Remember that there is no such thing as 'the media industry'.
The Internet killed the music industry because the music industry was literally in the disc-and-tape business. They were all about distribution, only doing production as necessary to ensure there was something to distribute. The only chance the RIAA had was to whine and fight because there was no place for them in post-CD world.
Movies, on the other hand, are actually in the content production industry. The Internet and desktop software make movie production and distribution cheaper, but not by that much. It still takes thousands of people and millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie. This isn't likely to change in the next few decades. This incredible cost of production and large fixed overhead, combined with vast demand for the product, mean there will always be opportunities for movie producers to make money, even if the entire way we distribute and consume movies is turned on its head.
As for the emotional impact disruption: most of the disruption is happening on the financial side; the alleged reason these people are trusted with billions of dollars is because they can put on their big boy pants and adapt to changing business circumstances, because business circumstances are always changing. For the people in the trenches, stuff isn't changing that much. The percentage of revenue from PPV vs DVD sales vs Licensing only matters to a grip if they have a really bizarre contract.
This neglects the still noticeable difference between "high end consumer sound setup" that might cost a few hundred bucks, and studio grade audio recording. Yes, making a movie takes magnitudes more capital investment than making an album, but I'd argue the scale of the initial investment is irrelevant - the larger the initial commitment just expands the required adoption to turn a profit.
But all media requires, first and foremost - and most scarcely in an economic sense - skilled creative people putting in the hours forging their craft. That never changes, regardless of where you extract value from (and you might as well just extract the value from the act of the craft at this point, by kickstarting or something else your albums / films / games / etc to be made).
Yeah sorry but from where I'm standing the studios are just suffering the consequences of their own ineptitude: as you might know the app is (originally) from Argentina, but what you likely don't know is that over here there is no legal alternative like popcorntime, and what little there is sucks, its overpriced to protect the traditional media system (which is getting pwn by the oldschool DVDR) and full of really old content nobody cares about.
Mind that by neglecting those markets the movie industry is losing even more money because people over here would actually pay for a service like popcorntime, but the bizantine system of regional distributors and studios run by people who don't even know how the internet works stands in the way of such a legal app.
I know because I was part of a team that once tried to do such thing: the tech part is easy, the legal part is impossible.
I appreciate the reflection on morality, but with the RIAA / Hollywood lobbying to basically destroy the Open Web (as well as other simply horrible behavior), all bets are off, with these industries. They deserve total obsolescence.
This is not to say that entertainment itself should become obsolete, of course! Only that the existing power structures of Music and Movies should be replaced with something that works, something that does not try to enslave and prosecute people.
Really? Think about all of the good the industries have brought to the world and all of the good they still can bring!
Film and music are driving forces for society. We need them.
Their own ignorance and inability towards copyright form sucks. I agree. I don't think that should doom them into obsolesence. I'll also argue that wouldn't happen. They would, somewhat righteously, kick and scream until copyright law tramples on internet freedom.
Technology cannot be suppressed. It's an axiom of history. One way to phrase it is "change or die," but a more optimistic way would be "change is life."
An important question for the future is how to make it profitable for studios to create media. If the revenue dries up, then so will the studios. I've heard Zuck likes Game of Thrones. In the future, there very well might not be anyone willing to invest money into creating Game of Thrones. Not at that level, anyway. The visual and epic experience that you're used to circa 2015 might not be sustainable circa 2035. Would Zuck fund Game of Thrones directly if needed? What are some ways that such an investment could make sense? Would crowdfunding make sense? The largest crowdfunding campaign still pales in comparison to the budgets required to deliver something like 7 seasons of Game of Thrones. Crowdfunding might not be the answer. There may not be any answer.
I am not advocating for a suppression of technology.
I am advocating for belevolent empathy towards those technology affects. I am advocating for action that helps people change with the tide, not prevent it.
> What are some ways that such an investment could make sense?
My intuition is that patronage systems lead to undue influence. If Coke will fund your video series, they'll want something in return, usually advertisements. That then leads a subtle (or not) influence on the content.
I think the best way to avoid that ultimately is crowd funding on a more massive scale, i.e. 10s-100s of millions of dollar, but that comes with a whole bag of issues.
Most movies / tv shows are already currently available digitally or without DRM (Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Amazon, etc).
