
Imitation vs. Innovation: Product Similarity Network in the Film Industry [pdf] - blumkvist
https://e949a11a-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/yanhaomaxwei/Draft_Sep.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cppFDtpeufllN7tJyJ8Gg9996M2XSWHMo5khEEEWTalrrgbk6O6TbCo1Hq-hPGp5_0uLAv3accHvuUzY6sWVWrVNpzTpd91-gmFE9tED2E0QD4FAApEL9c-65kyu8LshmA3xtIZkRGttVvce_OVC1o4gVOBuiWZ1Y0tjb3Q6Mzky0G_DgKLGNNQoVR4OqaU8iXlQK2QbmGbF5w76VVfo-mDrD9cBg%3D%3D&attredirects=0
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ClintEhrlich
One of the reasons for similarities in Hollywood is that outright theft is
quite common. Historically, it has been very difficult to prove damages to the
necessary degree of certainty.

This problem would be mitigated if more jurisdictions allowed liquidated-
damages clauses in contracts to be enforced on a consistent basis.
Unfortunately, most attempts at liquidating damages fail because courts
usually characterize them as unlawful penalties.

Judge Richard Posner, the most cited jurist of the last century, argues that
sophisticated parties should be permitted to liquidate damages however they
want, regardless of whether a court believes their agreement was reasonable.
"The reason for the [contrary] rule is mysterious," he says, "it is one of the
abiding mysteries of the common law."

In the 1970s, businesses in California persuaded the California legislature to
amend the relevant statute to create a rebuttable presumption that liquidated-
damages clauses were lawful. Yet the Courts were so attached to the underlying
rule that it made no difference! The California Supreme Court has inexplicably
extended the very lines of authority that the legislature explicitly intended
to override.

I was involved in litigation that involved the red-handed theft of a pitch by
the American division of a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. According to the
terms of the liquidated-damages clause that the parties adopted, this theft
would cost more than $120 million dollars. After years and years of
litigation, with back-and-forth rulings, it was finally declared
unenforceable. The firm whose pitch was stolen lost the chance for a life-
changing opportunity, which may have cost it a hecto-million dollars or more.

Until there is some realistic way to protect artistic ideas, whether through
contract or state fiat, imitation will prevail over innovation, because the
rewards are simply inaccessible to most outsiders. The means of production are
owned by the existing Hollywood elite, and they simply steal whatever novel
ideas newcomers develop.

Please note: I am NOT advocating more stringent patent laws — or even stricter
copyrights! People who are inspired by public ideas should be free to
incorporate them in their art. But private parties also need the ability to
disclose non-public ideas, without forfeiting their value. At least in
Hollywood, right now they do not. And before that changes, expect the _status
quo_.

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joe_the_user
Isn't one factor in movie similarity not just direct imitation between movies
but the use of plot/script formulas[1]? As I understand, screen writing always
involved hooks to emotional impact but as movies evolved, an arms race to
increase the speed and impact of emotional developed where now the aim is
"grad their attention in the first N seconds and never, ever let go". The
situation seems akin to the loudness wars [2].

[1]
[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollyw...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war)

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pierrec
There's a slight weirdness in this paper in the way they measure similarity
(which is admittedly a very hard problem). It's entirely derived from the
recommendation networks of IMDB and Amazon, which are mostly built on the
basis of "people who liked/watched this also liked/watched these movies".
Presumably this should measure similarity on many fronts, taking into account
the wide array of each user's subjective factors, including screenwriting
style as mentioned in joe_the_user's comment, for example.

I think it's a pretty wobbly base for the research, though. It doesn't make it
any less interesting, but even assuming that the recommendation networks
perfectly represent the network of user preferences, does this really reflect
movie similarity? People stick to directors or actors that they like, even
across very dissimilar movies, but this still counts as a form of "similarity"
in this paper.

And the Amazon network "finds items that customers tend to purchase together",
which might not represent similarity at all, but complementarity!

Also, consider a film that's extremely similar to another one, but is marketed
in such a way as to reach a different audience. This happens when marketers
deem that "lying" about the movie in the trailers and marketing campaign will
make for better box-office/video sales. Again, this might bend the
recommendation networks in a way that diverges from actual movie similarity.

Despite this, the study hardly seems to question their measure of similarity
at any point (I haven't read everything, though). Or rather, they redefine
"similarity" to mean "proximity in the recommendation networks", which
includes all these hidden factors that might overlap with other things they're
comparing against. As I said, though: it's a hard problem.

