A 'Mistake' Hollywood Had Better Start Making

Nearly two years ago, Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, told a roomful of Post reporters and editors that this had to change. "It's been slow," he confessed, but he said changes were coming. Apparently, they still are.

The music industry, meanwhile, has taken a different path. It's kicked and screamed as much as the movie industry about the evils of online file-sharing -- and has been just as much of a pest in demanding new laws that would force the makers of computers and other electronic devices to build in copy-control technologies.

But it took the music industry less than two years of floundering with such pitiful experiments as MusicNet and Pressplay before it accepted Apple's then-radical idea for the iTunes Music Store in 2003.

Now, music downloads are a thriving part of the recording industry. Apple says iTunes is the fifth-largest seller of music in the United States -- and is on the way to passing Amazon to claim the No. 4 spot. Meanwhile, subscription services such as Rhapsody and Napster to Go provide a rental option never before available.

(The second-largest music-download store in the United States, however, is eMusic, which sells a variety of independent-label songs in MP3 format without any copying restrictions at all.)

Many record stores may be hurting -- not always a good thing for the neighborhoods they do business in -- but the recording industry as a whole seems to have secured its future.

The record labels appear to have accepted that their job is to sell music, as opposed to selling plastic discs with music recorded on them. Most movie studios still appear confused on that point. They need to get on with making that same "mistake": It could be the most profitable blunder they've made in years.

Living with technology, or trying to? E-mail Rob Pegoraro atrobp@washpost.com.