George Soros sure is a character. The convicted insider trader is, according to the Wall St. Journal, nearing completion of a purchase of the DreamWorks SKG library. Viacom's Paramount Pictures is selling the 59-film library for $900 million, part of its strategy to finance last year's $1.6 billion purchase of the studio from Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen.

What does this mean for the DVD future of Anchorman and American Beauty? Good question.

I'm assuming that Soros will adhere to the line pitched by the organizations he funds and try to change the business model of modern studios. First, he'll re-release the DVDs without content protection. After all, DRM harms consumers. Next, he'll signal that anyone is free to rip those movies and make them available on BitTorrent to their million closest friends. That will make the ISPs happy, like BellSouth, whose William Smith told the WSJ recently that 1% of his customers are chewing up 40% of his bandwidth (but Soros won't want Smith to be able to create a separate lane for those heavy users, that would violate net neutrality). Then he'll register them in Creative Commons, so someone can take Saving Private Ryan and splice it with Gladiator to create a saga about a World War II soldier who time-travels to ancient Rome and is forced to fight for his life (it works, both movies open with the heroes fighting and eventually defeating Germans).

Now Soros is buying these films for his Soros Fund Management LLC, an investment fund. But it would be hypocritical of Soros to operate entities controlled by his fund in contrast to the positions he supports with his philanthropy, wouldn't it? So he must believe he can recoup his $900 million and more without DRM, with giveaways on BitTorrent, and with repurposing of the content without compensation.

After all, lets look at some of the groups he supports. This data, found on the Open Society Institute web site, lists a sampling of 2004 funding:

New America Foundation, $250,000; Free Press, $200,000; Media Access Project, $200,000; Consumers Union, $150,000; Center for Democracy and Technology, $100,000; Public Knowledge, $100,000; Electronic Privacy Information Center, $100,000. (By the way, it shows how extreme Soros' thinking is that he gives twice as much money to a shrill and irresponsible organization such as Free Press as he gives to civilized, reasoned organizations such as Public Knowledge and CDT. One can disagree with another's point of view and remain civil about it, something Free Press has yet to learn.)

So let's all watch closely what happens with the DreamWorks library. This could be a perfect opportunity for the Free Culture Movement to demonstrate exactly how high-quality (well, maybe not The Mexican) cultural works can thrive in a free market where their intellectual property rights are largely unenforced.

posted by Patrick Ross @ 4:14 PM | Free Culture Movement

Link to this Entry | Printer-Friendly | Email a Comment | Post a Comment(0)