2pnet view Movies | Music:- Back in the 1900’s, most railways were replacing steam power with electric power, notably the Pacific Electric Railway and the Inland Empire that connected much of California’s metropolitan areas and urban centers. Also, the 200,000+ miles of trans-continental railroad was replacing steam engines for diesel-electric engines, which ran cleaner, and required less maintenance.

In 1921, a business strategy was devised by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr, the MIT graduate behind General Motors. Seeing the market saturated, and losing over $65 million the year before, they decided the only way to increase demand for cars was to eliminate their principal rival; the electric railways like Pacific Electric Railway and Inland Empire.

At the time, only 1 in 10 americans owned a car, and 90% of all travel was via rail, mainly electric rail, at the time, a thriving industry of almost 50,000 miles of track, 300,000 employees, and over $1 billion in income yearly. Almost every city and town in America had its own electric rail system.

GM was the nation’s largest shipper of freight over railroads, railroads that also controlled some of the more extensive railways in America. By using freight traffic as a club, GM demanded the railroads abandon their electric rail subsidiaries, and then bought the scrap for pennies. From Los Angeles to New York, GM threatened Pacific Electric and New York Central to divert all lucrative freight to rival carriers unless they abandon their electric street car subsidiaries, and convert the urban transportation to buses. Buses that GM happpen to sell. They were slow, cramped, horrible vehicles that invariably pushed riders to purchase automobiles.

It goes on and on, how they used the banks for leverage over electric rail, the US Department of Justice, creating holding companies to acquire rail systems, to bribing officials with Cadillacs.

GM bragged, in court documents, that by mid-1950, their agents had canvassed, bought out, ran out, dissolved, or converted 90% of electric railways to motorized car owners.

This was the destruction of a clean, efficient, green, profitable infrastructure that brought benefit to the people, all for the sake of profits.

Quality automotive manufacturing in America has significantly diminished, primarily because all the competition was eliminated, and the market was saturated.

Take banking in today’s American market. What a joke. A perfect test case study on how corporate lobbyists can literally buy laws. And another industry that has no effective competition, or regulation, does NOT speak for the people, and is only interested in profits.

Today, one of the few things America can still claim is our entertainment culture. I don’t say all of our movies and music are better than any other country’s. But we have our moments.

The people behind the MPAA went a similiar route to GM: they bought up, or ran out, every studio that refused to join their ‘association’. Same for the RIAA– its owners weaseled, bribed, extorted, literally destroying anything that looked like competition, or didn’t join their boy band club.

America has very few natural resources left for export. Entertainment is one of them. Why do you think there are release ‘windows’? They exist to maximize profit.

Perfect example: New Line Cinema released the Lord of the Rings on DVD, then did the same for ‘Extended’ versions of the same movie. A year later, they release Lord of the Rings on BluRay, but NOT the extended versions, and I’m completely confident they’ll eventually release the extended version, for another window, and another customer raping.

The MPAA and RIAA know for a fact file sharing isn’t hurting their ‘members’ ‘ businesses. All you need do is look at their public bank records to see they are in fact, doing tremendously well, even in a recession period.

The MAFIAA is more upset about the fact they don’t have control like they used to.

Someone in Uzbekistan can easily get Lord of the Rings in DVD Extended, although the MAFIAA, hasn’t ‘allowed’ that content window to be legally openned yet. They don’t bother offering what the customer wants legally, and for a price the customer is willing to pay. In Uzbekistan, people turn to file sharing because there’s NO legal alternative. And they’re not alone.

The music and movie studios see their ruin. The internet has facilitated the ability to share files worldwide, and there’s no law they can buy, no judge they can bribe, no law enforcement to involve that’ll make file sharing go away.

The pandora box has already been opened. They’re not going to close it.

The MAFIAA understand they’ve lost control of distribution, and are feebly attempting to regain it via IPREDATOR and HADOPI, or Three Strikes, or DPI, etc.

Recently, Carlos Sanchez Almeida (FrEE) said it “When a revolution is underway, there’s only one way to go: join it or perish.”

surfer – p2pnet

STW

Follow p2pnet on Twitter … ..

… and identi.ca

June, 2010

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It`s really easy!

Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 28th, 2010 at 9:11 am and is filed under Movies, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 7281 times