Regardless of how Silicon Valley feels about copyright, it's been a profound failure of our legal system to permit their epic theft of creative work. I'm sure lots of people hate to buy the things they need, but if they decide to take them, they don't get glowing cover stories about their ability to create new "models"; they get arrested. These tech moguls have perpetrated of the greatest heists in the history of the world, and we're still treating them as heroes in most walks of life.
You might be surprised how much is being paid for now --- anthropic started buying physical books in huge quantities to scan, just as google did in the past. The major US AI companies are striking deals with everyone - for example, 250$million to news corp.
Anthropic paid 1.5 billion to make up for not licensing books in their beginning: an amount of $3k per book. The US companies are activating being fined when they don't.
If we're concerned about copyright infringement today, it mostly seems to be in the international (eg, Chinese) models, who do seem to have an advantage since they don't have to license things. Some people are raising this as a problem, as it potentially hurts US companies' relative cost (and data) competitiveness.
I don’t think buying a book gives the purchaser the right to scan it and train AI with it. Isn’t that what copyright should protect against? Unauthorized copying and use. If it doesn’t, copyright seems meaningless.
You'd have to argue about whether scanning and letting the AI use it is different from someone reading a book and using that knowledge. The Anthropic suit judge didn't think it was different.
Personally I suspect that judge will end up being an outlier, but we will have to see.
The law is eons behind, and maybe isnt written in a way that captures a meaningful distinction between a human being, who has hard limits on how much existing work they can hold in their minds and the pace they can produce new work at any one time, in while filtering whatever they learn from through their own subjective experience of the original vs. A digital system that threats a film as just a bunch or coloured pixels & sonic vibrations in various configurations, that can be sterilized of any meaning previously carried, atomized into components blocks analyzed mathematically, and then recombined infinitely with no meaningful constraints on memory capacity for existing work or the pace at which derivative work can be produced.
If that is the case, which it may be, it really makes a mockery of the laws legitimacy. What good is it if produces rulings that are obviously divorced from material reality, and unable to take the massively detrimental consequences that a certain ruling will lead to into account at all?
Judges rule on the letter of the law, not the ethics, which is, sadly, left to politicians, which we all know are pillars of ethical behavior. But just because you can legally do something, doesn’t always mean you should. Like any new technology, AI has eliminated jobs with, undoubtedly, countless more to follow. Unfortunately, I doubt it will create enough new jobs to offset the losses. And the damage to all creative fields is heartbreaking. Humans need the arts. AI Art is the oxymoron of the century. It’s soulless.
Luckily they are all thoroughly decent people who would never put profit before morality. Imagine if they weren't and had the ability to make societies divisive, purely to monetise hate?
So what you're saying is that in 10 years there will be one ginormous entertainment conglomerate that produces everything controlled by a nepo baby who's Dad is one of the 10 people that owns for 50% of the planet's wealth.
Gee, this sounds like a great good v evil script. If only there was an indie studio to produce it.
I love everything you write, Ted, but I think this post misses a few things (sorry about the mega-comment, which should be illegal):
1. It was The Studio - Showrun by established writers who have been in Hollywood for 30+ years - that won those Emmys. And Apple didn’t exactly revolutionize the development process. They hired the same execs that have been in the Hollywood ecosystem for decades.
2. Tech learned to do entertainment better than Hollywood 3 decades ago when Pixar applied iterative design principles to storytelling, and I don’t think any of us would reasonably argue that early Pixar movies represented some nightmarish Tech dystopia.
3. The fact of the matter is that the best storytellers come from Hollywood because they were trained by the best storytellers before them who were trained by the best storytellers before them and so on…
4. AI is not going to be able to replace them anytime soon. The backlash to Tilly Norwood was so swift and severe that the creators had to unroll their rollout and block comments on their posts. People have grown increasingly wary of AI and incremental improvements to models are only serving to exacerbate that distrust, not allay it. Further, the bubble will burst very soon (you said so yourself exactly a month ago) and when it does, all of its flaws will come to the surface. Generative it is not a magic bullet for storytelling, and the more practical applications of AI tech (e.g. sentiment analysis, transcription and editorial) will prove to be most impactful to the process of telling real stories.
5. Fully agree that increasing consolidation will be bad for the industry, as single points of control tend to smooth all the lovely rough edges out of storytelling. Creatives from the creator economy are learning to tell better stories - without and with AI - and I would argue they are a greater threat to the studio system than any tech bros… you’re right to want to build elsewhere, but studios have always been seen as a necessary evil by creatives, and I don’t think much is going to change in that regard.
