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Media Wants To Be Free
Jason Chervokas was the co-founder of @NY which along with Calacanis' SAR were the two bibles of the NYC internet scene in the mid 90s. I still miss Jason's brilliant writing and everyday commentary on the technology and internet scene and wish he and Tom would put the band back together.
But regardless, he's just penned what I believe is the perfect explanation of what is wrong with a subscription model in a digital world. He calls is Media Wants To Be Free (But Not in the Way You Think).
His point is simple. People are happy to pay for content but if they do, they want to use it everywhere.
As Jason says:
The universal appeal of peer-to-peer file sharing ..... in part has to do with the freedom from paying, but even more so has to do with the freedom of use--not "use" in the sense of piracy--redistribution for commercial purposes--but "use" in the sense of personal choice within a neatly legal context. In absence of an industrial infrastructure to provide that choice, end users are doing it for themselves.
EXACTLY
The other night I spent a half hour trying to figure out why a episode of Weeds that Jessica paid $1.99 for wouldn't play on her powerbook laptop. The reason? Because we already had five other computers in the house authorized on the account she bought the song with. What the hell does that have to do with anything????
I am sick and tired of paying ten times for the same content. I want to pay once and use whenever and wherever the hell I want to. I am sorry that others use that same freedom to pirate the same content, but I don't and I resent the fact that I am treated like a thief by association.
Now that I have calmed down, let me finish by quoting Jason again:
Media companies--producers, owners of programming networks, distributors--had better start thinking not outside the box but outside the device and outside the pipe. That's the information freedom that consumers want and that consumers will implement whether media companies like it or not.
I am glad that I am not the only one who sees the world this way.
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Five or six years ago, I wrote a piece with Chervokas for @NY, or the Times, or Inside or the Standard (neither of us can remember which, and digital archiving is poor) that imagined a time when we'd all carry [Read More]
Tracked on Feb 16, 2006 5:37:01 PM
Posted February 16, 2006 in Venture Capital and TechnologyComments
There's an article in the Wall St. Journal about a new e-book reader that Sony is coming out with. Their previous one failed because of stringent DRM protections.
Likely this one will fail too. There doesn't seem to be a sense of urgency at the top of Sony about letting people use content whenever they want, wherever they want.
BTW--What's Weeds? Is that the Showtime show about pot?
Posted by: Dave | Feb 16, 2006 3:25:35 PM
Great points Fred. I agree completely. The inability to transfer content to any device I please as many times as I please is upsetting to say the least. I just saw something yesterday that said the RIAA now says that buying a CD and then ripping it your iPod is not fair use. In reading more about the issue I see that this was inferred based on some other RIAA statements. However, the statements in question do seem to lead to the same conclusion: ripping CDs you have purchased to your own portable/stationary devices is legal now but only because we (the RIAA/copyright holders) say so. Fair use is very much in danger and it is time for all of us to start taking notice before our freedoms and ability to innovate completely come to a halt.
Arstechnica and the EFF have posted on this:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060215-6190.html
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004409.php
Both posts are worth a read.
Posted by: Eric Olson | Feb 16, 2006 3:25:54 PM
Household subscriptions.
Posted by: charlie crystle | Feb 17, 2006 11:38:39 AM
So what you are really looking for is a DRM solution that will allow you to carry your rights from one music service to the other. Two years ago a good friend of mine and leading technologist Michael Short showed me a solution that he had built that did exactly that. Purchase the rights once, carry them anywhere. The system is brillent and is unbreakable because it is not server based. Unfortunately, his superior solution never got the funding it needed. Still has it and is still looking.
Best Regards,
Luke W. Archer
CEO
JustEnough
Posted by: Luke Archer | Feb 17, 2006 3:36:54 PM
Fred,
Just as predicted:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/17/nbc_nastygrams_youtu.html
Although I agree with you completely on microchunks and video/media wanting to be free, it's no place for certain video services, youtube, google video (to an extent), to dictate and force that idea and be riddled with copywritten content on the site. Some companies I imagine were/are certainly looking at vimeo, youtube, and the like, as acquisition targets but would they take the risk of now having to face lawsuits and network types. Like I previously said, once networks realize they may be losing income by having these services offer the same thing the networks are charging for, lawsuits are sure to abound. If anything, this should signal networks to offer their content online themselves, without charging for it. The ones to realize this potential is Cartoon Network as they will be offering their whole adult swim lineup on their site in its entirety. But Cartoon Network has always been one of the more progressive networks with one of the best shows on TV also, the boondocks.
Posted by: Brian | Feb 18, 2006 5:16:23 AM
Fred, I've been pondering this blog entry for over a week now. For the life of me, I can't figure-out if (1) I don't agree with you or (2) I don't understand a distinction you may have with regard to intellectual property.
It seems to me that (specifically) music is IP, the same way that software applications are IP. I think it's safe to say that we generally (maybe begrudgingly?) accept the licensing limitations software companies place on us when we buy and install their applications. For example, the typical MSFT (or ADBE, INTU, etc.) license is for usage on a single PC. Why shouldn't music companies limit downloads to a certain number of PCs?
Am I missing the distinction between music as IP versus software as IP?
Posted by: Duncan Routh | Feb 22, 2006 10:46:22 AM
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