The entertainment industry really likes to trot out its explanation for suing people and treating fans like criminals, always claiming that it just wants to “educate” people on copyright issues. Of course, that education is usually incredibly one-sided, presenting a very biased case that refuses to recognize things like fair use. For years and years, plenty of people have been trying to point out to the movie industry that their problem is not the threat of file sharing or other intellectual property issues, but the fact that they’ve made the theater-going experience just awful.
Despite some claims to the contrary, the movie theater isn’t “going away”. It just needs to learn to adjust. Unfortunately, it appears they’re still not moving in that direction. The MPAA recently decided to put up its own online survey, which they claimed was a way for consumer to give them feedback and communicate with the industry on things that were important. That sounds like a good idea — considering just how many comments we seem to get whenever we discuss the poor theater experience. However, just as with their “education” campaign, it seems that these polls to “hear from the audience” have turned out to be something quite different. They’re push polls that clearly are not about hearing your opinion, but influencing your opinion on the issue of copyrights.
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus
