Fear (of) The Man

Hugh MacLeod’s blog, gapingvoid, had an great post on Hollywood and the writer’s strike. One quote in particular:

4. In the end, this strike is not about DVD and digital royalties. Ultimately, this strike is about the massive and traumatic erosion of privileges afforded the middle-ranking factory workers. But of course, there’s not a damn thing they or their bosses can do to bring those privileges back. The landscape of media is moving away from large studios, to college dorms, downtown lofts, and suburban garages. Like Madison Avenue, Hollywood won’t disappear. But also like Madison Avenue, it’ll never command the cultural vanguard like it once did.

Another set of privileges that erodes are those do to the distributors of content. Distribution used to be hard and expensive. The internet has made it much cheaper and much faster. Bits can fly after all.

Content producers get a small percentage of the revenues generated by direct sale or ad-supported sale of content. Writers get nothing from digital sales. As distribution get much easier, and since branded distribution of content is, at this moment, an oxymoron, competition will shrink the economics for intermediaries. Those working for distributors should fear.

The writers’ strike is about the reallocation of revenues away from distributors towards content creators. It’s about establishing those economics in the digital market. It’s a fight over new territory. It’s the 49ers all over again. There be gold in the hills. There be dragons too.

Thanks to Scoble’s shared RSS feed for the feed to the article.