Darknet: Hollywood's War against the Digital Generation

Last week Technicolor issued a memo to theatres stating that, due to the minority of managers in the business participating with or allowing for movie piracy, film prints will be delivered only one day prior to their opening date. This shouldn't cause a lot of problems visible to the public; but aside from frustrating projectionists everywhere, there is a lesser chance that all five copies of Batman Begins shipped to your local multiplex on Tuesday will get a test run before its Wednesday release. Without that "tech screening," audiences may be treated to the rare occasion of seeing errors. (With more theatres using managers in their projection booths instead of union professionals, this could include such sloppiness as reels spliced out of order or backwards, dirt and scratches and frame jumping.)

The ease in which corporations now excuse their actions as being combative against bootlegging is almost as out of hand as three years ago, blaming every invasion of privacy on terrorism protection. Some people in Hollywood even consider movie pirates to be just another level of terrorists similarly intent on damaging the American economy, but without the fatal operations. Entertainment companies also share with Washington an unwillingness to acknowledge, let alone reform, their own causes of problems like consumer alienation and overbearing foreign policy. Comparatively, there is a lot more literature focusing on the latter, but the public might want to arm themselves with knowledge about freedoms being compromised by organizations with seemingly more power these days than anyone in our government. Giant media conglomerates may affect the future of your rights on a level that may equal, or even surpass, anything accomplished through legislation like The Patriot Act.

Journalist J.D. Lasica opens up the ground on "Hollywood’s War against the Digital Generation" in a new book inconveniently titled Darknet (it sounds like a Goth club to me), which argues that the entertainment industry hurts itself with measures that come off as more disciplinary than helpful; and this leads to more estrangements with the community on which it forgettingly depends. Broadly outlining the history and structure of internet piracy, file swapping and downloading, Lasica entertains with specific accounts of individuals and organizations concerned with movies, music, software, games, and even contraband documents compared to the Federalist Papers. More importantly, though, Lasica warns of Hollywood's plans for monopolistic control of "their" media, "our: products, and public usage of both. Hollywood is also urged to take notice that the people could very well win the fight for digital progression that entertainment companies are decidedly ignoring.

Article Author: Film Cynic

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