Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes becomes a MPAA shill
I’ve got a suggestion for Leslie Stahl of 60 Minutes fame.
Stay the hell away from technology stories because you are coming of looking like an idiot who doesn’t have a clue. Not to mention that you also start sounding like some shill for whichever organization will benefit from the scare tactics you are using in your segments.
The last time you tried to instill fear in everyone was when you were reporting making up shit about the horrendous Cornflicker virus that was going to take down the Internet in one fell swoop. It didn’t matter one bit that the virus would only infect Windows computers. Nope this nasty little virus was going to destroy the Internet.
To make matters worse the security software company she talked was some dude from Symantec and in the end the whole segment ended up sounding more like an ad for Symantec.
This is a video of that show
Now fast forward to tonights show where once again Leslie is doing a segment of the incredible evils of movie piracy and how it was costing the movie industry billions of dollars and taking food out of the mouths of hard working actors and movie crews. She even had Steven Soderbergh in the interview chair going on about how bad this piracy thing was.
Of course this was all tied in with organized crime and people using their family to shield them while they filmed the movies playing in theaters. Now anyone who has even watched an illegal downloaded movie will tell you how bad these CAM movies are yet these are the very same movie that industry representative say are killing the movie business.
The one man that Stahl used in the segment was caught with a large amount of burned CD and computer equipment that had been used to upload these “industry killing” versions of movies. This apparently is where the real money is made according to Stahl and interviewees. The only problem is that no-one told Stahl that you don’t have to pay anything to download the movies just as you don’t pay to upload them for distribution.
There is no substance to this segment other than following the “industry representatives” lead on how terrible this all is and how the whole industry is losing money because of these evil people.
Substance like the fact that this has been one of the best years on record for the industry at the box office and it’s not even over yet.
Substance like the fact that the chances are that those terrible people who are downloading absolutely crapping versions of movies probably wouldn’t pay to go and see them in the first place.
Substance like the fact that those big budget movies that are losing money are general crap that no-one wants to see in the first place.
Substance like interviews with people like Cory Doctorow, Michael Mesnick, and others who have been following this subject for a long time and unlike the industry flack that Stahl was fawning over they actually have real figures to defend their arguments.
>In the end this 60 Minutes segment came off just as biased and stupid sounding as her piece on the infested Internet. So here’s a suggestion Leslie. when it comes to technology stories I strongly suggest that you run in the other direction because you – and or your production crew – don’t have a damn clue.
Here is tonight’s segment on how the movie industry is being killed off by evil pirates.