I think the point of all of these articles is that they should be available day one, for $1.99 or some other trivial amount, until then they are just being ignorant.
This is not going to happen. Early adoptor content will always be higher, just like it is for many other things. The new Stephen King book is going to be $25 in hardcover for a while before it is $5.00 in paperback because all of his rabid fans are happy to pay that much to read his new work immediately.
The same goes for media, there is going to be a premium price period, even if it is digitally distributed, because it makes business sense to do so overall.
> Most movies / tv shows are already currently available digitally or without DRM (Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Amazon, etc).
NO. NO. NO. Where did you get this information? It might be that the US of A is nearing such a state of affairs, but over here in Europe, these services are either not available or devoid of content.
For instance, I like to follow Continuum, Justified and Game of Thrones. The only one of these that is available online over here is Justified.
"Watchever", the service that carries it, however, is crippled by weird licensing deals where seasons of TV series appear and disappear seemingly at random, because they only get the rights for a limited amount of time. So if I get a Watchever subscription, I _might_ be able to watch Justified _some of the time_.
As for the other two, they are just not available online. The poor sods that can stand to watch it in the dubbed version with commercial breaks will get to see both series on free TV with a delay of more than a year.
There is no reason to assume that watching Game of Thrones with a one year delay is problematic in any way. After all, everybody (in Germany) watches it at the same time, one year later, right?
For GoT there is actually a third option. I can get a subscription with Sky for 35€ per month, where I'll get tons of sports television and one TV series of interest: Game of Thrones.
Oh, and that subscription? First time you can cancel it is after 24 months. So if I want to watch two seasons of GoT, it'll cost me a mere 840€.
Do you see the problem here? If HBO were to shut up and take my money, I'd gladly pay ten bucks per episode to stream it. But that would be soooooo 21st century, wouldn't it?
>Most movies / tv shows are already currently available digitally or without DRM (Netflix, Hulu, Apple, Amazon, etc).
I'd just like to point out that this is categorically untrue. What's available legally is a fraction of what's been produced, and even that fraction is fragmented across so many platforms with a lot of their own quirks and limitations.
And there is only one country in the world where it even approaches truth.
> for $1.99 or some other trivial amount, until then they are just being ignorant.
How did you get to this number? Its pretty bold to call them ignorant for pricing it this way if you don't have the economics to back this up. Fact of the matter is, content isn't cheap to produce and at some point either the cost to produce a Breaking Bad goes down, or there is a model that can keep the lights on for these studios.
Those long tail prices ($1.99/ep on iTunes and the like) are heavily subsidized by advertising during the airing of the show. Cable networks make almost more than half of their yearly revenue from advertising. The true price of each episode may be much more than $1.99 once you factor in how much is being paid by advertiser. A day one $1.99/ep may not even be economically feasible. The fact that television media costs so much more upfront has nothing to do with (consumer) price discrimination.
> This is not going to happen. Early adoptor content will always be higher, just like it is for many other things. The new Stephen King book is going to be $25 in hardcover for a while before it is $5.00 in paperback because all of his rabid fans are happy to pay that much to read his new work immediately.
Not entirely correct. For one, hard cover books are viewed as a luxury item by most. They last longer, look better, are easier to read (bigger print), etc. That does cost extra money, although I'm fairly sure they do get more of a profit from hard cover books.
Second, there are types of media where what you're stating isn't true. Take music, for instance. The price of CDs don't generally go down as an album ages. In fact, I seem to remember stores like Best Buy typically selling them for cheaper the first few days of a release.
This is nonsense. If the "media industry" can't survive, it doesn't deserve to. It's certainly not anyone else's duty to figure out for them what they haven't figured out for going on two decades now.
The "media industry," specifically the companies involved in lawsuits against regular people don't deserve anything but to be gutted and killed. The situation has been beyond legislation or a decent solution for many years. You can't expect the same customers who you sued in court to come back and buy products from you, let alone figure out your industry's problems. The quicker they die the better for everyone involved.
If your world was flipped upside down -- say we had AI built tomorrow that could code. Would you deserve to survive?
I would say it would depend. If you're open to change and new opportunities, then yes, you deserve to survive. If the rate of change is great enough, sometimes you need help.
