What if Hollywood had to use tech like we have to watch movies?

http://www.aaronklein.com/2012/01/hollywood-edition/

by aaronklein • 14 years ago

663 112 14 years ago

sounds• 14 years ago

Pure genius. You can, by the way, offer better licensing to specific companies and unaffiliated individuals -- leaving Hollywood with the unskippable ads, "premium tweets," and all the rest.

Good luck, however, winning in court to enforce your license.

aaronklein6• 14 years ago

But what if by losing, the court invalidates all of Hollywood's ridiculous licensing ploys as well? That would be winning by losing. :)

dredmorbius• 14 years ago

That's the legal ju-jitsu performed by the GNU GPL and related copyleft licenses.

The stronger the anti-misappropriation measures of copyright law, the stronger the sharing (and compulsory re-licensing) provisions of the GPL.

Playing other legal regimens against themselves in a similar fashion is a creative and often effective strategy.

jerf• 14 years ago

As mentioned on the Wikipedia page for EULAs towards the end [1], the solution is to encase absolutely everything in DRM, making it a DMCA violation to remove the DRM without permission. Then, Google permits everybody except Hollywood to remove it freely.

Oh, and while the DMCA requires DRM to be "effective", that has proved to be a low bar.

More seriously, EULA case results are mixed, and Wikipedia's somewhat sarcastic first sentence of that section as I write this is broadly correct: "The enforceability of an EULA depends on several factors, one of them being the court in which the case is heard." Maybe there's some other legal doctrine about contracts that would knock this out, but it's not immediately obvious to me that this couldn't be done. (Not that it will, of course.)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enfo...

nitrogen• 14 years ago

Oh, and while the DMCA requires DRM to be "effective", that has proved to be a low bar.

I think the "effective" in "No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."[0] probably means something more like "has the intended effect of" rather than "does a good job at."

[0] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_0...

ajuc• 14 years ago

Brilliant, but they will just use pirated versions. Or regular versions.

Silhouette• 14 years ago

That's fine, as long as they don't mind having their entire studio's Internet access cut off if any three people who ever wrote a piece of software each allege that someone from the studio downloaded that software illegally, based on the fact that at least one IP address that was allocated to the studio's domain at the time was observed downloading a file that contained the unique identifying mark "int main() {". Also, each developer who agrees to do this automatically gets $150,000 in statutory damages for every file containing that mark that anyone from any studio IP address ever downloaded.

blhack• 14 years ago

pre-edit: nevermind, Aaron removed it. Better now :)

Whatever that black popdown thing is called is really, really obnoxious.

Here is what it looks like in my browser: http://imgur.com/cKiYN

Chrome 16.0.9 on Snow Leopard.

The problem is that it covers text as I'm scrolling through the page.

To recreate it: start scrolling down the page.

aaronklein6• 14 years ago

I agree. Readers were asking me for share and tweet buttons, even though they were in the post, but that pop down is annoying. I killed it.

joejohnson• 14 years ago

I can't recreate this in Chrome or Safari on OSX Lion. Are my corner actions preventing me from seeing it?

aaronklein6• 14 years ago

I killed it. Only added it because some readers were having a hard time finding the "share" buttons. I'll find a better solution.

mrleinad• 14 years ago

I think Hollywood is just a facàde for the US government. A while ago, Hillary Clinton admitted the US government is losing the "information war"[1]. What could possibly be better for winning an information war, than to pass legislation like this, under the guise of "fighting piracy"? The government could not be seen as promoting this kind of legislation.. otherwise, they´d be on the same league as Iran or China..

Hollywood´s not the problem. Your government is.

[1] Hilary Clinton Admits US Is Losing The "Information War": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMoeDaLV2WA

tkahn6• 14 years ago

It's wonderfully hypocritical that Russia Today is accusing the US of pushing propaganda and stifling disenting perspective.

wisty• 14 years ago

A long time ago, the US pushed Hollywood because they knew it would essentially be free advertising for everything else the US sold. That's probably unnecessary these days. It's pretty obvious from certain comments that Hollywood is helping members keep their seats (via campaign funding), and threatening to pull the funding of anyone who rocks the boat.

It's like a Hollywood movie, about a beast (or robot) which ends up overpowering its master.

hunterp• 14 years ago

This is petty and immature.

quink• 14 years ago

You, Mr. living in San Diego, are trying to get KWIK24, PBS Wikipedia LA, instead of KOSA13, PBS Wikipedia San Diego, aren't you?

