Movie Industry Blames Texting for Bad Box Office

cybercuzco writes "The movie industry is blaming poor sales of such movies as Gigli, The Hulk and Charlies Angels not on the fact that they were poor quality, but because people text message other people telling them that the movie stinks. Industry executives say that this undermines a carefully crafted marketing image. Expect texting to be banned by the MPAA in the near future."

Comments

Hrrmmm

[mao che minh]

So, earning $131,164,155 in the United States alone and breaking sales records is considered poor sales? Incredible. =)

Re:addendum:

[uncoveror]

IMDB readers rated Gigli as the worst film of all time. Even Ed Wood movies don't suck nearly as bad. Word-of-mouth whether spoken, or through text messaging has always been the most influential form of review. If banning PDAs and cellphones from theatres is the MPAA's plan now, it won't work. The few who actually pay to see terrible movies will still warn us off as soon as they leave.

You Say that as a Joke, But...

[FreeUser]

So they are saying that communication is the reason for movie's failure? They should get rid of free speech.

You say that as a joke, but it is important to keep in mind that

• copyright is the only thing in the constitution that is explicitly allowed to trump freedom of the press (i.e. freedom of speech).
  Copyright was originally instituted as a means for the British Crown to censor the printing press, a new technology (at that time) which they felt threatened by.
• Copyright was later "reformed" in the Statute of Anne to give authors rights theoretically equal to those of the (by then) entrenched publishing cartel. This is the point in history that copyright advocates will try to pass off as the "beginning" of copyright, ignoring its much darker, earlier past, and the original reason for its inception: censorship.
• That same publishing cartel ignored the statute and fought it in the courts for nearly a century thereafter, before the highest court ruled they had to respect author's rights and pay to publish their works.
• It was this form of copyright that was encoded into the US constitution, with a significant change: said copyright was intended to be for a limited time, indeed, it was the intention of the founding fathers that it be a very limited time: originally 14 years plus an option to extend for another 14 years if the author was still living.
• Copyright, even in its original form, was hardly benign. Under the guise of insuring that authors and publishers receive compensation (since when is a government mandated monopoly a requirement for one to get compensation?), information in the age of the printing press was quite stringently controlled, both in the British empire and, within a generation after the ratification of the US constitution, in the United States.
• Copyright in its original form only applied to books. It's purview was then extended dramatically to include
  • cartography (maps)
  • sheet music
  • player piano music encodings
  • grammophone and other recordings
  • photographs
  • moving pictures
  • executable instructions (software)
• Copyright was also extended numerous times in duration, now reaching life+70 years for individuals and 90 years for works-for-hire, with no end in sight now that the supreme court has ruled that retroactive extentions are now "constitutional", despite the obvious conflict that entails with the constitutions own requirement that terms be of limited length.
• In addition, government has extended copyright's authority, making it a criminal offense for the first time in this nation's 200 year history, giving individual copyright cartels and corporations police and judicial powers to issue subpeonas and have people arrested, and banning certain creative works and expressions outright (anything that can be construed to circumvent a copy restriction scheme, which includes haiku poems describing how to decrypt DVDs for playback on Linux systems).
• The DMCA allows web sites and persons to be silenced as a result of mere allegations of copyright violation, with no due process, no trial, no conviction, no proof required, and no opportunity for appeal. Copyright has come full circle, returning to its origins as the primary means of modern day censorship.

The domain, authority, and severity of copyright have grown and grown repeatedly throughout our history, as the tiny minority of people it benefits and the cartels they have formed demand greater privileges and greater profits. It is the only provision in the constitution that trumps freedom of expression and the press. Each time it grows, your freedom of speech shrinks by a corresponding amount (at least). Now that communicating certain information that can be construed as circumventing copy protection (this could, BTW, include memorization of certain inf

Re:In other news...

[renderhead]

*Sigh*

That's a popular myth, but it simply doesn't wash. Check out the article that snopes.com did on why New Coke wasn't a marketing ploy to sell classic Coke.

Re:Yep

[barista]

I think its called "astroturfing" - essentially a fake "grassroots" effort.

Re:RTFA

[Mattcelt]

but they never advocated anything of the time - it was simply a guy making an observation

Well, if they weren't on record already trying to limit or take away our freedoms , rights, and liberties, I think the /. community would be a little bit kinder.

Don't you?

Oh, and here are a couple of extras for
good measure.

For idiots too incompetent to google

[FreeUser]

Wow Talking out your ass gets you modded to +5. Please tell me what article or what admendment in the constitution that even mentions copyrights. There is nothing.

For dumbfucks too lazy to google, lest others be misled by their inane spewage:

The US Constitution

clause 8:
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;


And for mindless trolls too literal to comprehend the above as it relates to US copyright and patent law:

Findlaw's Tretise of US copyright law.