Comment by gumby
3 days ago
The Hollywood case has a quirk that is relevent to the extensional content of HN:
West coast filmmakng started in the Bay Area (at the time the largest conurbation in the west) but moved south because of the year 'round weather.
But why the west? Because Edison controlled the filmmaking patents and demanded not just royalties but script oversight as well. By moving west, they could ignore the patents because they were simply too hard to enforce from such a long distance.
So ironically, given how things worked out, IP piracy is at the root of Hollywood.
Yep, but Edison is long gone, while Hollywood kept compounding over time. There's zero other reasons Hollywood is _currently_ better than any other place for filmmaking.
The term you’re looking for is “path dependence” and I was agreeing with you.
The only reason I even commented was because IP issues are popular and relevant on HN