What about libraries with a BSD license? I'm trying to decide between LGPL and BSD for my new library (a big one) and have been leaning towards BSD, but haven't ruled out LGPL. If my library were of use to you, would LGPL vs BSD make a difference to you>
What I saw in 1965 was a system of converting a single photograph taken with a fisheye lens in either up or down orientation, and produced a long strip print that gave a view of the surrounding area. You could view it as an outward view and it looked kinda funny, or stick your head in the middle and view it all around and it looked really cool.
I didn't see the actual mechanism of producing it; I only saw the original fisheye image blown up, and the resultant 360 degree connected strip. But how it was done was quite obvious to me. I saw this at the Columbus (Ohio, USA) Museum of Science and Industry. If it was patented then, it has long since expired.
I don't know if this is exactly what IPIX is claiming. But if it is, then their patents are bogus for two reasons: prior art, and utterly obvious. If IPIX is basing the life of their company on this technology, then it's a doomed company.
I would agree to the extent that the patent claim is specific to what was actually invented. Too often, some specific thing was invented, then the patent claim that is filed is written more broadly (and overlooked in a government office by people not smart enough to be doing the inventing), and finally, an even broader inter-corporate threat is made, with the likelihood that it will end up being settled in such a way (the claimed infringer preferring just to not go to court) that the patent owner now has even more weaponry to fight against more principled smaller firms and individuals.
The problem is that many of these codec inventions actually overlap so much, no one can tell what's what anymore. How do we really know that what AT&T is claiming is indeed infringed by Microsoft (even if we had the source code to check)?
Thanks. Too bad things were a bit slow, and the info from the FreshAir web site was a bit misleading (e.g. giving the impression that it was live at 7PM EST and any other shows were tape delay). Maybe/. would have gotten it out faster if they knew it was an all-day same-day thing.
Linux is not broke. RealPlayer is. It spews meaningless messages then segfaults. Maybe RP might work on vanilla Redhat, but I don't run that. The programmers of RP don't know the meaning of "portability".
No, you are not the only person. However I do need a Linux solution, and I'm not interested in f#####g around with real player in Linux anymore. OTOH, I don't have that much I would need to convert.
For now, anyone who can make a conversion and put it online solves the immediate problem.
The show has already played in half the market. Now we have to deal with real audio crap to hear it. I'll just be waiting for someone who can convert it to.ogg or.mp3 to make it available.
Next time,/. needs to check the national schedule for radio shows and get the word out before the first market plays.
I'm switching from GPL to another (perhaps BSD) licensing for my code. I'm not even federally funded, so doing this is strictly my own choice. But releasing my software under BSD would allow Microsoft to integrate some or all of it into their stuff w/o having to release their own source code. Doing this in no way inhibits anyone from using my original source code. Whether Microsoft chose to use my code or not, you'd have just as much access and rights to my code. Such a choice by Microsoft would not in any way diminish the value my code would have for open public use.
The issue comes down to whether or not taxpayer funded development should be allowed to require a commercial software vendor to release their own code in source form just to be able to take advantage of that taxpayer funded development. You know by now what my opinion is.
Of course you are allowed an opinion. The issue is whether you can use taxpayer money to force your opinion on others. This is more than just inserting some comments in the case saying "Microsoft is evil and their source code should be released". Those comments would be just opinion and I'd have no problem with inserting them in funded development. But to attach a license that prevents anyone from distributing the result of taxpayer funded development in conjunction with their own development that doesn't have this same licensing is what the issue is about. And that is not what government funding and taxpayer money should be used for. If there are circumstances the code cannot be distributed, then it is limiting, and with GPL there are.
The problem is that these "certain conditions" are the problem. They are what I was referring to, so my original statement remains correct.
Specifically the condition I'm referring to is the one which requires that all other code integrated or linked with the GPL code must also be distributed in source form under GPL. You know that's the case because eventually in your posting you finally reveal it.
Your reference to "use" in "GPL is not a limit on use" is not referring to what Microsoft wants to do. Again, you know this; you're just trying to change the wording around to obscure this fact.
What you need to show is that GPL benefits taxpayers more than another license such as BSD does. Suppose someone comes up with some new innovative software and releases it. Does the public (taxpayers if federally funded) benefit more if Microsoft can integrate it into their systems (as BSD license would allow) or not (as GPL would prevent, given that they won't release all the source to everything else they do)? Whether the code Microsoft develops would benefit the public if released is not the issue (if it were, I'd be in favor of releasing it).
