As further evidence that the digital downloading culture is about to crash like a wave upon feature films, a press release for Ipsos-Insight’s Quarterly Digital Music Study Tempo reveals that between late-December and early-January 21% of their study group had downloaded a full-length feature film from the Internet (in fact, 9% of them had done so in the last 30 days.) It's time for filmmakers to starting getting the product out there ... otherwise that landscape is going to be dominated by rips of commercial DVDs (sorry Artisan ... sorry Focus Features ... sorry Newmarket.) Of course, if you listen to the MPAA when they quote AT&T Labs, "77% of popular movies being illegally traded online were leaked by Hollywood insiders." Studios aren't going to lead the way on this one anymore than they did on MP3s: it's up to the independents to find the business models that work.

/. points out a fascinating Scientific American interview from last month with the founder of the Moving Picture Experts Group (responsible for such formats as MP3 and MPEG-2) about the future of digital media. Leonardo bemoans the current issues that have kept digital media from expanding to it's potentials, and his common sense approach is a breath of fresh air.

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Now that my second blog is basically public as well, I've had to crystalize my thoughts on what goes in each blog. The best I've been able to come up with is that this blog is more raw, more about experiments in process, and written more for my "inner circle of collaborators" than the other blog (which I'll try to treat as writing for people who are not as initiated in the topics I'm writing about.)

The quiet launch of one of our newest experiments means that I can at last start talking a little bit more about plans in the work. Where brands like indieWIRE used to be the "new media pressure on traditional brands," those same new media brands could very well suffer if they don't embrace the power of community publishing.

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Mike Monello of Haxan Films drew my attention to an article at Variety (subscription required) about how Hollywood is dealing with "film fan sites" like chud.com, JoBlo.com and Ain't It Cool: essentially as primative buzz marketing. Does that mean Hollywood is closing to getting the Web? Not by a longshot ...

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So I don't normally write much publicly about my viral narrative/buzz marketing campaign work (when such projects are ongoing, they are tip-top-secret.) But the Art Directors Club announced their 83rd annual awards, and the Beta-7 campaign that we helped Wieden+Kennedy New York execute picked up one of the 12 golds awards for the year and won top prize in the new "multi-channel category" they created this year.

I frequently drop by Rick Bruner's ExecutiveSummary.com, but also tend to run into him in other places as well. His piece, "Blogging is Booming", for iMedia Connection is one of the better round ups of stats (as varied and unreliable as they may be) related to the size of the blogging phenomenon.

Other development and writing tasks have kept me away from blogging about some of my experiments, but I'm getting ready this weekend to move my experiment on "gated torrents" (see previous thoughts). My current experiments have been focused on simple gating with .htaccess (ie, you get a piece of the equation or you don't) but I'm ready this weekend to instead move my test to a BitPass gateway as the last tests before a real distribution. I've learned some interesting things already that I thought I might share.

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I neglected last week to point out the film series indieWIRE is helping with at the California Film Institute (part of their fifth anniversery), based upon our "Best Undistributed Films of 2003" list. Still some great films to see up there if you are in the Bay area, and in indieWIRE we're using it as an excuse to check in on the status of those projects. Great screenings continue through April 15th.

The Tech-Web story makes it sound like an online threat to traditional DVD models, and the study the story is based on ($2,999, be my guest and let me know what the detail numbers look like, or enjoy the abstract) makes it sound more like a win for big media companies. But underneath are some more numbers pointing to a trend that I think is a real opportunity: online burn-it-yourself DVD distribution.

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So many things I've intended to write about, but so many other writing tasks thrown to my desk this week (the danger of the expectations of the blog, I guess.) Going to remedy that a bit today and tommorrow.

So the "screener ban" fiasco that started last year was always an interesting story (at least for indieWIRE) and its twists and turns ends with a sour note. Recap: MPAA bans screeners for the Oscars siting it as a source of piracy; protests emerge and the MPPA adjusts the ban; a number of indies suggest a settlement, MPAA says no fueling more debate; consortium of indies files suit and wins a preliminary injuction ... much crowing and tooting of horns ensues. But the fact that now the case has been settled and the terms are secret brings us back to the question of "who is independent"?

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