7 ms·

The Cost of Good Movies

78 points by flannery 3y ago

MrVandemar 3y ago
Excellent long-form article. A very thoughtful look on studio/streaming economics, the vanishing long tail, and the writers strikes and AI, short-films and bandcamp and discoverability … a lot to unpack.
542458 3y ago
I can’t help but feel that fighting for residuals for digital extras is a losing cause. Regardless of what you negotiate, the studios will probably eliminate the “scanning actual humans” step sooner rather than later and replace the entire thing with something like Unreal’s Metahumans.
- falcor84 3y ago
  To the best of my knowledge, all metahumans are (at the moment) based on scans of real humans, with approaches like this - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/how-to-use-realitycapture-to-scan-yourself-for-mesh-to-metahuman https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/how-to-use-realityca...
hyperion2010 3y ago
> This is why I introduced the concept at the beginning of royalties for AI work. Ultimately AI is not an alien brain generating texts or images from its own imagination. Neural networks and large language learning models input real people’s intellectual property and output that intellectual property when prompted by someone using the program. The novelness of the output is merely how the IP is reformatted to fit the parameters of the user’s prompts. The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness. The threat is the even further enclosure of the commons and the expropriation of culture by corporate interests who actively seek to destroy common culture by preventing the very people whose participation in a now privatized "culture" enables corporate profits, from ever earning a cent because they do not "own" the "IP" to the characters that they love and that are only common because they are a shared element of a common culture. It is absurd. If media corporations had to compensate whenever someone mentioned a trade marked character because it counted as advertising then let them keep their "culture" private. Until then, they are the beneficiaries of billions of dollars of stolen advertising and stolen culture.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  To expound on your point, corporations will be able to use AI - giant conglomerates such as Disney, that own enough media to train AI models on only works they own copyright on (and own enough senators to make sure those copyrights last), will happily use AI. But you, peasant, can only train it on century+ old works. Because "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", nothing post-WWII may become public domain, or artists will starve and culture wither.
  - harshreality 3y ago
    For a longer form version of this argument, Cybergem's "AI vs Blood Mouse": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk
- lapcat 3y ago
  > The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness. I disagree. As a cinephile and bibliophile, I'm often astounded by the creativity of writers. I don't know where they get their inspiration. Sadly, I don't possess such creative inspiration myself, despite having read "the classical western canon". Much of the great work is actually autobiographical, taken from the writer's own life rather than derivative from previous work.
  - jack_pp 3y ago
    Yeah, I've listened to tens of thousands of hours of music, especially Hip-Hop. Couldn't rhyme to save my life
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I would argue that autobiographical content is no less derivative than reading a book or watching a film, then retelling it. Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference.
bee_rider 3y ago
It is going to be weird in the future, when people realize how much use these companies get out of things like the $200 scan and perpetual license to somebody’s likeness, and as a result stop using them. All art will be presumably based on remixing a set of scans from between like 2020 and 2025.
- harshreality 3y ago
  Will that be significant 15 years from now? I imagine most work by then using 3d models that aren't based on any particular person, to avoid license fees. I can't imagine this strike ending with one-time payments for perpetual license to use actors' likenesses. However, even royalties based on screen time of AI-generated derivatives of their likenesses won't save their jobs in the longer term.
  - oezi 3y ago
    In 15 years I would expect a large percentage of stand-ins to be CG but also that there are various movies which are entirely generated bybl extensions of today's diffusion models. The actor personalities there-in will have been either created on the fly or supplied as previously created to the generator software.
powera 3y ago
I didn't like the article. Very long, and very shallow. It seems to take as an axiom that the status-quo of "residuals"-based payments is worth defending at all costs.
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago
  [dead]
saucymew 3y ago
After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-form films. Social media/TikTok videos own the top of the attention economy ladder now, not movies. This trend is not reversing anytime soon.
- throwawee 3y ago