Personally, I would like to see the US government not buy anything from Microsoft unless it comes in as the low bidder, and meets all requirements of compatibility and quality. But I also do not want it to be funding development that ends up being used as a tool for particular eco-politicial manipulation (whether it's what I agree with or not).
For those not inclined to read the actual article:
Q: Do you view Linux and the open-source movement as a threat to Microsoft?
A: Yeah. It's good competition. It will force us to be innovative. It will force us to justify the prices and value that we deliver. And that's only healthy. The only thing we have a problem with is when the government funds open-source work. Government funding should be for work that is available to everybody. Open source is not available to commercial companies. The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. If the government wants to put something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in the public domain. Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. That's the way that the license works.
So he did say "Yeah" to "threat":-)
The GPL affects a company like Microsoft that wants to not release the source of its own changes in a way similar to the proprietary code of a commercial competitor: they can't use that source. What Microsoft is probably most upset about is that unlike a commercial competitor, they most likely will not be able to do what they usually do with such a commercial entity: buy the license or buy out the whole company.
He does point out that when the government (read: tax payer money) funds development that ends up being GPL licensed (as opposed to perhaps LGPL or BSD) that not everyone gets to freely use it the way they want. His point is that the government should be taking a neutral position on software development, and whatever it does fund should be essentially in the public domain, allowing anyone to use it anyway they see fit (as long as it's legal). I happen to agree with him in this regard. By allowing the funded developer to choose a licensing strategy such as GPL, the government is not taking a neutral position.
Steve Ballmer's error is attaching the "cancer" label to Linux. Instead it should be attached to GPL and all GPL software. That may be good or bad depending on your preferences for licensing, and whether you want to allow a commercial entity like Microsoft to use it without obligations.
This does tell me that Microsoft might be interested in using some of the GPL'd software out there. I'm not sure if that would be Linux, but it could be. Linux XP anyone?
There's yet another aspect to lowering insurance premiums in business by switching from Microsoft products to Linux or BSD. As Microsoft moves more and more to coupling your software license registration with particular hardware, that could mean that if your hardware is stolen, you may have to buy another copy of the OS and all the applications, when you buy a replacement PC. If you expect the insurance to cover that added cost, you can expect the premiums to go up with it, too. And if you think Microsoft will readily make exceptions for stolen hardware, then I think businesses will catch on and claim hardware as stolen when in fact it is just sold off to recyclers or employees (who will likely continue using the software if it's from Microsoft).
Modification has been the whole purpose of making software free in the first place. The idea is if someone has an idea to make it better, they are able to do so reasonably if they have the source code. Licenses for free software have intended this in general (and often add other things, like GPL also requires your modifications to be equally free). Therefore, IMH(IANAL)O, the right to modify free software can be implied from common usage. An ordinary person involved in these projects could assume this. And the opportunity to exclude modification rights has always been available and easy to do (just say so, clearly).
And what is modification, anyway? It's taking parts of the original, plus what you contribute, and merging them together (usually in some coherent way that works). It's not all that far a concept from use.
Thanks. I never did know all the history in how it came about. I knew most of the technology back when I was dabbling with building video circuits (before computers took over my mind). I do know that the harmonics can cause problems with the FM carrier. One problem was that there was LESS freedom to move the 4.5 MHz audio carrier around than moving the horizontal sync frequency. Moving the audio subcarrier even as much as 5 kHz could cause problems.
A lot of people think of frequency modulation as being immune to interference. That is not the case. It is relatively immune to amplitude modulation changes, but coordinated multi-frequency (e.g. from harmonics) interference can introduce changes in the effective frequency of the carrier (effective when working with the whole waveform, which is pretty much what you have to do). AM has one set of sidebands on each side of the carrier, and thus little redundancy. FM has more sidebands and more redundancy which is re-integrated by the demodulation. Introducing a single low level interfering signal will have minimal effect. Introducing another will add to the effect slightly. But if those 2 interfering signals are phase coordinated they can introduce either amplitude or frequency modulation, depending on the way they are coordinated. Harmonics are always phase coordinated. By putting adjacent harmonics (58th and 59th harmonic of horizontal sync above the color subcarrier) around the audio subcarrier, they cancel out each other's phase shift relative to 4.5 MHz, leaving just a minor amount of amplitude modulation which the FM limiter can remove.