For years, I've tried to "do the right thing". Buy my music. Buy or rent the videos I view. Safari subscription...
The last few days, the Roku is rebooting multiple times per show. Content seems to be disappearing from Netflix streaming more rapidly than its appearing -- and no, I'm not interested in the episodes of yet another faux-reality TV show.
Although its not impacted titles I particularly care about, there has been a slowly increasing trickle of emails from Safari regarding titles "no longer available".
The cost of the pipe I'm viewing some of this over continues to rise far in excess of inflation. And the moment I stop paying my several monthly fees, it all "goes away" for me.
As much as anything, these and other limitations now primarily serve to get in my way.
So... look out, government-granted and ever-extended monopolies. "The People" are, I increasingly suspect and directly experience, about to tell you to go stuff it.
P.S. And on the other end, many of the people I care about seem to be ever more marginalized. Songwriters and musicians I both enjoy and can actually afford to see, who all have to hold down one or multiple day jobs. Special effects artists who, directly or indirectly, win Oscars while losing their jobs. Writers who... well, "writers" is a broad category, but there have always been plenty of good ones who live economically marginal lives.
The status quo is a money grab for entrenched interests. I no longer identify with those.
P.S. I get physical discs from Netflix, as well. Measured against my viewing habits, they make plenty off of me.
I very much wish the companies creating TV shows, movies and music would publish a rate schedule like a stock photo company. Anyone can licence that content for distribution at the rates published. That way, it would be possible to create tech companies which deliver this content in a way people are interested in consuming it with a full library of content.
I have money, I have a job, I'm willing to pay for what I consume, I just am not willing to wait while low quality video buffers on my TV after struggling to find a source for the content I'm interested in.
If Popcorn Time can do to the TV and movie industries what Napster did to the music industry, more power to it.
The idea that technology is a threat to jobs is not a new argument. It's true that things are progressing more quickly now than in the past, but that should be to our benefit. The problem is not that technology is obsoleting certain jobs. It's that the profits from the increasing productivity of our economy are by and large not going to the average worker, but to the Larry Ellisons and Tom Perkinses of the world. So long as the middle class's income remains stagnant, so will the economy. Put the record corporate profits into the hands of the employees who made them happen, and they will jump start the economy. The richer the middle class becomes, the more jobs there will be. But so long as we allow the takers at the top to amass all of the rewards of our technological progress, we'll see high unemployment and stagnant wages continue at the bottom.
Oh yes, the problem is not technology! If only we could take money from the rich and give it to the poor, our problems would be solved! Automation good! Free market bad!
> Every attempt [the media industry makes] to fix copyright protection results in proposed legislation that tramples internet [sic] freedom. I think there are many people in tech who would be on their side if real compromise was put on the table.
The whole post stems from this idea, yet there is actually no possible compromise. What these companies want is to make piracy hard, if not impossible. But if we have private user-to-user communication and user-controlled computing devices, it will always be possible to easily pirate. If a friend can privately send you a home movie, he can also send you a Hollywood movie. And if a friend sends you a Hollywood movie but you are unable to play it, that machine in front of you is either not a computer, or not your computer.
I believe private communication and computing is the much nobler goal, as this is the only way the power provided by technology will remain distributed throughout society rather than centralizing into too few hands. And I believe this regardless of how badly the resulting piracy ends up hampering creative production - there is no opting out of technology, and freedom/privacy/self-determination are simply more fundamental than professional creative works.
So to me, the "right thing" to do is in fact to avoid funding the content cartel's lawsuits/lobbying to further destroy the Internet. The right thing to do is to steer clear of anything that encourages the adoption of perverted technology like DRM. The right thing to do is to abstain from easy services like iTunes/Netflix, who sell the illusion of progress while recentralizing the Internet behind the scenes. The right thing to do is pirate and seed as much as possible, as the only acceptable distribution technologies are those completely under the users' control. The right thing to do is encourage adoption of encrypted p2p software amongst the general public, so that ISPs are less able to differentiate service based on type of traffic. And finally, the right thing to do is to support artists through ways that are sustainable in the face of every recorded work being freely available - eg concerts, public showings, tips, and crowd funding.
Popcorn Time was exactly the kind of media service we've wanted for over a decade. It probably wasn't even as good as it could have been had it been developed in an environment where there wasn't a lobbying industry actively trying to suppress this kind of innovation.
