MPAA/RIAA

A big pfftht! And a special raspberry alarm clock award to Jack Valenti and Hilary Rosen, presidents of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, respectively. While they may be the friends of artists, labels, songwriters, actors, directors and producers, the MPAA and RIAA spent the last year making enemies of technology and free-speech enthusiasts. Their myopic self-protectionism showed them to be less interested in figuring out how content can be distributed in a digital world than in flexing their muscle to quash new media technologies that might threaten the status quo — at least when it comes to long-established entertainment industry business models. Its not that the groups dont have a valid point: Copyrighted content should be protected from piracy. But just as talkies transformed Hollywood and CDs transformed the music packaging industry, so will the Internet transform the way content is distributed — and priced.