  It's kind of inevitable. I grew up hearing movies decried as brain-rotting, imagination-killing junk food preventing everyone from reading a good book like nature intended. Of course the medium would be dethroned by something even more accessible. When there's something even more convenient people will latch on to that instead. Expect nostalgia for the good ol' days when social media used to instill community values and awareness into the youth.
  - hinoki 3y ago
    > The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth Exactly, same as it ever was.
- zamadatix 3y ago
  I wonder if the shift has more to do with movie theater attendance absolutely tanking for COVID-19. Even in 2023 ticket sales have been significantly less than the relatively constant rate for the few decades prior. The advertised/direct fill in was of course streaming services but these lean away from the typical blockbuster film content or even full length films at all. I'm not ruling out new social media content trends as a factor in the trend change completely, or as an alternative fill in, but short form social media content doesn't really explain why the "why" for a recent shift. After all, it's not like TikTok invented quick social media content it's just a popular modern choice.
- 3y ago
g42gregory 3y ago
As a general rule (there are notable exceptions), I don't watch any movies made past 2019/20. Most of them seem to have some sort of a messaging embedded inside. Regardless of the nature of the messaging, I figure that they should pay me for watching it, not the other way around. I hope this would change soon. John Wick was awesome though...
- watwut 3y ago
  If you don't like movies with messaging, I have bad new for you about pretty much whole movies history. Because, oh boy, old movies were quite big on messaging ... and they even had codes/guidlines to ensure messaging is right.
  - g42gregory 3y ago
    That's a good point. I used to watch NCIS and liked it a lot. Then I learned that certain contractors were literally financing the production. I lost interest soon thereafter.
AlbertCory 3y ago
It's Shameless Self-Promotion Time again! https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-one-the-movies https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o... I started the Cinema Club at Google, which is still going on, AFAIK. You can download the list of the 300 or so movies which I put on. I really don't care about MCU, Harry Potter, Hollywood studios, AI, or Rotten Tomatoes. It's pointless to rage about it. Just offer an alternative. I'd rather show a great movie that no one comes to than a garbage one that attracts big crowds. Once in a while we had a film that was both: Chinatown, Rashomon. Our reaction to anyone was, "You can start your own movie club. We'll help you; here are all the secrets." The big secret was just to ask the boss for the money; 10 in a row said Yes. The most common thing people said to me was, "You guys show some great movies. But I have to leave to catch the shuttle!"
- BLKNSLVR 3y ago
  I've wanted to do something like this, but I'm not sure of the 'public viewing' licensing / permissions / royalties required. I looked it up a while back, but life got in the way and so the idea was mostly lost (thanks for the reminder).
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    You can get Public Performance Rights. They ask (1) how big is the venue, (2) are you charging money, and (3) is it advertised outside your organization. Remember: it's negotiable. Besides MPLC, there is Swank.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      One more thing: if you're not fixated on the big budget Hollywood flicks, there are a ton of smaller distributors; usually easier to deal with.
tompagenet2 3y ago
Genuine question that I couldn't see in the article; does everyone on a film get residuals, or just the more notable roles like writer and actor? If not, did e.g. a lighting specialist not contribute at least as much as a person whose face was scanned?
- brightlancer 3y ago
  AFAICT, all credited directors, writers and actors get residuals; production crew do not get residuals directly, but it's paid into health and retirement funds; uncredited actors get nada. https://www.ep.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-film-and-television-residuals/ https://www.ep.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-film-and-tele... https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/hollywood-unions-streaming-service-pay-74135/ https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/hollywood-unions-...
atleastoptimal 3y ago
All this actors-writers artists rights debate as of late feels like the last cries into the darkness before media, culture and the entire dialectic of creation and consumption changes forever and AI becomes THE thing behind everything. Custom generated movies, first person VR experiences, all the pleasures of a world soon to placate humans as their minds lose ascendancy on the cognitive totem pole to artificial intelligence.
slushh 3y ago
