Sweded Movies: The Fans Talk Back

from the losing-control dept

One of the defining characteristics of the digital world -- and one of the problems for copyright law, which was conceived in an analog age -- is the importance of being able to build on the work of others not just indirectly, but directly, through mashups or the re-use of existing material. Stig Rudeholm points us to a fascinating feature in the Guardian about "sweded movies": home-made tributes to Hollywood titles that adopt precisely this approach of creative re-interpretation. The name apparently comes from the film "Be Kind Rewind", where DIY imitations of studio favorites are passed off as Swedish editions.

As the article's author, Ben Walters, writes, beyond the surface humor, there's something interesting happening here:

sweded movies are a form of talking back to Hollywood. Along with recut trailers and "supercuts" of familiar tropes, they represent a fledgling digital moving-image culture that presents a radical challenge to the mainstream movie industry. They are created as fun for fans but the ideas of entitlement and agency underpinning these videos will shape how we all consume -- and produce -- moving images in the 21st century. They are a taste of what comes after Hollywood.

He gives some examples of that "talking back":

see, for instance, the video The Star Wars That I Used to Know, which combines anti-Lucas sentiment with Gotye's music. The same sense of media-savvy pushback is evident in trailers that reconfigure The Shining as a family comedy or Mrs Doubtfire as a stalker horror; and in supercuts that point out how much Julianne Moore likes to cry or how often the word "fuck" is used in The Big Lebowski.

What's striking about these, he suggests, is the lack of traditional deference to Hollywood and its highly-paid artists. Films are no longer immaculate creations that can be looked at but not touched; instead, cinema has become a store of images, sounds and symbols to be constantly reshuffled, re-used and reshaped in new works of sweded art, offering yet another example of lowered barriers to creativity brought about by low-cost digital technology.

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Filed Under: amateurs, communications, fan creations, fans, movies, sweded movies, sweding

How Piracy Created The Massive Movie Industry Success Of Nollywood

from the and-what's-happening-now dept

We've written in the past about how the three largest movie producing countries in the world are Nigeria, India and China -- despite the fact that all three have extremely high rates of infringement. It seemed to offer the perfect counterpoint to the insistence from the MPAA that high piracy rates automatically lead to the destruction of any form of movie industry. In fact, further research showed that the amount of piracy in Nigeria actually was a big part of the reason why Nollywood has been so successful. The ability to let "pirates" distribute their films in the most efficient way possible meant that the movies were distributed far and wide across Africa and established Nigeria as the place to go for movie making.

Of course, as we've seen through the history of the development of various industries, it's always after those industries are created and growing rapidly that the existing players suddenly want to ramp up intellectual property laws to stomp out new competition. This is true throughout pretty much the entire history of intellectual property law, and it shows that such laws are not -- as we're told -- about creating incentives to invest in these industries, but rather about keeping out the competition and setting up gatekeepers to lock things down for established players. The same thing is happening in Nigeria as well, as there have been new efforts to crack down on infringement, despite it being so central to the importance of the rise of the industry.

While we've covered all this before, Eric Crampton points our attention to a new research paper that digs even deeper into this story: The Rise of Nollywood: Creators, Entrepreneurs, and Pirates by Olufunmilayo Arewa. It covers much of the same ground as our previous reports, first noting the usefulness of infringement in establishing the industry -- which appears to employ more people than Hollywood. In fact, what's amazing is that while many developing nations focus on government subsidies, insisting that that's the only way to build a local film industry, there's almost no government support in Nigeria, yet the industry is significantly bigger than comparable countries:

The rise of the film sector in Nigeria runs counter to existing trends in the film sector in which developing countries, which produce 1.2 films per million inhabitant annually, lag developed countries, which produce 6.3 films per million inhabitants annually. At current Nollywood production levels, Nigeria produces approximately 6.7 films per million inhabitants annually. Bridging the developing country film production gap remains challenging, particularly because the optimal ways to create domestic film industries remain elusive in many instances. Prior to the proliferation of Nollywood films, at least one commentator suggested that government takeover of the film industry would be the only means by which Nigeria could develop a film industry.

