Actually this is no surprise. The traditional players – RIAA and MPAA – keep complaining about how their “industry” is shrinking, but in fact:

This all points to the fact that what is happening within the industry is not a challenge of a business getting smaller — quite the opposite. It’s about the challenge of an industry getting larger, but doing so in ways that route around the existing structures.

The industry is getting bigger, but recorded music on round discs isn’t. The film and TV business is getting bigger but not through the MPAA’s member studios. Remember these are lobby groups for legacy businesses, not representative of the modern industry.

This is a great study.

Some of the key points:

• Entertainment spending as a function of income went up by 15% from 2000 to 2008
• Employment in the entertainment sector grew by 20% — with indie artists seeing 43% growth.
• The overall entertainment industry grew 66% from 1998 to 2010.
• The amount of content being produced in music, movies, books and video games is growing at an incredible pace.

Read it for the conclusions and methodology and continue to resist the dinosaurs approach to protection: they don’t need SOPA/PIPA/ACTA or any of the other attempts to kill innovation to protect legacy business that do not represent any creative artist.

I’ve long said that there is no credible support for the ridiculous figures of “loss” to the US economy either in dollars or jobs. Even the US Government Accountability Office says there is no credible support for any of the ridiculous figures of loss promulgated by the MPAA and RIAA. And yet, the numbers are repeated by politicians and the mainstream media to “prove” that “piracy” is a problem “we can all agree on”.

No we do not “all agree”. Until you present evidence that there really is harm by using independent, credible and peer-reviewed studies, we simply do not believe your BS.

This article from the Cato Institute attempts to find the “facts” behind the ridiculous figures and finds exactly what I found: nothing. Zip, nada.  According the the real results of even studies by funded by the SOPA supporters, amount to nothing more than the global gross of Alvin and the Chipmunks!

Julian Sanchez takes down all the stats in a most thorough way.

But it misses the point and Nat Torkington nailed it brilliantly. I’d post the whole thing but that would not be right. It’s short, go read it.

He brilliantly juxtaposes a story about a farmer who’s property is flooding and house being inundated and yet he rejects help from a neighbor in a truck before the waters rise, a boat when it’s above floor level, and a helicopter when he’s on the roof. In each case he rejects the help claiming he’s praying and “relying on God”.

Well, Bob drowns. He goes to Heaven and finally gets to meet God. “God, what was that about? I prayed and put my faith in you, and I drowned!”

God says, “I sent you a truck, a boat, and a helicopter! What the hell more did you want from me?”

And that is *exactly* the point. In speaking to the proponents of SOPA/PROTECT IP (MPAA/RIAA) he nails it so completely it should be published far and wide:

All I can think is: we gave you the Internet. We gave you the Web. We gave you MP3 and MP4. We gave you e-commerce, micropayments, PayPal, Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, the iPad, the iPhone, the laptop, 3G, wifi–hell, you can even get online while you’re on an AIRPLANE. What the hell more do you want from us?

Take the truck, the boat, the helicopter, that we’ve sent you. Don’t wait for the time machine, because we’re never going to invent something that returns you to 1965 when copying was hard and you could treat the customer’s convenience with contempt.

Don’t wait for the time machine. Business models *always* change and if you don’t adapt, you die. Sometimes you can use your influence and money to buy a few more years by buying a few votes in Congress while distributing completely inaccurate information (less politely called lies).

There’s not going to be a time machine. Any legislative bailout you get will only delay the inevitable: business models for entertainment funding and distribution have already changed, it’s just some people haven’t realized it yet.

And Nat, sorry I still managed to quote way more than I should of your article, but since I couldn’t say it better, what was I to do?

My first thought when reading that headline was “well, d’oh”, because it seemed like an oversimplification of the scale of the problem. Sure, if everyone switched over to streaming video for their media consumption, then we’d be in a different position. Trouble is, people generally are watching more television than ever, via more traditional channels than internet delivered streaming content.

Ultimately typical viewers like the type of content they find on traditional television. The secret to success in the new world is more of that type of content. Netflix and Google’s YouTube are all investing in new content because the traditional suppliers (i.e. studios) want ever higher license fees for their existing content.

