You have all heard about the long tail. All of you have now also heard about how the ‘biz’ as in the ‘music biz’ and the ‘movie biz’ was slow to react. They were shutting down when they should have been opening up. And so forth.
They are now on the case though. Last week we were in a hearing at the swedish parliament where the topic was “Copyright Law on the internet”. A lot of things were said, one line that got stuck in my head was when a guy from Benvor(movie company) highlighted their own project Ameibo. Ameibo is a download service that uses Bittorrent technique to let users rent and download movies to watch. It’s very pricey. That’s not my main objection though. No, that has to do with those words the Benvor guy said at the parliament. He said “There is 25 million illegally downloaded movies every year in Sweden [...] We have now launched our new service Ameibo with around 1000(or did he say 400?) titles to chose from” or something like it. To me, there seems to be a gap there. 25 million downloaded movies - 1000 movies to choose from. I could be wrong, hey who knows if the sun comes up tomorrow, philosophically speaking no one can be 100% sure, but I think that a LOT of those 25 million downloaded movies was NOT movies available at Ameibo.
Now, Ameibo is not the only movie service at the Internet, but it’s actually one of very few. There only exists something like 5 or 6 sites in Sweden and the situation is hardly better elsewhere. I think it is impossible to have success of any entertainment/information service at the Internet if you do not have content that is at par with what can be found in the P2P networks. The problem is of course the major music labels and movie studios that refuses to ‘get on the train’, still 9 years A.N (After Napster). Some site that uses Bittorrent technique is not a sign that movie studios has ‘got it’ now.
Coincidently I was browsing the hell out of internet the day after the hearing in hunt for the documentary movie”Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie“. The movie won the Oscar award for best documentary in 1988 and was awarded at Cannes and the Berlin film festival too. It was directed by Marcel Ophüls that made “Sorrow and the pity”, a documentary almost no one has seen(no one watches documentaries) but many nerdy cultural snobs know about because it’s reffered to in Woody Allens “Annie Hall”. Anyways, “Hotel Terminus” is about Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo chief of Lyon, and about his life after the war. I have been in Lyon, studied there for a year, and I went to the Museum of WWII wich is in the old Gestapo headquartes where the nazis did all their horrors. I knew about the movie when I went to the museum. There was no DVD available of the movie in the museum shop. I tried to find it in different shops and did browse sites at internet and P2P networks for it with no success.
For years I didn’t think about the movie until I by chance saw a book on ebay about Klaus Barbie when I was browsing for other stuff to buy. I first searched ebay for a DVD, no luck. I checked amazon for a DVD, no luck. I checked imdb for complaints about it not being available on DVD, no luck. I checked all my torrentsites for the movie, no luck. I checked all my best DC++ hubs, no luck. I plagued all kinds of people about the movie, no luck.
The movie is available on VHS. I think my VHS player is in the attic. Maybe. Anyways the VHS were all NTSC. I dont know if my VHS player plays NTSC. Hell! Who wants VHS cassettes anyways? I don’t.
The movie is also available from a seller on Laserdisc. A weird format, almost more weird than Minidisc. I don’t know one single person that ever had Laserdisc. Pondered for a second to buy the Laserdisc, get a laserdisc player and try to transfer it to my computer in some way. Forgot about it the second later.
I started to look around the movie studios and production companies that made the movie. It was originally made at the classic film studio MGM - Metro Goldwyn Meyers - you know the one with the lion. MGM was bought up a couple of years ago by Sony Pictures and some other companies that have names like Providence Equity Partners, Comcast Corporation, DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and Quadrangle Group.
Now, browsing the sites, emailing people that never responds about a movie about some nazi, I start to feel somewhat fishy. Is it supposed to be this hard to get a obscure documentary that ‘only’ got an Oscar award, Cannes prize and Berlin film festival award? In 2008? Where is Criterion Collection when you need it? Hotel Terminus is only one movie but there has been occasions when a movie is very hard to find on P2P and impossible to find on DVD.
There are two main points I want to highlight from this story:
1. The movie biz has not got the long tail
2. The P2P networks has not got the long tail
At least they haven’t got THE long tail with a capital ‘T’ ‘H’ and an ‘E’. The THE long tail is everything and it’s everything now. And it’s user friendly, or else. If the movie biz gets THE long tail and is letting me and everyone I know in on it there will be peace and we can all focus on other stuff.
Until then, here’s your moment of Zen: The Sony Pictures and MGM Studios short and consise answer if you want to license their stuff for the internet(only clips, for heavens sake do you think they license FULL movies for the internet? )
“FOR INTERNET INQUIRIES
Sony Pictures Entertainment does not issue licenses for internet use.”
“Can I use a Film Clip and/or Still on my website?
MGM does not license images for use on websites at this time.”
