This Week In Techdirt History: May 17th - 23rd

from the thou-infringeth-on-a-summer's-day dept

Sat, May 23rd 2015 12:00pm — Leigh Beadon

Five Years Ago

There was plenty of ridiculousness from Hollywood this week in 2010. For one thing, movie studies were decidedly not following through on their "promises" to offer lots of new content if they could only break your TV with selectable output control, while the MPAA was also bizarrely focused on getting soldiers to stop buying bootleg DVDs, and Hurt Locker producer Nicholas Chartier was angrily defending his crusade against downloaders. Of course, given Hollywood's remake culture, it was no surprise that the studios were starting to run into copyright problems of their own (and given its anti-piracy culture, it was no surprise to see different anti-piracy solutions suing each other over patents). Not to mention the irony of Time Warner Cable standing up against automated copyright filings, or actor Peter Serafinowicz explaining why he even pirates movies he's in.

The UK was still grappling with the realities of the Digital Economy Act. We wondered if it would interfere with London's ambition to offer free wi-fi, while one regulator said the act only applies to big wireline ISPs and several politicians started trying to repeal it altogether. Copyright shenanigans were all around on the music side of things too: ASCAP bullied another local coffee shop into no longer playing local bands while a massive performance royalty rate hike in Australia drove gyms to start ditching pop music, and it became increasingly clear just how much the RIAA had clogged up the court system with its lawsuits.

Ten Years Ago

Five years before all that, the US Copyright Office was busy showing off just how much it misunderstood copyright law. Spain's recording industry pressured a university lecturer into resigning after he explained how file-sharing could be legal and positive. People were shocked at a Star Wars leak, but ignored the fact that it probably wasn't a big deal at all. And the UK's Premier League was moaning about illegal streams but not acknowledging that it was creating the market for them by failing to offer anything in competition.

The BSA conducted its annual ritual of releasing bogus piracy numbers, followed by the inevitable backlash. One copy-protection firm was playing both sides of the piracy game by patenting a P2P system and the technology to stop it. The NY Times tried its ill-fated experiment to charge for opinion pieces, one university library was going all digital, and megaplex movie theaters were straining to recapture their former glory.

Fifteen Years Ago

Last week, we saw Volkswagen become the first auto manufacturer to start selling cars directly online. This week, Ford joined them (in Canada) followed closely by GM, and lo the floodgates were opened. Meanwhile, online retail giant Amazon was experimenting with dynamic pricing, and some were predicting that the next great digital frontier would be family businesses — but we were all hoping that the then-dominant trend of cartoon mascots on every website would die out, quickly.

Michael Eisner, on the other hand, was convinced that email was a great existential threat to companies and the country (perhaps he heard that Singapore arrested a man for "cyber rage" after he sent thousands of them) while most people stopped shorter, at "email marketing is getting annoying". Congress was, for some reason, worried about genealogy websites, and Napster was struggling to figure out its future (with 60% of college students saying they'd supposedly pay for it).

Oh, and, you know those topic icons over to the left of every post? This week in 2000 is when we debuted them.

Four-Hundred and Six Years Ago

Shakespeare's Sonnets: they are among the foundational texts of English culture, and on May 20th, 1609 they were first officially listed in the Stationer's Register (an early precursor to copyright — for publishers, not authors), and printed shortly thereafter. Nobody has been able to determine whether the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, had authorization from Shakespeare or was working from an illicit copy.

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Filed Under: history, look back

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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2015 @ 1:19pm

Selling cars directly to consumers
Wait, the car manufactured have started selling cars directly to consumers? That should be illegal! Someone get Bill McNeal on the horn!
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charliebrown (profile), 23 May 2015 @ 2:49pm

Home Video Vs Cinemas
I'll tell you how seeing a movie at home can help cinemas. How often have you seen a movie and thought "Man I wish I could see this at the cinema!" but because it's months (or even years) since it was at the cinema, too bad.

I saw "Star Wars" on TV in 1994 (at age 15) and went "Wow! I wish I could see this on the big screen". Three years later I (sort of) got my wish. Now could we please have a few more re-releases internationally?
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Anonymous Coward, 23 May 2015 @ 3:27pm

15 Years Ago
I wrote 2 sentences either side of a link that has long expired.
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CK20XX (profile), 23 May 2015 @ 4:06pm

Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
How often have you seen a movie and thought "Man I wish I could see this at the cinema!" but because it's months (or even years) since it was at the cinema, too bad.

Never, sad to say, because movie theaters have become uncomfortable places where there are frequently sticky messes hiding under the chairs in the darkness and the focus at the theater is about packing as many people into chairs as possible and overcharging for snacks.

I think Roger Ebert once promoted a new kind of theater that addressed those problems though. Can anyone provide me with more information?
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That One Guy (profile), 23 May 2015 @ 5:45pm

Re: Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
I'm not too sure how much of that you can actually blame the theaters for. They charge obscene amounts for 'snacks' for example not because they're greedy, but because they get pretty much nothing from the films themselves, and those 'snacks' are pretty much the only thing keeping them in business.

While I imagine they would like to make the experience better, to draw in more customers, when they're already having trouble even breaking even, they may simply not have the money to burn trying to make the experience more customer friendly.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 24 May 2015 @ 7:27am

Re: Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
Indeed. I finally went to see Age of Ultron last night, and all I could think the entire time was "man I wish I was watching this at home on my computer..."

I dunno about where you are but here we DO have VIP Cinemas now, with tables for groups and comfy chairs and in-theatre food & drink service and such. But naturally they cost considerably more than your average movie ticket.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 24 May 2015 @ 7:29am

Re: Re: Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
I think it's kinda both... I mean sure, now they might not have the cash, but they did at one point when they first saw the world changing -- and instead of trying to change the nature of their experience to suit it, they tried to defend their existing way of doing things and cram more people into the seats with more expensive concessions. Such a rare story in entertainment industries these days, of course ;)
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 24 May 2015 @ 7:29am

Re: Re: Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
(but yeah, the way the film distributors charge them and lock them in aint helpful either)
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John Fenderson (profile), 25 May 2015 @ 5:56am

Re: Re: Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
" here we DO have VIP Cinemas now, with tables for groups and comfy chairs and in-theatre food & drink service"

Those are the only theaters I go to! But, at least around here, they aren't all more expensive. One of my favorite places is cheaper but has a two menu item minimum: $5 per ticket. The beer & grub aren't even any more overpriced than at a bar.
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Ninja (profile), 25 May 2015 @ 6:48am

Re: Re: Re: Home Video Vs Cinemas
Add me to the fast-growing crew of those who would rather watch home. Overpriced, overcrowded, noisy, dirty... No woder piracy has skyrocketed.
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