January 23, 2006
Re-Mixing J-Media, Part II: The Read-Only Internet
Posted by Devin
Per Lessig’s article today on his blog and his earlier story in FT earlier in the year. He truly believes the next big copyright war will be whether noncommercial creativity will be allowed. But there will be a big difference with this war and the last (over p2p filesharing) — attacking the heart of every Anime fan and their appeal for remixing. The tolerance of the Japanese media over its US counterparts, whether it be for flattery or other reasons, continues to spread among the kids of America. And the results, he states, are amazing:
After a talk in which I presented some AMV work, a father said to me: “I don’t think you really realise just how important this is. My kid couldn’t get into college till we sent them his AMVs. Now he’s a freshman at a university he never dreamed he could attend.”
But all this and more, are in frightful danger. From Part I, you find out that the greatest threat to AMV’s is not the video content which is usually overlooked, but the music used in the piece. And if enough copyholders get smart, they’ll cause lots of problems:
We are well on our way to perfecting the “Read-Only” internet – that network in which every bit of culture can be bought in a single click, but bought with the rights to consume only. 2006 will be a critical stage in this process.
Its whose who build the Read-Write internet, its the IP, not the economics that matter. I can’t agree with him more.
Filed To: Digital / Licensing
Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
Musicland Restructuring Affects 2005 Sales
Posted by Devin
Musicland Holding Corp., operator of more than 800 retail stores, including Sam Goody, Suncoast Motion Picture Company and MediaPlay.com, Thursday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The ripple effect of Musicland shutting down has just started to hit everyone’s 2005 books. Some raw numbers from ICV2—
The painful effects on suppliers continue to ripple through the anime business; FUNimation parent Navarre Corporation announced on Friday that it was owed $12.8 million by Musicland for November and December balances due and that it was assessing the effect on its quarterly and annual financial results.
Certain Suncoast stores have already liquidated their manga collection, shipping it back to the distributors and warehouses. Musicland already announced as part of the restruturing that all MediaPlay stores are closing. From HomeMediaRetailing.com
“We have been exploring various options for cutting costs, such as the impending closure of Media Play,” said Michael Madden, president and CEO of Musicland.
The effect on the final revenues could be rather staggering to other privately-held firms. Estimating that FUNimation/Navarre might have properites from both organiztions and the rank of FUNImation among all licensers, its not inconceivable that between $40-50 Mil of 2005 sales will have to be written off. Ouch.
Filed To: Distribution / Retail
Comments (0)
January 2, 2006
Blu-Ray disk code US-Japan releases as one region, anime gaming fans rejoice!
Posted by Devin
Reported a couple of days ago via Engadget—
It has just been announced that the U.S. will share Blu-ray Region 1 status with South America and, more importantly, East Asia minus China. (For the 58% of young Americans who are unable to locate it on a map, this means that Japan and the US are in the same region).
The Blu-Ray version which is slated to launch with PS3, Well, that means quite a few things—
(1) Games from Japan will instantly be played here in the States. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a brisk import business around games. However, we may be seeing a shift in the creation of PS3 games
(2) A bi-lingual track or a sub track for J-games that haven’t been able to crack the US market because of the translation problems of creating a new game. If the region is the same, maybe they’ll “tweak” the next generation of games to contain sub tracks.
(3) It really doesn’t matter since some games are just fighting sims. Who cares if you can’t read the Japanese!
Tags: blu-ray, ps3, region-coding
Filed To: Distribution / Gaming / Over in Asia / Retail
Comments (0)
