Digital threat prompts movie industry downgrade

July 8, 2008 By RYAN NAKASHIMA , AP Business Writer

(AP) -- A Lehman Brothers analyst downgraded the entertainment industry Monday and slashed forecasts for its five major companies, saying digital downloads of movies and TV shows posed a huge threat to profits from DVD sales that the companies rely on.

Content from The Associated Press expires 15 days after original publication date. For more information about The Associated Press, please visit www.ap.org .

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DGBEACH - Jul 08, 2008
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Boo effing hoo! Actors/Producers/Directors/Sony (amongst others) make way TOO MUCH MONEY for what they do and its about time they woke up to that fact. Why should someone like Tom Hanks make more than a Doctor? Or Arnold Schwarzenegger more than the president of the United States?? It seem to me that we've allowed them to take themselves way too seriously for too long.
I am also a musician however, and recognize the need for copyright laws, but they give creative people a bad name because they make us all look like a bunch of greedy bastards!

I for one don't feel sorry for them (couldn't you tell? :) )
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gopher65 - Jul 08, 2008
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DGBEACH, as a writer, if copyright laws did anything whatsoever to protect me, I'd love them. But copyright laws do not, and have never been intended to, help artists/authors/composers/musicians/etc. Copyright laws exist for one expressed purpose: to stop Warner Music from stealing from Sony BMG, or Microsoft from ripping off a Blizzard game, or Fox News from replaying a CNN broadcast without permission (etc).

Copyright laws exist to protect *distribution companies* from each other. And that's fine. That's necessary. But these laws were not originally intended to be applied to individual consumers, because the idea that an individual consumer would have a printing press in their living room was laughable.

In short, copyright laws are old and outdated, and are badly in need of *honest* revision (and NOT the kind of revision that distribution companies have been pushing for - and getting).
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