7 Comments
1 Dana Gillespie wrote:
Hold up there! — Don’t be so quick to poo-poo VHS tapes.
–MANY highly desirable films have not yet made it to DVD, and although some may make it one day, many will not.
The “Hotel Terminus” story is a case in point. I purchased the VHS 2-cassette version when Movies Unlimited was having a “closeout” sale of their VHS tapes, during their conversion to all-DVD sales.
I picked-up that double-cassette for $9.95.
If you check on Amazon, and try to find a copy of the Jack London story, “The Sea Wolf” on DVD, you will find that this classic film (the Warner Bros. film, starring Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield and Ida Lupino) is only available from independent sellers, who sell via Amazon, on VHS.
That title goes for up to $150.00, for an un-used VHS tape, from those independent vendors.
Ditto for many other great films. Try to buy “The Subject Was Roses,” with Patricia Neal and Martin Sheen. Only VHS tapes available, and very few, at that– for upwards of $50. and $60. each.
I tried to buy John Huston’s 1979 masterpiece, “Wise Blood,” and found only one seller, offering a used VHS of the film for $100.00. I passed. If I’m going to pay $100.00, I want the VHS to be still-sealed, and brand new. I check for such a copy aboout once a week.
….and haven’t found one yet.
The list of OOP films on VHS only, is endless.
While I always try to buy DVDs, sometimes the titles I seek just don’t exist in that format, and unfortunately, I have to pay premium prices for VHS.
– When I do, I try to only buy still-sealed UN-used tapes (unless I’m so desperate to see it that I break my own rule).
After all, when you’re paying premium prices for OOP titles, it pays to go for sealed product, even if it costs two, or three, times as much as a used copy.
One last point— not only “snobs” claim to have seen “The Sorrow and the Pity” because Woody Allen mentioned it in “Annie Hall.”
I have seen the film countless times. It’s fascinating, and it’s the type of film that reveals more & more, with repeat viewings.
I hape the Criterion DVD of “Sorrow…” and never tire of watching it.
Get your VCR out of the attic. If you’re a true film buff, you will find it comes in handy….
Even though I have three DVD players, I still have three VCRs, all in excellent condition. With a film collection nearing 15,000 titles, about evenly split between tapes and discs, I find a VCR to be an essential tool.
Enjoy “Hotel Terminus” (when you get a copy) It’s almost (but not quite) as good as “Sorrow…”.
2 Iain McLeod wrote:
It took me under a minute to find it on emule. In two parts, 1.37G each, so it’s a good quality rip, and with a dozen or so users so it would probably take a day or three to download.
Sometimes p2p does the long tail very very well indeed.
3 Iain McLeod wrote:
p.s. Long tail is actually what hooked me on Napster when I first dared try it (’dared’ because it sounded a bit illegal!). ‘I wonder if I can find xyz’, xyz being some cheesy old disco tune I had taped of the radio when I was a kid. A couple of minutes later I was muttering ‘bloody hell it’s got everything’ under my breath.
I then didn’t sleep for the next 48 hours.
Long tail is THE point of p2p. Ask the ex-oinkers about it.
4 Mattias Lövkvist wrote:
Iain: there you go! Personally I don’t use emule. Couldn’t found it on Torrent or my(very cineast-nerdy) DC-hubs so the P2P-tail in this case was very hard to find.
Dana: Get my VCR out of the attic you say. That feels a bit like giving up on the need for change in the movie business. I think that a lot of movies not available at DVD will show up in P2P networks. As VHS-rips or ripped from TV.
I do think though that the P2P could face hard competition from the movie business if the movie business decided to really use the internet for distribution of movies.
5 Dana Gillespie wrote:
I understand your feelings, and I fell very much as you do.
I’m just suggesting that you not trash your VCRs as long as there’s a chance, rare as one may be, that somewhere down the road you may find that your VCR is the only way to experience a rare cinematic work of art, –one that may be passed over by the great unwashed in this country.
Hopefully, your VCR is still working, as it may provide you with an easy, and convenient way to see that elusive title that may very well never show up anywhere else, or be available to you any other way.
Once a month, a friend of mine invites me and about a dozen of our film-fanatic friends, to view seeming lost, and exciting to see, obscure noirs on 16mm, in his garage, using his 16mm projector.
He has connections to several labs, and film storage facilities, in California. —
I feel priveleged, indeed, to see some of these rarities.
I do this, –while still believing as you do– that we must embrace change in the movie business, –and certainly not ‘give up on it.’
I’m a firm believer in the ancient proverb,
“The Times Change, and We Change With Them.”
dusting off the VCR was merely a suggestion to keep “all your options open.”
– Even the ones that seem passe’—
-Dana-
6 Carl wrote:
Sure, the P2P networks could have a longer and grander tail, but of course the problem is not a technical one…
7 Forester Hudd wrote:
thanks !! very helpful post!