On movie studios using copyright to loot their own basements
The article titled How ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ Wrecked Hollywood explains very well one huge and ridiculous internal contradiction in today’s movie industry
:
"the seemingly arbitrary nature of Sony's "let's go back to high school!" Spider-Man reboot was going to be the start of something very unfortunate. And in deed, nearly four years after that announcement, said fears have come to pass. Studios, terrified of spending the time and money to develop original proper ties, have been relentless in looting the basement. As I feared four years, ago, it does seem like every remotely memorable property from the last thirty years is getting rebooted. Even outside the horror genre, where looting has been occurring full time for the last ten years since Platinum Dunes' Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, studios have been basically revamping, rebooting, and remaking every remotely recognizable genre property from the 1970's, 1980's, and 1990's."
Personally, this "looting the basement" thing is one big reason, though not my Number One, why I find myself going to movie theathers less and less every year. Read the last paragraph if you really care to know what my Number 1 is. I wrote this post for another reason, that is to point out how that article makes very, very clear how absurd the positions on copyright of the movie industry are.
The people and companies looting their own basement because they are terrified to try something original are the same who claim from the rooftops that absurd extensions to both the duration and scope of copyright are the only way to protect and encourage... creativity! It would be funny, really, if it didn't create so many problems.
Never forget this point: Hollywood doesn't fight "piracy" because they don't want people to copy their existing movies. They fight it because they want to be the only ones who can produce all NEW movies. Even if those movies aren't really new. This is what copyright expansion is really about.
Why I don't go to see the movies these days
What Curtis Reeves did is horrible and completely inexcusable, if things stand as we read them these days. I offer my sincere condolences to the Oulson family. But the main reason why I stay out of movie theathers as much as I can nowadays remains people who can't turn their smartphones OFF (and I do mean OFF, not just silenced) during the actual movie.
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I am Marco Fioretti, tech writer and aspiring polymath doing human-digital research and popularization.
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