Media Companies, Not Pirates, Are The Real Threat > September 15, 2005

InformationWeek > September 15, 2005: "AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — When you hear 'content owners' (COWs, for short) from the Video Entertainment Vortex — mainly Hollywood studios and their spokespeople in the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) — talk apocalyptically about the rape of intellectual property by 'pirates,' the world does truly appear to be coming to an end. The fear factor in these warnings is so palpable that one looks for the hand of Stephen King — perhaps an Internet/ABC/Viacom simulcast entitled, 'The Night of the Mind Cannibals!'

Video piracy, in the standard scenario presented by big-time COWs, is the profoundest threat to mankind — or at least mankind’s potential profit margin on re-releases of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' — since the Black Death, the H-Bomb or killer hurricances.

The latest weapon promoted by the world's COWs against the threat of video piracy — which rips off Hollywood at something like .0175 percent of its (admitted) annual revenue — is something called the 'broadcast flag.' The Federal Communications Commission was planning to insinuate this copy-protection software into all new broadcast content until a federal court this year said they lacked jurisdiction. This ruling has only redoubled COW efforts to enlist regulatory agencies in its sacred mission of squeezing every quarter 'til the eagle grins."