6. La La Land will never beat Severance except maybe in the purely symbolic way you refer to in the post.
Apple TV+ got Chris Albrecht to curate their channel the same way he did for HBO at its pinnacle. Seems the opposite of letting an algorithm do the work, unless that algorithm is “find the best talent and let them do what they do best”.
And not only does La La Land not beat Severance, it didn’t even beat Office Christmas Party in this household! We saw both the same day, and one of them has become an annual tradition (the one with the egg nog luge and Kate McKinnon being her awesome self)
Sorry to butt in here, but “sentiment analysis” is a new term to me. Could you tell me what that means and explain how AI will be involved with that. Thank you!
AS I UNDERSTAND IT (and I’m no expert), Sentiment analysis is basically the AI system “understanding” the meaning beyond a string of text (or voice that has been converted into text). But understanding is probably too strong, it’s more like it’s “parsing” meaning from the words and can analyze the meaning. It’s basically the pre-generative part of your conversation with AI, where it parses your text and extracts the meaning behind it. This is super helpful in - say - AI-based editing tools.
So... what people used to learn in school regarding reading and understanding texts? If so, this seems like another step along our acceleration toward an illiterate society. If, indeed, the entertainment business is making extensive use of this, it explains why we have so much content and so little art. Such a sadness.
There’s reason for optimism, after all life’s short! I’ve been using AI to make illustrations do python programming and do some comparative analysis. It never understands anything of what it does. It’s just a sophisticated system of educated guessing. Helpful, it can scour the internet for information in 10s where it would take me a day. Same for illustrations however they never make a point of themselves and the copy factor is clear. It’s like eating re-heated food from yesterday. And culture-wise, from the arse-white 50s.
Yeah I usually agree with Ted (which is why I’m a paid subscriber) — but I think he missed the mark here by omitting some critical distinctions.
First, the distinction between production and distribution. The algorithmic optimization is a silicon-valley phenomenon, yes — but it’s not as if Hollywood is immune. Why do we have so many superhero movies and IP-driven franchise films? They’ve got to be profitable.
Which is actually why I’m cautiously optimistic about the most profitable companies in the world going into the production business. They can afford to take creative risks that hollywood studios cannot because of their wildly profitable core businesses.
Ultimately what we should watch is the creative constraints that the tech patrons place on their in-house studios. If they’re relatively hands-off and just want to produce great award-winning art, that’s great! If they want to produce stuff that fits the algo or their politics, less great.
Provocative, as the Washington Post puts it. But I agree, someone (maybe me) should write posts enlightening about the damages being done to NPR, PBS, the Nat'l Council on the Humanities, states' arts funding (currently at dire risk in Michigan), the Kennedy Center, philanthropies (Ford Foundation?), arts supporting non-profits -- arguably the entire cultural sector, and so the nation's (if not the world's) life.
Ooops, sorry for the digression. Back to worrying about masked fed agents without warrants rappelling into apt. buildings in mid-night raids to snare alleged "illegal" Black/Brown/Caribbean immigrant gang members, destroying peoples' belongings, zip-tying their kids' hands to take them away (where?).
There is no war between Nor Cal and So Cal because Nor Cal won, won without a fight even. We're in the mopping up phase now, with Disney and Comcast the only holdouts. Once that's done, they will finally reveal what they are really here for, what their vision for all this is. Which shouldn't be any mystery because they've used the same playbook in every industry they've gone into - Hollow out the middle, subsistence wages - or less to the bottom. And everything else to any extremely small cadre at the top.
Problem is, that will completely destroy everything that Hollywood is built on and everything that makes it distinctive - the vast middle of highly trained specialists is its competitve advantage.
But oh well, they will be on to breaking something else by then.
Not that I disagree with anything in this article but it should be mentioned that Ellison sr is buying tik tok so that they can shut down all criticism of Israel (Netanyahu was very clear about this) the fact that his son is also buying media properties shows how much they want to shut down any honest discussion of Israels genocide and war crimes.
That is far more frightening than Hollywood losing its influence.
I think in ten years whatever theyre calling movies wont much resemble the movies we have(albeit dwindling) now. They arent going to make better movies, theyre going to kill that whole thing. Like theyre killing everything else we used to enjoy(think of the album, its hardly what it used to be, still was with cds).
