Electronic Frontier Foundation: Stop us if you’ve heard these: piracy is driving artists out of business. The reason they are starving is because no one pays for things, just illegally downloads them. You wouldn’t steal a car. These arguments are old and being dragged back out to get support for rules that would strangle online expression. And they are, as ever, about Hollywood wanting to control creativity and not protecting artists.
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I’ve always found it frustrating that some live theatre can be quite inaccessible. For example, with Broadway productions, the cost of travel or tickets is high enough that it can make it unreasonable to go see some shows. That’s why pro cuts and recordings are a nice alternative, even though it’s not the same as a live theatre experience - such as the professional recording of Hamilton. The benefit of TV and film, and other media that exists in an online form, should be that it is more accessible to viewers – that’s what hits me about this article and the fact that so much content is impossible, inconvenient, or egregiously expensive to access. Streaming services are becoming more and more specialized, requiring deep dives across the Internet to find the available platform for a piece you may want to watch. Theatre and media are created for audiences - they should be available to as many people as possible, regardless of who can afford to pay. It's disheartening to see that these barriers of business are being put up all over, to the detriment of the artist rather than the benefit.
It's interesting to me that they noted the “moral panic” in the early 2000s because I remember piracy being a huge discussion early in my life that died out after everyone learned the etiquette of the new online world. What happened during the pandemic when there were no other options was liberating and gave folks access to otherwise not accessible entertainment (an argument for streaming live theatre, another debate all together). And now that the height of shut down has passed, people are looking for that to continue and that's where the sticky morality lies. Studios in Hollywood hold all the power, especially with the new streaming landscape, and that is a huge disservice to the artists behind the work. I would be in full support of harsher copyright laws if we as consumers could be assured it is for artist protection and not studio control over content.
I'm glad they brought up the whole HBO Max fiasco, because I've been following the Infinity Train story fairly closely. What gives me some degree of comfort is that Warner Bros lost about 20 billion in market value, which was like 40% of their market value at the time, by pulling a bunch of shows when they tried to save 3 billion in costs. I hope David Zaslav is feeling the pain big time. All of this really boils down to the evils of late-stage capitalism, I feel like. It's a totally self-made prison for all these streaming bigwigs, creating their own problems and driving users and employees away by being shitty and exclusive. It's like that HuffPost article titled "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people." If the people running these companies had even the slightest care for anyone but themselves, the problem would probably solve itself.
“A system that is broken for everyone except the few megacorporations and the billionaires at the top of them”. Wow could that apply to almost everything in our world or what? This article has more to unpack and understand then I can get through today. But, it is certainly important to understand, especially because we are all in this industry. Hollywood isn’t caring about its artists, only the money. Capitalism at its finest. So gross. The pandemic changed our world, in a massive way. And, still is. I know that has an impact. It infuriates me how corporations do things for the betterment of their billionaires, and in Hollywood or entertainment as a whole it is at the cost of the artists. People who bring creativity, beauty, stories, and voices into the world. Creators deserve for their work to see an audience, to be experienced how the artists intended. And, the artists deserve to have the means to continue their work, and live. Make capitalism make sense. You can’t, I promise.
For big corporations it has always been about control and money. What market can we control that will force the consumer to come to us for what they want/need and make them spend their money. With so many streaming services available, with so many different options for people to watch, the corporations think there is no scarcity for shows and movies. Instead, they are trying to create a kind of false scarcity, both in the work and in what the consumer has access to. By removing shows and preventing movies from being released they are attempting to do just that. This show you liked to watch or were excited to be released, we’re canceling that. Though I feel that what makes this worse is that artists are losing access to their work and are unlikely to be able to get it back unless they can get through all the red tape.
This is the second article I’ve looked at today that deals with accessibility - but the articles describe actions that are relative polar opposites. Art should be accessible to all people - film, theater, you name it, and in Hollywood the vast majority of cases the investors and studios work against that idea. As this article mentions, they try to cut costs as much as possible when creating work and charge as much as possible when distributing the media. Streaming services - especially at the number they are now, are expensive, making a lot of media consumption contingent on what streaming service someone is able to afford, and making media significantly less accessible. I had never thought about how digital streaming makes it so that the consumer never physically owns the product. The actions that many Hollywood studios make are transparently for their own profit - stifling many creative projects and almost disincentivizing creative careers.
As much as I am loath to say it, none of us are entitled to content that these corporations fund and own. It is the prerogative of the production company to charge whatever they want for content and to grant or revoke access in whatever fashion they choose. We can argue all the moral justifications for why art should be readily accessible, but from a legal standpoint, Disney can do whatever it wants with its content. Similarly, Warner Bros. can purge its entire catalog to claim a loss in profit for tax breaks and we can all be outraged, but it is well within their rights. These mega corporations may behave morally repugnantly, but our laws allow for it. They are correct that piracy is stealing. There is no ambiguous take here; consumers are not entitled to free content.
That said, the bigger issue is that we live in a capitalistic society where artists are forced to align with businesses that are working against their interests in order to make money. Because our society doesn't value art. As easy as it is to vilify Hollywood for exploiting artists, Hollywood is a byproduct of a society that views art as a hobby and not a viable career. A society that will flock to the cinema in droves to see the latest superhero action movie, but has no time for the independent filmmaker. Yes, Hollywood should do more to protect its artists and their artistry... but when the majority of consumers only care about content and not content-makers, there is very little incentive for studio heads to take moral action. I don't claim to know the fix, but the issues run far deeper than the greed of mega corporations.
It is interesting to me that how I never really thought about why some of my favorite shows are hard to find at one point and extremely easy at another time. The Disney example talked about in this article takes about something that I’m not aware of, taking down a previous episode in a sequel to encourage audience watch the new one. To me, this is a little bit confusing in why they are doing that. In many situations where if I was going to walk a new show in a sequel, I would want to rewatch the previous one before it. By Disney taking this show down, it leads me to watch the show on another platform or just wait until I find it. Which, circle back to the problem that many shows are exclusive and hard to find elsewhere. Hollywood, which also plays a part in this event also affect how audience can get access to artworks and if artists can get benefit from audience watching it.
As always, everything is about money. Money, money, money. And corporate greed. This article could not have put it any better. As the number of different streaming services has expanded over the years, I have gotten more and more frustrated trying to find the right place to watch what I want, then being disappointed when it’s behind a paywall on yet another streaming service website I have never even heard of. For the longest time, before it was even a streaming service, you had Netflix. You would rent up to two DVD’s at once, and mail them back when you were done. The options were pretty limited. See a film in person, rent from Netflix on subscription, or do a one-time rental from a Redbox kiosk. Then Netflix introduced streaming. It was revolutionary! But then, of course, in no time at all, all these other companies were following suit. Now you have a hundred different companies, all with their own subscription rates, and you cen never find that one show or movie you want to watch on the streaming services you have. It’s infuriating.
This article is eye opening. I think there could be some more specificities in their arguments but I believe all of their points are solid. I had no idea that certain companies in Hollywood sued VCR or DVD but it makes perfect sense. Honestly, I think my mom still has VCRs from TV recordings from my childhood. That was a games changer. And somewhere we are right back where we started. I will say that there are a lot of things that can still be purchased on DVD or Blue-ray but a lot of the content made for streaming services is unavailable and that is a little bit tricky, I’d say. Sometimes I feel like I am paying for something over and over again. You see something in the movies, then you have it on a streaming service until they take it off and then you buy it all over again to be able to watch it.
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