Well, unfortunately we know that you can't get it over 3G or 4G because you're outside the reception area and we've encrypted KWIK24 to be received by people in LA only on Fibre or ADSL.

KOSA13 might have 30 second ads before each article, doesn't carry half of the most popular articles and re-compresses every image with a watermark, but that's not our problem.

ericflo• 14 years ago

Hollywood business aside, I think you just came up with Twitter's business model. I'm joking, but only somewhat.

marshray• 14 years ago

Twitter? Oh I remember them. They were popular back in the MySpace days right? Silly of them to drive away their users with the lag punishment paywalls like that. As I recall it, folks seemed to be wandering over to Facebook and G+ by then anyway.

d5tryr• 14 years ago

Thankfully we can use a user's ip adress to ensure this only effects Hollywood executives.

rockarage7• 14 years ago

This is just sad, I get the impression from the comments and up votes that tech does not get Hollywood. Hollywood business only work because only Hollywood is willing to give Christopher Nolan 200+ million dollars to make Dark Knight, ditto with James Cameron's Avatar. When Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook or Yahoo decides to give a Christopher Nolan or James Cameron $200million+ to make a movie, things will be different. Then these multinationals can distribute to everyone who wants to buy the movie without DRM, without regional restriction and at a competitive price. Until then everything is just posturing, indie budgets will not change Hollywood. Tech world has competition, but only Hollywood is making these big budget productions.

edit: not sure why this is getting down voted, it would be interesting to see a counterpoint.

mathattack• 14 years ago

Interesting comment. I think the Avatars go away in a post-Hollywood world, but the smaller movies will thrive.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

I don't think they would. Hollywood budgets are partly due to Hollywood accounting. If movies were set up along startup lines (where only some folks get a guaranteed salary and the vast majority of earnings by everyone comes in the form of profit sharing) then I think you'd still see very big, expensive to make movies.

panza• 14 years ago

You've just proposed an odd dichotomy: that big budget films can only be funded through Hollywood with DRM and other restrictions, or by technology companies without DRM and other restrictions.

You're going to need to elaborate on that, because on the face it, this sounds absurd.

rockarage7• 14 years ago

That is not correct, DRM and other restrictions do not fund big budget films. Those things actually take away profits from film in the form convoluted distribution cost. see: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3514416 . Big budget films can only be funded by companies with the money and will to do so. Large tech companies have the money and means to produce & distribute big budget films, they just have to be willing to do it.

saulrh• 14 years ago

On the other hand, Apple gives Steve Jobs $200million+ to make an iPad, and Microsoft certainly gives someone 200 million dollars to make Windows.next. Google gave someone $200 million to develop Android. We just don't see it as much because software doesn't depend on personalities as much.

rockarage7• 14 years ago

Yes, and Microsoft is spending billions on Bing, if Google pulled a so called Hollywood move, by making Google search a pain to use, people will start using Bing more. We don't have that with big budget films. DRM died in the music industry, in part, because a number of popular artist, like Trent of NIN were not afraid to go direct to fans without DRM.

naner• 14 years ago

it would be interesting to see a counterpoint.

Sure.

1. Just because this is the way things work doesn't mean this is the only way things can work.

2. We aren't entitled to have Dark Knights and Avatars. Lets assume that, for whatever reason, in New Hollywood it will only be feasible to fund smaller budget movies. So what? People will still watch and enjoy the smaller-budget movies.

peterhunt3• 14 years ago

But I, and many other people, am willing to pay for these big budget movies even if I have to sit through ads. I like big-budget flicks.

rockarage7• 14 years ago

"Just because this is the way things work doesn't mean this is the only way things can work"

That is true, but the current reality is: these are the current cost to make big budget films, just like I would like buy a brand new Mac Book Pro for $500.00 but that's not going to happen any time soon.

And yes we are not entitled to have Dark Knights and Avatars, we did not always have big budget films. Big budget films are the only advantage Hollywood has, if it were not for these big budget films we would not be talking about Hollywood.

The reality is people want to watch some of these big budget films, that's why there is piracy, that's why we writing about it.

