"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it," a famous person once said, though I forget who. Or from whom he probably stole the phrase. But it's a maxim Hollywood might do well to bear in mind as, to a karmic backdrop of Thomas Edison's hollow laughter echoing from beyond the grave, it continues to grapple with the seemingly intractable conundrum of movie piracy, and how to capitalise on the public's burgeoning demand for movie downloads.

But what specific history did I have in mind at the beginning of that paragraph, you might be asking? Well, let's go back to the early 1890s and things should become clearer. Not least, that piracy in the movie industry is hardly something new. In fact, it's something the studios have been profiting from for over a century.

Back in the 1890s, founded on Prohibitionist values, ironically enough, Hollywood was no more than a recently developed residential community. It boasted 320 days a year of sun, and by 1903 enough prosperity to become incorporated. However, thanks to all that sun, it couldn't boast nearly enough water, prompting it's annexation to Los Angeles in 1910. It certainly wasn't yet known for movies.

In fact, the origins of Hollywood as we know it today are actually to be found in the East of America: in New Jersey. It was there that, in Thomas Edison's labs, William Dickson invented the Kinetoscope; and where, in 1893, Edison set up Black Maria, the world's first film studio.

Now, all-round bright spark and seasoned inventor that he was, Edison of course patented his assistant's new moving-picture making device, and set about profiting from it by distributing short films to penny arcades, vaudeville theatres, and fairgrounds. But it was only after the Lumiere brothers' 1895 invention of the Cinematographe system, in France, that movies came to be projected on screens and viewable by more than one person at a time.

Realising the Cinamatographe's potential, Edison and others quickly came up with their own versions, and by 1908, the movie business was booming; mass-produced 15-minute shorts being shown in thousands of movie theatres all across America.

Edison, though, was having trouble enforcing his patents. Even as early as 1898, fearing that other people were profiting from "his" invention, he had begun issuing lawsuits to rival movie producers.

Following a series of fruitless legal battles against, among others, American Mutoscope and Biograph, actually co-founded by William Dickson, and by then a more successful company than Edison's own, Edison changed tactics. In late 1908, banding together with Biograph, and a selection of other patent holders and producers, Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), a Trust issuing licenses for use of its members' technology, enforcing its members' patents, and generally attempting to regulate the still nascent motion picture industry. It worked well; at first. But there was still much resistance. Enter William Fox (of what would become 20th Century-Fox).

Page 1 of 3 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 | Next