6 ms·

Considering that California is home to most of America's production and distribution media companies, and derives significant direct and indirect tax revenues

by rprasad 14y ago

Considering that California is home to most of America's production and distribution media companies, and derives significant direct and indirect tax revenues from these companies, it is highly unlikely that a Silicon Valley-based "copyright liberalization insurgency" would succeed. Moreover, people in SV vastly overestimate the political influence they are likely to have in the rest of the state. The silly issues that "matter" in SV (like "liberalizing copyright") quite honestly don't matter in the rest of California, where jobs and local governance are much bigger, more important issues.

jacoblyles 14y ago
The tech sector is pretty big. It should be able to get its way some of the time. How big do you think Hollywood is? I would be willing to be that Google's annual revenue is bigger than all the major studios, put together. We have no excuse for being as inept as we are at politics. It is a game we can win, but first we have to decide to play.
- tptacek 14y ago
  A single movie production employs more people than most startups or single-offering SAAS companies ever will. The tech industry is in the business of eliminating jobs. That is what "productivity" means. I'm not making a moral judgement, but you should at least grok the basic cost/benefit that legislators are grappling with. Making things easier for the Reddits of the world by making things much harder for the movie production companies of the world sure looks like a net negative on the face of it.
  - mitchty 14y ago
    True, but the fact that we work in the tech sector aside, how is the idea of keeping people employed in jobs that are redundant or being replaced any different than buggy whips in some of the first automobiles? Continuing to prop up economic models that likely won't last doesn't seem very market driven. I understand the politicians don't want to address this fact, whether republican or democrat or other, but it will eventually come to a head and need to be addressed. Eventually even our own subculture here will be at the point that the movie industry is where most programmers/it people/etc... are unnecessary.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      I knew as soon as I made the observation that someone was going to mention buggy whips. The guys who set up the lighting and sound on motion picture sets have not been "obsoleted" by Reddit. The only reason this particular economic model needs "propping up" is that people have decided that they have an intrinsic right to content produced at great expense by other people on their own terms, and, despite the fact that the law prohibiting them from ignoring the terms of the content producers is clear as glass, have chosen to establish huge anonymous conspiracies to collectively ignore the law. Forgive me if I don't see this as a case of progress being held back by entrenched interests.
      - temphn 14y ago
        The guys who set up the lighting and sound on motion picture sets have not been "obsoleted" by Reddit. No, but they will be by devices like Lytro and the Kinect, and video camera descendants thereof. Instagram filters are just the beginning in terms of automated digital post-processing to allow semipros to shoot pro quality photos/footage. It'll take a little longer than blogs did to disrupt print, because the underlying data (sound, video, images) is more complex, but it is inevitable.
        tptacek 14y ago
        Blogs "disrupt" print by providing pithier summaries of content that costs millions of dollars spent on real reporters and their expenses to generate. Do you think written journalism is better in 2012, or way, way, way worse? I'm going with "worse". But I'm not here to promote the status quo ante. I'm just saying that the idea that progress for the tech industry as an inevitable and intrinsic good is a little suspect.
        temphn 14y ago
        Blogs have indeed disrupted print, which is why the New York Times lost its bet in 2002. http://blog.longnow.org/02008/02/01/decision-blogs-vs-new-york-times/ http://blog.longnow.org/02008/02/01/decision-blogs-vs-new-yo... Long Bets has arrived at a decision for Long Bet #2 between blogger Dave Winer and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times. At stake is US$2000.00 plus half the interest that has accrued over the last 5 years in the Farsight Fund, all of which will go to the charity of the winner’s choice. In the bet Winer asserts, “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 02007, weblogs will rank higher than the ‘New York Times‘ Web site”. ... The Long Bets decision on this bet is in favor of Winer’s side, weblog page ranks came out ahead of the NY Times. We will be calculating interest and sending a check on to Dave Winer’s charity of choice the World Wide Web Consortium in the next month. How could it be any other way, with hundreds of millions of people -- each with their own domain expertise -- now able to compete with journalists who often have little knowledge outside of J-school? For the topics one cares about (whether they be Linux or photography or finance), you can and will find much better reporting on specialist blogs for free, outside of the lowest-common-denominator mainstream media. And everyone has some topics they care about. Similarly, I encourage people who believe otherwise to go ahead and bet like Martin Nisenholtz of the NYT bet. Bet that Hollywood will survive unscathed in the wake of SOPA/PIPA and YC RFS9, in an era of 1 billion plus portable high quality video cams (soon depthcams), in an era where a Macbook Pro can do professional quality video editing. Bet by buying the stock of movie companies if you believe they haven't yet hit their peak, by investing in the current physical distribution model, by wagering that actors and actresses will make tens of millions in perpetuity. Bet with the confidence that only internet nerds believe Hollywood is due for a reckoning with technology. Others will bet the other way. That's the only way to really test the confidence of an industry prediction of this kind.
- rm999 14y ago
  I don't see this as a tech vs media issue. Companies like Google would love to have free access to old copyrighted material, but that's a minuscule part of their business. Newly created media is valuable but will always be copyrighted. Copyright holders have a lot more to lose than tech giants like Google have to gain from looser copyright laws. This means media companies will lobby more aggressively to save their copyrights.
- moheeb 14y ago
  It doesn't matter how big the tech sector is. The influence that Hollywood yields is much greater. The apple orchard might bring in more revenue than selling newspapers...but the newspaper has more influence over the population.
- m0nastic 14y ago
  Figures I see floating around for worldwide Hollywood Movie Studio revenue for 2012 are around 90 billion dollars (or about twice Google's revenue).
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  >I would be willing to be that Google's annual revenue is bigger than all the major studios, put together. Perhaps, but why would anyone (but google and their shareholders) care about that? What's important is the taxes, job creation, etc., etc. The tech sector is big but lots of things in CA are big. California is the top agricultural producer in the US [1], for example. [1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/faqs.aspx#10 http://www.ers.usda.gov/faqs.aspx#10

by rprasad 14y ago

jacoblyles 14y ago

The tech sector is pretty big. It should be able to get its way some of the time. How big do you think Hollywood is? I would be willing to be that Google's annual revenue is bigger than all the major studios, put together. We have no excuse for being as inept as we are at politics. It is a game we can win, but first we have to decide to play.

