Star Wars producer warns of P2P

Perhaps it was inevitable given the current political climate. Rick McCallum, producer of the Star War films, announced this month to an Australian audience that halting the exchange of movie files on P2P networks needs to be "as concentrated an international event as the war on terrorism."

He went on to say that big budget filmmaking would face a total collapse in three years if the studios didn't halt file trading. "It is a big issue and no-one seems to be wanting to deal with it," the producer is reported to have said.

Well there's my excuse to boycott another Hollywood movie. Somehow I just cannot imagine film-making as we know it collapsing under the weight of the handful of file trading networks that have managed to survive the movie studio's onslaught of litigation.

McCallum is in Sydney, Australia managing preproduction work on Star Wars Episode III at Fox Studios. In his address, which took place at a producer's conference in Melbourne, McCallum claimed to have "no idea" how the terrible threat of P2P networks would be tackled and neither did Fox Studios which he said was also "deeply concerned."

McCallum went on to insist that 50% of music business revenue had been lost due to file sharing in the last few years. Without even stopping to consider other factors, such as the listless U.S. economy, McCallum asked, "What's going to happen to the movie business?"

How sad. The Star Wars films reintroduced mythic storytelling to kids of my generation. And now these filmmakers are hitting their own audience who clearly have The Force of vast distributed networks at their command.

No, no Luke Skywalker! Do not join the Dark Empire. Resist! Rescue Princess Leia from the Death Star once more. A true Jedi Knight roams the galaxy at will and does not answer to Hollywood.

Ann Harrison is a technology reporter in San Francisco. She can be reached at ah@well.com.

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