Why Technology Is the Friend, Not the Enemy, of Hollywood ("Variety" Guest Column)

A guest column by Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box at variety.com begins:

Like many Hollywood stories, mine started with Harvey Weinstein. Well, sort of.

In 2004, during my freshman year of college, I was lucky enough to land a summer internship at Miramax in New York. As a film school reject, this was the holy grail, and the closest I figured I’d ever get to a movie set. While there were no Marty or Leo run-ins that summer (though I did get a “hello” from Mr. Weinstein), lessons about the entertainment industry were abundant.

Being a geek, one thing that stood out for me was the industry’s curious relationship with technology. Few things followed the path of least resistance in the media business whenever software was involved. This wasn’t unique to one studio, production company, or agency. Across the industry, whether it was the distribution of content to affiliates, artwork approval for a poster, getting a press release edit to a publicist, or making media available to consumers en masse, a barrier always stood in the way. Contracts, firewalls, licenses, legacy business models, or DRM wrappers were obstacles to getting the job done.

Read more at http://variety.com/2014/film/opinion/why-technology-is-the-friend-not-the-enemy-of-hollywood-guest-column-1201332277/