Pirates of Spiderman

My friend sent me a link asking what I thought about this.

A couple things come to mind: With respect to the 16 year old kid, I feel sort of like Mr. Constanza feels towards George when he's been caught pirating movies in Seinfeld. His gut reaction is to thump him on his forehead with the palm of his hand, "What were you thinking?" I mean, come on, videotaping a movie - that's just embarrassing. So, yeah, he deserves to get punished - and to not get laid very often.

With respect to the movie theater worker wearing night vision goggles I think, damn, that could actually be a pretty cool perk to the job.

With respect to being a movie theater patron with some creepy loser who works at a movie theater watching me like Jame Gumb in Silence of the Lambs, I'm a little freaked out.

And with respect to the studios, I think they can fight these little battles, trying to catch every 16 year old out there with a video camera, but in the long run they can't win that way. To win in the long run, they have to find creative ways to sell their product using new technology to meet customer needs to see their movies cheap and fast.

There's still something very magical about movies and movie theaters. Just because TV and DVDs and as Drew Casper calls them, postage stamp entertainment, predominates, it doesn't mean movies by any stretch are going down the tubes...not that the studio executives cracking down on pirating really care about that, though.

I think looking at it now, it's clear everyone's been hustling the audience - cities overcharging for permits, actors being overpaid, unions bullying crews and the studios, it's all a fabulous racket if you get an edge some way or another. No one gets paid at the bottom, and top feeders make tremendous amounts of money putting out a lot of crap.

But hey, show me a better system and I'm all ears.