The Wall Street Journal's published a roundup of all the clunky howlers in Hollywood movies' portrayal of the Internet:
In 1995's "The Net," a software engineer played by Sandra Bullock has online discussions with her buddies on "Cyber Chat," a cartoonish chat program. The movie was one of the first to capitalize on privacy and identity fears related to the Internet. Ms. Bullock's character finds herself hunted by the authorities after a terrorist uses his laptop to tamper with everything from her apartment lease to her police record. In one scene, she says, "Just think about it. Our whole world is sitting there on a computer. It's in the computer. Everything. Your DMV records, your Social Security, your credit cards, your medical history, it's all right there."
"It was Hollywood's attempt to borrow from the aura that anything Internet had at the time," said Carl Goodman, deputy director of the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, N.Y. The tension that the movie evokes is hard to appreciate 11 years later, since viewers now know the Internet couldn't cause those catastrophic scenarios, he added. "Maybe 'The Net' was never any good, but it certainly isn't any good today."
(Thanks, David!)
Update:
Wendy points out a glaring error in the WSJ article:
Sometimes, Hollywood depictions look different from reality on purpose. Filmmakers must sidestep delicate trademark issues when setting a scene. Prominently showing an AOL email screen or Google search page, for example, requires approval from the companies, so some production designers create a variation that avoids the red tape. Other times, filmmakers exaggerate the look of money transfers or Web searches with full-screen blinking graphics and sound effects, while removing extraneous details, so that viewers don't miss them in important scenes.
Wrong. Trademark law does not give companies veto power over the depiction of real products, either in documentary or in fiction. That's why when Disney's George of the Jungle 2 showed Caterpillar bulldozers battling George's jungle creatures, to unflattering effect, an Illinois district court denied Caterpillar Inc.'s bid to stop it.
The court found Cat unlikely to succeed on either infringement or dilution grounds ("[T]here is no apparent competition between Caterpillar bulldozers and George 2 videos and DVDs…. Part of what drives the Court's discomfort with Caterpillar's position is the fact that the appearance of products bearing well known trademarks in cinema and television is a common phenomenon. For example, action movies frequently feature automobiles in a variety of situations. Is the mere appearance of a Ford Taurus in a garden variety car chase scene sufficient by itself to constitute unfair competition?") (Example recalled by way of Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain comics.)
Moviemakers can use the brand-name products their real-life audiences use. They can even insult those products. As Eugene Volokh said at the time of the Disney-Catfight, "So long as the moviemaker doesn't make false factual assertions about someone — so long as the work is clearly fictional, and not intended to represent any real claims that Caterpillar is somehow committing some crime or misconduct — the moviemaker's speech is constitutionally and statutorily protected. See, e.g., Mattel v. MCA Records (9th Cir.), the "Barbie Girl" case, speaking about the 'noncommercial use' exception to the Federal Trademark Dilution Act."
If moviemakers aren't using real computer services in their movies, it's either because they are getting bad legal advice, or because mutt and pine aren't so photogenic as animated folding envelopes. I hope it's the latter.
