Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

[Dirtbag59]

Funny story about the other party thats claiming to loose money due to online piracy.

Hollywood accounting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hollywood accounting (also known as Hollywood bookkeeping)[1] refers to the opaque accounting methods used by the film, video and television industry to budget and record profits for film projects. Expenditures can be inflated to reduce or eliminate the reported profit of the project thereby reducing the amount which the corporation must pay in royalties or other profit-sharing agreements, as these are based on the net profit.

Hollywood Accounting: Darth Vader Not Getting Paid, Because Return Of The Jedi Still Isn't Profitable | Techdirt

“I get these occasional letters from Lucasfilm saying that we regret to inform you that as Return of the Jedi has never gone into profit, we’ve got nothing to send you. Now here we’re talking about one of the biggest releases of all time,” said Prowse. “I don’t want to look like I’m bitching about it,” he said, “but on the other hand, if there’s a pot of gold somewhere that I ought to be having a share of, I would like to see it.”

So basically they're claiming to loose money to online piracy when in reality these studios have been using accounting tricks for years to claim losses. Apparently the Enron shell company accounting trick is also pretty common in Hollywood.

Enron and Hollywood Accounting » Alex Hopmann’s Blog

One thought occured to me- the type of schemes that Enron used to do fake accounting to pump up their profits remind me of the kind of schemes that the Hollywood studios use (in reverse) to make sure that films never have a profit and thus they don’t have to pay out percentages to various folks who have a stake in the film. For those that aren’t familiar with it, having a percentage of the profit in a typical film has become a real joke since even films that rake in $100s of millions of dollars world-wide somehow always end up not making a profit. Strange that the studios keep paying for them when they never make any money?

Originally Posted by CRedskinsRule

Wikipedia to blackout all 3,847,673 English-language pages to protest PIPA - Yahoo! News

Good for them. Plus it's in Wales so not only do we get the full benefit of the blackout but we also still get to use Wiki. FTMFW!