Why Hollywood should forget about SOPA and PIPA

America has long been the home of the enterprising, even to the extent it was illegal. From bootlegging liquor during prohibition to selling knock-offs or contraband in Chinatown, alternative channels to acquire what one wants is as American as apple pie and capitalism.

Which is why Hollywood and the music industry need to wake up. "Piracy" exists simply because the movie and music industry refuse to embrace alterative distribution channels. The model they've always used is antiquated and should be adjusted.  They'd rather let someone else do it for them--and then continue to complain about how much money is lost in the black/secondary markets.

"Pirates" do the same, some for profit, others for free. The problem is the actual producers of the content don't see any coin. How do we fix this? The content providers need to up their game and get with the times. Give people options.  In other words, the content providers themselves need to completely takeover distribution, instead of trying to figure out ways to make pirating harder.  Eventually the government found a way to make selling liquor work--tax the hell out of it.  The content providers need to figure out a way to make distributing their content work.  CDs and DVDs are still made and sold despite the presence of iTunes and Netflix; Apple and Netflix simply offered another distribution channel.  I'm pretty sure people would still go see movies in movie theaters, even if they could download/stream "MI:3" in their house on opening weekend.

Spare me the crap about how piracy lessens the motivation to create artistic works--just say it's really about the money because that's what it's about.  Record companies and movie studios do a lot of complaining about their own pockets, yet their actions are such as to protect the pockets of their partners.  Fact is there are two many other entities making money off the content the movie and music studios produce for this idea to ever take hold.  Apple, Amazon, Netflix, the cable providers, RedBox, AMC, Marcus Theaters, etc. etc. are all making money from the ability to distribute content from Hollywood.  But if Hollywood was so concerned about the money lost in alternative markets, they'd step their game up with regard to distribution, their partner's pockets be damned.

I'm pretty sure if the movie/album is good enough, people will still go to the secondary markets (iTunes, Amazon, buying a CD/DVD at Target) to enjoy/purchase it like they do now.  So why not open up a studio backed streaming service (similar to Hulu for TV) and count the money that comes rolling in?  There are plenty of ways to make money from this--from putting ads at the beginning of the movie (instead of trailers) to small banner ads that work similar to subtitles--money can be made.  You really want to stop piracy?  Forget SOPA--start distributing the product directly in a way that incentivizes people to pay you for it.