Here’s something no one has stopped to consider: Maybe making movies is too damn expensive. Or rather, far more expensive than it needs to be.

After SOPA and PIPA, Hollywood now looks like a dinosaur, and as out of touch as someone trying to kill the radio or home video cassettes. Venture capital firms are actually now actively looking to fund companies with the aim of dismantling the industry, as the current model of movie making seems outdated. The internet is producing a talented crop of filmmakers working on shoestring budgets, hungry to get themselves noticed.

Perhaps A-list actors do not need multi-multi-million dollar salaries when there are thousands of hardworking amateurs trying to get noticed. Perhaps not every graphic novel and board game needs $100M or $200M thrown at it in order to become a feature film when there are hundreds of creative, original screenplays that get tossed in the trash. Perhaps you don’t need to spend an additional $100M marketing a movie when everyone is fast-forwarding through commercials and has AdBlock on their browsers.

The most baffling thing about the entertainment industry today is that by being so scared of totally collapsing, they are just standing still while the ground under their feet collapses.

Torrenting is probably too hassle-y for the average viewer: Installing Transmission, VLC, perhaps re-encoding to watch on my TV—but I'm pretty techy (ok, a geek) and have been doing this for years. However, if a show is available on iTunes—as South Park is to me now I've set up a US iTunes account (yet another tech hassle I had to overcome…)—I'll click and buy. It's simple, quick, better quality, not to mention legal. It's also cheap.

Preach it, Peter Serafinowicz.

With insider trading charges pending over LetsBuyIt, Schmitz decided it was time to lay low (by his standards); “in fear for his life,” he fled to Thailand in January of 2002. On his website, he hinted at possible suicide, saying he would be crossing “to a new world,” Hale-Bopp cult style. But instead of offing himself, he declared that he wanted to be known as “King Kimble the First, Ruler of the Kimpire” — a label he would apply to his future projects. (It’s listed as his title on LinkedIn.)

This guy is basically Richie Rich, if he didn't start with his family's money, built his fortune around multiple unethical business strategies and was hard into psychedelics.

This is the sole reason piracy is up and profits are down: because doing it right totally sucks. And that’s apparently how the studios want it.

Preach it.

I love Marco's reply to this post, too:

If I’m adding a movie to my Netflix queue, I’ve already decided not to buy the DVD. I’m adding it because it looks mildly interesting and I’d like to watch it sometime. If I can’t add it to Netflix, I’ll just forget about it and probably never see it.

I think that's probably the biggest reason I stopped buying physical copies of movies. Even though there have been some decent flicks that have come out in the past few years, I find myself going back and watching those movies again less and less. If I'm watching any media, it's streaming TV on Netflix.

We’re not talking about one of those “RIAA sues deaf Buddhist nun in monastery with no electricity for $9.8 million” cases here. And while I don’t doubt that thousands of legitimate users of Megaupload are genuinely shafted by this outcome, if the best restaurant in town turns out to be a mob front, hundreds of innocent diners are going to be denied that terrific Penne Arrabiata. So it goes.

I must admit, my initial reaction to the Megaupload shut down was that of slight outrage and "down with The Man"-itis.

But after taking a deep breath and thinking about it for a minute, it's pretty clear that these guys got what they deserved.

And look at it this way: if the copyright holders can shut down these sites now, then why do they need SOPA/PIPA?