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

I for one think it'd be really interesting if a tech conglomerate paid for a bunch of moderate-budget movies and distributed them exclusively through YouTube or other online sources, or distributed them to cinemas but did something Google-y with admissions and tickets. If Google just took 50% of opening revenues I am sure the cinemas would be thrilled to accommodate. Hollywood would seriously wig out. That is the kind of business we need to kill off the wickedness of the MPAA.

meta• 14 years ago

Like? Require all ticket purchases be done on a G+ account and before you get to the theatre. Mine the purchases for the most relevant ad from all the people who purchased tickets (80% of the G+ accounts like..., 50% like..., etc). Show the ads in stock that are most relevant and also re-sell the ticket stats back to the advertisers. Offer a discount on your next ticket purchase if you blog/comment/review the movie (and feed that back into your G+ data-mine profile).

Feedback to advertisers will increase relevant ad pool to make better matches from ticket purchases. Advertisers get more data to target their ads to a better audience. G+ profile gets more data for profiling. Win win win. ;)

drumdance• 14 years ago

Blockbusters are not the only movies that get made. Let Hollywood keep Batman. In the meantime, it's not hard to imagine a new way of making and distributing Mad Men and Portlandia.

cynicalkane• 14 years ago

Mad Men is a big-budget TV show. Its per episode budget is north of $2 million.

fabjan• 14 years ago

A counterpoint to what, exactly?

Your comment seems to have nothing at all to do with the link.

tomjen3• 14 years ago

It is properly downvoted because it is wrong.

Until Bieber came along, the most watched clip ever (Charlie bit my finger), having been seen 100 of millions of times cost a few cents of electricity to produce.

This indicates that there is an entire market out there which Hollywood is incapable of satisfying but which could easily be filled by a start up.

cageface• 14 years ago

I shudder to think of a future in which gimmick YouTube videos make up the bulk of commercially available entertainment.

jiggy2011• 14 years ago

I'm not sure there's an entire market out there wanting to pay to watch "charlie bit my finger" and if there are I don't want anything to do with them!

Having said that there are a load of genuinely quite funny and well put together pieces of content on youtube that come from amateurs. Problem is most of them distribute the content for free because they want to use it as a stepping stone to a job with BigMediaCo who can pay them $$$.

rockarage7• 14 years ago

Long before youtube, there was a show called American funniest home videos. You should check it out.

alextingle3• 14 years ago

Do you seriously believe that a $200 million movie is ten times better than a $20 million movie? Or a hundred times better than a $2 million movie??

Fargren• 14 years ago

It surely takes less time to see than on hundred $2 million movies. I'd much rather watch one good movie than 10 decent ones. Not that movie budget has anything to do with quality, but still.

teamonkey• 14 years ago

No, but it might be over 10 times more profitable than a $20 million movie, or over 100 times more profitable than a $2 million movie. Big budget movies have a greater potential RoR.

nextparadigms2• 14 years ago

Silicon Valley doesn't have to take on Hollywood head-on. That's almost always the wrong strategy to try to beat an incumbent.

The way you beat an incumbent leader is by changing the rules of the games so it's very hard for that company to play that new game, whether it's because they lack the competency or because the have internal conflicts of interest for doing that (think of the TV networks not really wanting to go full-web because it would eat into their much larger profits from traditional advertising).

Of course you don't just change the rules for the sake of changing the. This new game must also feel like the "future" of that market, and you need to be able to attract not only Hollywood "non-consumption", but also be able to transition Hollywood's "consumers" over time to your company (or companies - I still think that what would kill Hollywood is an entire different ecosystem for creating, distributing and watching movie, and not just a movie juggernaut like Hollywood).

eftpotrm• 14 years ago

Significantly, tech already has. How often do we hear numbers quoted that the gaming industry now grosses more than films?

Displacing the influence of the old leader in the community mindset is certainly a known problem and one that we've seen in other sectors. But, there's no disputing it - the kids are spending their time playing games rather more than watching films, and Hollywood isn't set up to produce interactive, dynamic content.

The rules of the game have been changed, and tech has won. Gaming beats films, and sooner or later people will realise it.

technoslut2• 14 years ago

I agree with you but doing so means that you have to acquire the talent to build the new business model. No major tech company seems to want to take that risk.

darklajid• 14 years ago

At which point in the past did we establish that these wages are in _any_ way reasonable. We talk about a 'bubble' in our sector every other day. And you seem to imply (please, correct me if I missed the point) that these are 'market rates' and need to be payed by someone to get a decent end result. Which then kind of defends the existence of Hollywood as the one to make it happen.

