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Leader: Note to entertainment industry - get over it
Tech giants and consumers will decide Hollywood's fate - not its lawyers...

By silicon.com

Published: Monday 22 December 2003

The entertainment industry has in the last few days suffered two set backs in its efforts to stop illegal copying of music and films.

First we heard that on Friday the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had a series of decisions allowing it to track down US file-swappers through their ISPs reversed in a DC federal appeals court .

Then today the Norwegian known as 'DVD Jon' was put in the clear after, as a teenager, cracking and distributing the keys to a program that keeps films on DVD being copied. The movie industry claims piracy costs it about $3bn a year in lost sales.

There are several factors at work here, in what has become one of the major stories of the past year.

First, we shouldn't assume the RIAA's case is lost. Friday's ruling was all about the privacy of ISPs' customers, not whether they are allowed to copy copywrite-protected work.

However, while Hollywood and the entertainment industry in general will continue to hire top lawyers - a major theme of the software industry this year - it is looking increasingly like they are getting bogged down while the number of consumers bypassing traditional channels goes up.

It may well just be that the move to new, internet-oriented business models occurs before the RIAA or a film studio takes every teenager in the world to court. Witness the success of iTunes and other, legal services, even from unlikely candidates such as Coke. Someone here is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and for once it isn't the kids.

And while this shift goes on, lest we not forget that the entertainment industry isn't actually that big. It punches above its weight because its stock is tied up with having to have the highest of profiles worldwide.

Take a bunch of the top technology companies. They weigh in in quite a different class - and may well have more to say about the future of the industry.

Remember a few years back, when Sony bought Columbia. What we witnessed at its most basic level was a hardware company - the maker of TVs, VCRs, Walkmans and so on - buying a software company. They wanted to control the material that would play on their main products.

Who's to say that an Apple, Microsoft or indeed a Sony again - now curiously schizophrenic with its technology units and content units - won't end this argument before we get much courtroom drama?