Happy Thanksgiving
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There's basically no news coming out this afternoon. A lot of people are looking forward to the 26th when the WGA and AMPTP return to the bargaining table, and I did read a story last night that said the total shutdown of scripted television figures to cost a little over $20 million per day once everything stops. It wasn't really clear if this was loss in revenue and/or profit for the studios and networks, or if that number included what writers and everyone else not working because of this strike are losing as well.
Either way, that's a big number. If this strike lasts as long as the last one, we'll be looking at losses above $3 billion rather than the $500 million that was lost in the 80's.
Speaking of the studios, all the big players grouped together to sue a Chinese Internet cafe for piracy. Apparently the studios can't do anything alone even though each is part of a billion-dollar conglomerate. If you think piracy is bad in the United States, wait until you see how they do things in China. Not only don't they respect intellectual property at all, they thieve and steal right out in the open like it's every day business.
China says its intellectual property safeguards meet international standards and the government is determined to stamp out piracy, though the effort may take many years.
Not to make light of a far more serious situation than piracy, but that's just bull and we all know it. If China cared about piracy half as much as it does about fighting against democracy and imprisoning and murdering its own citizens who are only interested in the free flow of information and ideas, piracy wouldn't exist at all over there.
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