The MPAA and NATO are panicking because they don’t know how to replace revenues lost not to piracy, but to newer legitimate commercial content platforms, like Netflix, or ad-supported platforms like YouTube. This is, I believe, a better explanation for the brinksmanship between Old Media and New Media companies over the now-tabled SOPA/PIPA legislation: it’s not really about piracy, but about which business models are going to be successful in tapping the entertainment content market in the 21st century.
The only way to stem piracy is to make more content more widely available at a competitive price point, and include added-value that pirates can’t match. It seems so obvious, at least to those of us not invested in failing 20th century business models. Piracy exists because consumers want content and can’t get it legitimately. Legislation can’t fix this. Remember Prohibition? Technology will find a way around enforcement every time. Remember DRM?
Industry exec John Tarnoff muses about the future of the entertainment business and draws connections between the seemingly disparate and chaotic forces that are transforming the content creation landscape before our very eyes. A 30 year veteran of the biz, John started out as a motion picture literary agent, was a studio exec for most of the 80s and early 90s (MGM, Orion, DeLaurentis, Village-Roadshow), launched a tech startup during the 90s “bubble” and wound up for most of the 2000’s at DreamWorks Animation, where he was Head of Show Development. Now consulting at the intersection of the industry, education and digital technology for clients including Carnegie Mellon, The ACME Network and the AMPAS, John is following his passion to better prepare the next generation (and those lagging behind in the current generations) for the business as it’s going to be, not as it has been.
