After the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act were shelved on Friday, some Web sites and venture capitalists went on the offensive against the people and companies behind the controversial piracy bills.
Y Combinator, an early stage investment company, announced on its Web site that it planned to finance start-up companies that would go after Hollywood and the movie industry.
» Investment Firm Y Combinator Goes on Offensive Against Hollywood.
The main reason we want to fund such startups is not to protect the world from more SOPAs, but because SOPA brought it to our attention that Hollywood is dying. They must be dying if they’re resorting to such tactics. If movies and TV were growing rapidly, that growth would take up all their attention. When a striker is fouled in the penalty area, he doesn’t stop as long as he still has control of the ball; it’s only when he’s beaten that he turns to appeal to the ref. SOPA shows Hollywood is beaten. And yet the audiences to be captured from movies and TV are still huge. There is a lot of potential energy to be liberated there.
Hollywood is on the wrong side of history.