But idk, im having a hard time caring about this. Something much worse, and more dear to our lives, seems to be looming over us. Like the death of hollywood is just a side effect, and not the thing we should be paying attention to(not bc its not important or interesting, it is and is).
Maybe im all doom and gloom bc of the changing season. I tend to get in this mood this time of year. But that doesnt mean drastic shit isnt happening. And nothings slowing down, its picking up speed.
Are we like those folks who decried the disappearance of silent movies while the great despression was overtaking them? Except this is so much more than an economic downturn. This is restructuring our society, changing the very fabric of our lives.
My prediction, before i die ill read an article, perhaps by ted, about how apple(or some other tech player) owns our water.
But ill feel better about all this in another month or so
They already have that in hand. It's called Natural Capital or even Ecological Capitalism. It's been explained to us as a good thing which is how I accepted it until I read another version that portrayed it as bad. I think the idea is neutral but can be implemented either way and all through history humanity always seems to choose the bad way. I'll try to explain. In Africa,a lot of local people were illegally killing lions etc to protect their homes and their crops and herds. The creatures were of no economic advantage to them. So conservationists got a scheme put in place that for every lion etc killed by a trophy hunter or every jeep safari that was driven out,the local people would get a cut of the profit. Once the wildlife was of economic advantage to them they would tolerate it more.That seems to work,in some places anyway. But the converse is that EVERYTHING even the air,lol,can be OWNED by SOMEBODY,even if that somebody is a Corporation. It sounds bizarre and I cant explain it as clearly as I read it but the idea is that you would not only pay rent for your dwelling but added charges for nearby trees,wide grassy areas,clean air,etc. In reality we already do that as it costs a lot more to live in a 'nice' area than an inner city litter strewn area. Not everyday costs but the cost of a property. It might be different in USA where I read that "flyover land" is depopulated and cheap to live in (until some popular meme maker popularises it and the people you went there to avoid flood in,lol.) But in Britain and invisible Pay Wall keeps areas exclusive - and nice too,gotta hand it to affluent people,they know how to raise the drawbridge + protect their own places. Probably because they get their income from other places THEY despoiled.!!!
My friends premiered their documentary in a theatre in Toronto. They have their own Substack and following and filled a nice theatre rented from the university.
As you mentioned in a previous article about Hollywood folks buying up old theatres to debut their own stuff, I saw what that looks like first hand.
It was a great success. They have their own Substack and a substantial following and managed to fill the theatre. There was great discussion and socializing after, dining, and a symposium on a beautiful farm estate the next day.
I can see a lot of independent theatres popping up, to show their own stuff. As long as they pair that with their own strong independent online platforms, the theatre side should have more of a social and institutional dimension than perhaps traditional theatres, a place for ideas and people to flourish and become intimately acquainted with music, culture, art, film etc. It would also offer a much more trance-formative and immersive experience than what modern streaming can offer.
If there was one such theatre/institution in each major city, I reckon that could have an interesting effect.
We know the major streaming services like Amazon/Netflix are largely about predictive programming, getting people to play out the scripts and realities the oligarchy itself wishes to “manifest.”
Last I checked, Minority Report’s pre-crime isn’t that far with Palantir (whose founder Thiel is obsessed with the anti-Christ lol). Nor is Gattaca that far anymore, with the whole Human Genome and various gene editing programs. Nor is something like digital ID, something out of the most dystopian stuff we could imagine!
Real theatre and art has to in some way provide a meaningful and serious response to this kind of dystopian predictive programming.
With AI, we actually can make cool stuff independently. Even here, I think the bad guys may underestimate how their own tools can be used against them.
This is why I buy DVDs. I can watch as many times as I want without paying a fee. I get director’s cut if possible. Funnily enough I have seen ending changed online.
It sounds like things are coming full circle. The radio and later television networks were founded by radio and later television manufacturers like RCA and General Electric. That was during a period of hardware innovation, and the manufacturers needed content. Radio manufacturers who shared in a patent pool for things like superheterodyne tuners even tolerated small infringers who manufactured cheap, low quality radios they called jalopies because this got less well off and less motivated people into the radio habit.
It's hard to say where streaming is going to take us, but we've been seeing a lot of hardware innovation with faster, better, larger displays and wireless / cellular internet. The developers need content. Netflix and Criterion show that there is a place for non-hardware manufacturing streamers, but the tech companies have the money and the hardware. Apple became a studio to sell hardware just as RCA became a radio producer almost a century earlier. There is still room for independent streamers, and there's a good chance the hardware will become available cheap after the AI bubble collapse.