Instead of tossing a bunch of cash into accomplished shows, Slash Gear says Netflix is heading into theoriginal programming market and YouTube is launching over 100 exclusive original channels, as reported by the Associated Press. However, getting those shows to the level of “The Big Bang Theory,” “True Blood,” or even “Dexter” will be the challenge facing streaming companies. For streaming companies, the money makes more sense if they own the rights to the shows and even create them in the first place.

The issue is pretty clear. Penetrating an existing market, like television, requires a great product, and while Netflix, YouTube, and even Apple have the cash to create a quality television show, that is not exactly the business the companies are known for. Challenging the content landscape is going to be an uphill battle, but it could be the move that changes television forever.

As I hypothesized back in December 2009, if the studios don’t make nice with new players, they have the means to pay producers - those that make this high value content now – directly, bypassing the studio and the networks.

This just in from Variety: Hulu orders first scripted original skein (that’s Variety-speak for “yarn” a.k.a series).

Last week, Hulu disclosed 2011 results that showed growth on both fronts. Hulu revenues increased 60% year over year to $420 million while its sub base reached 1.5 million.

In a blog post announcing his company’s results, CEO Jason Kilar pledged to spend $500 million on content in 2012.

Increasingly it looks like the future for Netflix, Hulu and YouTube is original programming. Do you really think Apple will have another path?

According to the Department of Labor statistics, employment in the entertainment industry has increased:

Why yes, that does show that the industry grew nicely from 1998 to 2008… all the while we were being told it was being decimated by piracy and no one could find work any more. Oh, and check out that last line. Independent artists, writers and performers jumped from 35.2k in 1998 to 50.4k in 2008 — the first decade of real mainstream internet infringement (Napster arrived in ’99). If you’re not quick with the percentages, that’s a pretty astounding 43.2% growth rate. And, it appears the BLS continues to think that jobs in that sector are going to grow over the next decade as well. Damn those pesky facts.

But surely all that “piracy” – that drives the MPAA/RIAA to lobby for truly bad laws like SOPA/PROTECT IP – has done some harm? None that’s apparently provable. This article - How Much Do Music and Movie Piracy Really Hurt the U.S. Economy – quotes the figures of “harm” that are propounded by the usual suspects and finds:

The good news is that the numbers are wrong — as this post by the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez explains. In 2010, the Government Accountability Office released a report noting that these figures “cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology,” which is polite government-speak for “these figures were made up out of thin air.”

More recently, a smaller estimate — $58 billion – was produced by the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI). But that IPI estimate, as both Sanchez and tech journalist Tim Lee have pointed out, is replete with methodological problems, including double- and triple-counting, that swell the estimate of piracy losses considerably.

These figures were made up out of thin air. That’s not from a pro-piracy lobby group, that’s the US Government Accountability Office, who categorically state that there is no basis for any of the scare mongering figures of “damage” done. No evidence. In fact there has NEVER been any peer reviewed studies that show ANY harm from unauthorized distribution.

And yet the idiots at the MPAA and RIAA – and their bought-and-paid-for stooges in Congress – insist on lying to the Government, their artists and the public. Ironic, since they’ve been so totally wrong about technology in the past.

In this episode Terence and Philip discuss the outsourcing of editing jobs, remote (a.k.a cloud) editing and automation in production. What’s happening now and how will it evolve in the near future. Philip also sneaks in a preview of an interesting show he’ll be involved with in 2012.

I have a friend who used to do a large amount of bonus material for one of the major studios as they progressed through releasing their back catalog. He has already noted that, as of about two years ago, that work dried up completely and now is no longer part of his business, which fortunately is still fairly healthy for him.

This is a depressing reality check, and is probably the counter argument to “the year of Transmedia“. Transmedia is seriously expensive to produce!

The same thing that happened to music is going to be true of books. The typical ebook costs about $10 in out of pocket expenses to write (more if you count coffee and not just pencils). But if we add in $50,000 for app coding, $10,000 for a director and another $500,000 for the sort of bespoke work that was featured in Al Gore’s recent ‘book’, you can see the problem. The publisher will never have a chance to make this money back.

Sure, there will be experiments at the cutting edge, but no, they’re not going to pay off regularly enough for it to become an industry. The quality is going to remain in the writing and in the bravery of ideas, not in teams of people making expensive digital books.

The market didn’t really make a conscious choice here, but the choice has been made: it’s not a few publishers putting out a few books for the masses. No, the market for the foreseeable future is a million publishers publishing to 100 million readers. Do the math. Lots of choice, not a lot of whistles. And no bells.

Now, I’d want to take issue with the assumption that factory work or farming is that common as a career/employment these days – certainly not farming – but I think the point was rather that “Someday, writing code could require as few skills as farming or factory work”.

Currently writing code is a combination of highly technical skills, attention to detail and a need for creativity in solving the problem and writing the code. Although I am a software product manager, I do not write code because it seems incredibly complex.

Just like editing!  Both require a combination of creative and technical skills now.

Roy Bahat, president of gaming media company IGN Entertainment, writes that coding is:

Like farming was in the 17th century, factory work during the industrial revolution, construction during the Great Depression, and manufacturing after World War II….Code may one day be a basic workplace expectation – like emailing, or “proficient in Word.” Young people are also willing to learn: coding now has a brand. The kid who writes an iPhone or Android app, these days, gets the girl (or boy!).

That reminds me of my long held opinion that video production is rapidly becoming “another form of literacy“. If coding can, why not video?

About 18 months back I started a blog post “Apps are the future of distribution” but beyond the title, didn’t really have my thinking clear enough to finish the post. Fast forward and now Erick Schonfeld expresses what I could not.

While I’m excerpting a few paragraphs I strongly recommend reading the whole article to get a full feel for it.

Except there already is a global market for digital media. They are called apps, and they represent the future of media in many ways. Apps are media. Not only are they a form of media in the way that consumer software and games have always been considered media (they compete with TV, books, and music for consumers’ time and attention). But increasingly, they are also subsuming other forms of media.

I think this is probably the crucial point he’s making:

 The lines between software and media will become harder to tell apart as apps begin to include more and more traditional media.

And I can’t put this any better:

A song or a TV show will become a hit because it is shared by millions of people on Facebook and Twitter, not because it is getting millions of dollars of promotion on radio or TV. These apps will determine what we watch next through social and algorithmic recommendations—because how else do you find something to watch when traditional programming is dead?

The apps that deliver this media will exert a powerful influence over our consumption habits—what we watch, listen to, and read, as well as how we do it. Apps will help us find media through social and other filters, and throw it onto our TVs, iPads, stereos or whatever device is handy. They will bypass the set-top box, the radio, and the book store. Apps are where media consumption will happen. Media companies can continue to ignore or fight that trend at their own peril.

From the article:

All of my stuff is pirated. Everything from my HDR Video Tutorial to eBooks to Apps. Fine. It’s all there on PirateBay and MegaUpload and all that stuff. Here are the reasons why I don’t mind:

His five points:

1. It’s a cost of doing business on the internet (and indeed it is).
2. People who don’t buy now, may buy later. (In my case, I don’t mind that the next generation grows up “knowing” I know my stuff.)
3. “Pirates” are people too and not just in it for themselves. They may not be able to afford it right now.
4. Pirates have friends with money and the piracy serves as publicity. (Well, d’oh but the RIAA/MPAA are totally unable to see that despite the RIAA members regular payola scandals where they pay radio stations to “pirate” their material, it’s just authorized at that point but functionally no different)
5. As soon as he opened everything up under a Creative Commons license his business grew!

This totally parallels my experience. I know for sure that there are copies of the HD Survival Handbook and probably all my books published as unprotected PDFs, but I’ve made a very good return for the work I put into that book, and don’t feel the need to “stamp out piracy” even where I know it exists.

