SAGWatch – Observing the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA

Wall Street’s meltdown is very public, with a half dozen bailouts on the way. Our morning reading has us worried about a similar meltdown in the financial side of the entertainment industry.Stories, in very different media, all say the trend towards content distribution via the net is unstoppable and increasing in velocity. This has major implications for the way we get paid – or even if we get paid.BluRay, touted as the hot wave of the future, is given a five year lifespan and described as the last-ever physical media. The reason? Sites like Surfthechannel.com, which link to overseas pirate sites from which thousands of theatricals and television shows stream on demand (though you may have to put up with some Chinese watermarks).The music industry is described as caving in to streaming, hoping (insanely, we think) that technology won’t rapidly allow theft of all the content it will release for free via MySpace. What, like they haven’t heard of streamrippers?So – here’s our disconcerting question. If everything is either stolen or given away free, where does the money come from to pay for content creation?We found these stories via our favorite technology blog, Digital Meteor.