The motion picture industry has no choice but to step into the lead in the digital revolution rather than being at the back of the bus throwing out anchors. Several very able digital personalities are in leading positions of influence within the studios. One was an architect for MPG2 when at David Sarnoff Research Center. He is now Vice President with NBC/Universal--Glenn Reitmeier Anther is Andy Setos, VP Engineering at Fox. There are several worth their salt at Disney, and certainly Columbia is in the picture with Sony, as is MGM. My good friend Hal Protter heads up the digital march at TheWB and is sure to be bumped up to Time-Warner. The MPAA is directed by these companies and these people I mentioned are all advocates of HDTV, each having spent more than 20 years in the field with it. They are not going to inhibit the growth of HDTV nor their movie/TV program business. What the first moves are is not easy to say. What is likely in one hundred years is an easier and accurate forecast.

Look out a hundred years.

In one hundred years you overcome all mistakes and wrong turns as long as you see the gold at the end of that 100 years.

What gold do I see then? I see every home in the civilized world with at least 200 Mbs downstream leading to a big high resolution display. I see that the programs are coming down that pipe via IP from a massive server. The Chinese have already started with this massive server concept to handle all known digitized programs and they will send them out on demand and any other way that works as a business, like near on-demand.

The key thing in enriching that one hundred year goal is seeing that your program is well made and well publicized to the then 10 billion people living on earth--a planet financially far healthier than is the one we have today. And, oh yes, the Chinese movie industry by this time has overtaken the importance of Hollywood in terms of global audience appeal, and, certainly, the quality of production from there is equal, if not superior. India and Eastern Europe and Northern Africa will have become highly competitive international producers of movie/games as well.

A premier for a movie at that one hudred years annevesary will be a four wall affair (term used when the theater is rented rather than the theater renting the movie) which becomes more like a big studio party than anything else and will be held in every major city in the world at the same time using an electronic version distributed and then shown on a vast screen in the once-again beautiful auditoriums. The rest of the world will see the movie the very same day in their own home big screen HD on demand, or, more likely, on near demand (much more efficient).

Oh gee, it gets copied 500 million, maybe a billion times in that one day!!! It's lost! Oh dear, oh dear, what is to be done?

Too bad, but nothing to be done. Copied a billion times also means it was viewed more than a billion times for say $4.50 each view (for a grand take of at least $4.5 billion dollars that day). Yes, they had to spend $500 million on promotion and another $100 million on the theaters and parties and the movie itself cost a billion to produce, but it turned out to be worth it as the producers in this scenario netted $ 3.8 billion!!! in one day's showing. Those who could not be home that day simply program their PVRs (who would not have one then?)to record it. If you think all this can't be done in just one day, neither then can the Super Bowl franchise be done in one day, but that defies the truth for it makes all of its money in just one day, albeit, with a handsome promotional lead up to that day.

Is there a second showing from the producers? Not by the maker of the movie is there a second showing. Once is enough for them and all that money rolling in THAT VERY SAME DAY is a truly liberating experience. They do put the movie into their library on a massive server for any other on-demand calls for it. But that is all ancillary and not primary business. Since the movie has been seen by such a large audience and presumably it is an appealing production, hard copies can be made and distributed by mail upon receiving a credit card order. It works today for PBS with thousands of discs sold right after the program airs! But in this scanrio of a wire world copyrights last less time because there is no way to control them and the compensating factor is you have a wired world in which and with which you have to profit.

Indeed, they (the movie maker) release ALL rights to the movie the very first day after it is sent out. The copyright law may change to read that you have one day to expoit the value of your movie and not so many years with renewals. You immediately go into the public domain. If one who copied it wants to make money with his copy he can turn to the the 9 billion people left who didn't see it, and they can have at it with the complete blessing of the producers. The producing studios know they can't stop all of the copying and redistribution so they get smart and decide to live with the global village model that fills their cash registers with billions on the first day (if the movie is any good). Since there is no appreciable distribution cost and no print costs -- just servers and bandwidth -- they have done more than well. This time the old story that you make it up in volume holds true. There may be another more anal retentive view that wants to hold on to the copyright for years and squeeze out the last drop of value in the product, but that model wears you out with all of the global litigations you have from those we used to call pirates. The rights instantly released model is where the REAL money is to be made because you open all distribution channels at once without resistance. You own and control the product only until it is released and then it in effect is in the public domain, but you have made more money from it than you could have any time in history with or without copy protection and enforcement. Moving that day into the public domain becomes a font for hundreds, if not thousands of cottage industries that can distribute that same copied movie to their local village on the big screen or download to their audience, even if it is a commercial audience and no one gets upset by you doing it. The movie makers label or brand is at least conveyed in that way to still bigger audiences. The key to success for the first showing is the timeliness. It's a little like news. Do you know anyone copying and selling the news at a later date?

It takes a new mind set to see this kind of model and it also takes the realization that greed is the most costly thing you can possess.

Posted by Dale Cripps, May 24, 2005 7:26 PM