Perhaps. There is more than one interference mode that can do that. Most TV systems use negative modulation, meaning, white reduces the carrier envelope. If it goes down too far (something out of adjustment) it can introduce an amplitude modulation onto the 4.5 MHz audio subcarrier. It's slightly worse with color than with monochrome, depending on the chroma level of the title. Another possible mode is that a non-linear stage in your TV is creating additional harmonics that stretch into the 4.5 MHz range. If those harmonics have opposite phases on opposite sides of the 4.5 MHz carrier, they can introduce frequency shifting that would get through the FM limiter.
Take DVD out of the picture for a moment, which is most of my point.
Sure, there is a cost to doing a world parallel release. I won't deny that. But now there is a cost to NOT doing so, and that cost is because the world is become less and less regionalized, especially with the Internet bringing it all closer together.
I'm saying this issue has to be solved by the motion picture industry. They have to balance their costs and they are encountering new costs in terms of market reductions that they don't even realize (because they are still clueless about the Internet).
Perhaps digital projection will be a solution here. I'm sure that will take a while before the theatres adopt it due to the high initial costs. But maybe by that time, the distribution will be via the Internet itself (hopefully, the MP industry will have their clues by then).
The NTSC color subcarrier actually overlaps the monochrome baseband signal. The design was done so that the harmonic sidebands of the quadrature modulated color subcarrier will have a minimum of mutual interference with the baseband harmonics, and the audio subcarrier which was fixed at a 4.5 MHz offset in the US. The color subcarrier was made to be exactly 63/88 times 5 MHz so it could be very tightly syncronized everywhere and still fit into all the constraints. There are 227.5 color subcarrier cycles per line, meaning the little bumps are offset 180 degrees in the next line, and less objectionable. The horizontal and vertical frequencies were then syncronized to the color subcarrier to control the artifacts.
For its time, the design was quite good, considering the requirement that the color system must work on existing monochrome TV receivers, and fit in the existing TV channel, which had a "lopsided" modulation sideband pattern. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Europe (except France) later adopted a different and somewhere better system that solved yet another problem (phase shifting in color syncronization). South American retrofited the European PAL system into their 525 line 60 Hz TV system.
Good points. I don't think they are unsolvable. They just make for a more interesting challenge.
The censoring thing could well be something that prevents many movies from ever showing up there (just because of the process involved, not because they might get a bad rating). Smaller producers simply may not be able to deal with it.
If the movie producers went ahead and launched a world-wide campaign to promote a new movie, and the the Australian censors dragged their feet on the movie, or worse, nixed it due to rating, then the movie industry could then, in the last day or 2, add a notation "not available in Australia". It would put more pressure on the censors. It's not like there isn't time to do that; I just don't know if they do or don't do their thing quickly enough there in Oz.
Your DVD players may be more expensive as a result. There will be a gray market in reselling them back to other parts of the world if multi-region players aren't available there. And the power differences won't be a problem in most cases (I can transform to most any voltage, and most 50 Hz stuff works fine at 60 Hz, and a 60-to-50 UPS isn't that hard to build for those that don't).
The system aims to protect cinema ticket sales by preventing people ordering DVD movies yet to be released in Australia.
Hey Jack Valenti. I have a free and open clue for you. Release the damned movie at the same time in Australia. And everywhere else.
It's a global world now. Back in BTI (Before The Internet), releasing a movie a year late in Australia would have no major consequences. People there didn't carry on daily conversations about all the things they love with people elsewhere in the world. But today, the world has changed, and you, Jack Valenti, need to catch up. You need the above clue so seriously.
Every movie that is released late in any part of the world isn't just going to suffer from world wide DVD distributions; it's going to suffer from world wide talk, and plot spoliers. Once a movie is out for a few weeks in the US, everyone will be talking about the ending (be it fantastic or utterly stupid) in the chat rooms, on the web boards, and in inter-office and intra-office memos of all the people working in international business. But among the participants will be people who live in regions where the movie hasn't even been released, yet. DVD won't be the only thing that can gouge into your precious first release theatre ticket sales. The Internet will, and you can't stop it.
But you can work with it. By simply doing world parallel releases, where each movie produced is released simultaneously in theatres in every country, then you'll beat even the Internet talk that can diminish your sales. And then release the DVD version later with yet another world parallel release.
Of course there will be difficulties with arranging that. As you should know, the movie industry is still entrenched with old BTI distribution methodologies that make a world parallel release difficult and costly. So change it. It only takes good leadership to steer the motion picture industry back on course into the future. Do you have it in you? Prove it to me. Or will I be watching "The Rise and Fall of an Industry: Major Motion Pictures" 10 years from now?