Notably, although many countries have sought to incentivize particular types of film production through direct government funding, subsidies, or film protection schemas involving film quotas, many of these industries have not been commercially viable in the absence of subsidies or other support schemes. In contrast, Nollywood has created significant volume of local video film content with virtually no government involvement or subsidies. The success of Nollywood may in many respects be attributable to a lack of government involvement and its decentralized nature, which has permitted Nollywood participants to be highly entrepreneurial, adaptive and innovative. Nollywood now may employ as many as 200,000 people directly with estimates of indirect employment as high as 1 million. The market-driven Nollywood approach is less costly than existing models of film production and distribution and may offer a new model for developing countries that wish to develop domestic film industries.

In fact, part of that "market-driven" approach is to figure out ways to embrace and leverage widespread infringement. That helped set up rapid and inexpensive (to free) distribution and promotion of new films. It has also continued to drive interest in new films, as people want to keep seeing more, helping to keep the industry going.

That said, the report also talks about the new efforts to crack down on infringement, but notes that this might not make much sense. It notes, correctly, that "the battle to control piracy will not be an easy one," and that such an effort to ratchet up pricing may be futile. Instead, it suggests taking a more proactive approach to providing better services and to looking at better ways to monetize the movies -- including things like advertisements and product placement.

Discussions of the piracy problem in Nollywood are based upon goals for control of distribution that may simply not be viable for Nollywood given current institutional structures and manners of doing business. In addition to dealing with piracy and issues of control of distribution, Nollywood participants should undertake focused strategies to address varied business and legal impediments. The development course of Nollywood, which in fact increasingly moving to digital distribution outside of Africa, and events in other arenas, suggest that the battle to control piracy will not be an easy one. Further, to the extent that webs of unauthorized uses enmesh consumers and end users, seeking to impose desired pricing in the face of rampant unauthorized distribution, or even the possibility of such distribution, may be futile, particularly given broad nature of Nollywood distribution networks. This ultimately may mean that price reductions may be one way to deal with problems of piracy, particularly to the extent that Nollywood participants can effectively harness other sources of value. Nollywood participants thus far have focused to a significant extent on the value of Nollywood content, which may obscure other potential sources of value to Nollywood participants. For example, the network of viewers reached by Nollywood films may be valuable to advertisers and others who may be willing to pay to have access to such viewers. The value of these Nollywood networks may actually be far greater than the value of the content itself.

The report also notes that "Discussions about the future of Nollywood should seek to move beyond discussions of copyright and piracy to fundamental reconsideration of a broader range of business and legal issues." I'd argue that applies to nearly all copyright discussions. Not just those in Nollywood.

Filed Under: movies, nigeria, nollywood, piracy

Hollywood, Once Again, Sets A Record At The Box Office

from the well,-look-at-that dept

Considering how much time the MPAA has spent arguing that the sky is falling, that jobs are disappearing and the movie industry is collapsing, you'd have to imagine that its PR people had to think long and hard about how they "spin" the news that global box-office receipts set yet another new record in 2011, as they rose by 3%. It really is quite the PR challenge, and the MPAA pulls it off with a bizarre press release patting itself on the back, and then insisting that piracy is right now... just about... this close... no, really... finally.... maybe... having an impact. How's this for awkward:

"Innovation and technology continue to be a driving force for our business," Dodd said. "People are driven to fill theater seats by the promise of great films and a great, technologically enhanced movie going experience. But online content theft continues to threaten the economic success of our industry -- an industry that employs millions of Americans and brings money into the U.S. economy from around the world. We should protect that success, not undermine it by stealing products and cutting the revenue it puts into the U.S. economy."

