Why Chris Dodd Is Doing Everything Wrong With The MPAA
from the you're-not-helping dept
We've certainly suggested that Chris Dodd was making a big mistake by focusing on the MPAA's old talking points in his new role as chief of that lobbying organization. Rather than leading Hollywood to a future of new business models and smarter embrace of what consumers want, he's kicked things off by being anti-consumer, anti-technology and a supporter of previous policies that have failed massively. It's not exactly a recipe for success. Marty Kaplan, a professor at USC, is pointing all this out in a wonderful opinion piece, explaining to Chris Dodd why he's focused on the wrong things. He uses the recent SSRC Report to explain why Dodd is barking up the wrong tree in claiming that the two things to focus on are "education" and "enforcement," a two-pronged strategy that has failed to do anything useful for the industry for over a decade:The problem with this is that there's no evidence that education works. There have been hundreds of vigorous anti-piracy educational campaigns all over the world -- more than 333 in developed countries alone as of 2009 -- and they've failed. It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is wrong. They know what they're doing. They're weighing moral considerations against price and availability, and they're deciding to go with cheap (or free), and now.Of course, we've pointed this all out as well, and the response has been for people to yell about how we're "defending piracy." Yeah, or trying to prevent Hollywood from continuing down a strategy that has been proven not to work. Instead, we agree with Kaplan that this is a business model issue, and if Dodd were a real leader, he'd actually help move Hollywood into new territory of embracing new business models and new technology:
[...] Not only is there no evidence that education has been building a stronger "culture of intellectual property." There's also little evidence that enforcement works. Splashy raids haven't reduced piracy. Two weeks ago the judge in a lawsuit by 13 record companies against LimeWire called their demand for $75 trillion in damages "absurd," and the infringement judgments that have actually been handed down also haven't stemmed the tide of illicit file sharing. In the SSRC report's words, "Strengthening police powers, streamlining judicial procedures, increasing criminal penalties, and extending surveillance and punitive measures to the Internet": to date, none of them "have had any impact whatsoever on the overall supply of pirated goods."
Sooner or later -- and judging by Chairman Dodd's speech, it'll be later -- the industry will have to move from moralism to pragmatism. Their business model has been digitally disrupted, irrevocably, and they are already vulnerable to the kind of game-changing innovation, and carnage, that Apple's iTunes visited on the music industry. If the studios are lucky, before a Netflix or a Facebook does that to them they'll figure out that neither education nor enforcement will rescue them from creative destruction. Pivoting from Moses to merchant will be an awkward adjustment, but they will eventually be forced to conclude that their other options just aren't working. It won't matter that they have righteousness on their side. If they have to spend less on producing and distributing content, distraught fans won't repent of their downloading ways. If jobs are jeopardized, it will be just as wrenching, and just as stoppable, as the transformation that globalization and rising productivity are wreaking on the rest of the economy.Wow. Suggesting smarter business models that involve actually delivering customers what they want? Why that's just someone who is a piracy apologist, I guess...
What will the new business model look like? It's hard to imagine that the sequenced distribution of product over a controllable period of time through an orderly series of "windows" -- venues and platforms and formats and pipes and territories, each with their own license deals and consumer prices -- will survive unbroken. In that future, a practical agenda for handling piracy is suggested by this 2009 comment from Robert Bauer, then director of special projects for the MPAA, as quoted in the SSRC report: "to isolate the forms of piracy that compete with legitimate sales, treat those as a proxy for unmet consumer demand, and then find a way to meet that demand."
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Filed Under: chris dodd, movie industry, strategy
Companies: mpaa
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ohhh...don't....
He's clearly not the type.
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The dangers of playing Follow the Leader
The problem was, piracy was not the thing that was killing either business. At most piracy was nipping at the edges, and it might actually have been boosting some aspects of the businesses.
I can't really blame either industry for their concerns in the early days. However, we have had a decade of failed efforts to stem piracy. Not only have they utterly failed to stem illegal downloads, we now have objective studies that put the whole situation into perspective. We also have lots of examples of artists that have demonstrated that it is possible to make a very good living by exploiting p2p sharing instead of railing against it.
It is time both industries ask themselves two questions:
-What do customers want?