Slashdot Mirror
What about libraries with a BSD license? I'm trying to decide between LGPL and BSD for my new library (a big one) and have been leaning towards BSD, but haven't ruled out LGPL. If my library were of use to you, would LGPL vs BSD make a difference to you>
What I saw in 1965 was a system of converting a single photograph taken with a fisheye lens in either up or down orientation, and produced a long strip print that gave a view of the surrounding area. You could view it as an outward view and it looked kinda funny, or stick your head in the middle and view it all around and it looked really cool.
I didn't see the actual mechanism of producing it; I only saw the original fisheye image blown up, and the resultant 360 degree connected strip. But how it was done was quite obvious to me. I saw this at the Columbus (Ohio, USA) Museum of Science and Industry. If it was patented then, it has long since expired.
I don't know if this is exactly what IPIX is claiming. But if it is, then their patents are bogus for two reasons: prior art, and utterly obvious. If IPIX is basing the life of their company on this technology, then it's a doomed company.
I would agree to the extent that the patent claim is specific to what was actually invented. Too often, some specific thing was invented, then the patent claim that is filed is written more broadly (and overlooked in a government office by people not smart enough to be doing the inventing), and finally, an even broader inter-corporate threat is made, with the likelihood that it will end up being settled in such a way (the claimed infringer preferring just to not go to court) that the patent owner now has even more weaponry to fight against more principled smaller firms and individuals.
The problem is that many of these codec inventions actually overlap so much, no one can tell what's what anymore. How do we really know that what AT&T is claiming is indeed infringed by Microsoft (even if we had the source code to check)?
Thanks. Too bad things were a bit slow, and the info from the FreshAir web site was a bit misleading (e.g. giving the impression that it was live at 7PM EST and any other shows were tape delay). Maybe /. would have gotten it out faster if they knew it was an all-day same-day thing.
Linux is not broke. RealPlayer is. It spews meaningless messages then segfaults. Maybe RP might work on vanilla Redhat, but I don't run that. The programmers of RP don't know the meaning of "portability".
Fine. OGG it is. When will you have the conversion ready?
No, you are not the only person. However I do need a Linux solution, and I'm not interested in f#####g around with real player in Linux anymore. OTOH, I don't have that much I would need to convert.
For now, anyone who can make a conversion and put it online solves the immediate problem.
The show has already played in half the market. Now we have to deal with real audio crap to hear it. I'll just be waiting for someone who can convert it to .ogg or .mp3 to make it available.
Next time, /. needs to check the national schedule for radio shows and get the word out before the first market plays.
I guess we just wait until someone "frees" the audio (e.g. converts it to .ogg or .mp3) and makes it available (hint, hint).
Useful link for more info on options: www.myoptionvalue.com. While there, check out The MOV School.
I'm switching from GPL to another (perhaps BSD) licensing for my code. I'm not even federally funded, so doing this is strictly my own choice. But releasing my software under BSD would allow Microsoft to integrate some or all of it into their stuff w/o having to release their own source code. Doing this in no way inhibits anyone from using my original source code. Whether Microsoft chose to use my code or not, you'd have just as much access and rights to my code. Such a choice by Microsoft would not in any way diminish the value my code would have for open public use.
The issue comes down to whether or not taxpayer funded development should be allowed to require a commercial software vendor to release their own code in source form just to be able to take advantage of that taxpayer funded development. You know by now what my opinion is.
Of course you are allowed an opinion. The issue is whether you can use taxpayer money to force your opinion on others. This is more than just inserting some comments in the case saying "Microsoft is evil and their source code should be released". Those comments would be just opinion and I'd have no problem with inserting them in funded development. But to attach a license that prevents anyone from distributing the result of taxpayer funded development in conjunction with their own development that doesn't have this same licensing is what the issue is about. And that is not what government funding and taxpayer money should be used for. If there are circumstances the code cannot be distributed, then it is limiting, and with GPL there are.
The problem is that these "certain conditions" are the problem. They are what I was referring to, so my original statement remains correct.
Specifically the condition I'm referring to is the one which requires that all other code integrated or linked with the GPL code must also be distributed in source form under GPL. You know that's the case because eventually in your posting you finally reveal it.
Your reference to "use" in "GPL is not a limit on use" is not referring to what Microsoft wants to do. Again, you know this; you're just trying to change the wording around to obscure this fact.