Yup. Love the spin, overpaid MPAA PR people: "protect that success"? Good stuff. "We're dying so bad that we're setting tremendous new records..." Digging into the details a bit, yes, the US numbers were off ever so slightly, but there's growing evidence that was almost entirely about the quality (rather, lack of quality) of the movies that were released last year, as the MPAA is also gleefully talking about how domestic box office is already up by 14% this year. And, even with the very slight dip last year, the MPAA notes that domestic box office is up 6% in the last 5 years, so the trend is still clearly upward. They also note that 67% of all people in the US and Canada went to the movies at least once in 2011, with the younger generation again going quite frequently -- with the 25 to 39 demographic and the 18 to 24 demographic (also known as the prime demographics for knowing their way around the dark underbelly of the interwebs) being the biggest movie-goers.

Also, pretty much anywhere around the globe that you look, box office revenue is up. Over the last five years, box-office revenue from Europe, the Middle East and Africa is up a whopping 24%. Asia Pacific? Up 38%. Latin America? Up an astounding 86%.

Buried deep within the MPAA's report is the basic admission that the reason for the drop in 2011 certainly wasn't "piracy," but rather the lack of Avatar:

3D box office was down $400 million in 2011 compared to 2010, which contained Avatar’s record-breaking 3D box office performance, while 2D box office was consistent with 2010.

Some keep trying to make a big deal out of the fact that the actual number of tickets sold has shown a steady decline, but that's silly. No business is focused on maximizing tickets sold. They focus on maximizing revenue. If the goal was to maximize tickets sold, that's easy, just lower the price to a penny and watch the number of tickets sold go sky high. Instead, as the report shows, ticket prices have continued to rise, though it rose by the smallest amount (1%) in 2011 that it has since 2002. That suggests, at least, that earlier in the decade they may have been underpricing a bit, but may have found something of a ceiling, for the time being.

Filed Under: box office, chris dodd, data, global, movies
Companies: mpaa

Wanted: The Truck Driver Who Lost His Job Due To File Sharing

from the we're-waiting... dept

Capitol File Magazine has a bit of a puff piece on the MPAA's Chris Dodd one year into his job at the lobbying organization (a job he took just months after promising he'd never work as a lobbyist). The piece isn't really that enlightening, other than an admission from Dodd that he didn't know anything about the movie business before he took the job. He probably should admit that he still knows nothing about the internet either, which is a pretty bad place to be if part of your job is trying to guide the movie industry into the future. In fact, the writeup notes that Dodd's one skill is his ability to push legislation through -- and then doesn't mention how he completely flopped on that front with SOPA/PIPA.

However, what the article does do is highlight Dodd's new talking points about how he's really protecting blue collar jobs, not Hollywood studio execs and movie stars:

“The first year has been a little chaotic,” says Dodd. “There’s been a steep learning curve. I bought into the notion that this was a redcarpet, Oscar-night kind of business. Over 2.2 million Americans are employed by the industry. Most of them are in blue-collar jobs, involving the people who drive the trucks and set up the lights. I didn’t know that when I started.”

It’s not just the names on the marquee, but the rank-and-file workers who are impacted by intellectual property infringements, says Dodd. “People think nothing of stealing from Charlie Sheen,” he explains, “but they might care if they realized they were stealing from someone who drives a truck.”

Yup. It's all about the truck drivers. Of course, the 2.2 million number is wrong. The Congressional Research Service says that number is less than 400,000. And, when we dug into the actual numbers, it shows that jobs in actual movie making are on the increase. The only real decrease seen in movie jobs has been in the number of people employed by theaters. But that's got nothing to do with piracy at all, since theater revenue has been going up and up and up (with a slight dip just last year). The job losses there have been about consolidation in theaters and the rise of giant multiplexes that employ very few humans.

That said, since Dodd mentions that poor, poor truck driver twice, I'm curious of a couple things. Which truck drivers get a cut of movie royalties? I'd like to know. Second, can anyone find me the truck driver who lost his job because of file sharing? I'd like to find that guy.