Considering this, with a little distance and perspective, makes it look like the hollywood side was bloated and needed deflated. Like maybe this needs to happen.
Even so, im not optimistic about what comes next. I dont have streaming so idk much about whats being made now, but i do see a general disinterest in people for tv and movies anymore. Barbie was the last movie i remember people talking alot about, and even that was half assed(the talking about). But maybe i just live under a rock(aka not online)
Most TV and radio networks were started by tech companies. Columbia started CBS to help sell its records. RCA made transmitters and receivers and started NBC, which later spawned ABC. Crosley started WLW to help sell his radios, and later formed a network. Westinghouse had a network. DuMont made TVs and then a network. It's pretty much the default situation.
This is only nominally true: "Walt Disney gave Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard an order for eight audio oscillators—which gave them enough cash and confidence to create their garage-born company."
-- but come on! Their audio oscillators were good products and they sold 80-90 in 1939. The Disney sale is famous but they were hardly the only buyer.
HP had a lot of customers and was maybe the coolest company in America through the 60's. Painting them as a creation of Hollywood is just dishonest.
Im off on a tangent here but in UK for at least 5 decades 'old movies' filled up the afternoon tv schedules once we had all day tv. Of course they were less old in 1965 than in 1995,lol. But they stopped doing that around millennium time. A whole generation has grown to adulthood without seeing Casablanca or Meet Me in St Louis. But more significant I feel all the less famed films,the B movies and the oddities like John Wayne being Ghengis Khan or Yul Brynner - with hair - as a pirate. I feel that by fates exigencies I had a film school education! But my personal interpretation is that one thing most old movies both USA + British is an insouciant disrespect for authority and an encouragment to question and NOT obey. I'm pretty sure the powers that be wanted to be quell this idea as much as they promoted it previously in order to destroy social connection and poison friendships and family relationships. Im sure a Gen Z watching many a 1950s Ealing comedy or a 1950s Western cowboy movie would find the lack of respect of and obedience to authority strangely disturbing. I'll just add im not against respect for authority. Im lucky in that in my life the authority figures who have occurred have been talented and decent people who deserved respect and obedience. Until now.
As a Kid, I was a real TV addict, and during school holidays, I would watch all kinds of black and white films just because that's all that was on. Happy days.
Apple is just playing the part of a TV network. Shows like Severance are developed by a Hollywood-type production company, pitched to Apple and others, one of whom puts up the money to make it and gets the right to distribute it. TV networks weren't usually based in Hollywood anyway. The networks are the business end, not the creative.
NBC is famously owned by GE. Way back when, they were making the hardware and decided to get into the content side. Apple is doing the same thing, just the broadcast medium has changed.
They are good at raising subscription prices too, Netflix recently did and none of them give a shit. It seems most of today’s business community lacks any sense of morality or ethics and all they care about is their fat fuckin’ wallet
We are in the subscription world now. How freeing? Buy only what you want. Sounds like a good idea. Until I cancel all that shit I can't say I'm not part of the problem by accepting it.
I guess my question is, Who cares? I will never give Disney or Netflix another penny. The list of actors that I would pay money to see their movie or TV show is a one pager with space for the musicians I would pay to see or buy music from. I’m not about to burn the things I have already purchased but I’m not buying any more. I do not financially support my enemies. Anybody attacking my children or grandchildren or our way of life is the enemy.
You have seen the light. Endless crap with the same tropes. But not much different from Hollywood. That's also been crap for years and years. Where's the next Koyaanisqatsi going to come from? Transformational movie in my teens. My take? Never again.
Regardless of how Silicon Valley feels about copyright, it's been a profound failure of our legal system to permit their epic theft of creative work. I'm sure lots of people hate to buy the things they need, but if they decide to take them, they don't get glowing cover stories about their ability to create new "models"; they get arrested. These tech moguls have perpetrated of the greatest heists in the history of the world, and we're still treating them as heroes in most walks of life.
You might be surprised how much is being paid for now --- anthropic started buying physical books in huge quantities to scan, just as google did in the past. The major US AI companies are striking deals with everyone - for example, 250$million to news corp.
Anthropic paid 1.5 billion to make up for not licensing books in their beginning: an amount of $3k per book. The US companies are activating being fined when they don't.
