I’ve no sympathy for them. No tears to cry for their proclaimed fictional loss. Like the music cartels, they’ve managed to rape everything in sight and now their bemoaning the idea, “We could have made more”.

Sue’em alls have seriously damaged the customer good will. Endless ripoffs, churning out dud output, and then overhyping it till the customers expectations are they are going to watch the next potential oscar winner, only to find they’ve been taken has also damaged the customer relationship. If you promise something and don’t deliver on that promise the customer walks away unsatisfied. Next time around they aren’t so easily taken in. Multiply that by several years of duds and they no longer want the rip-off experience provided by the theater.

Not giving the customer what they pay for has it’s effects with the business of lock down also. What good is some product overprotected to where the customer that should be rewarding for faithful patronage is instead the criminal for purchasing that product and in turn is denied the use of it how they wish to use it after paying for it? In customer relations, the media cartels could learn something from the competition that supplies these very things at only the cost of bandwidth.

Speaking of bandwidth, there’s some mistaken idea that on-line sales of vaporware in the form of movies is value for the dollar. Even more hilarious is the idea it’s worth just as much as a physical product held in the hand. Helloooooo, is anyone at home in these greedy corporations that has the idea that the exchange of money is for valuable products and not some idea of smokeware?

“‘Too much product sold around the world is illegal product,’ said Recording Industry Assn. of America prexy-chief Mitch Bainwol. ‘Piracy threatens investment in new artists.’”
If by “new artists” you mean “new Billboard Top 100 artists,” then I’m completely fine with that. Only a select few Top 100 artists are worth listening to. All of the rest are talentless hacks. In fact, if piracy is destroying “pop” music, then by all means we should be doing MORE of it.

“Motion Picture Assn. of America topper Dan Glickman argued that in many foreign countries, intellectual-property laws are under ’serious challenge,’ making real the threat of even more piracy.”
Oh really? Every WTO country has to agree with the TRIPS agreement, which, regardless of whether or not that country adopted the Berne Convention, requires it to enforce that convention’s laws anyway. That’s why Russia can’t get into the WTO. A look at all of the WTO countries suggests that this “serious challenge” is almost non-existent (although I wish that weren’t so, as I hate the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement).