5 Minutes with Harold Feld: "Dear FCC: No Special Favors for Hollywood!"

The only thing stopping Hollywood from releasing movies to VOD earlier is… Hollywood. They could do it if they wanted to. There’s no law stopping them, there’s not technical limitation. They’ve imposed an artificial limitation as a lever to get what they want. If there were actual serious demand for movies on VOD sooner, I seriously doubt Hollywood would leave the money lying on the table. I want facts and figures. How many people want these movies sooner? How much money is Hollywood losing because they aren’t releasing them sooner? How much of that revenue isn’t actually lost because people buy the DVD anyhow? How much would SOC prevent piracy? How much would it increase revenue, counting the fact that not every act of piracy is a lost sale? How much would it cost Hollywood to compensate the millions of Americans who would have their existing equipment broken? Would it cost more to the millions of law abiding citizens than would be earned by a few corporate entities? If so, is that really in the best public interest?

Just one tiny (pet-peeve) thing: please attach your lav-mic to your tie instead of your jacket lapel. Sounds a little like you’re talking from an airport restroom :0

Other than that, I really appreciate PK’s efforts. Based in LA, my frustrations are never let down with (specifically) Hollywood’s aggression against their consumers. Unfortunately, it seems to be within the “genes” if the industry.

I’m not a firm believer that piracy =’s lost sales. Sure, piracy is wrong, no doubt about it, just the same as taking anything to which you do not have a legal right is wrong. However, to say on a wholesale basis that piracy automatically =’s a lost sale is not only a false premise but is deceptive and allows for abuses on the part of organizations such as the MPAA who use it as an excuse to justify their own excesses and further their own profit motivated agendas to the detriment of others. After all, if there is one DVD on a store shelf, and someone has pirated the same content and placed it on the ‘net, that one DVD is still on the shelf ready for sale, the sale isn’t lost its just not been made yet.

It has come to the point where self serving organizations are now dictating to the very government entities designed to prevent the very abuses these self serving organizations wish to enjoy. How has it come to this? That a profit motivated group can affect government policy in such a manner as the SOC issue when the obvious end result is only profit for the group with nothing really in return for the public. Big deal, movies sooner, so? This is yet another case of the MPAA making an issue out of a non-issue. I’ll bet before long you will see some more unconfirmed and unverifiable “numbers” from the MPAA, like various organizations have done for piracy where no independant third party is allowed or able to verify them.

What utter rubbish the MPAA has thrown about yet again.