It almost seems like the entertainment industry is just extracting rent from the status quo.
I've been curious about volume collective licensing schemes and the like built into your ISP fee.
There must be a better way forward that doesn't stifle seriously useful technology.
I didn't get a "don't pursue certain technologies in order to protect certain industries" vibe from the article. Most here will agree that is futile. There will always be someone willing to take it a step further for another dollar.
The takeaway in the article is to be mindful of our work, and feel (some) responsibility towards the PEOPLE whose lives it will change. The collective "meh" on HN to any person outside the tech industry is disgusting.
Popcorn time is same as releasing a remote exploit bug after the developers have ignored/disbelieved your previous x warnings.
It's also just as controversial.
The distribution companies, aka Big Media (they don't create content, they profit over controlling its distribution), business model is no longer valid. They refuse to change, they deserve bankruptcy.
Every time this topic comes up I'm reminded of The Pirate's Dilemma [0], which is a great read that I recommend. The way the author presents the problem, using history as a reference, is that when "pirates" come to play and achieve acceptance by the masses (basically everyone "pirates" sometime at this point because people like what they're offering) you basically have two options. You can compete with them and potentially win big like Netflix or iTunes. Or you can fight against the change to the bitter end. History would suggest that the first option is always the better one yet the second option seems to be what the incumbents almost always choose.
I'd love to see someone create a version of Popcorn Time that does its absolute best to find legal streaming options for movies first, and didn't actually let you torrent if there was a legal option available to you to rent (I realize this varies widely by your country). There's definitely a market of people willing to pay for content, my Amazon rental charges alone prove there's at least an N of 1 here. But the act of searching 3 times anytime I want to find an obscure movie or recent release is a bad user experience. Check Amazon, check iTunes, check Netflix. If it's a TV show it's even worse because now you add Hulu/Hulu+ into the mix. Give me one place to let me pay for all available content and I'll use that every time.
We held out our hands 20 years ago, and kept that up for quite a while. We got laughed at, or worse.
Sure, doing the right thing would probably mean doing it again and again, even though "they" keep responding with erecting ever more barriers, and lobbying for ever more repressive legislation.
But personally, I'm tired of it. 20 years ago I believed we could bring them along, and I put a lot of time and energy into it.
Now I'm just hoping they'll disappear a.s.a.p., before they manage to destroy our civil liberties with what remains of their power.
This morning I was at the grocery store and I noticed they were still stuck in the 1800s with their stupid shopping baskets and checkout lines with registers. Dinosaurs. I saw their ancient distribution method and was like "Fuck. This." I just grabbed things off the self and left my money right there in its place. They got a shipment last night but had not put the items out on the shelf yet. I just went into the back room and grabbed stuff from there too. I'm not waiting for that shit. Fuck them and their stupid choices on how they want to sell me stuff. Idiots. I know better than them so I'm just going to do what I think is best. I deserve to get my groceries any way I want... when ever I want.
Piracy is not a technology problem. It is an attitude problem. Some people straight up just want stuff without paying. Some people are willing to pay but don't want to wait. Some people are willing to wait but want it one click away.
When they change their behaviour maybe I could do anything other than play cheerleader for popcorn time and its ilk, until then bring it on, give them a quick and merciful death.
You cannot expect to get all of millions of programmers out there to do the right thing. Statically, there are hundreds of killers, thieves (not talking about piracy) or even people that want to see the world burn.
We need to figure out how society should work in the new conditions.
I agree. It doesn't have to be everyone. It doesn't even have to be in the thousands. As long as the right people for a given situation are willing to go out and help, I think that is enough.
10 people can build a rocket engine, but only 1 person is required to explain how it works and why it's a good thing.
[+] [-] bcoates|12 years ago|reply
The Internet killed the music industry because the music industry was literally in the disc-and-tape business. They were all about distribution, only doing production as necessary to ensure there was something to distribute. The only chance the RIAA had was to whine and fight because there was no place for them in post-CD world.
Movies, on the other hand, are actually in the content production industry. The Internet and desktop software make movie production and distribution cheaper, but not by that much. It still takes thousands of people and millions to hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie. This isn't likely to change in the next few decades. This incredible cost of production and large fixed overhead, combined with vast demand for the product, mean there will always be opportunities for movie producers to make money, even if the entire way we distribute and consume movies is turned on its head.