If we're concerned about copyright infringement today, it mostly seems to be in the international (eg, Chinese) models, who do seem to have an advantage since they don't have to license things. Some people are raising this as a problem, as it potentially hurts US companies' relative cost (and data) competitiveness.
I don’t think buying a book gives the purchaser the right to scan it and train AI with it. Isn’t that what copyright should protect against? Unauthorized copying and use. If it doesn’t, copyright seems meaningless.
You'd have to argue about whether scanning and letting the AI use it is different from someone reading a book and using that knowledge. The Anthropic suit judge didn't think it was different.
Personally I suspect that judge will end up being an outlier, but we will have to see.
The law is eons behind, and maybe isnt written in a way that captures a meaningful distinction between a human being, who has hard limits on how much existing work they can hold in their minds and the pace they can produce new work at any one time, in while filtering whatever they learn from through their own subjective experience of the original vs. A digital system that threats a film as just a bunch or coloured pixels & sonic vibrations in various configurations, that can be sterilized of any meaning previously carried, atomized into components blocks analyzed mathematically, and then recombined infinitely with no meaningful constraints on memory capacity for existing work or the pace at which derivative work can be produced.
If that is the case, which it may be, it really makes a mockery of the laws legitimacy. What good is it if produces rulings that are obviously divorced from material reality, and unable to take the massively detrimental consequences that a certain ruling will lead to into account at all?
Judges rule on the letter of the law, not the ethics, which is, sadly, left to politicians, which we all know are pillars of ethical behavior. But just because you can legally do something, doesn’t always mean you should. Like any new technology, AI has eliminated jobs with, undoubtedly, countless more to follow. Unfortunately, I doubt it will create enough new jobs to offset the losses. And the damage to all creative fields is heartbreaking. Humans need the arts. AI Art is the oxymoron of the century. It’s soulless.
Luckily they are all thoroughly decent people who would never put profit before morality. Imagine if they weren't and had the ability to make societies divisive, purely to monetise hate?
"buy the things they need" ? I'm sorry ,but didn't we all put em' in Power ?
So what you're saying is that in 10 years there will be one ginormous entertainment conglomerate that produces everything controlled by a nepo baby who's Dad is one of the 10 people that owns for 50% of the planet's wealth.
Gee, this sounds like a great good v evil script. If only there was an indie studio to produce it.
Vonnegut's Ramjac Corporation.
Might just start writing about it today
Mind yer liability....
Idiocracy, here we come!
I don’t think that the tech bros will be able to overcome the built in degradation that occurs when AI learns from itself.
I love everything you write, Ted, but I think this post misses a few things (sorry about the mega-comment, which should be illegal):
1. It was The Studio - Showrun by established writers who have been in Hollywood for 30+ years - that won those Emmys. And Apple didn’t exactly revolutionize the development process. They hired the same execs that have been in the Hollywood ecosystem for decades.
2. Tech learned to do entertainment better than Hollywood 3 decades ago when Pixar applied iterative design principles to storytelling, and I don’t think any of us would reasonably argue that early Pixar movies represented some nightmarish Tech dystopia.
3. The fact of the matter is that the best storytellers come from Hollywood because they were trained by the best storytellers before them who were trained by the best storytellers before them and so on…
4. AI is not going to be able to replace them anytime soon. The backlash to Tilly Norwood was so swift and severe that the creators had to unroll their rollout and block comments on their posts. People have grown increasingly wary of AI and incremental improvements to models are only serving to exacerbate that distrust, not allay it. Further, the bubble will burst very soon (you said so yourself exactly a month ago) and when it does, all of its flaws will come to the surface. Generative it is not a magic bullet for storytelling, and the more practical applications of AI tech (e.g. sentiment analysis, transcription and editorial) will prove to be most impactful to the process of telling real stories.
5. Fully agree that increasing consolidation will be bad for the industry, as single points of control tend to smooth all the lovely rough edges out of storytelling. Creatives from the creator economy are learning to tell better stories - without and with AI - and I would argue they are a greater threat to the studio system than any tech bros… you’re right to want to build elsewhere, but studios have always been seen as a necessary evil by creatives, and I don’t think much is going to change in that regard.
6. La La Land will never beat Severance except maybe in the purely symbolic way you refer to in the post.
Apple TV+ got Chris Albrecht to curate their channel the same way he did for HBO at its pinnacle. Seems the opposite of letting an algorithm do the work, unless that algorithm is “find the best talent and let them do what they do best”.
