Back in October, we reported on rumors that the movie studios were so upset with MPAA boss Dan Glickman that many thought he wouldn’t make it to the end of his contract. While he had said all the usual stuff about “evil piracy,” apparently the studios were upset that he couldn’t stop technological progress with the wave of a magic wand, and wanted someone who would attack file sharing even more aggressively. At that time, the MPAA revamped to focus more on content protection — which is the exact wrong thing to be focused on. They should be focusing on providing increased scarce value that gets people to buy — but instead, they wanted to focus on building up artificial scarcity that technology (and much of the market) will ignore.
Of course, right after the rumors, Glickman came out and announced that he would be stepping down at the end of his contract in September of 2010. So it seemed like maybe the studios would let him stick around to the end, since it was clear he wasn’t coming back. Apparently even that plan has been thrown out the window, as Glickman has now announced that he’s leaving as of April 1 in order to take over Refugees International, which seems like a worthy enough cause.
The real question, though, is who is going to take over, and just how much more of a mess of things will they make. One could hope for more enlightened leadership, that actually focuses on adapting to the modern age, but all signs suggest the studios have no interest in doing that any time soon.
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