Slashdot Mirror
Fox CEO Says Tech & Media Should Work Together
An anonymous reader writes "An article running on cnn.com talks about how Peter Chernin, CEO of Fox and COO of News Corp., says media and tech companies should work together in the best interests of both industries. It's an interesting new angle for them anyway, with the point exentuated by George Lucas (of American Graffiti fame!) showing up to say 'there is no free lunch'."
"..as long as it keeps making my industry billions on overpriced plastic."
Trolling is a art,
hairy ass. He did offer this gem:
Still, Lucas said that entertainers themselves, not the big media companies, stand to lose the most if more content is available for free on the Internet. "Corporations are like cockroaches. They'll survive everything," Lucas said.
How true.
Lucas went on to say that [cprt violations => less money =>] wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies
... why, yes, I agree. Only disagree on the sign of \Delta_Q .
less money => major impact on quality of movies
since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
and "design by commity" them to death.
Working for necessity's mother.
Slogan-based arguments of complex issues will never succeed. Create intelligent discourse? Someone will respond with "information wants to be free." Unless the poster gains rhetorical skill, the issue at hand will never be discussed fairly.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
This could also wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
Yeah, and Michelangelo threw buckets of dirt and paint at an easel just so he could have enough money to make real art.
Saying that there won't be film of merit or quality without there first being movies of flashy repetitive garbage sounds like a pathetic attempt to make people believe the shit he's shoveling.
Media companies want to deliver more movies etc. online, which will foster the growth of broadband.
Broadband ISP's want to cap downloads or charge more for "bandwidth hogs".
I don't think this is going to work out. ;)
assert(birth_date<time-86400)
George Lucas (of American Graffiti fame!) showing up to say 'there is no free lunch'.
Although, with an estimated wealth of $2.5 billion, it's easy to forget that a "movie lunch" costs regular people at least $10 each these days, before the popcorn.
Lucas went on to say that the proliferation of free and illegal downloading of content on the Internet could eventually lead studios to shy away from spending as much as they do on blockbuster movies since it won't be nearly as profitable for them to do so. This could also wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
Excuse me while I shed a few tears for the poor movie industry. Waterworld spent hundreds of millions and it was just an OK (not to mention unprofitable) movie. Actors and puppets are much more realistic and engaging and inexpensive than computer animation, and make for a better movie, but that doesn't stop Lucas from overspending on CG. And since when do artsy movies require any sort of high budget, compared to the summer blockbusters? Oh well, we only made $300 million on this blockbuster, instead of $305 million on the last one, so we can't afford to make the $5 million "Painting for Harold" sequel.
$8.95/mo web hosting
Okay, try posting a sign on your window that says, "Do Not Break This Window". Is this going to A) Give the Window a Longer life or B) Catch the Attention of those that like breaking windows. I'm sure we've all heard this little theory before.
On to the point (in relation to this story):
I rent and buy DVDs, I don't even think about it. I play them on my PC, my laptop, my PS2, my DVD player. It's great, I like it and DVDs are quite reasonably priced.
Now comes DRM - in whatever form they are planning. Will I have to call in and register my DVD? Will I need to have a phone or network cable attached to the player of the future? Are restrictions going to be inserted on to my PC? Is my old non-DRM box going to find itself instantly outdated and unable to play the latest movie or whatever?
All of a sudden I'm not a happy-go-lucky watcher of TV, and consumer of media. I'm feeling a little under appreciated, plus all of a sudden all of these restrictions are in my face. I can't just scoot out and pick up a DVD or record a TV program for viewing later.
So now I have to figure out, "How can my PC or media unit view these new movies?" or "How can I make my PVR record this show?" I didn't care before, but now I'm going to have to go and take a look. While I'm figuring this out illegal content may also be discovered (boot legged movies side by side with info on getting around DRM). Next thing you know I have the latest warez for viewing moviez on my PC. All because you wanted to make sure you've squeezed every last dime from everyone's pockets. The people who were copying before are still copying now. Formerly loyal customers are now pissed off pirates.
I'd been ignoring the window, happily walking by it - then you had to go and put a damn sign up and eventually it became time to break it!
Piracy in all its forms is not a technical problem, but a social problem.
... in excess of 20 years.
... most people's time is more valuable to them than the money saved infringing on the copyright and burning a copy of the DVD ... despite the existence of tools that make doing so easy, even trivial, on just about every platform.
... most people find the hassle of ripping, copying, and downloading the one or two good songs off an otherwise crappy CD, and the time spent doing so, well offset by the savings and satisfaction of not being suckered into paying full price for a disc full of crap, merely for the privelege of listening to one or two decent songs they'll soon grow tired of anyway.
... a boycott alone is a lonely thing indeed).
Absolutely right.
Technical solutions to social problems will never succeed. Build a better lock? Someone will build a better lockpick. Unless the social problem is dealt with, the technical solutions will continue to fail.
People have had, to their perceptions at least, the ability to make "perfect" copies of music and video for a very long time
Yes, the audio and videophile will quickly point out the problems with generational loss on both cassette tape and VHS/Hi8, but to the average person who wants to build up a video library of Seinfeld and Friends episodes, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation videos are perfectly fine (and no, sorry, macrovision is no barrier even for the unititiated. Thank you for playing).
Yet Hollywood makes millions on VHS tapes, and millions more on DVDs that are, I must admit despite my boycott, reasonably priced. Why? Because the hassle factor of burning a copied DVD outweights the pricetag
Music, on the other hand, is a different story. The CDs cost as much or more than the DVDs, with vastly less value and content. The hassle factor of copying a good CD is such that a good CD is more likely to be purchased than copied, at least by those who can reasonably afford the purchase, but so much of the mindless dreck being sold by the RIAA is sold on shiny discs with one or two decent tunes, and the remaining tracks utter crap (even by their low standards). The result
Hollywood, for all of its evil and stupidity on the DRM front, at least understands that offering their customers added value gets them to go out and buy DVDs in droves (much as I wish it were otherwise
All of which underscores that, not only will Palladium and DRM wreck the home tech market, much as copy protection killed consumer DAT and cost the home electronics industry a big boom they would have otherwise seen, but, in the end, it won't work anyway.
The problem is a social problem, but that social problem includes not just copyright infringers who are doing something they shouldn't, but also the purveyors of shoddy product that don't want to be forced to give their customers better value or better product, who have already been convicted of price fixing, payola, and other cartel behaviors more than once, producers who are arguably more responsible for the current p2p file trading phenominon than anyone else.
There will always be someone who wants to get the new movie release beforehand, who doesn't mind spending the hours online downloading the latest spiderman cam or LOTR dvd rip, but these people have always existed, will always exist, and don't impact anyone's bottom line appreciably. It is the rest of us, who are used to buying and copying our own stuff (for backup, for ease of use, to listen to in the car, on the boat, in the plane, etc.) who will stop buying this crap if it means ubuiquitous surveillance of our listening habits, and cripping our favorite, expensive toys, that they should worry about. We're the ones who are going to stop buying this stuff if Hollywood and the RIAA get their way, and that's a market downturn they aren't likely to recover from.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Second point: we're getting this from a guy whose career is based on an idea ripped from Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress?" For those who have seen it, but don't see the Star Wars resemblance, I invite you to read Lucas's original 13 page treatment. The names have been changed to protect the innocent, but the events are Kurosawa's. I don't begrudge the man making a successful adaptation of someone else's material. Furthermore, he's admitted the influence, and even funded some of Kurosawa's later projects. Still, you'd think this would be a guy who would champion fair use. Instead, we get this lecture? Feh.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
So far, large enough portions of the public have wanted things like VCRs, PVRs, mp3 players, and CD copiers that I don't see why the technology industry has any reason to 'work together' with media. In fact, because of how media is distributed, through technologically savvy means, the media should, in theory, be more inclined to kiss ass to the tech people.
Tech leads to the development of more tech, while media seems to actively work against such. This is not a good deal.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
>> Lucas went on to say that the proliferation of free and illegal downloading of content on the Internet could eventually lead studios to shy away from spending as much as they do on blockbuster movies since it won't be nearly as profitable for them to do so.
Yeah!! Look what the internet did to the porn industry!
Seriously.. You'd think Hollywood could learn a thing or two from the XXX industry. Look how mainstream it became via the internet. Hard to understand why they don't see it as the powerful distrobution vehicle it could be.
I mean if you distributed 100% more copies of , why fight so hard because 5% of them are pirated? Mo money, mo money mo money. You don't see vivid video fighting to shut down distribution of their films.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Forcing me to re-buy The White Album, 4 more times, in 4 new formats, isn't why we have copyrights and patents. It was constructed as a careful use of a necessary evil (state granted monopoly) for a limited time (17 years), in order to make sure the authors had sufficient incentive to put works into the public domain. (Happened at the end of the time period).