-What are customers willing to pay for?
Industry shills say that what customers want is "free." But there have been plenty of cases now that demonstrate that is not not true. Many customers are willing to pay for content. Just ask NetFlix or Kindle or iTunes. They are all making money despite the entertainment industry's best efforts to impede them. It is time for the industries to stop fooling themselves and set a course that will make them successful in the long term.
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Morality
Hypocracy is no one's friend.
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Remember, it's not the profits of the studios or labels that the MAFIAA is concerned with - it's the profits of the Associations.
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What I meant to say was that organisations who are making the big bucks, like MPAA and the RIAA, can afford to talk and complain a lot instead of working. If they weren't rich beyond understanding, they'd probably be more busy trying to make money instead of playing whack-a-mole with pirates.
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Dodd
They are paying him a fortune and he is saying what the industry wants to hear - he IS a politician, so this is what he has been doing for a long time. Taking the path of least resistance in his "retirement" job is simply what makes sense. He doesn't care about the actual outcome, he can ride the wave of money they are giving him and quit when the job becomes work.
Why bother making it into something complicated? Trying to lead the MPAA into the digital era and getting movie studios to adopt new business models is a lot more work than grandstanding, complaining, and lobbying to try to protect a dying business model.
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Re: Dodd
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Don't you share anything?
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Don't you share anything?
What Greevar meant by "wrong thing" is Dodd regurgitating the lies of the MPAA, and by "right thing" he's refering to Michael's point about Dodd not being willing to do the hard work required to drag the MPAA to an understanding of modern digital business models.
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Speaking from the viewpoint of the MPAA
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Re: Speaking from the viewpoint of the MPAA
Turns out right, goes down in flames, or becomes irrelevant. More often the second or third options.
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False. Even then, we continue throwing money at it.
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He was brought in to do things the old way
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Reasons for not paying attention...
The more interesting thing is that I think that most of of the people who won't get away from the 'punish the pirates' viewpoint have a big problem - if they admit that they were wrong about the right way to combat piracy (and it's pretty clear that lawsuits, DRM, and legislation aren't fixing the problem), then they might have to start to admit that LOTs of things aren't really solvable by legislation and punishment. And for some people, the idea that you can't just beat the populace into doing what you want is very hard to swallow.
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Re: Reasons for not paying attention...
Yeah, that worked well in Tunisi, egypt, lybia, bahrain ...
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Like rain on your wedding day?
Does anyone else find it ironic that Hollywood is accused of being morally bankrupt while at the same time their focus on morality issues is preventing them from looking for workable business models to deal with "theft"?
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Re: Like rain on your wedding day?
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I personally think what's more likely to happen is that they'll start to become irrelevant and finally change before they disappear completely. Yes, the people who do the hiring all have the same mentality, but "new blood" comes to every organization, albiet at a slow pace. What could happen is that you'll see a succession of MPAA presidents either resigning in frustration or being forced out for not solving that darn piracy problem.
The problem is that the MPAA isn't like a "normal" business. In the normal business world, you can have a young, agile company take business away from the older, bureaucratic company. But the MPAA is like a monopoly. I think that they will be forced to change at some point, but because of their singular role in Hollywood, they'll survive after finally being forced to change.
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LOL ... how many of my post have you read ????
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Dodd
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1. Make fist
2. Shake at clouds
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New business model
This is what the studios need to do. Get the price down to a level where quality and safety from viruses overcomes free. At that point they can start making that argument to the public. "look we have a high quality product that is safe and easy to purchase or rent".
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Re: New business model
I absolutely LOVE my Roku box, because they have done what cable companies should have done long ago. Offer many channels for free, but charge on a per channel basis for the premium ones. (I'm not an employee or anything, just a very pleased customer. Though if anyone wants to pay me for this opinion I'd be happy to accept.)
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Agreed. I haven't felt a need to move my TV off the Roku box for at least three weeks.
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I disagree with this assumption. Many people, myself included, do not see what we are doing as wrong. Sharing is a positive experience even if current laws protecting imaginary property do not agree.
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Get out of your parent's basement and get a job, you worthless leech.
