This has nothing to do with real estate and I’m no expert on movie production and distribution but the recent consequences of the Sony hack incident has really ticked off a lot of people – me included. Polls that I’ve seen consistently show about 80% of Americans disagree with Sony’s decision to not release “The Interview”. For example see this Cnet poll: Was Sony right to cancel “The Interview”? Even the President called Sony’s decision a mistake today.
But obviously a large corporation like Sony, with deep pockets and well identified executives, is incredibly vulnerable for all kinds of extortion – risk of lawsuits from a theater explosion, exposure of employee confidential information, mortified senior executives who write racist emails. It’s no wonder that Sony decided to kill the movie.
And it’s not just this particular movie that is at risk. As the president pointed out today, “If someone is able to intimidate folks out of releasing a satirical movie, think of what they can do if they see a documentary they don’t like, or a news report they don’t like.” Well guess what? It’s already happened:
- Team America has been pulled
- Steve Carell’s “Pyongyang” has been cancelled
- HBO has to hire a team of 160 lawyers in order to make a documentary about Scientology
If this is the world we live in – and it is – then it’s time to change the game. It’s really time for a new movie production and distribution paradigm for films that are too hot to handle that would be immune to such blackmail and censorship. Although I don’t know the details I’m pretty sure what I’m about to propose is totally feasible:
- Crowdfund the production and distribution. Or you can use the Master Limited Partnership structure, which is already in use for movies, but crowdfunding sounds like more fun and would build early interest and a guaranteed audience.
- The movie is produced and distributed by an entity that only exists for this one movie.
- Everyone works as independent contractors.
- Build a technology infrastructure modeled after WikiLeaks and Anonymous. Use this for distribution and streaming. If you need help building this out I hear a guy named Julian Assange is looking for work.
- You can make it available for theater distribution if theaters want it.
- If you are worried about the financial accounts of the entity that owns the movie you can convert all funds to bitcoins.
The basic concept is that there is only a very small and transitory entity to target. Everything is distributed as much as possible. I don’t know exactly how to pull this together but I sure hope someone smarter than me does. Otherwise we are at the mercy of Kim Jong Un for what we see.
#sony #theinterview #kimjongun
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