And not only does La La Land not beat Severance, it didn’t even beat Office Christmas Party in this household! We saw both the same day, and one of them has become an annual tradition (the one with the egg nog luge and Kate McKinnon being her awesome self)
I endorse your point 3.
Hi, Jon,
Sorry to butt in here, but “sentiment analysis” is a new term to me. Could you tell me what that means and explain how AI will be involved with that. Thank you!
Peace,
Timothy
AS I UNDERSTAND IT (and I’m no expert), Sentiment analysis is basically the AI system “understanding” the meaning beyond a string of text (or voice that has been converted into text). But understanding is probably too strong, it’s more like it’s “parsing” meaning from the words and can analyze the meaning. It’s basically the pre-generative part of your conversation with AI, where it parses your text and extracts the meaning behind it. This is super helpful in - say - AI-based editing tools.
So... what people used to learn in school regarding reading and understanding texts? If so, this seems like another step along our acceleration toward an illiterate society. If, indeed, the entertainment business is making extensive use of this, it explains why we have so much content and so little art. Such a sadness.
Thank you for your response, Jon.
There’s reason for optimism, after all life’s short! I’ve been using AI to make illustrations do python programming and do some comparative analysis. It never understands anything of what it does. It’s just a sophisticated system of educated guessing. Helpful, it can scour the internet for information in 10s where it would take me a day. Same for illustrations however they never make a point of themselves and the copy factor is clear. It’s like eating re-heated food from yesterday. And culture-wise, from the arse-white 50s.
Yeah I usually agree with Ted (which is why I’m a paid subscriber) — but I think he missed the mark here by omitting some critical distinctions.
First, the distinction between production and distribution. The algorithmic optimization is a silicon-valley phenomenon, yes — but it’s not as if Hollywood is immune. Why do we have so many superhero movies and IP-driven franchise films? They’ve got to be profitable.
Which is actually why I’m cautiously optimistic about the most profitable companies in the world going into the production business. They can afford to take creative risks that hollywood studios cannot because of their wildly profitable core businesses.
Ultimately what we should watch is the creative constraints that the tech patrons place on their in-house studios. If they’re relatively hands-off and just want to produce great award-winning art, that’s great! If they want to produce stuff that fits the algo or their politics, less great.
Provocative, as the Washington Post puts it. But I agree, someone (maybe me) should write posts enlightening about the damages being done to NPR, PBS, the Nat'l Council on the Humanities, states' arts funding (currently at dire risk in Michigan), the Kennedy Center, philanthropies (Ford Foundation?), arts supporting non-profits -- arguably the entire cultural sector, and so the nation's (if not the world's) life.
Ooops, sorry for the digression. Back to worrying about masked fed agents without warrants rappelling into apt. buildings in mid-night raids to snare alleged "illegal" Black/Brown/Caribbean immigrant gang members, destroying peoples' belongings, zip-tying their kids' hands to take them away (where?).
"I give up on this blog, basically. It's the same post over and over, with different names"
Pretty much everywhere
What you got?
There is no war between Nor Cal and So Cal because Nor Cal won, won without a fight even. We're in the mopping up phase now, with Disney and Comcast the only holdouts. Once that's done, they will finally reveal what they are really here for, what their vision for all this is. Which shouldn't be any mystery because they've used the same playbook in every industry they've gone into - Hollow out the middle, subsistence wages - or less to the bottom. And everything else to any extremely small cadre at the top.
Problem is, that will completely destroy everything that Hollywood is built on and everything that makes it distinctive - the vast middle of highly trained specialists is its competitve advantage.
But oh well, they will be on to breaking something else by then.
Not that I disagree with anything in this article but it should be mentioned that Ellison sr is buying tik tok so that they can shut down all criticism of Israel (Netanyahu was very clear about this) the fact that his son is also buying media properties shows how much they want to shut down any honest discussion of Israels genocide and war crimes.
That is far more frightening than Hollywood losing its influence.
It's always about the Jews with some people.
Because it is.
Whoa. On Yom Kippur? L'shana tova.
Like I care.
That's some racist shit right there Jane Baker. Not ok.
Good.
What's the good part?
Don't watch it. You KNOW it ain't true
I think in ten years whatever theyre calling movies wont much resemble the movies we have(albeit dwindling) now. They arent going to make better movies, theyre going to kill that whole thing. Like theyre killing everything else we used to enjoy(think of the album, its hardly what it used to be, still was with cds).