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Artists are the only class of people who get to hold on to some imaginary right to charge others for the use of what they produced when it gets out of their hands and that is crazy, if everyone used the same logic you would have to be paying all the workers who produced your car, your house, your furniture and so on, but that doesn't happen because it would be unworkable and everybody knows that.
Instead artists should start a threshold pledge system, where they get paid for producing something and have no rights after that, it is not their problem what others do or if others make more money with it, just like car manufactures can't charge taxi cabs for their earnings.
Maybe something like PledgeMusic but one that the musician or artists doesn't retain any rights after completion of the work.
Demand for the artist can grow then and he can make more money on secondary and tertiary channels, like endorsements, live gigs, merch and so forth,
Maybe Netflix could do something like that for movies, launching a short trailer demonstrating the ideas behind the movie and making people want to see something and use the pledge system to bring it to life.
TV shows could use the same system, so shows wouldn't be rated by views but actually collection of actual money.
Or a system like Flattr, where people put some amount of money in it and Flattr all that they like and at the end of the month the proceedings are distributed among the producers of something.
Can you imagine Techdirt Video Productions, having a subscribers fee of $10 bucks or $5 a month using a Flattr system, that allows people to configure their Flattr system to automatically Flattrs anything they watch till the end?
Without borders they could get millions of subscribers and reach a bigger audience globally, how much that could be worth?
Also Techdirt Video Productions would have a section for creation of new material where you could pledge your money to have it created, also if people wanted to have a show continue despite it not collection enough money, TVP would offer a way for people to come together and try and save the show, by allowing them to contribute more outside the Flattr system.
Wouldn't be wonderful to have everybody get what they want?
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And thought isn't property, industry troll.
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Well, maybe, as long as it doesn't even remotely resemble anything that has ever been done in all of human history, because that would then be infringement, right?
Freetardo.
Get out of your parent's basement and get a job, you worthless leech.
Yeah, insults so help your argument.
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Pointing someone to a link of the band's page or a stream is sharing.
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Everything that is forbidden is like the light of a bug zapper.
I love to break those laws that say I can't lend, I can't copy or I can't back up anything, I just can't stop myself.
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False-dichotomy. It's both sharing and breaking the law. Some of us just don't give a shit about the latter part.
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Bullshit, shilltard.
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"It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is ILLEGAL."
The public is quite able to distinguish between "illegal" and "wrong." Consider underage drinking: College students everywhere know that underage drinking is illegal: that's what the fake IDs are for. They do not, however, see it as wrong.
(If the public felt that media piracy was WRONG, cassette tape decks could never have become big sellers.)
As for Chris Dodd: His only job function is to get his old pals in Congress to deliver the laws that the MPAA wants, to allow Internet content and users to be proscribed simply on the say-so of the copyright industry. Expecting Dodd to have a grasp of the bigger picture is pointless.
Total corruption, selling access. I'd expected better from my political party.
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As for opinions. Tell people to think for themselves; hence rage against the machine, dr. steel, my playlist is full of this culture; key is culture.
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"It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is wrong"
I'd liken the situation to a concept in formal logic related to the validity of an argument.
To wit:
"All men are blond."
"Socrates is a man."
Therefore
"Socrates is blond."
The argument is logically valid - If Socrates is a man, then he must be blond too - but it's not actually true.
There's a difference.
Similarly, consumers know piracy is wrong in the sense of "they might be punished for it", but I don't believe many think it's wrong in the sense of "they ought not do it".
So why do we have laws that punish individuals for actions that the people don't think are wrong?
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Re: "It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is wrong"
Answer: Because of lobbyists like Chris Dodd and laws that allow lobbying to continue. Because without term limits every member of Congress' full time job is getting re-elected, not serving the people they supposedly represent.
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Re: "It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is wrong"
The valid argument that tends to crop up is that breaking the law is wrong in itself, but the 'anti-pirates' never care to expand on their premise and tell us why breaking the law is inherently wrong.
So one the one side we have to guess that they assume a slippery slope towards lawlessness and on the other I could probably detail an actual slippery slope into Judge Dredd's universe.
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Re: Re: "It's not that consumers don't get that media piracy is wrong"
Source: IMDB - Judge Dredd (1995)
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Chris Dodd
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