I know I talk about digg a lot on here.. seems to be the main topic of my log lately.. but it really is a rather interesting community.
Today I was surfing through stories and I found one about legislation that would require movie theaters to tell exactly when the real movie starts so people wouldn't have to sit through the previews and ads. Quite an interesting piece of legislation. Of course it's completely unnecessary and a blatant attack on the free market and a big piece of harmful regulation.
What's more interesting than the story though are the comments in the story. I commented with my views, but I really didn't expect to find the other comments in there that I did.
No Thanks.
I am tired of everyone screaming "make a law!" for everything. We've got enough laws. Let consumer pressure force them to cut it out. All we need is a chain of theaters stating what time their movies actually start, and advertisements slamming their competition for false start times, and then we'll see if people really care or not.
And if that never happens, fine. Go to the theater for yourself and ask the manager what time the movie actually starts if its so horrible to sit there for an extra 15 minutes.
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Just what we need, more silly laws!
This will be up there with the no ice cream on tuesdays on the sidewalk type laws.
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I don't like the ads either, but we are a capitalist society and thus, the government should take its fat hands out of it. If we stop going to the movies, maybe revenue will go down even more than it already has (it's not BitTorrent's fault, Hollywood).
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More laws?!
Isn't that putting a problem on a problem?
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The story's digg page is filled with even more comments like this. Sure there are quite a few in support of the law, but it's amazing the number of comments you can find that just don't want government getting involved. Such opinions in such a very open forum with people of all political beliefs is very encouraging. Go freedom.
January 10th, 2006 at 02:11
Ah, yes, the old 'let the market decide' argument. How long will it take, how egregious will it be, before people finally decide enough is enough and stop going to movies in protest? 15 minutes? Half hour? An hour? Sure, the market will fix things, that much has been proven. The issue here is how LONG it takes the market to decide things. I personally think a regulation system built on disgust and hatred is a faulty one.
As for the law itself - yeah, it's stupid and frivilous. A lot of laws are. But that's the beauty of Democracy! Politicians would love to spend their time drafting and passing a law that doesn't mean anything (and therefore won't lose them voters) as opposed to laws that *gasp* are actually meaningful, which means they could possibly backfire and lose them their jobs.
Even though I'm not as anti-regulation as *ahem*, you, I don't really think this legislation should be passed. The obvious reason? Advertisers might start interrupting the movie itself, or make a more obvious physical presense in the theater, which would be more annoying than watching 20 minutes of Mountain Dew commercials.
January 10th, 2006 at 02:13
P.S. - That being said, I certainly think you could find a better example of 'freedom' ringing than the fact that not all people agree with a stupid piece of legislation.