A new sideline for the RIAA and MPAA?

Here's a thought - why don't the RIAA and MPAA redirect some of their expenditure to preserving public domain content. It's a crazy thought and totally opposed to what critics describe as their real purpose, but it seems in line with their stated purpose and may be a good source of profit to the organization and content creators as well. I realize this sounds naive, but why not? The Internet Archive has numerous movies and cartoons that have been uploaded for preservation in the archive, but by its nature this content tends to be poorly indexed and catalogued. I would gladly pay for a service that allowed me to download high quality mp4s of old movies that included full and accurate metadata tags, or DiVX versions with multiple soundtracks, or why not full VIDEO_TS folders of DVD versions of these old movies. The distributor need only produce an electronic image of a DVD, and provide me with some assurance that the information was accurate. The RIAA and MPAA are in a strong position to do so, and to further entice me to buy such content they could even offer a guarantee that a portion of the proceeds would get to the original artists, their heirs, or some project to preserve more the artists works. This would seem to place the RIAA and MPAA in the roles of philanthropic organizations, and I'm not naive enough to imagine them as such, they are looking out for material interests. I'm just saying that they could look out for such material interests by adding value, adding knowledge and resources that they would typically use to track copyrights. Such information becomes useless to these organizations when a copyright expires, but this gives them a way to keep generating revenue and giving the customers something they want and are willing to pay for. Bottom line, there's too much content that is being lost due to lack of motivated custodianship, and it wouldn't hurt to see energies that are being expended on punitive measures be redirected to preservation efforts. Digital media makes it easier for pirates to copy, but why can't these organizations make use of how much cheaper it makes it to produce and distribute larger media libraries. Three or four man-hours expended in transferring an old film to digital format (about the time it takes me to transfer and tag a home movie or presentation) is much cheaper than pressing a production run of DVDs and CDs. Distributing a library of cult TV shows and movies becomes less of a risk, and would be a service, to the public, the artists, and the bottom line. So why not? You can't make a profit off public domain material by restricting people's use of it, but you could potentially make a profit by making it available in an attractive package ... option 1: make no money, option 2: make some money for the artist and yourselves from those who value the work. It seems like a worthy cause to me.
Would it be that bad to spend a tiny fraction of the resources expended on litigation to such a purpose, or am I just being too naive?

Cordially,

Argy

[Update: On a related note, here's an amazing presentation from Yahoo!, via Oreilly Radar and BoingBoing]

Andrew Ridgeley (of Wham!), member of the SAS

I was surprised to hear that, but it probably isn't the SAS that first pops to mind. It's actually an organization campaigning for safe recreational waters, free of sewage and other forms of irresponsible pollution - Surfers Against Sewage. All kidding aside, that's a very good and worthy cause.

And just in case you don't know who Andrew Ridgeley is, you should check out this video, and if you're old enough to remember it'll come back to you.

[via Wikipedia]

Matt as Matthew, Damon with a dead-on McConaughey impersonation

Not the kind of post I'd typically put up, but Matt Damon was just too funny.



[YouTube Link]

Weird Al Wednesday - on UHF!

Worth it for so much, but the George Michael "Faith" impersonation is just priceless.


[via Revver]

X-Wing Model (Rocket-Powered, 21-feet, and it flies too)

Gizmodo has an excellent gallery of this incredible 21 foot long model of a Star Wars X-Wing. It has four solid-fuel rockets, and radio-operated control surfaces ... yes, that means it does indeed fly, and lands with the help of three parachutes.


[via Gizmodo]

notMac Challenge Winner Announced

Ben Spink has just been declared the winner of the notMac Challenge. This is great news, as a free and open-source alternative to .Mac is something I've been hoping for.

Whitehall - divine jeweller's? or just a weird sign?

This is something that struck me at the mall recently, the logo for "Whitehall Co." jeweller's spells out the word "Allah" in Arabic. It's actually the "WJ" ... and since it needs a very thin capital J to work, and a fairly elaborate scrolling of the W, I can't help but wonder how much of a coincidence this is. Or if it's not a coincidence then why can't I get any further information on the subject? (the employees were oblivious to the matter). It's very eye-catching for anyone who reads Arabic. Could that be the reason? I tried doing a quick websearch, and all I could come up with was web pages talking about lawsuits, customer service complaints, and investment info. The link below is to the sole blog entry I found that includes a decent picture and seems to have noticed this as well.

If anyone knows more about this, or just thinks I'm seeing things, then let me know what you think in the comments.



[Link to blog entry]
[Link to larger version of image]