But idk, im having a hard time caring about this. Something much worse, and more dear to our lives, seems to be looming over us. Like the death of hollywood is just a side effect, and not the thing we should be paying attention to(not bc its not important or interesting, it is and is).
Maybe im all doom and gloom bc of the changing season. I tend to get in this mood this time of year. But that doesnt mean drastic shit isnt happening. And nothings slowing down, its picking up speed.
Are we like those folks who decried the disappearance of silent movies while the great despression was overtaking them? Except this is so much more than an economic downturn. This is restructuring our society, changing the very fabric of our lives.
My prediction, before i die ill read an article, perhaps by ted, about how apple(or some other tech player) owns our water.
But ill feel better about all this in another month or so
They already have that in hand. It's called Natural Capital or even Ecological Capitalism. It's been explained to us as a good thing which is how I accepted it until I read another version that portrayed it as bad. I think the idea is neutral but can be implemented either way and all through history humanity always seems to choose the bad way. I'll try to explain. In Africa,a lot of local people were illegally killing lions etc to protect their homes and their crops and herds. The creatures were of no economic advantage to them. So conservationists got a scheme put in place that for every lion etc killed by a trophy hunter or every jeep safari that was driven out,the local people would get a cut of the profit. Once the wildlife was of economic advantage to them they would tolerate it more.That seems to work,in some places anyway. But the converse is that EVERYTHING even the air,lol,can be OWNED by SOMEBODY,even if that somebody is a Corporation. It sounds bizarre and I cant explain it as clearly as I read it but the idea is that you would not only pay rent for your dwelling but added charges for nearby trees,wide grassy areas,clean air,etc. In reality we already do that as it costs a lot more to live in a 'nice' area than an inner city litter strewn area. Not everyday costs but the cost of a property. It might be different in USA where I read that "flyover land" is depopulated and cheap to live in (until some popular meme maker popularises it and the people you went there to avoid flood in,lol.) But in Britain and invisible Pay Wall keeps areas exclusive - and nice too,gotta hand it to affluent people,they know how to raise the drawbridge + protect their own places. Probably because they get their income from other places THEY despoiled.!!!
Focus.
My friends premiered their documentary in a theatre in Toronto. They have their own Substack and following and filled a nice theatre rented from the university.
As you mentioned in a previous article about Hollywood folks buying up old theatres to debut their own stuff, I saw what that looks like first hand.
It was a great success. They have their own Substack and a substantial following and managed to fill the theatre. There was great discussion and socializing after, dining, and a symposium on a beautiful farm estate the next day.
I can see a lot of independent theatres popping up, to show their own stuff. As long as they pair that with their own strong independent online platforms, the theatre side should have more of a social and institutional dimension than perhaps traditional theatres, a place for ideas and people to flourish and become intimately acquainted with music, culture, art, film etc. It would also offer a much more trance-formative and immersive experience than what modern streaming can offer.
If there was one such theatre/institution in each major city, I reckon that could have an interesting effect.
We know the major streaming services like Amazon/Netflix are largely about predictive programming, getting people to play out the scripts and realities the oligarchy itself wishes to “manifest.”
Last I checked, Minority Report’s pre-crime isn’t that far with Palantir (whose founder Thiel is obsessed with the anti-Christ lol). Nor is Gattaca that far anymore, with the whole Human Genome and various gene editing programs. Nor is something like digital ID, something out of the most dystopian stuff we could imagine!
Real theatre and art has to in some way provide a meaningful and serious response to this kind of dystopian predictive programming.
With AI, we actually can make cool stuff independently. Even here, I think the bad guys may underestimate how their own tools can be used against them.
This is why I buy DVDs. I can watch as many times as I want without paying a fee. I get director’s cut if possible. Funnily enough I have seen ending changed online.
AI feels like Juicero. A Silicon Valley slop machine that had no real market demand and went bankrupt after a bubble. Ellison is turning into Elliot Carver, the Bond villain in Tomorrow Never Dies: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/tomorrow-never-dies-fake-news-info-war
It sounds like things are coming full circle. The radio and later television networks were founded by radio and later television manufacturers like RCA and General Electric. That was during a period of hardware innovation, and the manufacturers needed content. Radio manufacturers who shared in a patent pool for things like superheterodyne tuners even tolerated small infringers who manufactured cheap, low quality radios they called jalopies because this got less well off and less motivated people into the radio habit.