Filed Under: blue collar workers, chris dodd, movies, sopa
Companies: mpaa

Forget Home Taping: Evil Robots Are Killing Music!

from the i-for-one-welcome-our-new-innovative-overlords dept

The entertainment industry has a long and storied history of incumbents freaking out about every technological advancement that alters the market. From iPods and digital distribution, to VCRs and home taping, all the way back to player pianos, it seems like they've never met a device they didn't hate and fear. And they've yet to be right about any of them: whenever a group claims something is going to destroy the music or movie industry, that thing ends up expanding it instead. In the interval, they churn out scare campaigns and sob stories like "Home Taping Is Killing Music", or the laughably intense anti-piracy ads that run before feature films, or in the 1930s, depictions of a vicious battle between musicians and evil robots.

Yes, evil robots. Long-time reader Matt Novak points us to a blog post he wrote last month, showing off some vintage ads from a campaign by musicians against recorded music in movie theatres:

That must be a textbook symptom of technophobia. You should only be warning the public about robot tyrants if you are a) dangerously insane or b) John Connor. Of course, as we now know, synchronized sound massively expanded the film industry, which in turn created countless new opportunities for musicians—while at the same time, closely-related technology advancements were turning the recorded music industry into its own powerhouse. Today's entertainment incumbents have reined it in a little, preferring somewhat-believable lies over utterly fantastic ones, and focusing more on issues of "theft" than a supposed decline in the quality of the experience (they leave the latter up to technicians and weirdos like Prince). And yet there are still striking similarities between their message and the copy that appeared on those 1930s ads:

The time is coming fast when the only living thing around a motion picture house will be the person who sells you your ticket. Everything else will be mechanical. Canned drama, canned music, canned vaudeville. We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing. We are not against scientific development of any kind, but it must not come at the expense of art. We are not opposing industrial progress. We are not even opposing mechanical music except where it is used as a profiteering instrument for artistic debasement.

Note the consistent refrain—"we're not opposed to technology and innovation, except that we totally are"—and the characterization of what they do as the entirety of "art". The more things change, the more they stay the same.

(By the way, there are several other amusing ads in the original post, and I strongly recommend checking them out.)

Filed Under: history, home taping, innovation, live music, live performers, movies, predictions

One Cent Friends: Another Attempt To Quantify Social Media's Value

from the disconnect-with-fans-plus-reason-to-not-buy dept

We've talked before about services that attempt to measure someone's social media "influence" and the inherent silliness of the concept. Although the numerical values assigned by services like Klout are, at best, weak indicators of a person's actual influence, it's not surprising that people are trying to make it work. The advertising industry has run on flimsy numbers for a long time: newspaper readerships and television ratings are all extrapolated, not directly measured, and advertisers pay rates based on numbers that may or may not be indicative of how much exposure they are really getting. This was an advantageous situation for the media industry, but the digital world has largely nullified that advantage. Today's advertisers are clamouring for social campaigns and viral ads, but ad agencies and publications aren't quite sure how to actually measure those things—or how to charge for them.

So it's interesting, but pretty bizarre, to see some short film creators attempt a promotion that places an arbitrary dollar- penny-value on their fans' Facebook friends:

A 40-minute film called Andy X (about the life of Andy Warhol), which was available for streaming starting Feb. 22, is offering interested viewers an opportunity to get a discount on the $6.99 price tag. As the promotion explains, "We're trying something a little different here. We're letting you pay to watch the movie by using your friends as currency."

In other words, one Facebook friend equals one cent. If you have 300 friends, you'll pay $3.99 for the rental. Don't get too excited if you have more than 400 friends since there is a cap ($2.99 is the least you'll be able to pay to stream the film).

