Science Quote by Niklas Zennstrom

"And the VCR did the same thing: the movie industry thought nobody would ever watch movies any more"

Niklas Zennstrom, Scientist

About this Quote

Zennstrom’s line is a neat little needle aimed at a familiar creature: the incumbent industry panic. By invoking the VCR, he’s not reminiscing about clunky tapes; he’s dragging out a historically verified overreaction and using it as a template for every new technology the entertainment business has tried to strangle in its crib. The intent is strategic: to reframe today’s disruption (streaming, file-sharing, platforms, user-generated distribution) as not a moral crisis but a predictable cycle of misread incentives.

The subtext is sharper than the wording lets on. The movie industry didn’t truly fear that people would stop watching movies; it feared losing control over how, when, and at what price they watched. “Nobody would ever watch” is a deliberately exaggerated paraphrase of an argument that was never really about demand. It was about gatekeeping: release windows, theater exclusivity, distribution monopolies, and the ability to meter access.

Contextually, the VCR reference is a greatest-hits example because it ended up expanding the market: home video created new revenue streams, new viewing habits, and a longer tail for films that would’ve died after a theatrical run. Zennstrom uses that reversal as a rhetorical trap. If the industry was wrong then, the implication goes, why should we trust its doomsday forecasts now?

It’s a founder’s argument disguised as common sense: innovation looks like theft to the people who built their business on scarcity.

Quote Details

Topic	Movie

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About the Author

Niklas Zennstrom (born March 16, 1966) is a Scientist from Sweden.

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