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- A (Streaming) Bundle of Joy?
Hello Hollywood tech nerds!
In this week’s post:
📺️ A (Streaming) Bundle of Joy?
💻️ On YouTube Video Essay Plagiarism
🍿 Kernels: 3 links worth making popcorn for
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A (Streaming) Bundle of Joy?
As your pal Steve awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed into a teenager in 1994 watching this on his TV:
Luckily THAT was also a dream and Steve woke up in the last month before 2024 to read in The Hollywood Reporter that Netflix and Apple TV+ are looking at bundling their services with other platforms at discounted rates. Netflix and Apple in a bundle??? THR goes on:
…the new bundles involving Netflix and Apple suggest that some players that have largely avoided discounting or wholesale offers may be warming up to the idea, and partnering with their legacy media competitors to stay in the game
As I wrote a few months ago about the surging popularity of FAST channels, the increasing cost of subscription streaming is having real, industry-warping effects on how consumers are allocating their entertainment dollars for these platforms. As noted in a Variety article featured in that newsletter, “it now costs more to have access to the top streaming services ($87 per month) than cable ($83).”
2019 and 2020 alone saw Disney+, Max, Peacock, and Apple TV+ join Netflix, Hulu, Paramount+ and many others in squeezing increasing monthly payments out of consumers. Is it any surprise they’re revolting and I’m dreaming about 1994?
On YouTube Video Essay Plagiarism
If you’re a film nerd like me, you know all about the excitingly varied world of movie-centric YouTube video essays, from Every Frame a Painting to Red Letter Media to hundreds more. If you’re a film fan who enjoys analysis, there are unfathomable riches for your viewing pleasure.
This weekend, the YouTuber Hbomberguy (real name: Harris Michael Brewis) released a deeply-researched piece on plagiarism in the video essay space, focusing on the content theft committed by a number of fellow creators.
Brewis spends significant time on focused James Somerton, a video essayist who had plagiarized numerous books, articles, and films in the creation of his essays, in some cases providing no credit and in no cases sharing any of the Patreon and advertising revenue he made. The video is below:
Caveat: this video is long, its almost 4 hour runtime eclipsing even Flowers of the Killer Moon! Yet it is also effective, laying out in sometimes-excruciating detail the ways in which Somerton gobbled up the hard work of others without any credit or recompense.
I’m highlighting the video for two reasons: first, its excellent quality and research. Secondly, as David Slack put it months ago and as Brewis points out in his conclusion, generative AI has the potential of being a “plagiarism machine” on a scale much more significant than a YouTube essayist. How do we protect the hard work of humans from the rapaciousness of robots?
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool links about Hollywood and technology:
The crazy story of the rooftop scene in the pilot episode of Moonlighting. (link)
Zack Snyder on his new Netflix movie Rebel Moon. (link)
The Internet enabled mass surveillance. AI will enable mass spying. (link)