Somewhere Over the Rainbow
October 12, 2005

In this month's Wired, Joshua Davis writes a wonderfully engaging piece about The Decline & Fall of Randolph Hobson Guthrie III, the American playboy arrested in Shanghai for his DVD piracy service.

However interesting his own personal story may be (a lifetime of trials and tribulations, spoils and foolishness, mail-order brides and all that good stuff), what's more intriguing is the underlying story about the Chinese government's ploy surrounding his capture. Long-known to be the center of the DVD piracy world, China has done very little where it matters: Distribution channels, factories where the discs are stamped, the source of the media itself, much of this has been neglected. In fact, the article goes on to assume/conclude that the Chinese government actually profits off of the pirated film market by taxing vendors. Whether this can be proven is fairly moot—the open buying/selling of these DVDs out in the streets and in brick & mortar shops are a testament to the apparent "legality" of its existence.

What bothers me quite a bit is that the MPAA considers any arrest of this sort as a victory, when in reality it hasn't realized (or has realized but refuses to acknowledge) that the true problems with the industry lies with the fact that a) films are not released at once everywhere, thereby forcing eager fans to pirate their long-anticipated features, and b) the basic quality of the films are going down the shitter. (But I'm sure most of you can't wait to see 3 Fast 3 Furious!)

It's a broken record: Neither the film or music industries are able to grasp that the world is, like, uh, changing. Money sometimes makes you unable to adapt to the world around you because you're scared of losing what you had. But there are lessons to be learned here: Most importantly that if you are smarter than these guys, their tardiness is giving you quite an amazing chance to do things that can heavily impact the dynamics of these markets (Napster? Bit Torrent?). From the mp3's debut until now is only the beginning of this structural shift. A lot lies ahead in terms of development and understanding. Technologies will change, distribution as well. The question is: Who's going to be there to give you what you want?

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