Alternative history, anyone? Might e-book enjoy billions of dollars in annual sales by now–far beyond the present $20-$30 million–without Hollywood-bought laws? And might the Net be even bigger than it actually is? I won’t blame the DMCA, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the like for all of the problems of the electronic media, but they didn’t exactly help.
E-books are a $3-billion-a-year business now, with all the U.S. best-sellers instantly available throughout the world at affordable prices. Small wonder. The cheapest machines for reading them off high-resolution screens go for less than $50, and low-cost computer networks have penetrated even rural villages in the Haiti and Vietnam. Mass-market international Internet TV is a reality.
Thank goodness for the scandals of the motion picture industry. Those boys–and, yes, a small predominantly male group controls the big studios–couldn’t get it right. Jack Valenti earlier had thought that the video cassette recorder would kill off Hollywood, when actually the opposite happened despite his resistance. He bumbed yet again in the 90s in joining the RIAA and other copyright zealots in calling for Draconian copyright laws. Valenti and henchmen would have gotten their way except that an overeager lobbyist for Hollywood was caught providing hookers to Bill Clinton and large sums of unreported campaign cash to key members of Congress. Recording industry executives, in the tradition of the payola scandals of years back, were also implicated. Valenti the master puppetmaster had nothing to do with scandals. But their strench proved so overpowering that for years he and the rest of the copyright establishment were rendered impotent on Capitol Hill.
Greater prosperity for Hollywood
Without strict copyright laws, Napster-style endeavors boomed, and outright piracy took off. The end result? Greater prosperity for Hollywood. What happened is that venture capitalists could invest confidently in broadband and other new tech without fear of bribed legislators and thuggish Hollywood lawyers shutting down their P2P networks. That, in turn, helped justify all the nifty new pipes that telecommunications firms were building. Although the wildest predictions of growth did not pan out, companies such as JDS Uniphase indeed did prosper. The mass demand for broadband was there.
Because the embarrassing truth about Hollywood had emerged, the overpaid black suits had to seek out allies. They found them in, of all people, librarians and EFFers who helped them obtain a tax on blank CDs and hard drives through which revenue was obtained for compensation of many copyright holders. At the same time, without lobbyist-written copyright law resulting in consumer gouges, the prices of the content was kept reasonable. Consumers responded by showing support for artists they loved, especially as movie studios and record companies cluefully encouraged the formation of performer-and-fan-centered communities. They also took care to invest sufficiently in new performers, rather than frittering away so many millions on rapacious executives and, yes, lawyers. Movies and music were less of a commodity, more of a true part of consumers’ lives–er, people‘s lives.
E-Books take off
Over in the e-book world, many of the same concepts applied. Publishers appreciated the need for a community-oriented approach and reasonable prices. What’s more, publishers and writers could benefit from a well-stocked national digital library system that the librarian/content-provider coalition had brought about. While copy protection schemes existed, they were of the non-instrusive kind. The book industry unerstood that consumers would turn to illegal copies if it were not easy to buy and use the legal variety of book.
At the same time the Napster-fueled explosion in broadband worked to the advantage of book publishers, not just movie and recording studios. Most of the devices bought for viewing movies via the Net were also superb for reading electronic books. What’s more, broadband connections were almost all of the “always on” variety. So it was easy for e-books to link to each other, especially with WiFi-style technology in popular demand far earlier than if the copyright zealots had prevailed. Needless to say, the overnight success of broadband also fueled the rise of multimedia e-books.
Edwards turns back on old farts
As the 2004 election approached, some old farts in Hollywood tried to shove massive cash in the direction of North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and other candidates. Edwards turned them down. “I’ve got to stay true to my populist roots,” he said when one pushy lobbyist called him. “Besides, the system works.” And it did and does. Helped by the ease of downloading and the superb display technology developed, his trial-lawyer memoirs are selling twice as well as they would have with Hollywood-bought laws wreaking havoc on electronic books and the Net.
Hollywood reality: So much for fantasy. Now read up on reality–the Hollywood-inspired FBI raid on the SG1Archive.com website, which happened even though the fan site had helped to move more than $100K in CDs. Love the way Hollywood cooperates with fans to create a sense of community, eh?
