The "Code" is why you don't know much about history.

Hedwig pointed me to this SFgate.com article Balboa film festival offers rare peek into naughty past.

Many of you, I bet, never even heard of this and know nothing about the code. But it's important. Here's why: it totally screwed up most peoples' understanding of history, life, and pretty much everything.

I love movies, god help me, I do. But very rarely do we find a movie that really gives us a real piece of truth. If you shape your view of what it means to be an American largely from movies and TV, what do you think and believe? You probably believe that Americans are virtuous, hard working, and largely moral people. Mostly white, too. And never the bad guys. The great American West was a golden age of good over evil and the struggle over savagery. Our heros are strong, tall, strong, and silent. Bad guys are easy to spot. And our leaders are good and enlightened men.

But then the viewer is confronted with something like HBO's "Deadwood" or "Rome". I've seen the arguments. "They swear too much. There's too much sex. They weren't that violent."

It's hard to take. The Hays Office and the administration of the code forced movies into a complete alternate universe. And you know what's really a shame? It was self inflicted. The studios felt that if they didn't crack down hard on themselves, then the government would.

Want another thought to give you pause? The Hays Office, the code - everything that attempted to sanitize life and make movies and TV acceptable to the powers that be - they're still around. You betcha. It's now called the Motion Picture Association of America. That's right, the MPAA. The folks that want to keep you from recording TV. The folks that want every single electronic device manufactured under their control. They no longer care about your morals. Frankly, they never did. They're businessmen, not artists. They could just as well be selling soap. Or cigarettes. They put the code in place to protect their industry, but the effect was what Washington wanted: a gullible, easy to control public. And now what do they want? They want to control and charge and remove long held rights. They hated the VCR and are livid about TiVO. And computers make them foam at the mouth. They don't want you to record, time or place shift anything you watch. They don't want you to make a backup copy of a DVD your purchase, or copy it to your laptop to watch on the road. And most of all, they want more money.

And here's the gag: they totally miss the point. If they would embrace the technology the could collect untold billions. That's right, billions. Starting today. Here's how: put everything online. Everything. Do exactly the opposite of what they're doing. Take the over 100 years worth of commercial movies, put them in full high-definition glory, and let anyone download and view them for a buck. Sure, charge a bit more for things just released, but let's be generous and say anything over five years old is a buck. Recent experience with "the long tail" tells us that every single movie would be downloaded and paid for every month. That means movies that haven't made a cent for decades (and for some, a century or more) would suddenly be making money for the movie industry. Billions and billions.

Idiots. And they don't care what damage they do as long as they get richer.

long tail, mpaa, censorship