I'd argue that this is turning the thing on its head. The Hollywood crowd overcharges from the position of a quasi monopoly that is protected by IP and copyright laws in most places of the world. They dictate the prices and are therefor able to sustain the costs of having to pay ridiculous (you can argue, but there's no way in hell I change my pov on this one) amounts of money to single persons for 'a project'.

Take away the quasi monopoly and yes, dear god: 200million+ might be a tad too much. But the market will adapt and we'll find awesome actors that are happy to do that job for 300.000 USD per year. Or less. No idea - let's find out.

MrScruff• 14 years ago

Great, but how are you planning on paying the rest of the production, which after all makes up the majority of that $200 million.

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

Directors get huge payouts for the same reason athletes or other performers get huge payouts: simply because they generate a TON of money AND because the pool of potential candidates is so small that there is no one to undercut the rate. That $xx million ($200 mil was the budget for the whole film fyi) that the director got paid is a fraction of the total revenue generated by a major blockbuster like The Dark Knight, just as the 10-30 million an athlete receives is a fraction of the revenue he generates for the owners. You simply can't get around the fact that many people will spend a lot of money on entertainment, and even if we don't think actors and directors deserve all of that money in terms of social contributions and the long-term redeeming value of their work, the numbers don't lie: they get big payouts simply because they generate lots of money.

The same principle applies in other jobs, the values are just much smaller.

wazoox2• 14 years ago

Christopher Nolan doesn't deserve, or need 200 millions. The fact that Hollywood celebrities receive so much money is a symptom that something isn't right.

o1iver• 14 years ago

I never get arguments like this. In a perfect market every entity tries to get as much money as the market is willing to pay. There are some pretty extreme example such as this one, but in the whole that is a good thing!

jonhohle• 14 years ago

Christopher Nolan is given command of a 200 million budget, that's not his compensation for directing, writing, and producing. He probably earns a few million per movie - for creating something that brings his employer over a billion in revenue. That means he is only making a thousandth of what he generated. That seems like a fair return to me.

paganel• 14 years ago

We did very fine, thank you, before Nolan's "Dark Knight" or Cameron's "Avatar" hit the screens, and I'm saying this as a movie freak. In fact, I'd say that the only difference between Melies' movies (which he did as an independent producer back in the day) and "Avatar" is only a technological one, not an artistic one.

technoslut2• 14 years ago

>This is just sad, I get the impression from the comments and up votes that tech does not get Hollywood. Hollywood business only work because only Hollywood is willing to give Christopher Nolan 200+ million dollars to make Dark Knight, ditto with James Cameron's Avatar.

Your comment is somewhat ridiculous because these examples are not risks. Christopher Nolan was well known before Batman Begins in writing Memento. James Cameron wrote the script for the original Terminator and directed Aliens, T2 and the highest grossing film of all time in Titanic. Anyone would've bet on these two individuals.

rockarage7• 14 years ago

I never said anything about risk, I said willing. The tech world giants so far has not been willing to produce a Hollywood type blockbuster film. I think it is a matter of will not risk.

gaius• 14 years ago

Counterpoint: Kevin Costner

gerggerg• 14 years ago

Most importantly, we should send them extortionate threats of law-suit based on easily fake-able evidence that claim they owe us thousands of dollars just to get us to not send them more letters.

And then when they stop using our service we'll say it must be because they're doing something illegal.

dirtbox• 14 years ago

Hollywood are not in the business of offering a service, only a product. This is mostly why the two aren't compatible and why they aren't interested in developing it.

The thinking is that a product is far more profitable and has higher gains than a service which bleeds money by comparison due to it's constant maintenance costs, upkeep and customer care and that drop in profit would make their pyramid business model unsustainable.

fleitz• 14 years ago

I think this is great, we should add a licensing clause for this, if you work for a subsidiary of an MPAA member you have to check a box to get the Hollywood edition else you are not entitled to use the software, perhaps even a Hollywood IP database for internet companies.

If Hollywood execs had to sit through 5 minutes of ads to use Google they'd soon get the message.

Anyone have any ideas on how to get the IP blocks of MPAA member companies? Is there anything better than just whois'ing every class A/B/C?

