...about rich people's problems.

We interrupt our usual technical trivialities to bring you an important open letter from Rich Corporate Douche, CEO and Chairman of Corporate Douche Multiplex Cinemas Ltd, who wants you to feel really sorry for him and his important rich person problems.

From the desk of Rich Corporate Douche:

Dear Pirating Plebs,

A young man born in the Sydney suburb of Douchetown, I have become one of the world’s finest crony capitalists. Along with my fellow corporate cronies, and with the assistance of compliant governments, we have conspired to eliminate major competitors in the Australian movie business and build a cosy entertainment oligopoly. Our extraordinary efforts at subverting free market forces have earned us millions.

With little real consumer choice in the market, this has allowed us to build a profitable business model based around treating our customers with contempt. We can charge them whatever we want for movie ticket prices and food. We can make them wait months, if not years, to see movies already released overseas. Even if a movie happens to be made in Australia, overseas audiences will see it long before it’s released locally. They are all shining examples of how easy it is to exploit the Australian creative industry.

We love technology when it increases our profit margins, because those profits can be used to fund expensive personal drug habits. For example, technology advancements allowed us to automate many aspects of our cinema business and thereby reduce staff. Less money spent on staff means more profits, and more profits means more drugs for us, so it’s a win-win situation. Unless you’re a customer watching a movie and a technical glitch causes the sound to drop out at a crucial point in the movie, and there is no staff member to complain to, yet alone fix the problem. But we don’t care about any of that as long as we get our drugs. It’s this focus on profits over the customer experience which I’m sure will make you proud of the Australian industry.

All this wonderful Australian creativity and excellence in profitably screwing our customers is in real jeopardy of being lost if the problems the internet poses to our business isn’t solved. We hate technology when it creates competition for our lazy and outdated business models, because it’s really hard to innovate and compete with expensive personal drug habits to maintain. It’s OK when we used technology to cut costs and increase profits, but it’s evil and illegal when consumers use technology to bypass our cynical and inept business practices. After decades of treating customers with contempt, how dare those customers bypass our oligopolies — how dare they consume media online instead of going to our cinemas and buying ridiculously overpriced popcorn!

As rich people who have made lots of money and monopolized an industry for a really long time now, we feel entitled to continue to make money and monopolize the industry in perpetuity. We are entitled to our profits. But this is the good kind of entitlement — rich people entitlement. The Government have rightly moved to end the age of entitlement, but that only applies to poor people. We’re rich white men with political connections, so it’s different. We are entitled to our profits, and neither the free market nor technology changes will stand in our way when we can use our money and power to make politicians skew the playing field in our favour.

Adjusting business models for changing technological landscapes and adapting to profound cultural shifts in the way people consume media content is just not the way things are done in Australian business. Especially when it’s so much easier to bribe politicians to regulate away competitive threats to our monopolistic market share.

Online content consumption, even the legal kind, is a threat to our increasingly outdated business model, and therefore by extension, a threat to our shareholders, trophy wives, mistresses, kids, and personal drug habits. Especially personal drug habits. Because our position on piracy issues is clearly the result of overindulging in illicit substances.

Being rich has many advantages, including being able to afford some really great drugs. While under the influence of those drugs we came up with a potential solution to the problems online piracy poses to our business. After lots of smoking funny stuff, the solution became so obvious we were surprised no one had seriously proposed it before:

Let’s make the internet illegal.

The Government, through Attorney General George Brandis and Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull, have moved positively to address this crucial issue. But they haven’t done anywhere near enough. We still don’t feel we’ve got value for money with regards to our many corporate donations to the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party still owes us, so we want The Liberal Party to take immediate steps to make the internet illegal.

Those calling for a nuanced, common sense approach to online piracy are clearly crazies whose hidden agenda is theft of movies. Those who insist on trying to explain matters regarding science or technology to senior ministers in this government are even crazier. And anyone who thinks we’re going to get any decent technology related policy out of this government is downright delusional.

Given than both Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Attorney General George Brandis have demonstrated they know nothing about the internet, it will be much simpler to convince them to ban the internet entirely, rather than trying to explain it to them.

We believe that Australia cares and it is a choice between a tiny group of out of touch rich white men unable to adapt to the digital age, and the rights and freedoms of millions of Australian internet users. I’m sure the Australian people understand the needs of rich people should come first. After all, the jobs of 900,000 people and economic value to our economy of $90 billion annually depend on us. And that’s just our mistresses and drug dealers. Tragically, it could also mean the next generation growing up without knowing what it’s like to pay a week’s wages for a small popcorn and coke.

This won’t happen. We care. Mostly about our profits. And expensive drug habits. And also shareholders. But mostly the drugs.

Which is why, after making the internet illegal, we want the government to make computer games illegal too. Because computer games compete with movies for people’s attention and entertainment dollar. And we really hate competition. We also want to outlaw YouTube cat videos too, while we’re at it. Can’t have people staying at home and watching cat videos on the internet for free instead of going to our cinemas. Internet cat videos are just as bad as piracy, they are stealing our potential income.

Also, in addition to making unemployed people apply for 40 jobs a month, we think the government should force every unemployed person to go see 40 movies a month at our cinemas too. That extra profit for us would be good for the economy, and great for our drug habits. (Exactly how unemployed people on the dole who have to apply for 40 jobs a month are going to find the time or money to go see 40 movies a month is an implementation detail for a lower pay grade, and not something for us rich elite to worry about.)

See? We’re just full of great ideas in the movie distribution business!

Like our exciting new joint venture with a rather mysterious but strangely compelling group calling themselves SATAN, or something like that. Their representatives are very keen to be working with us to capture the immortal soul of every patron to enter our cinemas. The details and business case are still being worked out, but we’re told we can buy lots of really great drugs with immortal souls, so needless to say we are very excited.