Jordy Blog

Hollywood Hates You

I’ve been meaning to blog about this ever since I saw Joshua Steimle’s excellent post on the court ruling against CleanFlicks, CleanFilms, Family Flix USA, and Play It Clean Video. The skinny of it is that U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch ruled that the distribution of edited movies (which have been scrubbed of objectionable content) violates copyrights. Here were his words:

“This court is not free to determine the social value of copyrighted works. What is protected are the creator’s rights to protect its creation in the form in which it was created.”

Now don’t get me wrong, I agree with the ruling, but I can’t help but find the case, brought to the the table by the Directors Guild of America (DGA), utterly despicable. Why? Because any other industry would offer its customers what they want. There’s definitely a market for sanitized videos, and studios could easily serve that market with their own self-sanctioned sanitized versions. But they don’t. Studios could offer alternatively rated versions on the same CD at almost no additional cost. But they don’t. Studios could enter into some kind of licensing agreement with film sanitizers. But they don’t. The very least Hollywood could do is turn a blind eye to the film sanitation industry –after all, these companies bought legitimate copies of each movie and are only using edited copies to reach a valuable market segment that Hollywood refuses to accommodate.) But they don’t.

Why do they do none of this? It’s because Hollywood hates you. Unlike any other industry on the planet, it doesn’t want to give you what you want, even though you’ll pay extra for it. Instead it wants to jam profanity, graphic violence, and sex down your throat and the throats of your children, whether you want it or not. Any option (legal or not) to view a film without Hollywood’s insertion of mind-numbing filth undermines it’s evil control of content and culture, and that’s the issue here.

Of course, the DGA claims it’s a different issue:

“Audiences can now be assured that the films they buy or rent are the vision of the filmmakers who made them and not the arbitrary choices of a third-party editor.”

My response: “Thank you from protecting me from those malicious sanitizers! My children will finally be protected from accidentally viewing a nudity-free ‘Titanic’! Thanks to your bitter reluctance to give your paying customers what they want, society can finally rid itself of the harmful effects that occur when children aren’t exposed to graphic violence and soft porn on a regular basis. Again, thank you Hollywood for looking out for me and mine!”

Obviously I’m pretty ticked about this. I’ve got a lot more to say about it, but this rant is already getting too long. For now let’s just say this: Hollywood and the DGA must not want you to be happy with their product. Put differently, the studios must value other interests or agendas more than you and your money. And if you’re not willing to be a full participant in Hollywood debauchery, the studios (even Disney) will hold you in contempt, even claiming that they are protecting you from products that you seek out and buy at a premium. In short, the film industry wants you to be unhappy.

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Netflix Fix and the Long Tail

That’s right. I finally broke down and joined Netflix. Actually, I’d already signed on for 2 free weeks during my last semester of college. Of course, I had to drop it right away because of the student budget. I had a series of massive papers and a presentation examining the online DVD rental company and I wanted some real exposure just to make sure I knew what I was talking about.

I was totally fascinated by the company’s business model, blown away by the way it moves DVDs around the country with very little inventory in-house on any given day. My group spend several pages explaining “Long Tail” economics, only we didn’t call it that because we weren’t subscribed to Wired and didn’t know it had a name. It may sound a little trite, but the concepts we learned will revolutionize business and a lot more. Basically Netflix is able to blow Blockbuster out of the water by serving hundreds of very small niches that are very important in the aggregate. Blockbuster (in it’s brick-and-mortar stores) simply can’t supply small niches because a low-demand movie can’t pay the rent on its shelf-space.

And that’s why I’m switching. Netflix has so much more selection than your local brick-and-mortar rental store, and the experience is way better. Instead of looking through the same crappy “hits” at Blockbuster, I go online to Netflix and rate the movies I’ve seen. The Netflix recommendation engine then leads me to other movies. If you Liked “Amadeus” you’ll probably like “Ghandi”. If you liked “Ghandi”, you’ll probably like “Hotel Rwanda”, “Rabbit-Proof Fence”, “Waking Ned Devine”, “The Dish”, “October Sky”, etc.

But there’s so much more. Documentaries. TV shows. Music DVDs from Jethro Tull to Thelonious Monk. RSS feeds make it easy to browse new releases, and I can opt to have R-rated movies not displayed. Can I just tell you how much time that saves? I’m not going to become a movie nut, because I do believe there is such thing as too much entertainment, but for the little time that I have to spend on entertainment, this is just so much better.

All in all, Reed Hastings is a genius. Netflix continues to grow, while Blockbuster (despite it’s copycat online ventures) hasn’t turned a profit in years. Long Tail Economics will change American culture as taste are allowed to become less homogenized. Independent filmmakers and publishers will be able to find an audience without having to appeal to the lowest common denominator. The internet will further this phenomenon as content that was unavailable due to the prohibitive economics of physical distribution channels can be accessed by anyone anytime. These dynamics already affect everything from CD sales, to software, to journalism; and I believe this is only the beginning. Long live the Long Tail!