I'm thinking of a javascript that creates a black modal dialog with a youtube video queue of startup video ads. Use the chromeless video player, I'll even max the volume for them.

Simple one line addition to your site and voila your startup/site/blog is Hollywood Edition.

mishmash• 14 years ago

> Anyone have any ideas on how to get the IP blocks of MPAA member companies?

It's been tried before. Maintaining the list is very difficult for the exact same reasons that would have made PIPA/SOPA technically inept.

e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerGuardian

cookiecaper3• 14 years ago

Such lists continue in wide use. Of course they are not foolproof, but it does help.

lordlicorice• 14 years ago

Also it's definitely a shotgun approach, and tons of innocent people would be affected. For example, bluetack's most conservative list level1 (http://www.iblocklist.com/list.php?list=bt_level1) includes any organization with significant intellectual property.

paul9290• 14 years ago

The Twitter one sounds good then you realize an entrepreneur will come in and create a Twitter for Hollywood types. Twitter would lose millions of users to this competitor, as following celebrities draws millions.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> Since they’re so persnickety about licensing agreements,

I'm not convinced that they are. I'm sure that an audit of Hollywood software licensing would find many unlicensed copied (their word "stolen") bits of software.

MarkTraceur3• 14 years ago

I love this article for its irony, intentional or no.

The author cites perfect examples of why the software industry is exactly like Hollywood with its products. Word? Need a license key. Can't open or save ODT files without annoying popups. Apple? Don't even try to partition the system or it will break, and don't use the software on non-Apple hardware. Certainly don't try jailbreaking it. Google? Can we talk about privacy policies?

Of course, the biggest problem is that none of those instances of software are even accessible (fully) by their users. The user can't change the software, they can't even use the software in every capacity.

So I guess the real question is, why are we still acting like Hollywood?

SquareWheel• 14 years ago

"Certainly don't try jailbreaking it. Google? Can we talk about privacy policies?"

Could you explain that? I've been jailbreaking for, maybe five years now, and it's very easy. And I think Google's new privacy policies are an improvement over the old.

Maybe that's your point, but I'm not sure what you're getting at.

MarkTraceur3• 14 years ago

Well, the Google privacy policies have been consolidated, which means less piecewise freedom for people who use one or two Google products. I, for example, use Mail and (barely) use Search. I don't need to agree to things about Google+!

And jailbreaking Apple devices, while possible and, in some cases, easy, has never been encouraged by or even considered by Apple. In order to jailbreak, you have to find exploits in the software. This is opposed to free software, where you are able to do anything you want with the phone's software from the start--no exploits, no jailbreaking, just freedom.

zimbatm• 14 years ago

We're sorry, this tweet is not yet available in your country but we are working hard to make it possible !

aaronklein6• 14 years ago

Ha! Awesome. Should have thought of that one.

mrebus• 14 years ago

They probably do. I download movies and they probably download tech.

sofuture• 14 years ago

It's mind boggling that people treat being able to consume (fettered or not) media as a god-given right. The suggestion here is that our best option is to 'be terrible' to old media until they understand what it's like to be treated poorly?

You want to know how to fix things?

Stop buying what they sell.

aaronklein6• 14 years ago

That's not my take at all.

The content companies do believe they are God's gift to mankind and they have some very anti-customer policies. They think they are optimizing their revenue from such policies.

I think they underestimate the kind of growth they could see if they started treating their customers the way that most of the tech industry does.

Tech is far from perfect, but it does a better job of being customer centric.

nyar• 14 years ago

That article is dumb in its examples, lets consider something more realistic.

Every developer from this point onward adds a licensing clause for holywood execs - if that product is showcased during the movie a certain amount is owed to the developer at this point. Start putting it in every single app they will start making mistakes.

The other day I saw Open Office 2.0 in Girl with Dragon Tattoo - Libre office could easily add this clause.

eurleif• 14 years ago

>Libre office could easily add this clause.

That clause is incompatible with the LGPL, and Libre Office doesn't do copyright assignment, so there are many copyright holders, all of whom would have to agree to the licensing change. Not so easy.

yycom• 14 years ago

Humour.

To everyone taking this seriously, please remember, variously, "two wrongs don't make a right", the "golden rule" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule), "don't stoop to their level", etc.

What if Hollywood had to use tech like we have to watch movies?

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