What you need to show is that GPL benefits taxpayers more than another license such as BSD does. Suppose someone comes up with some new innovative software and releases it. Does the public (taxpayers if federally funded) benefit more if Microsoft can integrate it into their systems (as BSD license would allow) or not (as GPL would prevent, given that they won't release all the source to everything else they do)? Whether the code Microsoft develops would benefit the public if released is not the issue (if it were, I'd be in favor of releasing it).
Personally, I would like to see the US government not buy anything from Microsoft unless it comes in as the low bidder, and meets all requirements of compatibility and quality. But I also do not want it to be funding development that ends up being used as a tool for particular eco-politicial manipulation (whether it's what I agree with or not).
For those not inclined to read the actual article:
So he did say "Yeah" to "threat" :-)
The GPL affects a company like Microsoft that wants to not release the source of its own changes in a way similar to the proprietary code of a commercial competitor: they can't use that source. What Microsoft is probably most upset about is that unlike a commercial competitor, they most likely will not be able to do what they usually do with such a commercial entity: buy the license or buy out the whole company.
He does point out that when the government (read: tax payer money) funds development that ends up being GPL licensed (as opposed to perhaps LGPL or BSD) that not everyone gets to freely use it the way they want. His point is that the government should be taking a neutral position on software development, and whatever it does fund should be essentially in the public domain, allowing anyone to use it anyway they see fit (as long as it's legal). I happen to agree with him in this regard. By allowing the funded developer to choose a licensing strategy such as GPL, the government is not taking a neutral position.
Steve Ballmer's error is attaching the "cancer" label to Linux. Instead it should be attached to GPL and all GPL software. That may be good or bad depending on your preferences for licensing, and whether you want to allow a commercial entity like Microsoft to use it without obligations.
This does tell me that Microsoft might be interested in using some of the GPL'd software out there. I'm not sure if that would be Linux, but it could be. Linux XP anyone?
There's yet another aspect to lowering insurance premiums in business by switching from Microsoft products to Linux or BSD. As Microsoft moves more and more to coupling your software license registration with particular hardware, that could mean that if your hardware is stolen, you may have to buy another copy of the OS and all the applications, when you buy a replacement PC. If you expect the insurance to cover that added cost, you can expect the premiums to go up with it, too. And if you think Microsoft will readily make exceptions for stolen hardware, then I think businesses will catch on and claim hardware as stolen when in fact it is just sold off to recyclers or employees (who will likely continue using the software if it's from Microsoft).
Modification has been the whole purpose of making software free in the first place. The idea is if someone has an idea to make it better, they are able to do so reasonably if they have the source code. Licenses for free software have intended this in general (and often add other things, like GPL also requires your modifications to be equally free). Therefore, IMH(IANAL)O, the right to modify free software can be implied from common usage. An ordinary person involved in these projects could assume this. And the opportunity to exclude modification rights has always been available and easy to do (just say so, clearly).
And what is modification, anyway? It's taking parts of the original, plus what you contribute, and merging them together (usually in some coherent way that works). It's not all that far a concept from use.
The table nesting is definitely off by one.
Thanks. I never did know all the history in how it came about. I knew most of the technology back when I was dabbling with building video circuits (before computers took over my mind). I do know that the harmonics can cause problems with the FM carrier. One problem was that there was LESS freedom to move the 4.5 MHz audio carrier around than moving the horizontal sync frequency. Moving the audio subcarrier even as much as 5 kHz could cause problems.
A lot of people think of frequency modulation as being immune to interference. That is not the case. It is relatively immune to amplitude modulation changes, but coordinated multi-frequency (e.g. from harmonics) interference can introduce changes in the effective frequency of the carrier (effective when working with the whole waveform, which is pretty much what you have to do). AM has one set of sidebands on each side of the carrier, and thus little redundancy. FM has more sidebands and more redundancy which is re-integrated by the demodulation. Introducing a single low level interfering signal will have minimal effect. Introducing another will add to the effect slightly. But if those 2 interfering signals are phase coordinated they can introduce either amplitude or frequency modulation, depending on the way they are coordinated. Harmonics are always phase coordinated. By putting adjacent harmonics (58th and 59th harmonic of horizontal sync above the color subcarrier) around the audio subcarrier, they cancel out each other's phase shift relative to 4.5 MHz, leaving just a minor amount of amplitude modulation which the FM limiter can remove.
