The Good News Is That You Can Still Get Movie Popcorn At Home

I predicted that all of the major movie studios would sign up for downloadable movies and that it would take long.

Turns out that it took less than 5 months from the moment of my prediction.

This morning, [name withheld] is rolling out what it calls a "beta" of its pay-per-download video service
...
it features new and recent releases from every major Hollywood studio, including Sony (Columbia, Screen Gems, MGM), Warner Bros., 20th Century-Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal, and Lionsgate.

Now why on earth would I withhold the name? So that I can say "I told you so" yet again.

But several weeks ago, in the midst of rumors that Apple was close to announcing a deal with Disney, Wal-Mart's David Porter - the executive responsible for stocking the retailer's shelves with DVDs and CDs and whose influence is so immense in Tinseltown that he's been named to Premiere magazine's annual power list - made the rounds of Hollywood studios.

Not only did Disney not worry too much about cutting a deal with Apple, Wal-Mart is jumping into the game with both feet forward.

The movie industry has been a lot smarter and much quicker to embrace the digital age than the music industry. [side note: what I can't figure out is that many of these companies are the same. Do the different divisions just not talk to each other?]

So with Wal-Mart bringing movie downloads into the mainstream I expect a couple things to happen. First, prices will start dropping, though I'm not sure by how much. Second, one of my first predictions in this area will start coming true: near simultaneous theatrical release and home video release.

It won't be quite there this year, but the time will start shrining. When the media finally reports on it, expect another "I told you so" post from me.

Tags: wal-mart, technology, movies

Democrats Soak The Poor

Democrats want to collect money from those evil tax dodgers.

House and Senate Democrats say the government could collect as much as $100 billion more a year by whittling the tax gap — the unpaid taxes, mostly on unreported earnings, that the I.R.S. estimated was about $300 billion a year.

Kip rightly points out that most of these unreported earnings take place near the bottom of the earnings scale, but he forgot the biggest culprit - waitresses and waiters.

In my experience, tipped employees report less than half of their actually earnings. The people that earn tips, but aren't 'expected' to earn tips (maitre'd, valets, dancers, etc) probably don't report anything at all.

Its unfortunate that when Democrats say they care about the little guy more people don't realize that the caring stops at the voting booth.

Tags: democrats, taxes

Linux To Self-Destruct

I've always had the feeling that Linux was going to implode upon itself but was never quite sure what the mechanism was going to be. I think I've figured it out.

The Free Software Foundation is reviewing Novell Inc.'s right to sell new versions of Linux operating system software after the open-source community criticized Novell for teaming up with Microsoft Corp.

"The community of people wants to do anything they can to interfere with this deal and all deals like it. They have every reason to be deeply concerned that this is the beginning of a significant patent aggression by Microsoft," Eben Moglen, the Foundation's general counsel, said on Friday.

The foundation controls intellectual property rights to key parts of the open-source Linux operating system.

Making decisions based on the purity of the players sounds like a sure fire way to limit growth of a product. Having self-righteous technocrats in charge is equivalent to a death sentence for any project.

Tags: linux, Microsoft

Its A Good Day

According to Cato@Liberty, Utah has passed a universal school voucher program.

the Utah House of Representatives passed the nation’s first universal school voucher bill (HB 148) in a nail-biting 38-37 vote. From what I hear coming out of Utah, it’s going to pass the Senate next week as well, and be signed by the governor.

There are three things that keep me awake at night about current policies in the US: healthcare, energy policy and education. These sectors are the last vestiges of command economies left in the country, they are also the sectors of the economy that most people complain about because they are either overly expensive, low on quality or some combination of both. Fixing the problem seems so abundantly obvious to me (let them compete) I just can't understand why the vast majority of the polity doesn't come to the same conclusion.

Its great news that one state is taking the plunge into competition in education. Yes there are some short comings. One of those shortcomings ($3000/student, half what public schools get) may actually be a blessing in disguise.

Public schools are so over funded this will be an excellent opportunity to show how efficient the market is at supplying superior quality at a lower cost. If the prices were at parity private actors would take the money even if they could do it more efficiently.

I'm very optimistic that the program is going to be a resounding success and that it will spread to many parts of the nation. Too bad we are going to have to wait for a decade or more to get there.