>My favorite model for a distribution platform is BandCamp. > On much of the free-to-play music, the audience can listen to the album twice before the content locks and BandCamp asks you pay to continue listening to it. easterneuropeanmovies.com[1] comes close. Obviously, watching movies twice before paying doesn't work. Instead, easterneuropeanmovies.com allows you to watch the beginning of the movies for free. If artists want a platform like BandCamp, they should create a pool of available movies that platform creators could instantly use. Now, it's difficult to establish a new platform because it's not enough to program the software. The movies have to be licensed and an audience has to be acquired. If artists already take care of the license side, and if they help with acquiring an audience, they could lay the foundation for their favorite distribution channel. [1] https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/ https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/
mk_stjames 3y ago
> But if I did edit a feature length film that became a major box-office hit, I should get some residuals to help tide me over. This is the line that made me sit and think about this whole construct for a bit. I've worked as an engineer for multi-billion-dollar companies. I've designed components and whole systems that then get put into mass production and stay in production for years. Safety-critical in some cases. Some of those components are still being made today and still generating revenue for those companies, nearly a decade after I moved on. Should my work back then be continuously rewarded if that company still uses that design, unchanged, and still generates revenue from it? I've since gone into consulting, and as a private contractor I work similar stints as a hollywood editor- sometimes I do not have a steady client for many months at a time. It would be great if my engineering work for companies past could 'hold me over' via residuals. But that isn't how getting paid for my time works. I just bid my hourly rates accordingly, of course. You could say stock options in companies are similarly equivalent to residual checks for hollywood, but... it's not. Stock prices aren't always tied to anything rational (although... I don't know how hollywood accounting is either). And they aren't something that are guaranteed to be negotiable or granted post-facto. What I'm trying to point out here is... a lot of people in Hollywood seem to think they have something special somehow and aren't at the will of a market to set prices. If they want better profit sharing, there should be ways to do that, but its ultimately down to setting your prices and being paid for your time and thats is how it works for nearly everyone else in the world who 'creates' things.
- dijit 3y ago
  I had a similar discussion on Tiktok of all places regarding the Rachel Zellger comments on her playing Snow White. “I had to sit 17 hours in a Disney Princess dress! I want money for every hour it is watched” and I had a similar thought to you. I feel like its a good idea but I’ve definitely missed something with capitalism: I thought the notion of being paid for your time leaves the fruits of that labour in the rightful hands of those who “invested” the capital up front to pay you. If thats the case then getting residuals is directly against that notion at least, but hey, its what they negotiated so good on them. However, where would that end hypothetically- what makes artistic works more inherently valuable in the long tail? I mean- aside from the fact that we all agree. Why is design work, or even craftsmanship not rewarded the same? Its not like there is additional work to be done for artistic works. It it because of likeness? I don’t fully understand.
nullc 3y ago
> Scrolling through it is tough, but not because of too many options, but because too many repeats. Repeats and already seens. I seldom want to rewatch movies, I do so usually only to show someone some classic they missed. So I find the interface of netflix (and youtube, for that matter) infuriating in that they seem heavily centered on showing me things that I've already seen and don't have any option to suppress them. What the heck is with that? While my preference to see something new might not be the majority of their views, I assume that most people will want to see something new at least some of the time-- so why isn't this an option? If anything it should make the service more sticky since they'll have hold of that already-seen data. Now some better search -- year ranges, category/keyword, credits search, etc. but presumably that would take a lot of work compared to just letting me skip the stuff I've seen or seen recently.
- tpmx 3y ago
  The presumed Netflix UX prime directive: Mask the shallowness/low average quality of the catalog at all costs. Similar, and as the article notes: Why can't you see an alphabetical list of content by category?
bambax 3y ago
IP is like the car: an interesting idea that has been pushed way too far. It's hard to even imagine the number of problems that would go away instantly if we got rid of it. And if someone wonders if people would stop creating if there was no more IP: 1/ Creators always create; that's what they do. 2/ Arguably, the best works of art were created before IP even existed (invented at the very end of the 18th century). 3/ And most importantly, IP doesn't pay creators. That's the whole point of the article. IP pays the studios' CEO ridiculous salaries, and their lawyers' whose sole job is to create artificial scarcity.

