The Motion Picture Association of America is doing their best to follow in the footsteps of their brethren at the RIAA and make business harder for its members. They, Im guessing at the direction of some lawyers of their member companies, want to try to make cable and satellite companies shut off the “analog hole” when showing movies that are being released to TV prior to their DVD release. In the MPAA’s own words “Distribution over insecure outputs would facilitate the illegal copying and redistribution of this high value content, causing untold damage to the DVD and other ‘downstream’ markets.”

The MPAA is staring right in the face of a paradox and they must make a choice. They can continue to invest in the war on Digital Piracy (as opposed to physical DVD piracy, which can be monitored and slowed by confiscating actual DVDs and duplication equipment), or they can invest in promoting the fun of going to the movies.

Invest in a positive message that can get people more excited about their member products and the unique experience offered in theaters, or send a message that your customers are crooks and pirates. Invest in a message that could generate more revenues for your members, or invest in the cost of trying to close the “analog hole” which costs taxpayers money as you waste legislative time, consumers money, as you waste the time and money of cable, satellites and telcos who will fight this effort or spend millions having to adopt it, and of course drive up the cost of the movie going experience because of all the above.

I have more than 1 billion dollars invested in the entertainment industry. I get to see our content distributed illegally online. I get a daily report of all the torrents and other files available online. You know what I think about that ? So what. Thats what i think. Its collateral damage. Unlike music, it takes time to upload and download movies. People with more time than money will steal content. THey werent going to pay for it otherwise. People with a conscious will pay for the content. Fortunately that is most people.

For all the money the RIAA wasted on trying to stop digital piracy, about all they acccomplished was explaining to everyone exactly where and how to steal music. Please do not make the same mistake. Right now its a hassle to unitlize the analog hole to copy movies. Most people have no idea how to do it, particularly for HD delivered movies. Please do not go through a big process of teaching people exactly what the analog hole is in hopes of getting companies to prevent its use. All you are going to do is turn on the lightbulb for many who would otherwise not have a clue.

The theatrical exhibition industry just experienced a phenomenal several weeks with The Dark Knight setting record after record. People by the 10s of millions went to the theater, many multiple time to enjoy the unique experience of going to a movie. Could you please, please, please use the money you are going to spend fighting the unfightable and instead spend it on promoting the fun of going to the movies ? More people going to the movies is more people getting excited about movies. More people getting excited about movies means more people watching movies on TV, which is good for revenues, and more people buying DVDs or legal downloads of the movies. Again, good for revenues.

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I was going to write a post about how similar the porn industry is to that of web video. The commonalities are striking. Find a hot girl with hopefully a big personality and put her as the focus of the show. Find the least expensive video equipment you can and using low cost production methods, quickly release as many videos as possible. Every now and then a hit pops out, but the key is volume. In the porn biz, its pay per view/subscription, for the internet video business its free with ads or maybe some money from Itunes. Not so different, are they ?

But thats not for this post. It occurred to me that its possible to find porn. Its possible to find PG 13 type videos,but its really difficult to find R rated videos. Sure there are Playboy or Mr SKin type sites that will titillate us, and there are the sites where college kids go wild, but thats not what Im referring to. Where are the internet videos that cover grown up subject matters, where nudity “that contributes to the subject matter” isn’t considered gratuitous or pornographic ?

You cant post that kind of material on Youtube , Myspace, Yahoo or AOL Video. So where will user generated content geared towards a more “mature” audience go ? Dailymotion ? Or does internet hosted video never get past PG – 13 ? Has internet hosted video evolved into the most censored medium of our generation ? If you really want to go beyond PG 13, do you have to host it yourself on your own website ?

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I started this blog more than 4 years ago because I wanted to respond to a story that I felt misrepresented the email exchange I had with the reporter. My concern then, was that reporters in the traditional news media, in this case the Dallas Morning News had sufficient power to create whatever perception they wanted to about whoever they wrote about. This blog was a way to combat that.

That was during a time when newspapers and televisions perceived themselves to have more impact than the internet, and they were right. The topics they wrote and reported about, and the perceptions they left had a far longer shelf life and messaging impact than they do today. To this day, my day of making blizzards at Dairy Queen is referenced frequently, as if it happened recently, although it happened more than 7 years ago. To this day, it seems that every mention of me, whether it relates to basketball or not has to mention my being fined by the NBA in some manner, although the only time I have been fined in the last 5 years was during the 2006 playoffs. There have been multiple other stories about me that have drawn headlines, but few people are going to remember them.

Today’s media presumes that our memories are short, and that we need continuous shots of adrenaline generating headlines in order to get our attention. Whether its the paparazzi following a starlet doing the exact same thing over and over again, or the search for the latest rehab relapse, no story is expected to remembered past dinner the next day.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing. It’s a reflection of the significant increase in competition for subscriber, viewer/reader and advertiser attention and dollars. If thats the best way you can come up with to compete, go for it.

Of course, the constant chase of headlines can create misery for those people being chased, but it has lead to a rule of thumb that offers a light at the end of the tunnel for anyone under media scrutiny. The life of a story in this media world is 3 weeks. Not 2 weeks and 6 days, and not 3 weeks and 1 day. 3 Weeks. For anyone who is getting attention they would not like, if you can just deal with it, and not generate any new news or stories about yourself, than all the attention will go away in 3 weeks.

In 3 weeks, unless you do something new, even the media gets bored with the story. They run out of ridiculous headlines. They cant get even the smallest blogs to reference them. The juice runs dry and by then someone else has is the story. More importantly, if you can stay out of the news for a while, your 3 week run will have been completely forgotten.

Its also important to recognize that the 3 weeks rule does not apply to good news. If you cure the common cold, save a person from drowning, feed the poor, or do something nice that does get a headline, it will not be carried forward for 3 weeks. You will get 1 day in the news, and then 10 blogs will write about it, and then after 3 days, it will be forgotten by all by those involved in the story and your friends and relatives.

Whats the point of all of this ? Planning and understanding. If you find yourself in the media for any reason, just remember the rule of 3s, 3 days or 3 weeks. Then it all goes away