Of course all predictions are subject to change but Steven Rosenbaum takes a shot at it in this Fast Company article. Naturally Fast Company are going to be more focused on the business side, rather than production side, so no “large sensor” type predictions here instead the five predictions are below with my comments.

Prediction #1. 2012 is the year all video goes a la carte.

I seriously doubt that all content will go a la carte in 2012. Hopefully some moves in that direction but to have even all cable channels available a la carte in 2012 is highly unlikely because it’s just too big a shift in thinking to happen that quickly. That it is a trend that will grow somewhat in 2012, is likely.

Prediction #2. 2012 will be the year of the OverTheTop revolution.

“Over the top” = “cord cutters” = “Internet set top boxes” like Boxee, Roku and Apple TV (among others). Definitely a trend toward dropping the cable subscription in favor of broadcast HD (free with an antenna) and a combination of Hulu and other sources for content, but will this year be the tipping point? Very highly unlikely. Cable subscriptions seem to be dropping but nowhere near fast enough for any cable company to fee the pressure in 2012.

Prediction #3. YouTube and Google TV will merge (really this time). 

Perhaps, but we won’t really care as all the action is around YouTube where money is going into original production.

Prediction #4.  Yahoo will emerge as a big creator and distributor of video.

Again, perhaps, but within the span of the next 12 months we won’t necessarily see the results. Yahoo went down the path of content creation a few years back and lost a boatload of money on it. As a company that doesn’t have strong reserves (or necessarily a strong future at all) to pull off a major turnaround and be a player in creating and distributing video with 12 months, it’s highly unlikely. Maybe the deal to distribute ABC News will come to something but it’s hard to get excited over that single deal indicating anything significant.

Prediction #5.  Business video will arrive as a real targetable business opportunity.

Yep, got to agree with this one. The use of video in business promotion – both online and in real life – is growing dramatically. Branded entertainment – where the brand pays to produce a program(s) directly – is in major growth and shaping up to be one of the viable methods of funding production in the future. (There will be an upcoming blog post summarizing the sorts of deals done in recent years.)

Rosenbaum finishes with:

The next twelve months are going to be transformative. Web video will become simply “video”–made everywhere and consumed everywhere. And brands and companies, who’ve contemplated using video to tell their stories or connect with consumers, will find that the train is leaving the station. It’s time to get on board the video express, or be left with an unpunched ticket in your hand.

That I also agree with.

He starts by acknowledging what people thing:

The current and perhaps scariest Bogey Man yet is the INTERWEBS (duhn-duhn-DUHN!). The most recent doom-sayers predict ominously that audiences will “cut the cord” in favor of online video on their iPads, laptops and even on their big screens. The latest example of this gloom-o-logy is on full display in “The Death of Television May Be Just 5 Years Away” by Jim Edwards.

He then presents the evidence that television consumption has gone up by 25% recently because (or despite) many more outlets.

Technology not only did NOT erode viewing, it did the seemingly impossible, it actually created time — a new hour every day, seven new hours every week, 365 new hours — more than 15 additional days — every year. More people watch more television, now, than ever.

Once again, television has just refused to die. It has evolved.

As for those cord cutters… it is true that over the past year, paid TV subscriptions have flattened, or even declined. And, yes, technology has given audiences the power to disintermediate the advertisers who sponsor much of what is produced. These are indeed worrisome trends for an industry that relies on cable subscriptions for an enormous part of its revenues and advertising for most of the rest. It means that those of us in the business must adapt to the changing needs of the audiences we serve, in order to better reflect the value they attach to the programming we provide. We must change or risk becoming a sequel to the music industry.

I’m not entirely convinced the Networks can evolve fast enough, but they are not the essence of Television – the relationship between the producer and the audience is what’s paramount, and there are enough alternate channels being developed (and could be developed) that would make the Networks and Cable Channels as they are currently structured, irrelevant.

Clay Shirky has an interesting perspective in the Collapse of Complex Business Models, that suggests the current power players may end up out of the picture if they can’t adapt – and Shirky’s point is that complex systems can’t adapt, only become more complex until they collapse.