As for the emotional impact disruption: most of the disruption is happening on the financial side; the alleged reason these people are trusted with billions of dollars is because they can put on their big boy pants and adapt to changing business circumstances, because business circumstances are always changing. For the people in the trenches, stuff isn't changing that much. The percentage of revenue from PPV vs DVD sales vs Licensing only matters to a grip if they have a really bizarre contract.
[+] [-] zanny|12 years ago|reply
But all media requires, first and foremost - and most scarcely in an economic sense - skilled creative people putting in the hours forging their craft. That never changes, regardless of where you extract value from (and you might as well just extract the value from the act of the craft at this point, by kickstarting or something else your albums / films / games / etc to be made).
[+] [-] JVIDEL|12 years ago|reply
Mind that by neglecting those markets the movie industry is losing even more money because people over here would actually pay for a service like popcorntime, but the bizantine system of regional distributors and studios run by people who don't even know how the internet works stands in the way of such a legal app.
I know because I was part of a team that once tried to do such thing: the tech part is easy, the legal part is impossible.
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
Thanks for the great info.
[+] [-] alex_doom|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nakedrobot2|12 years ago|reply
This is not to say that entertainment itself should become obsolete, of course! Only that the existing power structures of Music and Movies should be replaced with something that works, something that does not try to enslave and prosecute people.
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
Film and music are driving forces for society. We need them.
Their own ignorance and inability towards copyright form sucks. I agree. I don't think that should doom them into obsolesence. I'll also argue that wouldn't happen. They would, somewhat righteously, kick and scream until copyright law tramples on internet freedom.
[+] [-] sillysaurus3|12 years ago|reply
An important question for the future is how to make it profitable for studios to create media. If the revenue dries up, then so will the studios. I've heard Zuck likes Game of Thrones. In the future, there very well might not be anyone willing to invest money into creating Game of Thrones. Not at that level, anyway. The visual and epic experience that you're used to circa 2015 might not be sustainable circa 2035. Would Zuck fund Game of Thrones directly if needed? What are some ways that such an investment could make sense? Would crowdfunding make sense? The largest crowdfunding campaign still pales in comparison to the budgets required to deliver something like 7 seasons of Game of Thrones. Crowdfunding might not be the answer. There may not be any answer.
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
I am advocating for belevolent empathy towards those technology affects. I am advocating for action that helps people change with the tide, not prevent it.
[+] [-] backprojection|12 years ago|reply
My intuition is that patronage systems lead to undue influence. If Coke will fund your video series, they'll want something in return, usually advertisements. That then leads a subtle (or not) influence on the content.
I think the best way to avoid that ultimately is crowd funding on a more massive scale, i.e. 10s-100s of millions of dollar, but that comes with a whole bag of issues.
[+] [-] res0nat0r|12 years ago|reply
I think the point of all of these articles is that they should be available day one, for $1.99 or some other trivial amount, until then they are just being ignorant.
This is not going to happen. Early adoptor content will always be higher, just like it is for many other things. The new Stephen King book is going to be $25 in hardcover for a while before it is $5.00 in paperback because all of his rabid fans are happy to pay that much to read his new work immediately.
The same goes for media, there is going to be a premium price period, even if it is digitally distributed, because it makes business sense to do so overall.
[+] [-] sentenza|12 years ago|reply
NO. NO. NO. Where did you get this information? It might be that the US of A is nearing such a state of affairs, but over here in Europe, these services are either not available or devoid of content.
For instance, I like to follow Continuum, Justified and Game of Thrones. The only one of these that is available online over here is Justified.
"Watchever", the service that carries it, however, is crippled by weird licensing deals where seasons of TV series appear and disappear seemingly at random, because they only get the rights for a limited amount of time. So if I get a Watchever subscription, I _might_ be able to watch Justified _some of the time_.
As for the other two, they are just not available online. The poor sods that can stand to watch it in the dubbed version with commercial breaks will get to see both series on free TV with a delay of more than a year.
There is no reason to assume that watching Game of Thrones with a one year delay is problematic in any way. After all, everybody (in Germany) watches it at the same time, one year later, right?
