Warner Brothers screws around with distribution, again.

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Moon

So, Warner Bros recently decided that, apparently, it was just too flipping easy for customers to get the chance to pay WB to see their movies when and how they wanted to.

I’m simplifying that unfairly, of course, but that’s largely the gist. From the Los Angeles Times:

Under a new deal between the two companies, Netflix users won’t just have to wait 56 days to rent Warner Bros. movies on DVD. They’ll have to wait 28 days to add the movies to their queues. [...]

Beginning Feb. 1, when the new agreement goes into effect, Netflix customers won’t even be able to add Warner movies to their queues until four weeks after the DVDs go on sale, a knowledgeable person not authorized to speak publicly confirmed. They would then have to wait another four weeks until Netflix starts shipping the discs.

Logically, Warner Bros clearly felt that they don’t get enough revenue from Netflix and Redbox (and, really, that’s completely understandable), and had a feeling that potential customers who really, really, really want to see a movie the instant it is released on DVD or digitally, would quite clearly love to utilize avenues that provide WB with better revenue (such as DVD sales or direct pay-per-view), if only there wasn’t that pesky Netflix and Redbox there letting them rent-or-stream the movie after only a few weeks of waiting.

So, did WB decide to combat this lack of traffic to their better-revenue-generating sources by enhancing the customer experience of those sources?  Or by leveraging the popularity of their titles alongside the tricky market that Netflix, and to a lesser extent Redbox, are always in to renegotiate better rates from the rental places?

No, no, of course not.  WB decided to make it more difficult for customers to find its titles, even when those titles aren’t technically available via the rental places yet.  Continue reading →

Posted in Entertainment, From the Industry, The Business of Film Making | Leave a comment

Investing in the Future, at a reasonable return

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Moon

A few weeks ago, a group of students at my alma mater (University of California at Riverside) put forward a proposal to the UC Board of Regents that would completely overhaul and replace the current tuition scheme of the entire UC system. The details of the proposal are worth a read in and of themselves, but to summarize, rather than paying a flat tuition fee each year, students would instead pay the university 5% of their paychecks, for 20 years of employment, after they graduate.

In other words, rather than paying a fee in order to get educated, students would pay a percentage of the income they achieve because of the education they receive.

Now, as with any idea of such magnitude, there are a lot of issues that need a lot of discussion, and I bet most anyone could find bits and pieces of the specific proposal that they absolutely hate, or at least think will be trouble. Maybe there’s even aspects of it that I can’t see at the moment that would be fundamentally worse than the current ever-increasing tuition set up. To be sure, the transition involved in going from the current system to this would be… interesting, to use a cliché as a massive understatement.

But never mind all the technical issues for a moment. What intrigues me about this proposal is the underlying intent. It turns education, specifically public University education, from a service needing to be bought from the state, into an investment made by the state into its youth. And an investment with huge potential dividends, both financially and socially, besides. On an almost philosophical level, it brings in an element of capitalist, business-oriented thinking to the tricky question of public higher education, without treating the students (and thus the citizens they will eventually become) into commodities or employees. It’s possibly the first alternate education funding scheme I’ve ever encountered (and I’ve encountered quite a few) that would make practical post-graduation results into the incentive driving the constant chase for money. Continue reading →

Posted in College, Education, Issues and Ideas | Leave a comment

Another SOPA/PIPA post

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Moon

I’ve been wracking my skull trying to come up with an original and in-my-voice way of expressing just how much I dislike SOPA and PIPA, but ultimately, I can’t say it any more eloquently than so many others have done.

Wil Wheaton talks about the ridiculousness of the MPAA accusing anyone of “abusing authority”

John Scalzi on how the rights of creators to control their copyrights are not served by this legislation

Randal Munroe gives his usual succinct view of how these bills would actually harm the people they’re supposed to be empowering

Jon Stewart wonders when the Congress became Ogre from “Revenge of the Nerds”

NewLeftMedia explains just what the heck this is all about, anyway

Ars Technica on how many people involved themselves in the Wikipedia and Google protests

Even Glen Beck weighs in on how bad these bills are

Even the Author of SOPA is guilty of violating it

Put simply, the “Stop Online Piracy Act” and the “Protect I-P Act” are bad legislation, written by people who do not understand the industry and environment and issues involved.  I am a creator of content, a very strong supporter of copyright law, and the owner of several copyrighted intellectual properties, and every thing I’ve read about these bills (including the actual texts of the bills themselves) convinces me that this legislation would do far, far, far more harm than any possible good that might come of it.

Consider the example of MegaUpload, taken down by the FBI this week for copyright violations. Under current law, the place can be shut down, despite the fact that thousands of people use it for completely legitimate uses. As the graphic there points out, under SOPA/PIPA, not only is the need for probable cause massively reduced, but the options for redress in the event that the take-down isn’t upheld are virtually non-existent. 

It is important to protect intellectual property and promote the ability of artists to make a living off of their art without having it stolen out from under them, but it’s also important that we don’t rush so quickly into the fray that we wind up destroying the very thing we’re trying to protect.

(tip o’ the hat to +StopSOPA on Google+ for the image)

Posted in Entertainment, Politics | Leave a comment

In The Middle

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Moon

“The middle” is an inexact range bound only by the two conditions of it not being concurrent with “the beginning” or “the end”, but existent between those two states on the condition of the former being before and the latter being after in terms of the normal entropic directionalism of time.

Being that both the termination point of “the beginning” and the commencement point of “the end” arealso inexactly defined for any given period of time, the conditions of “the middle” are defined primarily by subjective determination.

IOW, I’m now completely in the middle of writing two scripts right now, and Junie is in the middle of two other projects.

The middle is a nice place to be.

Posted in Entertainment, MoonHill Productions, Script Writing | Leave a comment

Amazing Discoveries.

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Moon

Several weeks ago, I was walking along on my way to lunch, when for some odd reason it occurred to me that milk, containing as it does a combination of water, fat, and protein, is nearly the perfect food for young children, ’cause children, y’see, they need protein and fat to build up body-mass, and especially fat for brain development, and so on and so forth.

Yes. I “discovered” that milk was a perfect food for babies.

I are smart.

 

There’s an axiom about ideas that states: “There are no new ideas. There are just new ways of making them felt.” And while there’s a part of me that would really, really, really love to believe that Audre Lorde was talking about the adaptation of classic stories into Muppet movies, I do know what she was talking about. Inspiration, discovery, even creation, rarely if ever happen in a vacuum, at least when it comes to Humanity and Story-Telling. We are all the products of our upbringings and environments, and half the reason we create stories to tell to other people is because those other people will understand what the heck we’re on about.  Continue reading →

Posted in Entertainment, Science, Script Writing | Leave a comment