SOPA Is a Symbol of the Movie Industry's Failure to Innovate

By Donal on Fri, 01/06/2012 - 11:13am |

1920's - the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can't compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again.
1940's - movie studios had to divest their distribution channel - they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. "It's all over," complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.
1950's - broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn't compete with paid.
1970's - Video Cassette Recorders (VCR's) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with "end of the world" hyperbole. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket. With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.
1998 - the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased.
2000 - Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR's reignite interest in TV.
2006 - broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers.
Today it's the Internet that's going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar?

URL:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/01/sopa-is-a-symbol-of-the-movie-industrys-failure-to-innovate/250967/?google_editors_picks=true

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