For GoT there is actually a third option. I can get a subscription with Sky for 35€ per month, where I'll get tons of sports television and one TV series of interest: Game of Thrones.
Oh, and that subscription? First time you can cancel it is after 24 months. So if I want to watch two seasons of GoT, it'll cost me a mere 840€.
Do you see the problem here? If HBO were to shut up and take my money, I'd gladly pay ten bucks per episode to stream it. But that would be soooooo 21st century, wouldn't it?
[+] [-] stormbrew|12 years ago|reply
I'd just like to point out that this is categorically untrue. What's available legally is a fraction of what's been produced, and even that fraction is fragmented across so many platforms with a lot of their own quirks and limitations.
And there is only one country in the world where it even approaches truth.
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nemothekid|12 years ago|reply
How did you get to this number? Its pretty bold to call them ignorant for pricing it this way if you don't have the economics to back this up. Fact of the matter is, content isn't cheap to produce and at some point either the cost to produce a Breaking Bad goes down, or there is a model that can keep the lights on for these studios.
Those long tail prices ($1.99/ep on iTunes and the like) are heavily subsidized by advertising during the airing of the show. Cable networks make almost more than half of their yearly revenue from advertising. The true price of each episode may be much more than $1.99 once you factor in how much is being paid by advertiser. A day one $1.99/ep may not even be economically feasible. The fact that television media costs so much more upfront has nothing to do with (consumer) price discrimination.
[+] [-] fooqux|12 years ago|reply
Not entirely correct. For one, hard cover books are viewed as a luxury item by most. They last longer, look better, are easier to read (bigger print), etc. That does cost extra money, although I'm fairly sure they do get more of a profit from hard cover books.
Second, there are types of media where what you're stating isn't true. Take music, for instance. The price of CDs don't generally go down as an album ages. In fact, I seem to remember stores like Best Buy typically selling them for cheaper the first few days of a release.
[+] [-] rmc|12 years ago|reply
In the USA.
[+] [-] joesmo|12 years ago|reply
The "media industry," specifically the companies involved in lawsuits against regular people don't deserve anything but to be gutted and killed. The situation has been beyond legislation or a decent solution for many years. You can't expect the same customers who you sued in court to come back and buy products from you, let alone figure out your industry's problems. The quicker they die the better for everyone involved.
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
If your world was flipped upside down -- say we had AI built tomorrow that could code. Would you deserve to survive?
I would say it would depend. If you're open to change and new opportunities, then yes, you deserve to survive. If the rate of change is great enough, sometimes you need help.
[+] [-] pasbesoin|12 years ago|reply
The last few days, the Roku is rebooting multiple times per show. Content seems to be disappearing from Netflix streaming more rapidly than its appearing -- and no, I'm not interested in the episodes of yet another faux-reality TV show.
Although its not impacted titles I particularly care about, there has been a slowly increasing trickle of emails from Safari regarding titles "no longer available".
The cost of the pipe I'm viewing some of this over continues to rise far in excess of inflation. And the moment I stop paying my several monthly fees, it all "goes away" for me.
As much as anything, these and other limitations now primarily serve to get in my way.
So... look out, government-granted and ever-extended monopolies. "The People" are, I increasingly suspect and directly experience, about to tell you to go stuff it.
P.S. And on the other end, many of the people I care about seem to be ever more marginalized. Songwriters and musicians I both enjoy and can actually afford to see, who all have to hold down one or multiple day jobs. Special effects artists who, directly or indirectly, win Oscars while losing their jobs. Writers who... well, "writers" is a broad category, but there have always been plenty of good ones who live economically marginal lives.
The status quo is a money grab for entrenched interests. I no longer identify with those.
P.S. I get physical discs from Netflix, as well. Measured against my viewing habits, they make plenty off of me.
[+] [-] sfeng|12 years ago|reply
I have money, I have a job, I'm willing to pay for what I consume, I just am not willing to wait while low quality video buffers on my TV after struggling to find a source for the content I'm interested in.
[+] [-] skywhopper|12 years ago|reply
The idea that technology is a threat to jobs is not a new argument. It's true that things are progressing more quickly now than in the past, but that should be to our benefit. The problem is not that technology is obsoleting certain jobs. It's that the profits from the increasing productivity of our economy are by and large not going to the average worker, but to the Larry Ellisons and Tom Perkinses of the world. So long as the middle class's income remains stagnant, so will the economy. Put the record corporate profits into the hands of the employees who made them happen, and they will jump start the economy. The richer the middle class becomes, the more jobs there will be. But so long as we allow the takers at the top to amass all of the rewards of our technological progress, we'll see high unemployment and stagnant wages continue at the bottom.
[+] [-] tttrrr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mindslight|12 years ago|reply
The whole post stems from this idea, yet there is actually no possible compromise. What these companies want is to make piracy hard, if not impossible. But if we have private user-to-user communication and user-controlled computing devices, it will always be possible to easily pirate. If a friend can privately send you a home movie, he can also send you a Hollywood movie. And if a friend sends you a Hollywood movie but you are unable to play it, that machine in front of you is either not a computer, or not your computer.
I believe private communication and computing is the much nobler goal, as this is the only way the power provided by technology will remain distributed throughout society rather than centralizing into too few hands. And I believe this regardless of how badly the resulting piracy ends up hampering creative production - there is no opting out of technology, and freedom/privacy/self-determination are simply more fundamental than professional creative works.
So to me, the "right thing" to do is in fact to avoid funding the content cartel's lawsuits/lobbying to further destroy the Internet. The right thing to do is to steer clear of anything that encourages the adoption of perverted technology like DRM. The right thing to do is to abstain from easy services like iTunes/Netflix, who sell the illusion of progress while recentralizing the Internet behind the scenes. The right thing to do is pirate and seed as much as possible, as the only acceptable distribution technologies are those completely under the users' control. The right thing to do is encourage adoption of encrypted p2p software amongst the general public, so that ISPs are less able to differentiate service based on type of traffic. And finally, the right thing to do is to support artists through ways that are sustainable in the face of every recorded work being freely available - eg concerts, public showings, tips, and crowd funding.
[+] [-] agentultra|12 years ago|reply
It almost seems like the entertainment industry is just extracting rent from the status quo.
I've been curious about volume collective licensing schemes and the like built into your ISP fee.
There must be a better way forward that doesn't stifle seriously useful technology.
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
Music industry revenue last year = $16B Banking inudstry revenue = $600B+
Entertainment makes money. That is not a bad thing.
[+] [-] mattholtom|12 years ago|reply
The takeaway in the article is to be mindful of our work, and feel (some) responsibility towards the PEOPLE whose lives it will change. The collective "meh" on HN to any person outside the tech industry is disgusting.
[+] [-] njharman|12 years ago|reply
It's also just as controversial.
The distribution companies, aka Big Media (they don't create content, they profit over controlling its distribution), business model is no longer valid. They refuse to change, they deserve bankruptcy.
[+] [-] icehawk219|12 years ago|reply
[0] http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-Dilemma-Culture-Reinventing-Ca...
[+] [-] dougmccune|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EGreg|12 years ago|reply
What new business models can we offer these guys?
I would say that Peter Jackson's days of making massive flicks are numbered....
[+] [-] bowlofpetunias|12 years ago|reply
Sure, doing the right thing would probably mean doing it again and again, even though "they" keep responding with erecting ever more barriers, and lobbying for ever more repressive legislation.
But personally, I'm tired of it. 20 years ago I believed we could bring them along, and I put a lot of time and energy into it.
Now I'm just hoping they'll disappear a.s.a.p., before they manage to destroy our civil liberties with what remains of their power.
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|12 years ago|reply
Piracy is not a technology problem. It is an attitude problem. Some people straight up just want stuff without paying. Some people are willing to pay but don't want to wait. Some people are willing to wait but want it one click away.
[+] [-] etherael|12 years ago|reply
http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html
When they change their behaviour maybe I could do anything other than play cheerleader for popcorn time and its ilk, until then bring it on, give them a quick and merciful death.
[+] [-] badman_ting|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
I targeted the post towards the tech industry. I should probably make that more clear.
[+] [-] lukasm|12 years ago|reply
We need to figure out how society should work in the new conditions.
[+] [-] ztratar|12 years ago|reply
10 people can build a rocket engine, but only 1 person is required to explain how it works and why it's a good thing.