WGA Strike Day 8: Send in the kids

photos by Michael Jones/Variety

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[Ted Shuttleworth]

In case anyone missed this news in today's NYT:

"Intel plans to announce a family of microprocessor chips on Monday that it says will speed the availability of high-definition video via the Internet. Sean Maloney, Intel’s chief sales and marketing officer, said last week that the chips’ increased computing power would begin the transformation of today’s stuttering and blurry videos, the staple of YouTube and other video streaming sites, into high-resolution, full-screen quality that will begin to compete with the living room HDTV."

Since the networks are all likely to become websites, and much sooner than I'd imagined before this news, we clearly need a reasonable residual deal for all platforms. That probably means coming down from the excellent rates we got for content on the old big three networks, but better than we get presently on HBO, USA and the like. And then the artists and the studios need to work *together* to deal with the absolutely massive copyright infringement problem this technology is going to present. We've all seen how the music business has been decimated by file sharing and bittorrent sites. When clear, hi-def copies of first run films and television series are available quickly, easily and free of charge on the internet, our entire industry will be under siege.