The shift is both promising and unpredictable. The Internet has already disturbed the recording industry, which has sued Napster and other firms for facilitating free computer downloading of music. The online upstarts are negotiating copyright settlements with the record producers. It remains to be seen whether Internet distribution will produce the high profits that compact discs have. But the vision may be an illusion.
Digital images are easier to work with in fashioning a motion picture.
And unlike film, digital content can be beamed directly to theaters. The movie Titan AE was beamed from Los Angeles to Atlanta recently. The experiment worked, but the movie flopped at the box office. Still, it will take time for digital and Internet distribution to displace the infrastructure of the movie business. So entertainment companies have a favored position for the next five years anyway.