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"Why Net Neutrality is Hollywood’s Secret Enemy"

by Open-Publishing - Wednesday 11 April 2007

Internet Cinema-Video USA

http://www.chycho.com/?q=neutrality

On February 8th, the independent movie known as “The Secret” was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. What was of significance about this event was not the information that this movie shared, but about this movie becoming a member of an elite and very significant group of films to have had a successful transition from the Internet to the mainstream media.

The first major movie to have successfully used the Net to propel itself to the spotlight was the “Blair Witch Project” (BWP). Even though the BWP and “The Secret” are two completely different movies, produced with totally different intentions, they have one very distinct similarity: they were both able to bypass controls set up by the establishment to become powerful enough to be part of the establishment. They did not use the Net to distribute a movie that has already been released in theaters like most large studios are doing now. What they did was to produce and distribute a movie through the Net bypassing government regulators, distributors, marketing and advertising companies, high priced executives and union actors, plus countless other organizations and peoples that usually take a piece of the pie and end up filtering a production to suit their reality.

Through the Net we are seeing creators produce and provide both entertainment and education on a global scale with minimal physical or material constraints, at a fraction of the cost of mainstream studios while generating millions of dollars, and this fact is well known to the media conglomerates. As a close friend told me a few weeks ago, the reason that Walt Disney is reducing the number of movies they will be producing per year by more then 50% is because they will be buying independent movies instead of taking the risk of producing high budget flops. What this means is that as long as the Internet remains neutral, we should be prelude to a new genre of film.

The BWP and “The Secret” are only two such movies that belong to this genre of “Internet Film”. Eight years ago, the success of the BWP helped five film students become multimillionaires, allowing them to create their own film studio to the astonishment of the industry. At present, the ripple effect from “The Secret” is already being felt around the world and people have began to search the Net seeking exposure to similar films to educate and entertain them. Movies such as Earthlings, America: Freedom to Fascism, A World Without Cancer, Deconstructing The Myth Of AIDS, Poison Dust, Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre, Chemtrail: Aerosol Crimes, The Oil Factor: Behind the War on Terror, The Future of Food, The Money Masters, Liquid Crystal Vision, Loose Change, and countless other movies and lectures from prominent spiritual and political leaders within our society that previously had no voice on the mainstream media. How this revolution in film will effect society is yet to be fully understood.

The success of movies like “The Secret” becomes even more profound when we take an in-depth look at the distribution of daily adult Internet usage in the United States. According to a 2006 survey, which accounts for 92 million people, only 31% get their news from the Net, 28% surf the Web for fun, 10% watch a video or listen to an audio clip, and only 4% download video files to their computer. Considering that “The Secret” was initially only available as a download, it means that within one short year, with only a 4% penetration of adult internet users, equal to approximately 3.5 million people, a fraction of which would have actually viewed “The Secret”, this movie made it to the mainstream media and onto the number one talk show for the past 19 consecutive seasons, with an estimated 49 million viewers per week in the United States alone. According to these statistics, the media conglomerates should be quite concerned about their future, since this is just the beginning.

Internet Film is just one branch of communication on the Net that is threatening the Status Quo. Podcasts, personal and news blogs, internet radio, streaming media, social network services, online shops, video sharing websites, to virtual worlds; the face of society as we know it is changing for all those countries that have a high internet penetration rate. In the United States alone, approximately 210 million people are logging onto the Net on a regular basis. With all these different tools at our disposal, it’s no wonder that the Internet is being used to provide information and entertainment that was previously not readily available.

The unfiltered dissemination of information through the Internet is affecting our belief structures, changing our way of consumption, our way of doing business, our way of seeking knowledge, our way of communicating, and our way of life. It is creating a new branch of consumer, numbering in the tens of millions, requiring products and services that have yet to be produced. In essence, the Internet is creating the largest untapped market the world has ever seen. It should then not come as a surprise that Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast are trying to control the content on the Net and why consumers are demanding Internet freedom (pdf). The Internet is a new world and the battle to keep it free and accessible to all is just beginning. It is up to us, the occupants of this world, to keep those who wish to control us and future generations to come at bay.

It is true that “The Secret” has created a paradigm shift, but it is not about the message, it is about the median in which the message is distributed. With the price of video and audio equipment being as low as they are, the software being as accessible and as simple to use as it is, and the Internet being the only true free form of communication, as a society we may be lucky enough to be on the road to the “Golden Path” if we are able to Save the Internet and provide a medium for those who wish to share a non-corporate vision of our collective.

chycho March 2007
http://www.chycho.com/?q=neutrality