78 points by flannery 3y ago

Excellent long-form article. A very thoughtful look on studio/streaming economics, the vanishing long tail, and the writers strikes and AI, short-films and bandcamp and discoverability … a lot to unpack.

542458 3y ago

I can’t help but feel that fighting for residuals for digital extras is a losing cause. Regardless of what you negotiate, the studios will probably eliminate the “scanning actual humans” step sooner rather than later and replace the entire thing with something like Unreal’s Metahumans.

falcor84 3y ago
To the best of my knowledge, all metahumans are (at the moment) based on scans of real humans, with approaches like this - https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/how-to-use-realitycapture-to-scan-yourself-for-mesh-to-metahuman https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/how-to-use-realityca...

hyperion2010 3y ago

> This is why I introduced the concept at the beginning of royalties for AI work. Ultimately AI is not an alien brain generating texts or images from its own imagination. Neural networks and large language learning models input real people’s intellectual property and output that intellectual property when prompted by someone using the program. The novelness of the output is merely how the IP is reformatted to fit the parameters of the user’s prompts. The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness. The threat is the even further enclosure of the commons and the expropriation of culture by corporate interests who actively seek to destroy common culture by preventing the very people whose participation in a now privatized "culture" enables corporate profits, from ever earning a cent because they do not "own" the "IP" to the characters that they love and that are only common because they are a shared element of a common culture. It is absurd. If media corporations had to compensate whenever someone mentioned a trade marked character because it counted as advertising then let them keep their "culture" private. Until then, they are the beneficiaries of billions of dollars of stolen advertising and stolen culture.

SenAnder 3y ago
To expound on your point, corporations will be able to use AI - giant conglomerates such as Disney, that own enough media to train AI models on only works they own copyright on (and own enough senators to make sure those copyrights last), will happily use AI. But you, peasant, can only train it on century+ old works. Because "to promote the progress of science and useful arts", nothing post-WWII may become public domain, or artists will starve and culture wither.
- harshreality 3y ago
  For a longer form version of this argument, Cybergem's "AI vs Blood Mouse": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pIVVpoz5zk
lapcat 3y ago
> The crux of the argument is this paragraph. But swap out AI in that paragraph for "writers who have read the classical western canon" and suddenly you realize that no one has original ideas, and that the idea that somehow humans are uniquely capable of being the primary causes of their own thoughts and owe transitive credit (and royalties!) to the great authors of all time, or their estates, is madness. I disagree. As a cinephile and bibliophile, I'm often astounded by the creativity of writers. I don't know where they get their inspiration. Sadly, I don't possess such creative inspiration myself, despite having read "the classical western canon". Much of the great work is actually autobiographical, taken from the writer's own life rather than derivative from previous work.
- jack_pp 3y ago
  Yeah, I've listened to tens of thousands of hours of music, especially Hip-Hop. Couldn't rhyme to save my life
- ben_w 3y ago
  I would argue that autobiographical content is no less derivative than reading a book or watching a film, then retelling it. Any creativity is in the difference, and only the difference.

bee_rider 3y ago

It is going to be weird in the future, when people realize how much use these companies get out of things like the $200 scan and perpetual license to somebody’s likeness, and as a result stop using them. All art will be presumably based on remixing a set of scans from between like 2020 and 2025.

harshreality 3y ago
Will that be significant 15 years from now? I imagine most work by then using 3d models that aren't based on any particular person, to avoid license fees. I can't imagine this strike ending with one-time payments for perpetual license to use actors' likenesses. However, even royalties based on screen time of AI-generated derivatives of their likenesses won't save their jobs in the longer term.
- oezi 3y ago
  In 15 years I would expect a large percentage of stand-ins to be CG but also that there are various movies which are entirely generated bybl extensions of today's diffusion models. The actor personalities there-in will have been either created on the fly or supplied as previously created to the generator software.

powera 3y ago

I didn't like the article. Very long, and very shallow. It seems to take as an axiom that the status-quo of "residuals"-based payments is worth defending at all costs.