tptacek 14y ago
A single movie production employs more people than most startups or single-offering SAAS companies ever will. The tech industry is in the business of eliminating jobs. That is what "productivity" means. I'm not making a moral judgement, but you should at least grok the basic cost/benefit that legislators are grappling with. Making things easier for the Reddits of the world by making things much harder for the movie production companies of the world sure looks like a net negative on the face of it.
- mitchty 14y ago
  True, but the fact that we work in the tech sector aside, how is the idea of keeping people employed in jobs that are redundant or being replaced any different than buggy whips in some of the first automobiles? Continuing to prop up economic models that likely won't last doesn't seem very market driven. I understand the politicians don't want to address this fact, whether republican or democrat or other, but it will eventually come to a head and need to be addressed. Eventually even our own subculture here will be at the point that the movie industry is where most programmers/it people/etc... are unnecessary.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    I knew as soon as I made the observation that someone was going to mention buggy whips. The guys who set up the lighting and sound on motion picture sets have not been "obsoleted" by Reddit. The only reason this particular economic model needs "propping up" is that people have decided that they have an intrinsic right to content produced at great expense by other people on their own terms, and, despite the fact that the law prohibiting them from ignoring the terms of the content producers is clear as glass, have chosen to establish huge anonymous conspiracies to collectively ignore the law. Forgive me if I don't see this as a case of progress being held back by entrenched interests.
    - temphn 14y ago
      The guys who set up the lighting and sound on motion picture sets have not been "obsoleted" by Reddit. No, but they will be by devices like Lytro and the Kinect, and video camera descendants thereof. Instagram filters are just the beginning in terms of automated digital post-processing to allow semipros to shoot pro quality photos/footage. It'll take a little longer than blogs did to disrupt print, because the underlying data (sound, video, images) is more complex, but it is inevitable.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        Blogs "disrupt" print by providing pithier summaries of content that costs millions of dollars spent on real reporters and their expenses to generate. Do you think written journalism is better in 2012, or way, way, way worse? I'm going with "worse". But I'm not here to promote the status quo ante. I'm just saying that the idea that progress for the tech industry as an inevitable and intrinsic good is a little suspect.
        temphn 14y ago
        Blogs have indeed disrupted print, which is why the New York Times lost its bet in 2002. http://blog.longnow.org/02008/02/01/decision-blogs-vs-new-york-times/ http://blog.longnow.org/02008/02/01/decision-blogs-vs-new-yo... Long Bets has arrived at a decision for Long Bet #2 between blogger Dave Winer and Martin Nisenholtz of the NY Times. At stake is US$2000.00 plus half the interest that has accrued over the last 5 years in the Farsight Fund, all of which will go to the charity of the winner’s choice. In the bet Winer asserts, “In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 02007, weblogs will rank higher than the ‘New York Times‘ Web site”. ... The Long Bets decision on this bet is in favor of Winer’s side, weblog page ranks came out ahead of the NY Times. We will be calculating interest and sending a check on to Dave Winer’s charity of choice the World Wide Web Consortium in the next month. How could it be any other way, with hundreds of millions of people -- each with their own domain expertise -- now able to compete with journalists who often have little knowledge outside of J-school? For the topics one cares about (whether they be Linux or photography or finance), you can and will find much better reporting on specialist blogs for free, outside of the lowest-common-denominator mainstream media. And everyone has some topics they care about. Similarly, I encourage people who believe otherwise to go ahead and bet like Martin Nisenholtz of the NYT bet. Bet that Hollywood will survive unscathed in the wake of SOPA/PIPA and YC RFS9, in an era of 1 billion plus portable high quality video cams (soon depthcams), in an era where a Macbook Pro can do professional quality video editing. Bet by buying the stock of movie companies if you believe they haven't yet hit their peak, by investing in the current physical distribution model, by wagering that actors and actresses will make tens of millions in perpetuity. Bet with the confidence that only internet nerds believe Hollywood is due for a reckoning with technology. Others will bet the other way. That's the only way to really test the confidence of an industry prediction of this kind.
rm999 14y ago
I don't see this as a tech vs media issue. Companies like Google would love to have free access to old copyrighted material, but that's a minuscule part of their business. Newly created media is valuable but will always be copyrighted. Copyright holders have a lot more to lose than tech giants like Google have to gain from looser copyright laws. This means media companies will lobby more aggressively to save their copyrights.
moheeb 14y ago
It doesn't matter how big the tech sector is. The influence that Hollywood yields is much greater. The apple orchard might bring in more revenue than selling newspapers...but the newspaper has more influence over the population.
m0nastic 14y ago
Figures I see floating around for worldwide Hollywood Movie Studio revenue for 2012 are around 90 billion dollars (or about twice Google's revenue).
flyinRyan 14y ago
>I would be willing to be that Google's annual revenue is bigger than all the major studios, put together. Perhaps, but why would anyone (but google and their shareholders) care about that? What's important is the taxes, job creation, etc., etc. The tech sector is big but lots of things in CA are big. California is the top agricultural producer in the US [1], for example. [1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/faqs.aspx#10 http://www.ers.usda.gov/faqs.aspx#10