We have no national program to promote film as anything but entertainment. Entertainment is a commodity and the market belongs to big voices. The same is true of books. Music is the only thing so primal and infectious as to reach us beyond the din of the television. It’s so consumable and our hunger for it is so great, that the traditional means of consumption cannot defend themselves from our desire.

It seems inevitable that film will follow suit, stripping away all the middle layers that separate the consumer from the artist. Technology provides the means now to bring it to us. The market is overdue for a shift.

We live in a new prohibition. What we want we can’t have yet. There are many who take it anyway. Who download as they like, who see what they want and when they want to. For now they are the underground of empowered consumers. They thrive on a new economy of access. Certain college kids and teenagers get busted, but the train is rolling and nothing can stop it.

When the old guard is weak enough, they will abide new distribution structures so they can eke out a living. The iTunes music store was a hard sell, but the result was a validation of a new medium.

Nobody questions the selling of an iPod, though many of them are populated with illegal downloads. I myself cannot wrap my head around the twisted legalities of the music in my possession. We are all being criminalized by the very passion the media has helped foment.

For what it’s worth, the technology exists. The medium is real. What happens next is some sort of compromise. The artists receives more of their due. In fact, all those would be artists can at last actualize their vision without requiring a hollywood budget. So, the very form of film is changing. Becoming more consumable, more available.

What happens next is a leap that is so obvious, we can all say “yes” in unison. For now, there is Hollywood.