I'M Suing Hollywood

It's 1984. Well, it feels like 1984, the novel George Orwell wrote in 1948 about the 'Negative Utopia,' a startlingly accurate, imaginary view of what could happen to the country if power was given to policing agencies to protect their (or their backer's) control of people and money. Though that account was fictional, this account is real. What's happening to Michael J. Rossi at Internetmovies.com is true.

Unbelievable but true.

We fondly reflect upon the amazing technological advances that characterize the twenty-first century. Cell phones are everywhere and we don't just use them to talk. One can email and check the basketball score, all in a few keystrokes. Flat screen TVs are readily available, upon which kids continue to strengthen their uncanny hand-eye coordination (that they've practiced since gaining control of their thumbs!). Most businesses and households use desktop computers to write, design, record, communicate, and sell, sell, sell anything from expensive art and chic handbags to plane tickets and tennis rackets. Let us rephrase - they don't just use desktop computers, they rely on them. They rely on them for the Internet, where people communicate, barter, research, and find answers on sites like Dictionary.com, Uselessknowledge.com, and Internetmovies.com.

Internetmovies.com was registered and launched in 1997 by entrepreneur, Michael J. Rossi, who wanted to share his interest in movies, both blockbuster and independent, with Internet users. He shared this interest by providing information to visitors, such as articles about the movie industry and a graphic directory that linked visitors to movie trailers (to get them excited about new releases!). The graphic directory is an assemblage of movie poster icons that, when individually clicked, connect the visitor to the registered movie site of interest, or site which features a trailer (nine times out of ten being Apple.com). To many, Rossi's website has provided the missing link between a visitor questing for a movie trailer and a website that features the answer.

Answers are what visitors found. Rossi had so many satisfied visitors, he continued to maintain Internetmovies.com by thirstily scanning the news for articles and updating his movie trailer links. He presently has 30,000 members, and boasts 60 million hits per year. A real moneymaker? No, this idea was not hatched to make money, though Rossi believed he was entitled to minimal payment for membership (a measly $5.95 a month) to put towards his monthly ISP fee. Intertnetmovies.com started as a hobby for Rossi, although he had hopes of eventually running a web-based movie rental business.

Business is a tricky beast. Especially when it comes to Hollywood, where producers spend millions of dollars on projects and actors are paid like royalty. The heavy taxing befalls the American public, who pays at least $8 for a two-hour thrill that isn't guaranteed. But we comply, spending more than the U.S. minimum wage, because it's our culture. We're a movie-crazed society. That's okay because we choose to be. We choose to pay Hollywood atrocious amounts of money, better spent on teachers, and it's from this free will that Hollywood moguls profit. No wrong done (though ethics would be nice). The wrong happens when Hollywood takes more than their share.

'Share,' that's a good word. Most people understand and even appreciate the meaning of this word, even if they don't know it. To share can mean acting generously, though 'share' traditionally means "what's yours is yours." Like when you buy some acreage, or plot of cyberspace - that's your 'share' because you paid for it. Someone sold it to you, just like Rossi sells memberships to pay his ISP and Hollywood sells tickets to pay for their blockbusters (and limousines). But when Hollywood production companies, led by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) of which AOL Time Warner is a member, choose to fire away at a little guy on the Internet (who paid to be there!), it shows that sharing means nothing to them.

Them, the incredibly monolithic band represented by the MPAA, is who emailed Rossi in March 2002, accusing him of selling unauthorized copyrighted motion pictures on Internetmovies.com. A month later the MPAA sent a letter to Rossi's ISP, making their accusation known and demanding that the ISP shutdown Internetmovies.com. Now who the hell are they? No lawyer would have authorized these messages to be sent, because lawyers check first and then defend. Lawyers aren't in the business of making their clients look like donkeys. Sure, lawyers sometimes fight for what isn't their client's, but at least they strategize. They use their brains by clicking through the evidence. Now sometimes clients end up looking like donkeys anyways, when secret evidence or unknown witnesses crop up. But when the case is based on what the accuser guesses is hard evidence and that evidence proves no evidence at all, well, that's not a case (and the lawyer mutters "donkey" for wasting his time).

Time has shown that monopolies hurt the little guy, like the family farm that the community loves but is beaten under by corporate farms flaunting loads of money, who keep things running due to countries where labor costs nothing. Somehow the Sherman Antitrust Act means very little to our society despite its passage in 1890, because the MPAA is threatening the income and individual initiative of Michael J. Rossi. Their accusations haven't just upset Rossi, making him question his integrity, but they're also costing him money. Due to the success of Interntemovies.com, Rossi has made it the source of his livelihood. Not only is he losing money on members and potential visitors falling prey to AOL's cyber-squatting, illustrated in the next paragraph, but he his spending time and money on research, formal complaints, lawyers, and articles written in his defense. This is taking time away from his business! The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed to restrain conglomerations of economic resources, like the MPAA, from injuring individuals and obliterating normal marketplace competition.

Competition does not seem to exist in this situation. Members of the MPAA make movies while Rossi runs a dinky little website that actually drives business towards Hollywood. But we forget that AOL Time Warner is both in the entertainment industry and the Internet business. So now Rossi is competition. Who would have thought? Apparently AOL Time Warner, since they launched a site called Internetmovies.org (sounding like they're non-profit). Internetmovies.com applauds Fair Use Rights and one can see this immediately when visiting the site (if only the MPAA could read!). But they still don't seem to understand Rossi's intentions, and they run when he questions them. Like at the Copyright Convention 2002, where Rossi questioned the Vice President of Intellectual Property for AOL Time Warner and she stormed off stage. Normal marketplace competition is now established since AOL Time Warner and Rossi both have Internet businesses that link to sites with movie trailers. But the MPAA has obliterated normal marketplace competition by threatening Rossi and cyber-squatting on Internetmovies.org. Must be nice owning a company that assigns Internet domain names.