To date I have never found a peer reviewed study (i.e. one that has some validity) that shows any harm from unauthorized distribution via bittorrent or other means. There are, however, many studies and examples that show a positive benefit from the publicity and promotion that happens when a project gets released onto a torrent tracker.

Within 24 hours 5,000 people had already grabbed a copy without paying. For some filmmakers this is a nightmare scenario, but Diestler clearly disagrees as he sees all these BitTorrent downloads as a good way to gain exposure for the film that took blood, sweat and tears to make.

“I would much rather have 500,000 downloads than 5,000, although our distributor may feel differently. The worst thing that can happen to a small film, any film for that matter, is to fall into obscurity. 500,000 people could download it and hate it, but in my mind that is better than then not seeing or hearing about it all,” Diestler tells TorrentFreak.

Once, when doing a presentation on How to build and monetize an audience for your independent project I bought up the issue of “piracy” starting with:

“If you aren’t being torrented…”

before I finished someone in the audience completed the sentence with

“… you suck”.

And that’s the truth.  There is one thing worse than being torrented – being ignored!

“When you are a small film with zero money for advertising, BitTorrent can get your film out there and get people talking about it – that is all advertising really does anyway. It’s certainly an interesting question. Being friends with Jamin and Kiowa Winans – the filmmakers behind the film ‘Ink’ – I am very close to this topic,” he says.

You’ll notice the reference to “Ink”.  That is an example I use in the presentation noted above:

“Ink” got heavily pirated 400,000 times, shot into the top 20 movies on iMDb up from 12,991!

Kiowa says that is really hard to put an exact figure on that – they haven’t sold a DVD or Blu-ray for every download but sales have unquestionably gone up.

“We put that [donation link] up at the urging of some of the downloaders with the message ‘if you have watched Ink online for free and would like to contribute what you can, click here’,” Kiowa explains.

Incredibly it has stayed as one of the top 200 movies in the world for the last two months, a feat that would have been impossible without the extra exposure.

And like “Ink” the results are looking good:

Thus far The Inner Room has done “great” on BitTorrent resulting in the much anticipated buzz. Just a few days after it was pirated the movie saw a huge bump on IMDb’s movie meter where it’s currently ranked 250. And although the exposure is nowhere near that of “Ink,” the makers are content with the publicity BitTorrent pirates have given them thus far.

Bittorrent exposure, and free copies, are great ways to promote a project as long as there is a business model to capitalize on the publicity and promotion.

Since ultimately, it’s been brands that have financed Television from the first, I’ve long wondered why it’s taking them so long to realize they no longer need the middle man – the networks or channels – because they can take their message directly to the viewer. Mark Pesce set out the basic proposition in his 2005 article Piracy is Good? which sets out the basic Hyperdistribution philosophy: create the advertising content in conjunction with the program so it is sympathetic and integrated, then distribute it as widely and as far as you can, by whatever method works because the advertising message is integral to the program, and – presumably – targeting the same audience, avoiding the “irrelevant advertising” problem I have.

Now this survey examines what people – potential customers/audience – think about brands sponsoring entertainment:

With further innovation in TV so clearly in demand, we asked consumers if new providers could enter the market, appearing on our internet-connected screens, and if today’s brands would still be relevant, by 2020?

Many consumers agreed that there are “brands that could do a better job at providing TV than some of the TV providers and channels we have now”: 39% agreed, and only 8% disagreed. In the eyes of our viewers, there is clearly room for new entrants to be successful in this market – in particular, major internet, technology and film brands.

Interesting, very interesting.

I’ve long agreed with Techdirt that connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy something (at a reasonable price) is the model for indie financing of project.

For years, we’ve talked about this concept of Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy (CwF + RtB), and too frequently have assumed that the really difficult part is the RtB side of the equation. But it’s really amazing just how many artists have trouble with CwF as well. And this is a great explanation of why. We often hear from artists who say, “well, I have a Twitter and a Facebook feed, but it doesn’t work.” And then you go and look at the feed, and all it is is them announcing, “I just released this work,” or “I’m performing at such-and-such on December 10th,” or whatever. It’s not just that there’s little interaction, but that there’s little that’s interesting.