It's a novel idea, but one that I doubt will work for a variety of reasons. For one thing, number of friends is an even worse influence metric than something like Klout, which at least looks at multiple factors. People use Facebook in all kinds of different ways: someone with 100 friends might be a quiet user who uses the site for little more than private messages and birthday wishes, or they might be a powerful voice who keeps a small social circle of others like them. Similarly, someone with 1000 friends might be a trendsetting socialite, or they might be an indiscriminate social media butterfly whose posts are lost in the noisy news feeds of other people who also have 1000 friends each, and who don't really remember who they are.

Moreover, the promotion doesn't actually encourage fans to do anything. Nobody is going to go out and add an extra hundred friends to save a dollar, and those getting the full discount have no added incentive to actually use their supposed influence on behalf of the movie. I bet this promotion will alienate a lot of people, since it's basically a direct insult to anyone with fewer than 400 friends. Telling your fans that they have to pay more because they don't use Facebook the way you want them to (or don't use it at all) is not going to endear you to them. "You have been weighed in the balance of customers, and found wanting."

I'm all for creators trying to leverage the evangelistic powers of their fans, but the creators of Andy X have really missed the mark. Their promotion comes across less as a reward for fans who have big social circles and more as a punishment for those who don't—and it doesn't encourage either group to do anything useful.

Filed Under: andy x, influence, movies, social media
Companies: facebook

Funny How Sensitive Hollywood Gets When You Threaten To Mess With Its 'Fundamental' Structure

from the but-the-internet?-bah... dept

One of the key points in the SOPA/PIPA debate involved Hollywood -- and the MPAA's Chris Dodd and Michael O'Leary in particular -- dismissing the worries of folks in the tech industry about the rather fundamental changes that these laws would make to both the technological and legal frameworks of the internet. Anytime such a thing was brought up, it was dismissed out of hand. This was most noticeable during the original SOPA hearings in November, where a number of experts were pointing out their concerns with how SOPA would undermine basic internet security principles... and O'Leary dismissed them with a simple statement about how he just didn't believe those concerns to be true.

What shocked many folks in the tech community was just how easily the MPAA sought to dismiss some pretty massive fundamental changes to both the internet and the legal framework around the internet. However, apparently if you dare touch the "fundamental" parts of Hollywood's business, the same MPAA throws a hissy fit. The EU recently had a public consultation on a variety of copyright-related topics, some of which were more interesting than others. One of the topics was on the question of movie release windows, and whether or not they made sense any more. As we've noted there have been many, many studies that suggest that these release windows are actually a big part of the problem for Hollywood, and they're leaving a ton of money on the table by not making movies available in as many convenient ways as possible.

In fact, many of the (non-Hollywood) respondents to the consultation made this point. There's BEUC (a consumers' group) that sees (pdf) "both platform and territorial release windows as outdated." GSMA called for (pdf) support for "flexible and shorter release windows." And EuroISPA was the most stringent (pdf), pointing out that:

the current windowing system is obsolete and seriously damaging the objective of the Digital Agenda, because it hampers the circulation of digital works and discriminate amongst platforms, to the detriment of more innovative technologies and business models

But you get a totally different story when you hear the MPAA's international arm, the MPA, tell its story (pdf). You see, to Hollywood, release windows are a "fundamental" part of its business model, and how dare anyone think of touching it.

The MPA submits that the freedom to set the exact timing for the release of films in various media and various countries is a fundamental feature of the film industry’s business model

Perhaps Hollywood is right, even if so many studies disagree. But, really, if it thinks it can just claim a certain feature is a "fundamental feature of the industry's business model," why does it then feel that there's absolutely no problem to leap into a totally different industry, and muck around with the "fundamental features" of that "industry's business model"? What an incredible sense of entitlement. The MPAA wants the law to keep its business model in place permanently... but if anyone else even dares to ask why Hollywood is trying to muck with their own business model, everyone gets attacked as being misinformed shills.