Perhaps. There is more than one interference mode that can do that. Most TV systems use negative modulation, meaning, white reduces the carrier envelope. If it goes down too far (something out of adjustment) it can introduce an amplitude modulation onto the 4.5 MHz audio subcarrier. It's slightly worse with color than with monochrome, depending on the chroma level of the title. Another possible mode is that a non-linear stage in your TV is creating additional harmonics that stretch into the 4.5 MHz range. If those harmonics have opposite phases on opposite sides of the 4.5 MHz carrier, they can introduce frequency shifting that would get through the FM limiter.
Take DVD out of the picture for a moment, which is most of my point.
Sure, there is a cost to doing a world parallel release. I won't deny that. But now there is a cost to NOT doing so, and that cost is because the world is become less and less regionalized, especially with the Internet bringing it all closer together.
I'm saying this issue has to be solved by the motion picture industry. They have to balance their costs and they are encountering new costs in terms of market reductions that they don't even realize (because they are still clueless about the Internet).
Perhaps digital projection will be a solution here. I'm sure that will take a while before the theatres adopt it due to the high initial costs. But maybe by that time, the distribution will be via the Internet itself (hopefully, the MP industry will have their clues by then).
The NTSC color subcarrier actually overlaps the monochrome baseband signal. The design was done so that the harmonic sidebands of the quadrature modulated color subcarrier will have a minimum of mutual interference with the baseband harmonics, and the audio subcarrier which was fixed at a 4.5 MHz offset in the US. The color subcarrier was made to be exactly 63/88 times 5 MHz so it could be very tightly syncronized everywhere and still fit into all the constraints. There are 227.5 color subcarrier cycles per line, meaning the little bumps are offset 180 degrees in the next line, and less objectionable. The horizontal and vertical frequencies were then syncronized to the color subcarrier to control the artifacts.
Here is a starting point for more info.
For its time, the design was quite good, considering the requirement that the color system must work on existing monochrome TV receivers, and fit in the existing TV channel, which had a "lopsided" modulation sideband pattern. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Europe (except France) later adopted a different and somewhere better system that solved yet another problem (phase shifting in color syncronization). South American retrofited the European PAL system into their 525 line 60 Hz TV system.
If so, would that let me ship my pr0n CDs into Oz?
Good points. I don't think they are unsolvable. They just make for a more interesting challenge.
The censoring thing could well be something that prevents many movies from ever showing up there (just because of the process involved, not because they might get a bad rating). Smaller producers simply may not be able to deal with it.
If the movie producers went ahead and launched a world-wide campaign to promote a new movie, and the the Australian censors dragged their feet on the movie, or worse, nixed it due to rating, then the movie industry could then, in the last day or 2, add a notation "not available in Australia". It would put more pressure on the censors. It's not like there isn't time to do that; I just don't know if they do or don't do their thing quickly enough there in Oz.
Your DVD players may be more expensive as a result. There will be a gray market in reselling them back to other parts of the world if multi-region players aren't available there. And the power differences won't be a problem in most cases (I can transform to most any voltage, and most 50 Hz stuff works fine at 60 Hz, and a 60-to-50 UPS isn't that hard to build for those that don't).
Hey Jack Valenti. I have a free and open clue for you. Release the damned movie at the same time in Australia. And everywhere else.
It's a global world now. Back in BTI (Before The Internet), releasing a movie a year late in Australia would have no major consequences. People there didn't carry on daily conversations about all the things they love with people elsewhere in the world. But today, the world has changed, and you, Jack Valenti, need to catch up. You need the above clue so seriously.
Every movie that is released late in any part of the world isn't just going to suffer from world wide DVD distributions; it's going to suffer from world wide talk, and plot spoliers. Once a movie is out for a few weeks in the US, everyone will be talking about the ending (be it fantastic or utterly stupid) in the chat rooms, on the web boards, and in inter-office and intra-office memos of all the people working in international business. But among the participants will be people who live in regions where the movie hasn't even been released, yet. DVD won't be the only thing that can gouge into your precious first release theatre ticket sales. The Internet will, and you can't stop it.
But you can work with it. By simply doing world parallel releases, where each movie produced is released simultaneously in theatres in every country, then you'll beat even the Internet talk that can diminish your sales. And then release the DVD version later with yet another world parallel release.
Of course there will be difficulties with arranging that. As you should know, the movie industry is still entrenched with old BTI distribution methodologies that make a world parallel release difficult and costly. So change it. It only takes good leadership to steer the motion picture industry back on course into the future. Do you have it in you? Prove it to me. Or will I be watching "The Rise and Fall of an Industry: Major Motion Pictures" 10 years from now?
Well, they can't really make it free, but it could be very low cost, charging for the administrative cost, not the amount of space.