Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Jonathan Peterson reproduces Peter Chernin's (CEO of Fox) Comdex keynote, interpolating comments disputing not only its accuracy, but its most basic representation of what's going on. Jonathan summarizes his own reaction:

They still see us as consumers only capable of digesting their offerings and handing over money. They really don't seem to understand that the reason we are buying PCs, video cameras, digital cameras, broadband connections and the like is that we want to create and share our creations

I found a few places in the speech that made my see the inside of my own retina that Jonathan saw fit not to comment on. In particular, Chernin says:

The trumpeters of the Big Bully Theory may also be startled to learn that we have absolutely no problem with viewers shifting our content from their television to their PC, from their living room to their bedroom and to their bathroom and back again as many times and ways as they'd like.

First, "shifting" does not necessarily include copying. Second — and this is what makes my blood boil — he's granting us permission to shift "our content" where "our" refers to the entertainment company? It's not their content. When I buy a DVD, the DVD is mine and I can use it any way I want so long as I'm not reselling it or broadcasting it. The disk is mine. I can make a copy for my upstairs TV. I can mold it into a pretty little ashtray. I can roll it in a tube and sell it to Peter Chernin as a home colonoscopy kit.

Keep your hands of my property, you goddamn burglar!