Filed Under: business models, europe, fundamental, movies, pipa, release windows, sopa
Companies: mpa, mpaa

Streaming Rights On Whitney Houston Movie NOT Pulled In Order To 'Make Really A Large Amount Of Money On DVD Sales' [Updated]

from the profiting-off-of-death dept

Update: Netflix denies this story, though the reporter stands by it. See update at the end.

We covered how Sony Music UK jacked up prices on Whitney Houston's music minutes after her death -- then changing them back and apologizing. However, in an even more extreme case, it appears that whoever holds the copyrights on the Whitney Houston movie, The Bodyguard has pulled those rights from Netflix, where it had been streamable (found via Karl Bode, but kudos to Dan McDermott who noticed the problem and found out the details from Netflix). The reasoning is that they figure lots of people will want to buy it now, and this is a chance to cash in on her death:

Netflix rep: "Okay Dan, I just went and talked to my main supervisor as to why the movie had been pulled and the reason it was pulled was the production company pulled the streaming rights from us because all the publicity after Whitney Houston's passing there was an opportunity to make really a very large amount of money on the DVD sales of her movies. So they're going to pull all the streaming titles we have of Whitney Houston so they can make more money off the DVD sales of her movies."

Now, watch the copyright holder complain that there's too much infringement of the movie as well...

Update: Apparently Netflix is denying the story though McDermott -- a long time reporter stands by the story. Netflix claims that the streaming rights to the movie went away last year when a licensing deal ended (and it is true that Netflix has lost some streaming rights in the last few months, though I have no idea if this is one of them). However, McDermott insists that he got the story from Netflix directly. As he told Andrew Couts at Digital Trends:

“I publish three newspapers and first started in news when I was news director at WLVA in 1987. I was aware of the sensitive nature of the story and was cautious and responsible,” McDermott told us via email. “The quote I printed is accurate. I cannot speak to whether the Netflix representative was telling me the truth but I asked him to verify what the Netflix users were saying (that it was pulled after her death) and the guy came back and said what he said. I tripled checked to get the quote accurate.

“He said that he had checked with two supervisors and that the ‘main’ one told him why it had been pulled.

“Personally I believe that the kid told me what his supervisors said. I can’t imagine that they were pulled after her death in some bizarre coincidence.

“Also, it is important to note that Netflix is not the bad guy in this. Unless they lie now.”

I guess it's possible that Netflix is right, and there was confusion on the part of the supervisors...

Update 2: Indeed, it looks like my guess was correct. Netflix was right, and the supervisors of the customer service guy were wrong. Dan McDermott has admitted that the report the guy gave him appears to be wrong. He reported it correctly, but Netflix staffers gave him incorrect info. The movie was pulled from streaming back in January...

Filed Under: death, dvds, movies, music, prices, streaming, the bodyguard, whitney houston
Companies: netflix

Hollywood Wants To Kill Piracy? No Problem: Just Offer Something Better

from the and-watch-people-go-away dept

Just John points us to a recent Reddit thread, in which a rather basic suggestion is made for how Hollywood could do a much better job killing movie piracy: by offering something better. It was summarized with the following graphic: Or, basically, create a service that doesn't limit people and offers them what they want, in a convenient manner, at a reasonable price. Simple. Except... that's just not how the MPAA works. As we've stated many times in the past, services like Spotify have massively shrunk how much people in Sweden use The Pirate Bay for music. They now use it for other media, because no one's really created a "Spotify for movies." In fact, whenever the industry seems to get close to creating a good product for video -- see: Hulu or Netflix -- the industry then freaks out that it's going to cannibalize their old way of doing things, and tries to make it worse. It's why the big studios have been pulling content from both services, and trying to limit what they can provide. And that's exactly the wrong thing to do. That's how you encourage more piracy.