Now the slackers in Congress have perverted the original design to provide for Government enforced monopolies on ideas. This can not stand, in the long run.
DRM is evil, there is no practical purpose for it.
--Mike--
They can say that, and at the same time stiff the artists like Stan Lee by claiming that they make no profit.
Or they lobby for copyright extension after extension so they can continue selling goods with no further IP investment.
Sounds to me like they're saying that consumers can't have a free lunch, only corporate media.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
the *consumer* need to "work together." One of the ways this can be accomplished is through a free market. It's not the best imaginable system. It's adversariale to an extent and definately a bit on the tempestuous side now and again. . . like now.
.there's no such thing as a free lunch. I'll accept that statement for the sake of argument. It cuts *both ways* Georgie boy. You have to earn your lunch. Your costomer buys it for you, in exchange for goods and services.
.words.
But. .
The "consumer's" money belongs to the consumer. It isn't yours. You don't "deserve" it. You have to earn it under true contractual terms wherein both sides of the contract receive fair and equitable exchange for freely voluntary participation in the deal.
This means that to get the consumer's money you have to offer them what they want, when they want it, how they want it and at a *price* they are fully, freely and happily willing to pay.
If it is not done this way then in the multi-hundred year history of contract the deal *isn't legitimately valid.*
The "cooperation of media and tech" is nothing more and nothing less than a cabal formed against the ultimate source of "lunch" and business power. . . your customers ( do you remember that word? Have you looked it up in a dictionary lately? It's a very important word Georgie boy).
As a "consumer" all I can say to this is " Stick it up your Star Wars whoring butt George."
I play musical instruments, as do many of my friends. I can write my own songs. I can download Dumas ( where you ripped off all your "ideas" anyway. Can you say "Three Musketeers in Space"? I KNEW you could Georgie boy, in fact, you already did, didn't you?) from Project Guttenburg and get hundreds of hours of superior entertainment for free in a format you can't control. .
The "media industry" isn't the only source of "content" in the world.
Watch yourselves carefully or you just might end up at the soup kitchen begging for a "free lunch."
KFG
"If hundreds of thousands of dresses were stolen from Wal-Mart, the police would assemble a task force that would have Winona Ryder shaking in her boots," Chernin said. "
These are NOT dresses we are stealing. They are ugly, torn and patched pieces of fabric that hardly resemble the original dress. Think Attack of the Clones on the big screen vs. Attack of the Clones recorded by some dope with a camcorder on his shoulder, and then uploaded to Kazaa. Who are they trying to kid? And at least the RIAA is actually losing money(although they are wrong about why it continues to happen). Motion picture studios continue to make more and more money, even though it is obvious that these crappy cam movies are easily downloaded.
Oh, dear God, I can only hope so. The brief heyday of director-centric blockbusters in the 1960s and '70s -- Jaws, Apocalypse Now, Kubrick's best works, and, yes, even Star Wars -- has simply given way to overhyped, overextended special effects larded with committee-designed dialogue and focus-tested credit crawls. Am I supposed to believe that companies choosing to spend billions of dollars less on overplotted tripe like Clone Wars is a bad thing? Perhaps, if the financial stakes weren't so high for the studios and directors, they'd be willing to try riskier experiments in film.
"Freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I'll spend to find out how to get people more."
You're right: the entertainment/media industry runs on technology,and it wouldn't exist without it. What has them worked up in such a froth is that they don't control the technology like they did when media was all analog. They could charge for each copy or for monthly service.
Now that they don't control the digital technology,they are on the backs of everyone in the tech world to save their ass, um, business model. They want to continue the top-down content delivery methods that the mass media has used for the past 100 years. And, they wanna make a killing in doing so, too.
It seems that they should get to work and improve their watermarking/copy protection/whatever technologies, and buy themselves a brigade of whores (um, I meant programmers and security experts).
Seriously, though, more expansive horizons await us, when high-speed 'net access is commonplace: it will be possible for people to choose what content they want. When it becomes possible for artists to use the 'net to distribute and sell their works with a street performer business model (give some stuff away, play some more songs for dough), the entertainment companies might be out of business.
(Pardon my shouting) IT'S ALL ABOUT CONTROL
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
Technical solutions to social problems will never succeed.