It wasn’t until I found a way to use Twitter to share news items I found interesting (which, btw, get reproduced back here, where I write more) that I even got on Twitter.

The subscript 2 was just too much for the app store – no provision to include it in the name, so we did a rethink. Smooth sailing into the store – approved in less than a week.

And there it is. Doesn’t show by search yet, but here’s the direct link:

Mac App Store – Xto7 for Final Cut Pro: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xto7-for-final-cut-pro/id487899517?ls=1&mt=12

Starting with an article “Hollywood & the Job Crisis” that leads to be a discussion about constantly changing business model. Right now the model seems to be “how low can you go” which is ultimately self defeating. Where do you go from here? Talent and desire are what will sell. How did post houses get to this, and what will the future hold? What is your Unique Selling Proposition?

Now to be fair, what is being demonstrated is that employees within the studios (and it turns out the some anti-piracy organizations) are indeed downloading unauthorized, copyright material via bittorrent.

You have to wonder that, if the supposed damages done by bittorrent (never proven in any peer reviewed study) then it would be the people working in the studios who felt they should uphold the position of their employers. At least to the extent that they wouldn’t download copyright material on the job!

First up is Sony Pictures Entertainment. As shown below, on this single IP-address alone a wide variety of music and movies have been downloaded. And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg, as YouHaveDownloaded only tracks only a small percentage of all public BitTorrent downloads.

And then:

Another Hollywood studio where it’s not uncommon to download music, TV-shows and movies is NBC Universal. The employee(s) behind one of the IP-addresses at the Fort Lauderdale office in Florida downloaded the first season of ‘Game of Thrones,’ some trance music, a DVD of ‘Cowboys and Aliens’, and much more.

….

And then there are the fine upstanding people at Fox Entertainment checking out the work of a competing studio. Perhaps downloading ‘Super 8′ can be branded as “market research,” but in this instance actually paying for the DVD might be more appropriate.

After all, when Fox notices that one of their own movies has leaked online they quicklycontact the FBI to get the offender jailed. Ouch.

So, I expect there will be mass sackings over this? Unlikely as the position is really “do as we say, not as we do”. I wish I could find the link to a story of a year ago where one Studio executive discovered his children were downloading unauthorized material. Instead of doing what he’d do for any other person – sue them – he was going to give his children “a stern talking to”! Hypocrites.

The terms that best describe Studio or Record Company executives: clueless hypocrites.  My position is that is factual and let them try proving otherwise in a defamation suit!

Torrent Freak has even more examples, and then check out why not even the collection agencies believe in the law.

Update: Could not miss linking to this: ANTI-PIRACY MOVIE ADS CAUGHT USING PIRATED MUSIC  December 10, 2011

Netherlands composer Melchior Rietveldt composed that ominous techno tune for a local film festival after being asked by anti-piracy group BREIN, who are funded by Hollywood. A few years later, he got himself a copy of Harry Potter on DVD and noticed his music was suddenly being used for much wider use than he had originally agreed to in contract. Which essentially means that when they say ‘you wouldn’t steal a television’, that doesn’t quite extend to intellectual property.

Legal estimates put the amount of money Rietveldt is owed by pretty much every movie house on Earth at somewhere close to €1 million. Matters got even worse when the chairman of the board of the royalty collection agency in the Netherlands offered to help recoup the funds – but only if he could take a 33% cut. It’s bad timing particularly for the US, where the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is currently a hot topic for its intended transferral of responsibility for pirated from individuals back to small businesses and web hosts. After all, if they can’t even look after their own ads, how can they expect anybody else to abide by the law?

Many thanks to my friend Don Berube for pointing this out.  While the headline slightly overstates the case, it’s clear we’re heading for an era when computers in general will understand meaning and the content of images. 

Face Detection and Recognition is now prevalent in digital cameras which can detect many faces and even recognize those you tag, giving them preference as to focus and exposure. But Antonio Torralba is more concerned with what’s not the face in a photo: his Artificial Intelligence (A/I/) software tags all objects in an image and makes the image more easily searchable so as to be able to place the photo in an appropriate context. This ability will eventually mean that robots can recognize their surroundings, say in a house or office building, based on what furniture and objects they see around them.

