It is with mixed feelings that I bid adieu to the MPAA and the major motion picture companies of America, because although some of the epic films that came out of….oh hell. Who am I kidding. I’m already planning a party. The desperate land grab for your hard-earned CD’s and song files that the RIAA and the established music industry attempted with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and DRM has spawned one of the most creative decades in pop music, and put more money in more artists’ pockets than ever before. Although smart pop media influencers like Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing are in a tizzy about the admittedly insane new “Selectable Output Control” power that the FCC is handing the film industry, the development should come as no surprise; I can only guess that the reason Cory is so upset is that he must be a cable subscriber. As an avid film lover, this will have little impact for me personally. As just one of the more glaring examples of why this should come as no surprise, one of the people who more recently spun through DC’s revolving doors was Catherine Bohigian, chief of the office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis at the FCC, who left in 2008 to take a job with the cable giant Cablevision. To me the most shocking thing about this recent round of nuttiness being promulgated by the in-some-ways shadowy MPAA is that it’s taking so darn long for the movie industry to undermine itself the way the music industry did. It shouldn’t take too long though; although the studios haven’t been aggressively suing their customers on a regular basis like the record companies, they do have a pretty batshit-insane shopping list for how to protect their market. And after witnessing the indy music industry explosion of the last decade, I personally don’t see any reason why this couldn’t happen with film. The film industry is doing exactly the same thing the record companies did; they’re routinely annoying their best customers, and sticking it to a key distribution channel in their maniacal grab for control of intellectual property. The RIAA did it with radio, the MPAA is doing it to theaters. And they’re doing this at a time when professional-quality production and distibution tools are within the reach of just about anyone. In my opinion there would be nothing cooler than a massive movement comprised of small-house indy film venues showing nothing but indy film in intimate settings using HD technology. I say go ahead and FCC yourself, MPAA.