Legal solutions aren't necessarily the solution either. Think about zero-tolerance policies at schools (absurdly naive), drug laws (who do they protect, really), personal and corporate welfare by tax credit/deduction (misguided and unnecessarily complex), RIAA royalty per blank media (make the innocent pay), and so on.
DRM laws will simply be some combination of zero-tolerance policies, gun laws, and drug laws, in effect. The outcome is certainly not to our benefit, and a whole generation of really cool stuff will be wiped out to make paranoid media companies more comfy in their money-stuffed chairs. It really makes me cringe when I think about it.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
First of all, it will be a cold day in hell before I take any advice from that Right Wing propaganda maker. Second George Lucas jumped the shark a long time ago and I could care less about what he thinks. This is a guy who would literally replace every actor in his film with CG actors if he could. Again no thanks.
Here's my advice to Big Media. Adapt or Die. Stop trying to crush my rights for fair use. Stop using your monopoly power to keep prices of CD's artificially high. And lastly stop trying to push new formats which make using media on my existing electronics worthless.
Work with the consumer not against them, and stop acting like your at war by pressuring congress to pass laws which enable you to become rogue vigilantes.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Piracy is both a social and a technical problem. It is tractable, up to a point, by both social and technical means, but ultimately intractable: in other words, neither social engineering nor software engineering will ever make it go away completely.
Locks on doors are a technical measure to reduce the attractiveness of the contents of your home to people who might otherwise be tempted to steal them. The problem of rampant housebreaking and theft in the area where you live may also have social factors, and may prove susceptible to a degree of social management, but that doesn't mean that the police are wrong to distribute leaflets advising tenants to tighten up their household security.
Media piracy is rampant at the moment because it's easy, and because no-one very much feels bad about doing it. If it were significantly harder, then a significant number of people would stop doing it, irrespective of their moral sentiments. If the moral sentiments of would-be pirates were engaged on behalf of the grievous sufferings of the music industry, then perhaps even fewer would succumb to temptation...
Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn no other.
...says media and tech companies should work together in the best interests of both industries.
Too bad it doesn't say "in the best interests of consumers"
Lucas went on to say that the proliferation of free and illegal downloading of content on the Internet could eventually lead studios to shy away from spending as much as they do on blockbuster movies since it won't be nearly as profitable for them to do so.
Great! Why don't you cut the $50M special effects budget in half and use some of the savings on a decent script and a good director?
This could also wind up having a major impact on the quality of movies since Lucas said that the success of summer popcorn movies enable studios to finance more artsy films.
Studiotalk translation:
"popcorn movies" == Mindless garbage with no story, poor acting, and lots of big explosions.
"artsy films" == Anything with a plot.
Too bad that 95% of the films to come out of Hollywood fall into the "popcorn movies" category.
Here's a clue for the studios and the MPAA: make some decent material that I would be willing to spend $20 on to buy the DVD.
I doubt very much that LoTR DVD sales will be disappointing, and I bet that there will be a lot of piracy of "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" DivX copies on P2P. Simple reason: people don't like to pay good money for garbage. Either make movies worth the sticker price, or lower the sticker price.
Hi all.
Sitting here in Business School, who gets me are the following two quotes from the article:
"The most powerful catalyst for growth is not piracy, but partnership"
and
"Both of our industries need to be seriously re-energized"
What gets me is this:
Given: any anti-copy measures can and will be circumvented.
It seems the Media industries are using the tech industry's need for immediate gratification (turnaround of the tech slump) to spur growth of old assets (repurchase of old media on new distribution method), and in return, then tech industry gets to develop and sell new hardware/software purchases to help turnaround the 'tech slump'.
When the copy-prevention technology is broken after the first week, the media companies don't lose much on their old catalogs (most of it has already been digitized anyhow, or is in a digitizable form). However, the tech companies lose their entire investment in the technology and implementation.
The media industry says, "Come again, let's try this one more time..."
Will the tech industry wake up and realize that they should be innovating themselves out of this slump, instead of partnering with the Media industry to create a lock-in to shove DRM down our throats?
It strikes me the Media Industry is just refusing to adapt to market pressures and trying to use legal means to guarantee their monopoly. What will they do if people decide to consume less media? Force us to? *boggle*
Just because the two industries stop growing doesn't mean it should be legal to pass laws to further the growth of certain industries at the expense of US citizens.
My liang fen...
M.
"media and tech companies should work together in the best interests of both industries."
I've got this silly idea: Why don't they team up and work together in the best interests of their customers instead? Or am I being too capitalistic again?