is a basic human need for listening to stories that will not go away. So
it makes sense for movie makers to figure out how to best fulfill this need on
the internet.

As I pointed out, one of the biggest uses people are putting this amazing new
two-way medium to, is obtaining loads and loads of one-way material.

~~~
edw519
"basic human need for listening to stories that will not go away"

Absolutely. I just suspect that now that we have more options, we'll spend a
little more of our time doing and a little less receiving. I have noticed that
this is true for many people. It is, alas, not so true for many others.

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henning
Keep making shitty movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious, Deuce Bigalo: Male Jigalo,
etc. and it doesn't matter how you distribute or sell it.

