Reading further into the story I discovered that one of the things that damaged in the fire were 40,000 to 50,000 film, tapes, and other original media from shoots by NBC or Universal though nothing was destroyed permanently because the media giant had a duplicate site elsewhere.

There has been a war waging recently among the media users and media creators. The war is for fair use of media by the user. You as a user do not have many rights when you purchase a DVD or CD. The rules are defines by lawyers at this time. Lawyers who define the law by suing kids and anyone else they feel will be high profile enough to get attention and scare the public in. Of course this is done in civil court because the laws of course are only interpreted by those lawyers to include what they are suing for. Sure stealing is wrong. But how about ripping music to MP3 from your own CDs? According to the digital millennium copyright act of 1998, if you change or remove encryption to ‘rip’ a DVD to your computer you are breaking the law.

I think the fire at Universal studios was not an accident and was actually a message to the entertainment world to back off and let people use their media how they want. This isn’t the world of yesterday when we all had records and could only play them on record players. There was no way to make them work in a CD player.

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Today we see our rights being taken. Daily, someone in the government decides, for the safety of the public, what we are no longer allowed to do. Sadly, so few in our country care about rights so long as they are being placated by something, entertained, inebriated, or generally confused to the point where they can no longer act. I saw on a bumper sticker a few days ago that said ‘freedom isn’t free’. But I think that it’s more appropriate to say that freedom is gone. The Constitution is no longer of the people, it is defined and redefined by lawyers who wish to change just one thing or another to fit their personal, political or employers whims. We barely have the freedom that was sought after by the pilgrims escaping England for tax and religious relief. We are taxed heavily and our religious freedoms are being turned into hate crimes. Our world concerns itself with itself, worshiping celebrities, false gods, money, power and forgets that which is truly important: God, family, freedom. Don’t forget what’s important as you sit in front of your X-Box or iPod and are distracted from the world around you. Eventually they could be knocking on your door asking for that iPod. You would care then.

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During the writers strike, my uncle found himself bored out of his mind because there wasn’t anything to do. Apparently, no one had to go during that time either. I talked to him a few days before the writers strike ended and asked him what he thought about the writers demands. He said they were greedy and they should stop complaining. He said that he would love to be paid for the rest of his life for the job he does today. He said that the production stops just as quick if there isn’t a toilet somewhere nearby. He was obviously unhappy with the writers and told me that he had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars during the three month strike.

Looming in the distance there looks to be a actor strike coming up fast. The actors have many of the same gripes that the writers had with the exception of one that I thought interesting: Product placement. That’s right, they want a piece of the action every time the studio gets paid something by Coke, Disney, Apple, or whoever to have their soda, Donald Duck, or a computer used or held or spoken about by the actors in a film or television show. Wow. These people want to get paid extra if they hold a Coke instead of generic brand X. Talk about greed.

If it was up to me I’d fire them all. For every writer and actor there is in the guilds in Hollywood there are ten others waiting behind them. Waiting to be discovered. Most of them have talent, have the look, have what it takes to make it in the business but can’t do it because the business is all tied up by the guilds. The theory is that if the studios fire all of the guild writers and hire non-guild writers that every other guild or union from the actors to the directors to the laziest teamster grips would all strike and nothing would get done at all. Most of these people are all replaceable as far I’m concerned. Just because you are a teamster and your only duty is to move the camera from point A to point B and not from point B to point A doesn’t mean you should make $100k a year and it doesn’t mean you are guaranteed work forever. Let’s fire every single one of them and replace them with a fresh batch of people excited to be in the business. Maybe there would be entertainment that was actually entertaining rather than one crummy show after another sinking to the lowest common denominator. Fire them all and let’s see what happens. Maybe you’ll be sitting in a stall next to Cameron Diaz or Tom Cruise in one of my uncle’s extremely high end toilet trailers on a break from shooting something new that is better.

Have a different opinion? I’d love to hear it.

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