MightyBuzzard 3y ago
[dead]

saucymew 3y ago

After finishing reading the article, it didn't mention one anecdotal cultural trend a friend who's teaching film class at his local community college noticed. Every semester at the beginning of class, he'd quiz his students what they've watched. In the past few years, nearly everyone has limited knowledge of current films, let alone old films. He realized young people do not have the attention/habit of watching long-form films. Social media/TikTok videos own the top of the attention economy ladder now, not movies. This trend is not reversing anytime soon.

throwawee 3y ago
It's kind of inevitable. I grew up hearing movies decried as brain-rotting, imagination-killing junk food preventing everyone from reading a good book like nature intended. Of course the medium would be dethroned by something even more accessible. When there's something even more convenient people will latch on to that instead. Expect nostalgia for the good ol' days when social media used to instill community values and awareness into the youth.
- hinoki 3y ago
  > The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth Exactly, same as it ever was.
zamadatix 3y ago
I wonder if the shift has more to do with movie theater attendance absolutely tanking for COVID-19. Even in 2023 ticket sales have been significantly less than the relatively constant rate for the few decades prior. The advertised/direct fill in was of course streaming services but these lean away from the typical blockbuster film content or even full length films at all. I'm not ruling out new social media content trends as a factor in the trend change completely, or as an alternative fill in, but short form social media content doesn't really explain why the "why" for a recent shift. After all, it's not like TikTok invented quick social media content it's just a popular modern choice.
3y ago

g42gregory 3y ago

As a general rule (there are notable exceptions), I don't watch any movies made past 2019/20. Most of them seem to have some sort of a messaging embedded inside. Regardless of the nature of the messaging, I figure that they should pay me for watching it, not the other way around. I hope this would change soon. John Wick was awesome though...

watwut 3y ago
If you don't like movies with messaging, I have bad new for you about pretty much whole movies history. Because, oh boy, old movies were quite big on messaging ... and they even had codes/guidlines to ensure messaging is right.
- g42gregory 3y ago
  That's a good point. I used to watch NCIS and liked it a lot. Then I learned that certain contractors were literally financing the production. I lost interest soon thereafter.

AlbertCory 3y ago

It's Shameless Self-Promotion Time again! https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-one-the-movies https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/culture-at-google-part-o... I started the Cinema Club at Google, which is still going on, AFAIK. You can download the list of the 300 or so movies which I put on. I really don't care about MCU, Harry Potter, Hollywood studios, AI, or Rotten Tomatoes. It's pointless to rage about it. Just offer an alternative. I'd rather show a great movie that no one comes to than a garbage one that attracts big crowds. Once in a while we had a film that was both: Chinatown, Rashomon. Our reaction to anyone was, "You can start your own movie club. We'll help you; here are all the secrets." The big secret was just to ask the boss for the money; 10 in a row said Yes. The most common thing people said to me was, "You guys show some great movies. But I have to leave to catch the shuttle!"

BLKNSLVR 3y ago
I've wanted to do something like this, but I'm not sure of the 'public viewing' licensing / permissions / royalties required. I looked it up a while back, but life got in the way and so the idea was mostly lost (thanks for the reminder).
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  You can get Public Performance Rights. They ask (1) how big is the venue, (2) are you charging money, and (3) is it advertised outside your organization. Remember: it's negotiable. Besides MPLC, there is Swank.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    One more thing: if you're not fixated on the big budget Hollywood flicks, there are a ton of smaller distributors; usually easier to deal with.

tompagenet2 3y ago

Genuine question that I couldn't see in the article; does everyone on a film get residuals, or just the more notable roles like writer and actor? If not, did e.g. a lighting specialist not contribute at least as much as a person whose face was scanned?

brightlancer 3y ago
AFAICT, all credited directors, writers and actors get residuals; production crew do not get residuals directly, but it's paid into health and retirement funds; uncredited actors get nada. https://www.ep.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-film-and-television-residuals/ https://www.ep.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-film-and-tele... https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/hollywood-unions-streaming-service-pay-74135/ https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/hollywood-unions-...

atleastoptimal 3y ago

All this actors-writers artists rights debate as of late feels like the last cries into the darkness before media, culture and the entire dialectic of creation and consumption changes forever and AI becomes THE thing behind everything. Custom generated movies, first person VR experiences, all the pleasures of a world soon to placate humans as their minds lose ascendancy on the cognitive totem pole to artificial intelligence.

