MPAA’s Chris Dodd Calls Piracy Defeat a ‘Watershed Event’ – Hollywood Reporter
[Via Sundance 2012]
Monday morning, as part of the Sundance Film Festival’s daily Cinema Café speaker series at the Filmmaker Lodge, New York Times writer David Carr moderated a wide-ranging discussion with MPAA chairman Christopher Dodd, independent producer Christine Vachon and NATO president John Fithian. While many issues relating to exhibition and independent film made the agenda, Dodd was the first to address “the elephant in the room,” as he put it: the SOPA and PIPA legislation designed to combat online piracy that was recently derailed by an unprecedented public outcry.
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It is obvious to me from reading the article that these guys do not know what hit them. They believe it was simply a problem with messaging. “We’ve gotta find a better way to have that conversation than we have in the last two weeks.” From the industry whose entire reason for existing is to communicate meaningfully and monetarily with people.
The problem with the MPAA is the same seen with many organizations – they do not really understand their customers. IN this case, they appear to believe that almost all of their customers are actually criminals. They have been acting this way for many many years.
Yet they are surprised that those customers do not like the characterization. The MPAA has never had any respect for its customers. It only focuses on what is best for its industry.
But what happens to an industry that fails to focus on its customers? They always die. Always.
The MPAA represents a dying industry whose main focus is on using government regulation to prop up its business model. It relies on a moribund and decaying business model that can not be sustained in the market place.
Look at the death spiral of ticket prices. It costs as much for one person to see a movie as it costs to access ALL of the movies in Netflix for a month. How is that sustainable? Going after pirates are not the answer here. Threatening politicians will not help.
The customer is simply not happy with the way the product is being distributed. The organization that would survive would find ways to delight the customer.
Crying to the government is not a sustainable business model. The MPAA’s only hope, as is the hope for any dying industry, is that the customers will not notice the subterfuge.
This is a faint hope in the era of the Internet. We all know now and ill be watching.
The customer has real power in the world today and will use it. Something these old-fashioned power brokers like Dodd simply have a hard time understanding.
