By Jim Cummings
(This week we have enjoyed this discussion on The Digital Recession. It concludes with this post.)
Should schools still charge so much for things that you can learn on youtube for free? Will anyone be able to in 20 years? When the time comes for my generation to send their children to college, what will they think about the value of an arts education? How can we construct the landscape of the internet to better guarantee opportunities for artists? The current atmosphere is bound to negatively effect future generations, and we owe it to them to fix these problems now.
It would seem that the answers are simple, unique media encryption needs to be implemented on iTunes and Youtube so artists can hold their thieves accountable, Netflix needs to allow users to submit films instead of just distributors, movie theaters need to allow the moviegoers to choose what is playing (not the corporations), and the Academy Awards need to allow for the consideration of films that premiere online. These changes seem obvious, but they can only be made from the top.
If we do nothing and continue to gamble our time and money while dreaming of a viable future, we will only lessen our likelihoods of success and become even larger victims of these pyramid schemes. We cannot allow the industrialization of art to make so much from us when they contribute so little. It is time to rebel, to release films for free and to seek our own monetization. We have arrived at the Gold Rush to find the mines emptied, now is the time to circle the wagons and to fight for it.
Part Two: The Problem With Piracy
Part Three: The Dreamer’s Disease
Jim Cummings is a producer at ornana.com and the creator of Sanfrancisco3dfilms.com He is also a screenwriter about the imploding film industry (originalhighquality.com) and you can reach him here: jimmycthatsme@mac.com
