I love the ongoing “pissing into the wind” approach of big media in their battle against the ease and speed with which any and all content will be spread:
Looking for highlights of last night’s Oscars on YouTube? Good luck.
That’s because ABC, which broadcast last night’s show, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which produces the event, don’t want clips of last night’s show on the world’s biggest video site. Instead, they’d prefer that you watch highlights on ABC’s Oscar.com site. (via)
Aside from the fact that I was able to find a number of live streaming links of the Academy Awards last night (on of them was even on the popular Justin.tv) there are literally hundreds of clips of last night’s show on YouTube and elsewhere.
Oh, and you can also download the entire thing from any number of P2P sites.
The point is that ABC has wasted time and energy trying to protect their property instead of working with the powerful distribution forces that were going to win either way.
There is an article in today’s NYT about the pictures and video posted via Twitter by Ashton Kutcher and Demi more during and after the Academy Awards last night:
While watching the Academy Awards on TV Sunday night, Hollywood couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore sent text updates to fans via Twitter. At a post-Oscars party afterward, they also uploaded several grainy photographs using TwitPic, an application that allows users to post pictures taken with their mobile phones to their Twitter accounts. Mr. Kutcher posted two low-resolution photos: a blurred image of producer Sean Combs along with the note “Diddy throws up oscars” and one of Mr. Kutcher himself clutching an Oscar, accompanied by the text “Me and penelopes oscar.” Ms. Moore turned her cameraphone on herself and Mr. Kutcher decked out in their postceremony party gear, garnering thousands of hits in less than a minute.
I’m actually surprised more fans don’t take more control of their public exposure. All they would really have to do to get rid of the Paparazzi is to release floods of pictures they (or their friends) have taken – give them away to the media orgs for free and just put the paps right out of business.
Considering the level of access the actual stars have it is impossible to imagine a professional paparazzi being able to compete.
Every year the MPAA claims to be doing everything in its power to stop pirates from destroying the film industry. Of course, what they really mean is that they are wasting millions of dollars and work-hours.
Not only does there seem to be little proof that pirated downloads are actually hurting the film industry’s bottomline but the efforts of the MPAA are doing nothing to stop it:
Waxy.org’s Andy Baio has once again published an extensive collection of data about this year’s Oscar nominations and their availability on P2P networks. He’s been doing this for the last seven years, during which the overall picture has remained pretty much the same; almost all Oscar nominated movies are available on file-sharing networks before the annual awards ceremony. In fact of the 26 movies that were nominated this year, 23 are already available in DVD quality on P2P networks. (via NewTeeVee)
While this same article points out that it is taking longer for pirates to get copies to the internet, by a matter of days from year-to-year, it makes it very clear that the major studios are going to have to figure out a new approach to fighting the pirates other than chasing them around the net with “cease and desist” orders and dragging fans into court.
Maybe they should, um, take a few lessons from the pirates and begin releasing usable digital copies themselves without endless forms of DRM that cripple the end-users ability to do what they want with the movie.
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February 23, 2009 2:37 pm | 
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