The WSJ today (subscription required) has a piece on the next two releases in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Following up the success of the initial movie, Disney decided to make two sequels at once, for release this summer and next, at a cost approaching $500 million.

I quite enjoyed Black Pearl, and I am happy it grossed about $600 million, enough to persuade all the players to risk their time and money on the sequels. And, as the WSJ documents, it took a lot of effort and dedication on the part of all to commit to the follow-up.

Of course, soon after the film is released it will be rocketing around the Internet on Bit Torrent. The creators can make enough money to finance the enterprise largely because real broadband is still scarce enough and the computer movie-viewing experience kludgy enough so that people still prefer to pay see a film a theater or or buy/rent the DVD. But as Internet speeds increase and the home viewing experience shifts, this balance will change, and it is important to get some protections in place before it does. Otherwise, I will not get to see Pirates #4 and #5.

This is the concern behind the proposed broadcast flag, which tech objects to as a "tech mandate." All right, I have an alternative -- let the ISPs filter their traffic using digital fingerprinting to block copyrighted material. They can be paid for this -- we aren't socialists here. There are still glitches, of course, but the technology is improving steadily and such measures would avoid the tech industry's complaint about mandates; any technology could be used. It would not work perfectly, but incentive structures could be created to discourage abuse and encourage improvement, and it all looks quite promising to me.

Of course, tech companies may object on the ground that there is no problem. Today's WSJ has another entry:

Yo Ho Ho

The Consumer Electronics Association took at shot at the Recording Industry Association of America this week, running an ad in a Capitol Hill newspaper with photos of a pirate — eye-patch and parrot, included — and a photo of a father and son sitting on a couch. The caption: “This is a pirate…This is Not.”

Electronics manufacturers and the record labels are fighting about whether Congress should require antipiracy technologies to be built into new gadgets that play or record digital music – particularly satellite and digital radio. So far, legislation hasn’t gotten very far, partly because broadcasters are worried that new antipiracy mandates might slow the development and use of devices that can pick up digital radio signals.

Let's experiment. Go to Best Buy (a CEA member), take a product made by Samsung or LG or SanDisk or Panasonic or any of 2000 other CEA members and walk out the door. You may have a little problem getting by the guards and alarms, so just pull out the CEA ad and point out that the product under your coat may carry a price tag of $500, but the materials in it are worth about a dollar and half; all the rest of the value is in its IP. And since CEA says that appropriating IP is perfectly fine, what is the problem? The company can replenish the inventory at marginal cost, which is close to zero.

If you don't want to spend jail time this would involve, then maybe you can help CEA's members practice what they preach by drafting a new law that repeals all patent protection for any company that is a member. After all, people should share, and the case for patents has always been more troublesome than the case for copyrights, so the logic is impeccable. If sharing movies for free is fine, then so is sharing chip designs.

And let's abolish trademarks while we are at it. Then you can weld a few random components together and sell it under any brand name you choose. What, you say? That might reduce the brand name's incentive to invest? But, but -- who cares about investment when we all want to share?

To turn serious: Come on, CEA! Get serious. If the IP-dependent industries don't stop trying to rend each other for short-term advantage, the Copyleft and the DotCommunists are going to eat you all for lunch.

posted by James DeLong @ 12:48 PM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

Link to this Entry | Printer-Friendly | Email a Comment | Post a Comment(2)