Going one step further with this research, Torralba is also developing systems that can scan a short video clip and predict what is likely to happen next, based on the people and objects in the scene. This should eventually allow robots to anticipate how their actions will influence future events.

Seems like magic to me, but I seen enough of these type of articles – fully acknowledging they’re at the cutting edge of research and many years from practical application in an editing situation – to know that the future will be computer aided way beyond what we have now.

I’ve long said that the application of at least basic editing algorithms (such as in our First Cuts software) isn’t that difficult being largely a matter of modeling the behavior of human edits and what drives their decisions. The problem is having the source information – metadata if you will – to feed the algorithm. Speech transcription, facial detection, emotion detection, and now software to tag all objects in the image and predict what will happen next all point to a much more computer-assisted editing future than most expect.

An interesting research result from a source that isn’t fully bought and paid for by the Studios, that is, a report that may have some chance of relating to the real world rather than the fantasy land that MPAA/RIAA “research” reports come from.

Recently, Senator Ron Wyden asked CRS if it could explore the state of the movie industry today as compared to 1995 on a variety of different criteria. You can read the full report embedded below, but here are a few key points. First off, despite the industry’s regular attempt to play up its contribution to GDP and employment, the report found that the combined GDP contribution of both the “motion picture and sound recording” industries was a whopping 0.4% in 2009. Back in 1995… it was also 0.4%.

Emphasis is from TechDirt.com.

As for employment, Hollywood loves to claim that it employs millions of people. One popular number is that 19 million people have jobs in “IP-intensive industries.” Of course, we’ve discussed how misleading a term that is, as they lump in all sorts of jobs that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. So, how many people are actually employed in the movie industry? Not that many. 374,000 in 2010 — and that includes both full and part time workers. And that’s really not much different from the 392,000 in 1998. So it’s not like the industry has been losing employees in droves as they imply. Furthermore, that’s only slightly more than the number of jobs that Facebook’s app platform alone is estimated to have created. Hell, we’ve seen reports that have said eBay alone created 750,000 small business jobs. Perhaps Hollywood isn’t as big a part of the economy as it likes to claim.

I like that last line, and this time I’m going to add the emphasis: Perhaps Hollywood isn’t as big a part of the economy as it likes to claim. 

The article goes on to consider Box Office Gross (higher than ever before), so once again I have to ask: Why do we need the Internet destroying, Constitutionally difficult pieces of nasty legislation as PROTECT IP and SOPA?  O right, to give “Hollywood” ultimate power over the Internet without challenge, due process, or recourse.

Once again it really is a case of protecting the MPAA and RIAA from themselves. Every new technology they’ve challenged and hated over the last 100 yours has turned out to benefit their own business. Idiots. That’s all, they’re just plain idiots. Especially the hypocritical Chris Dodds (now head of the MPAA). Now as head of the MPAA he is totally in favor of a “Great Firewall of China” for the USA (government censorship of the Internet) to protect the MPAA.

“When the Chinese told Google that they had to block sites or they couldn’t do [business] in their country, they managed to figure out how to block sites.”

But just a few years ago as a potential Presidential candidate, he seems to have a whole different opinion:

Tell the Chinese government that Google.cn will no longer censor information with Google’s consent. And should the Chinese government not find that acceptable, then Google.cn would shut down its operations. I understand that you’ve already moved all of your search records out of China, to prevent them from being turned over to the Chinese government. But what better way to affirm Google’s commitment to the free flow of information as a human right, than to send this message to a nation with the largest population in the world?

You can view that video on YouTube. So, is Chris Dodds a lying hypocrite, just incredibly stupid or a politician who’ll say whatever they want to get elected, but ultimately follow exactly what their finical sponsors (aka donors) tell them to do and say.

“How do you know if a politician (future, present or former) is lying? There mouth is moving.”  How true that remains now.