Side note: Telecommunications used to bother me, but the internet and wireless is managing to beat down that command economy quite well. The land line monopoly is very nearly at its end.

Tags: education, vouchers, school choice, economics

Now That DRM Is Dead...

Commenter Eli Dourado asks this in response to my last post on DRM.

If the fixed cost of producing a record is tending toward zero (as it is), and the marginal cost of reproducing the record is very near zero, what happens to the price of music? It seems like eventually it will have to go way way down. It may be the case that musicians will give away the digital recordings to make money on tour. Labels provide a valuable service in promoting artists (and a less valuable service in screening them), but it's hard to see how they will be able to survive in their current incarnation.

I think that the price of music won't change all that much, at least at the top end. Assuming that copyright law doesn't change the artist ultimately owns his/her own destiny.

Artists won't have to compete on price because they are essentially monopolists - distribution companies (ultimately the iTunes, Napster, Launch and similar service) will have to compete on breadth of artists and features.

I think that ultimately the Labels will play a limited role in production if at all - their role will be replaced by small firms that will assist artists with production, PR and advocate services, negotiating compensation rates with the online service providers.

The days of controlling the music industry is coming to end - and not a moment too soon.

Tags: music, DRM

Inequality Doesn't Matter

Brad DeLong doesn't think inequality matters.

Nor should we worry a great deal that some people are richer than others. Some people work harder, apply their intelligence more skillfully or simply have been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. But I don't see how alternative political-economic arrangements could make individuals' relative wealth closely correspond to their relative moral or other merit.

Unless it can be used for political gain.

the increase in inequality that we have seen in the past generation is predominantly a result of failures of social investment and changes in regulations and expectations. It has not been accompanied by any acceleration in the overall rate of economic growth. For the most part, it looks like these changes in economy and society have not resulted in more wealth, but only in an upward redistribution of wealth -- a successful right-wing class war.

In a world where the poor make less than $1 a day inequality is just bad luck. In the US where most poor own their home, have a car, a refrigerator and cable TV its a problem that must be fixed because it just isn't fair.

Tags: inequality, democrats, economics

Odd Bedfellows

I don't know much about the details of the case, but the results of the vote in Cunningham v. California seem more than a little odd.

Her opinion was supported by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and by Justices Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas There were two dissenting opinions -- one by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, supported by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and one by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., joined by Kennedy and Breyer.

Scalia and Thomas agreeing with Ginsburg and Stevens with Breyer and Alito dissenting? How often does that happen - split decisions that split the liberal and conservative Justices?

Tags: Supreme Court

Is This Ad Hominem?

Someone states a position on an a topic. The reply is this:

I find it inconsistent that you think X but find that Y is ok.

Is that an ad hominem argument?

Tags: logical fallacy

Death of DRM Imminent

I've said previously that media companies that ditch DRM will find a goldmine at the end of the rainbow.

It is beginning to look like the Big Four may be starting to agree with me.

Most of the big players are experimenting with DRM-less distribution and the content providers: Amazon, Yahoo, and others are all providing MP3s for download.

Heck, EMI is even partnering with a company in China (the home of IP piracy of all stripes) to provide advertising supported downloads.

This is going to put Apple (and to a lesser extent Microsoft) in the lurch as they have spent huge amounts of capital propping up systems and devices that rely on DRM to lock consumers in.

I'll see this as damning evidence against the power of monopolies, though I doubt haters of capitalism will see it in quite the same way.

More thoughts on the NYT piece here.

Tags: DRM, MP3, Music

Another Silly Question

The right gets chastised for not evaluating Iraqi and American lives one-for-one.

The way you can tell that, fundamentally, the right's Iraq hawk pundits are deeply unserious people is that you'll see things like Reuel Marc Gerecht making this argument: "I can understand--though not appreciate--Americans who don't want to see Americans dying in Iraq because they value American lives more highly than they do Iraqi ones. This sentiment, more common on the right than on the left, inevitably leads to a bigoted isolationism that allows nefarious forces to run amok." The view that American lives are more valuable than Iraqi lives is obviously false. The view that the American government should value American lives more highly than it values Iraqi lives is, I think, quite different, fairly intuitive, and certainly not something that advocates of neoconservative foreign policy deny in anything resembling a consistent manner.

Isn't that the exact same argument that the left uses on trade - American jobs are more valuable than foreign jobs?

Tags: trade, politics