slushh 3y ago

>My favorite model for a distribution platform is BandCamp. > On much of the free-to-play music, the audience can listen to the album twice before the content locks and BandCamp asks you pay to continue listening to it. easterneuropeanmovies.com[1] comes close. Obviously, watching movies twice before paying doesn't work. Instead, easterneuropeanmovies.com allows you to watch the beginning of the movies for free. If artists want a platform like BandCamp, they should create a pool of available movies that platform creators could instantly use. Now, it's difficult to establish a new platform because it's not enough to program the software. The movies have to be licensed and an audience has to be acquired. If artists already take care of the license side, and if they help with acquiring an audience, they could lay the foundation for their favorite distribution channel. [1] https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/ https://easterneuropeanmovies.com/

mk_stjames 3y ago

> But if I did edit a feature length film that became a major box-office hit, I should get some residuals to help tide me over. This is the line that made me sit and think about this whole construct for a bit. I've worked as an engineer for multi-billion-dollar companies. I've designed components and whole systems that then get put into mass production and stay in production for years. Safety-critical in some cases. Some of those components are still being made today and still generating revenue for those companies, nearly a decade after I moved on. Should my work back then be continuously rewarded if that company still uses that design, unchanged, and still generates revenue from it? I've since gone into consulting, and as a private contractor I work similar stints as a hollywood editor- sometimes I do not have a steady client for many months at a time. It would be great if my engineering work for companies past could 'hold me over' via residuals. But that isn't how getting paid for my time works. I just bid my hourly rates accordingly, of course. You could say stock options in companies are similarly equivalent to residual checks for hollywood, but... it's not. Stock prices aren't always tied to anything rational (although... I don't know how hollywood accounting is either). And they aren't something that are guaranteed to be negotiable or granted post-facto. What I'm trying to point out here is... a lot of people in Hollywood seem to think they have something special somehow and aren't at the will of a market to set prices. If they want better profit sharing, there should be ways to do that, but its ultimately down to setting your prices and being paid for your time and thats is how it works for nearly everyone else in the world who 'creates' things.

dijit 3y ago
I had a similar discussion on Tiktok of all places regarding the Rachel Zellger comments on her playing Snow White. “I had to sit 17 hours in a Disney Princess dress! I want money for every hour it is watched” and I had a similar thought to you. I feel like its a good idea but I’ve definitely missed something with capitalism: I thought the notion of being paid for your time leaves the fruits of that labour in the rightful hands of those who “invested” the capital up front to pay you. If thats the case then getting residuals is directly against that notion at least, but hey, its what they negotiated so good on them. However, where would that end hypothetically- what makes artistic works more inherently valuable in the long tail? I mean- aside from the fact that we all agree. Why is design work, or even craftsmanship not rewarded the same? Its not like there is additional work to be done for artistic works. It it because of likeness? I don’t fully understand.

nullc 3y ago

> Scrolling through it is tough, but not because of too many options, but because too many repeats. Repeats and already seens. I seldom want to rewatch movies, I do so usually only to show someone some classic they missed. So I find the interface of netflix (and youtube, for that matter) infuriating in that they seem heavily centered on showing me things that I've already seen and don't have any option to suppress them. What the heck is with that? While my preference to see something new might not be the majority of their views, I assume that most people will want to see something new at least some of the time-- so why isn't this an option? If anything it should make the service more sticky since they'll have hold of that already-seen data. Now some better search -- year ranges, category/keyword, credits search, etc. but presumably that would take a lot of work compared to just letting me skip the stuff I've seen or seen recently.

tpmx 3y ago
The presumed Netflix UX prime directive: Mask the shallowness/low average quality of the catalog at all costs. Similar, and as the article notes: Why can't you see an alphabetical list of content by category?

bambax 3y ago

IP is like the car: an interesting idea that has been pushed way too far. It's hard to even imagine the number of problems that would go away instantly if we got rid of it. And if someone wonders if people would stop creating if there was no more IP: 1/ Creators always create; that's what they do. 2/ Arguably, the best works of art were created before IP even existed (invented at the very end of the 18th century). 3/ And most importantly, IP doesn't pay creators. That's the whole point of the article. IP pays the studios' CEO ridiculous salaries, and their lawyers' whose sole job is to create artificial scarcity.