Filed Under: better, drm, movies, streaming

Hollywood Still Doesn't Realize That The Internet Drives Popular Culture Now

from the big-miscalculation dept

Stewart Baker, the former DHS official whose warnings about how SOPA would wreak havoc on online security were instrumental in convincing many of our elected officials that SOPA and PIPA were half-baked legislative disasters, now has a fascinating writeup for The Hollywood Reporter, trying to explain why the Republican Party turned strongly against SOPA/PIPA. We've pointed out a few times, that the different reactions by the Democrats and Republicans to the online protests threaten to cost the Democrats a generation of voters who had previously looked to them as the party that "got" the internet.

Of course, where it gets even more insightful is Baker's analysis not just of how the Democratic Party appears to have miscalculated badly the reaction to these bills, but how truly and spectacularly Hollywood has failed to understand what happened -- in part because Hollywood still thinks that it drives pop culture. The truth, however, as Baker points out, is that the internet drives popular culture these days... and on the internet, Hollywood is a big bully:

The [entertainment] industry still doesn't understand its adversary. From the start, studios saw the fight over SOPA as a struggle with a bunch of other companies -- Google and Internet service providers among them -- that were hoping to profit from the Internet travails of the entertainment industry.

That turned out to be wrong. In fact, the industry is fighting what amounts to a new popular culture.

Unlike the old pop culture Hollywood dominated, this one is largely independent of the music, movie and broadcast industries. In fact, people who spend hours online instead of watching TV or going to movies will probably encounter the entertainment industry only when YouTube videos of their kids dancing to Prince or spoofing Star Wars are pulled down by Hollywood's bots, or when the RIAA threatens to sue them for their college savings, or when digital rights software makes it hard to move their stuff to a new tablet or phone.

To the entertainment industry, these episodes might seem like collateral damage in the fight to stop piracy. To the new pop culture, though, collateral damage and misuse of enforcement tools are everywhere, and they threaten everyone. The content industry has made itself into the villain. Increasingly, it looks like an occupying power, obeyed at gunpoint, despised for its ham-handed excesses and resisted from every dark corner. Unfortunately for Hollywood, as its customers migrate to the Internet, it is losing not just their money but their hearts and minds as well.

There's a lot more in Baker's article about the political implications of all of this, which are worth thinking about as well, but I wanted to focus on this key point. Last week, at the Midem music industry conference, I was amazed at how many people from the legacy music business believe, 100%, that the reason SOPA/PIPA were stopped was because Google stepped up its lobbying efforts. I can't even begin to count how many conversations I had with people trying to explain to them that Google only played a small role in what happened, really jumping on the bandwagon pretty late in the game. It was a widespread group of internet users who spoke up, and that really has changed the equation. And Hollywood still can't seem to wrap its mind around that.

That may be because Hollywood was popular culture for so long. It seems to just assume that this is still the case, when there's an awful lot of evidence suggesting otherwise. And really, that explains both Hollywood's confusion in how to deal with all of this, as well as one of the reasons it's lashing out. When Hollywood no longer drives pop culture, it loses its influence, and as it loses its influence, that's going to spell trouble for its business model. The biggest threat to Hollywood's dominance isn't piracy. It's that people no longer view Hollywood as the main source of pop culture any more. Art forms often lose their popularity over time. A few years back, we pointed to a quote from Paul Oskar Kristeller that seems worth highlighting again:

There were important periods in cultural history when the novel, instrumental music, or canvas painting did not exist or have any importance. On the other hand, the sonnet and the epic poem, stained glass and mosaic, fresco painting and book illumination, vase painting and tapestry, bas relief and pottery have all been "major" arts at various times and in a way they no longer are now. Gardening has lost its standing as a fine art since the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the moving picture is a good example of how new techniques may lead to modes of artistic expression for which the aestheticians of the eighteenth and nineteenth century had no place in their systems. The branches of the arts all have their rise and decline, and even their birth and death.

Perhaps it's not piracy that Hollywood is fighting here. Maybe it's the industry's own cultural relevance.

Filed Under: hollywood, internet, movies, pipa, politics, pop culture, sopa, stewart baker