It's hard to say where streaming is going to take us, but we've been seeing a lot of hardware innovation with faster, better, larger displays and wireless / cellular internet. The developers need content. Netflix and Criterion show that there is a place for non-hardware manufacturing streamers, but the tech companies have the money and the hardware. Apple became a studio to sell hardware just as RCA became a radio producer almost a century earlier. There is still room for independent streamers, and there's a good chance the hardware will become available cheap after the AI bubble collapse.
Considering this, with a little distance and perspective, makes it look like the hollywood side was bloated and needed deflated. Like maybe this needs to happen.
Even so, im not optimistic about what comes next. I dont have streaming so idk much about whats being made now, but i do see a general disinterest in people for tv and movies anymore. Barbie was the last movie i remember people talking alot about, and even that was half assed(the talking about). But maybe i just live under a rock(aka not online)
Most TV and radio networks were started by tech companies. Columbia started CBS to help sell its records. RCA made transmitters and receivers and started NBC, which later spawned ABC. Crosley started WLW to help sell his radios, and later formed a network. Westinghouse had a network. DuMont made TVs and then a network. It's pretty much the default situation.
This is only nominally true: "Walt Disney gave Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard an order for eight audio oscillators—which gave them enough cash and confidence to create their garage-born company."
-- but come on! Their audio oscillators were good products and they sold 80-90 in 1939. The Disney sale is famous but they were hardly the only buyer.
HP had a lot of customers and was maybe the coolest company in America through the 60's. Painting them as a creation of Hollywood is just dishonest.
Im off on a tangent here but in UK for at least 5 decades 'old movies' filled up the afternoon tv schedules once we had all day tv. Of course they were less old in 1965 than in 1995,lol. But they stopped doing that around millennium time. A whole generation has grown to adulthood without seeing Casablanca or Meet Me in St Louis. But more significant I feel all the less famed films,the B movies and the oddities like John Wayne being Ghengis Khan or Yul Brynner - with hair - as a pirate. I feel that by fates exigencies I had a film school education! But my personal interpretation is that one thing most old movies both USA + British is an insouciant disrespect for authority and an encouragment to question and NOT obey. I'm pretty sure the powers that be wanted to be quell this idea as much as they promoted it previously in order to destroy social connection and poison friendships and family relationships. Im sure a Gen Z watching many a 1950s Ealing comedy or a 1950s Western cowboy movie would find the lack of respect of and obedience to authority strangely disturbing. I'll just add im not against respect for authority. Im lucky in that in my life the authority figures who have occurred have been talented and decent people who deserved respect and obedience. Until now.
Actually most of the old shows are on YouTube now.
That's true. Does it make a difference that now we need to seek them out rather than them just occuring randomly.
As a Kid, I was a real TV addict, and during school holidays, I would watch all kinds of black and white films just because that's all that was on. Happy days.
It's an education.
It really is, but it didn't feel like it, as it was just fun.
Yes! In retrospect I see it as an "education" in old Hollywood + old British movies but at the time it was "just the tv"!
Apple is just playing the part of a TV network. Shows like Severance are developed by a Hollywood-type production company, pitched to Apple and others, one of whom puts up the money to make it and gets the right to distribute it. TV networks weren't usually based in Hollywood anyway. The networks are the business end, not the creative.
NBC is famously owned by GE. Way back when, they were making the hardware and decided to get into the content side. Apple is doing the same thing, just the broadcast medium has changed.
GE hasn't owned any part of NBC in a dozen years.
They are good at raising subscription prices too, Netflix recently did and none of them give a shit. It seems most of today’s business community lacks any sense of morality or ethics and all they care about is their fat fuckin’ wallet
To be fair, it's still far cheaper than cable used to be....
We are in the subscription world now. How freeing? Buy only what you want. Sounds like a good idea. Until I cancel all that shit I can't say I'm not part of the problem by accepting it.
In what way hysterical?
I guess my question is, Who cares? I will never give Disney or Netflix another penny. The list of actors that I would pay money to see their movie or TV show is a one pager with space for the musicians I would pay to see or buy music from. I’m not about to burn the things I have already purchased but I’m not buying any more. I do not financially support my enemies. Anybody attacking my children or grandchildren or our way of life is the enemy.
You have seen the light. Endless crap with the same tropes. But not much different from Hollywood. That's also been crap for years and years. Where's the next Koyaanisqatsi going to come from? Transformational movie in my teens. My take? Never again.