A closer look
Thomas Edison essentially invented the concept of modern movie piracy when he dispatched hired thugs to physically assault independent filmmakers who refused to pay him exorbitant licensing fees for using his motion picture patents. The brilliant inventor formed a ruthless corporate monopoly called the Motion Picture Patents Company, forcing every single film director on the East Coast to use his proprietary film stock and heavily restricted cameras. In a brilliant stroke of poetic justice, terrified independent filmmakers collectively fled as far away from Edison's violent New Jersey goons as geographically possible, eventually settling in a sunny, unregulated California town called Hollywood. The entire multi-billion dollar American film industry basically only exists on the West Coast because a bunch of stressed-out directors were desperately running away from a psychopathic lightbulb inventor with an army of corporate mobsters
