Psst! Wanna Baby? Only a Million Bucks!

then there was another half hour of speeches and explanations and a quite moving video segment by our president who read something off a cue card that suggested that since his proposal to give all new immigrants the "if it floats it's a witch" test failed, he supposed that he was happy immigration was legal.

then we watched the music video again.

fucking hysterical.

the one nice thing was when they read off the list of countries the new citizens hailed from and everyone stood up as their country was listed. there were about 1400 new citizens in the hall. 750 of them appeared to be from China, but there were also Iranians and Zimbabweans and Moldovians. it was moving to think about people from places where the things we take for granted don't exist becoming citizens. it ain't perfect here, but we only apply electric current to our citizen's genitals if they look suspiciously arabic or if they pay the step-up fees to mistress whipsalot.

then, after the ceremony was over, they forcibly conscripted everyone into the armed forces and registered them as republicans.

Fuck Yeah!

in case you're curious, the dullest ceremony of all time was my sisters rabbinic ordination. i swear to god that one lasted so long and involved so little genuine emotion it might be a good alternative to cryogenics.

but, hey, bartlebee is now american! that means she can't get deported, she never needs to deal with the INS again, and all of our votes mean that much less.

mom bought her flowers and AOL signed her up for sixty-five free hours!

then, i went to this round table discussion on Digital Rights Management sponsored by the Wharton School. i was really excited to go! i'm fascinated by this crap.

it's the future and all that.

plus there were interesting people invited. reps from major media companies, the EFF, giant computer firms, etc. i got to sit in because my boss was invited. i don't think he knows half what i know about DRM, but hey, whatever.

there were some extremely dramatic statements made and some intense throw-downs during the course of the day. my eyes hurt from concentrating so hard.

two things really stood out for me though. the first is the conversation i had with the head of "anti-piracy" for giant-media-conglomerate x over lunch. he looked vastly unhappy. he told me that with the explosion of services like bit torrent, producing television shows was becoming financially shakey. that a show like The Wonder Years doesn't become profitable from its US broadcast, but via syndication and overseas sales. if people watch the show via bit torrent, then there's no syndication market or overseas market and then.... and then? NO MORE WONDER YEARS!!!!

holy fucking christ fucking shit! we all immediately drank a double of warm gin to chase away the horrific image of a world without the Wonder Years.

later, towards the end of the day, mr heavy from media conglomoration y got infuriated by some bombastic statements from one of the EFF reps. he said:

you know what? million dollar baby hasn't made a profit! we need the DVD sales, the foreign market sales, the cable and broadcast sales if we want to make any money at all! on million dollar baby! and if we can't make any money on million dollar baby we'll just have to stop making movies! (sic sic sic)

i wonder if he really believes that? there are so many things that amuse me in a statement like that i'm not even sure where to begin.

first off, million dollar baby was pretty dumb. i'm a fan of the clint-man, but really. it was tired material. it just happened to strike the critics fancy for some bizzare reason (such as a lack of anything else to like last year) and the complacent world of theater goers decided it would be comfortable to agree with everyone else so they liked it, too. but hey, whatever. you liked it? i'm happy for you. my first point is that what mass media companies think is great isn't particularly great. even if you liked it, even if you loved it, i'm willing to bet it isn't remotely your favorite film.

secondly, saying MDB didn't make a profit is like saying enron didn't make a profit because it went bankrupt. the company has not "recouped its expenses" on MDB because of the disingenious way in which media companies do their accounting. because they can pay clint $20MM or whatever, and all their executives however much and all the sycophants and hangers on however much and say profit? there isn't any profit? the company has nothing, boo hoo hoo.

here's an idea. maybe they shouldn't pay everyone involved as if they're having a race to see who can be richer than Ali Baba.

third off, if your business model proves to be unprofitable, that's a major problem. for you. instead of attempting to force the world to conform to what made you filthy rich for decades, why don't you try innovating? is it no longer affordable to throw $200MM at michael bay so he can blow new shit up in an old way? who fucking cares? there will ALWAYS be a market for genuine artistic expression.

yeah. what i left the meeting thinking about is this: the worst case scenario? if media companies are right and a failure to impose regulations like the broadcast flag or mandatory DRM cause the bottom to fall out of the entertainment industry? then people will go back to local entertainments bolstered by a free and effective distribution system: the Internet. all that major media companies provide is blocks of capital for obscenely expensive productions and distribution. obscenely expensive is in no way correlated to worthwhile. the distribution systems are outdated and of rapidly decreasing value. if we successfully defeat DRM legislation and the predictions of mr. heavy are right then maybe there would be no more major motion pictures. no more stadium tours. no american idol.

instead people would have to create their own art on a local scale. find local bands, poets, filmmakers. band together to make their own artistic product.

and the cream of that crop? easily able to distribute their material and reached regardless of location via the net? they wouldn't make as much money as michael bay, but michael bay is an overpaid hack. and now they're competing with michael bay which usually means they make nothing at all.

i believe artists with talent will, as a demographic, do better than they do currently. in a worst case scenario.

much more likely is that major media will continue to exist. they just won't be able to afford to wipe their ass with freshly minted certificates of naturalization purchased off destitute immigrants.

i really enjoyed being part of the meeting. i think DRM is a waste of time, but no one particularly asked me.

and i love it when the largest corporations in the world ask for pity and a leg up. it isn't profitable to be the largest corporation in the world?

let's throw a party.