One disappointing thing from the article is that they state that Hollywood loses billions a year to piracy - as if it were an established fact. Sure, there's billions of dollars worth of content traded via piracy, but it's debatable how many of those dollars were lost to Hollywood.
Otherwise I have to say this article is one more example of why I love The Economist. You'd never see a publication from, say, a Time Warner company chiding Hollywood for being stupid. I started reading The Economist in the 90's because it was the only news outlet that didn't have weekly in-depth coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial or Monica Lewinsky. I've never looked back.
To say that Hollywood loses billions of dollars a year is not only true, but a gross understatement. The figure is actually about 1,000,026,000,000,000 (one quadrillion, twenty-six billion).
The reason is that, a few months ago, my six-year-old cousin filmed a skit in drama class and planned on selling it to my parents, who told her they were interested in buying it. My Dad once told her he had a bajillion dollars, so she figured a quadrillion would be a drop in the bucket. Unfortunately, before the transaction was completed, my cousin's unknowing mother found the DVD and sent a copy to us, causing my cousin a quadrillion dollars in lost revenue.
When she found out, she cried. I had to give her a lolly-pop to console her.
Otherwise I have to say this article is one more example of why I love The Economist. You'd never see a publication from, say, a Time Warner company chiding Hollywood for being stupid. I started reading The Economist in the 90's because it was the only news outlet that didn't have weekly in-depth coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial or Monica Lewinsky. I've never looked back.