Tuesday
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9/17/03
Stealing From the Police. Sort Of.
It seems just about everyone is in a tizzy about the RIAA, their lawsuits, and file sharing. Oh all right, stealing music. I guess what I’m surprised by is not that the subject has become a mainstream topic of conversation, but that it’s taken so long to get to this point.
Of course the RIAA has no one to blame but itself for the pitiable state of their industry. Well, pitiable for the stockholders and board members mostly; I doubt there are any musicians starving out there now that weren’t already. But anyway, by the mid to late ‘90s sales of home computers were explosive. Built-in CD burners became common. Broadband had arrived and was promised everywhere soon. Shawn Fanning whipped up a little network solution called Napster so he and his college buddies could share songs. All this, of course, took place lifetimes ago as far as business cycles go. And still, late to the party already, the RIAA did exactly the wrong thing.
Picture, if you will, you’re going through old Uncle Marvin’s garage. You look inside one particularly stinky cardboard box and are horrified to simultaneously see about a zillion cockroaches, at the same time realizing where uncle Marvin has been hiding the rest of those pickled herring sandwiches that aunt Mabel tries to get him to eat. Now, do you, A: slowly close the box and take a moment to consider the best way to control the menace you saw, or do you B: shriek hysterically and jump up and down all over the box making the cockroaches scatter to the four corners of the earth, thus ensuring that you will never be able to find or control them ever again. The RIAA chose B.
Incidentally, broadband wise, I just happened to be the luckiest boy on the block, so to speak. Cable modems came to our neighborhood very early and I had a pretty new machine: a killer Compaq system with a blazing fast 200 MHz speed Pentium with "MMX technology" and a whopping 4, count ‘em, 4 gig hard drive. And, even better, I must have been one of the first people in my neighborhood to be on that network. All the bandwidth in the world, just for me, me, me. I was in Heaven. And then, as if it wasn’t sweet enough already, someone turned me on to Napster. It was like crack, only geeky. My hard drive filled up and the stack of disks grew.
There were people on corporate and university networks with T1 lines and collections of the most amazing, esoteric stuff. (Not of course that I have any of this… but we’re talking rare recordings of authors reading their own material. Recordings to replace my lost cassette of the live WLIR broadcast of the Police’s first U.S. club appearance at ‘My Father’s Place’ on the Island in 1979. There were ‘Goon Show’ episodes, and I mean all of them.) And it was all mine at 2, 3, 4, and sometimes even 500k a second. ‘Bam’ that, Emeril. It was not only the friggin Wild West, but it worked. So, anyway, back to the RIAA.
They chose B, and the roaches scattered. They scattered to the P to P’s. WinMX, Grokster ShareBear, LimeWire and countless others. The Genie was out of the bottle, and it became apparent to even the glacial corporate culture of the RIAA that not only was a foreseeable lifetime of corporate lawsuits not an option, but that there was a new 800-pound gorilla in the corner named Kazza.
Ever subtle in their response to change, they have now settled on a three-pronged attack: First, suing twelve-year-old girls. Second, cutting retail disc prices, and therefore their own revenues, by a third. And lastly, by concentrating on efforts to produce un-rippable, encrypted discs.
You know, it’s really hard to feel sympathy for an industry that absolutely refuses to learn. Sue a twelve-year-old? Publicity-wise, why not kick puppies? (Or do an LBJ on them?) Cut your own revenues drastically? Well ok, I’m sure that pain will get passed on to the artists… heck, go kick some more puppies. And lastly, any technology you produce to protect hard copies of your content will be secure for how long? I’d give it a month before the enterprising sort of crackers who blew past DVD encryption make your product jump through hoops.
The future of entertainment media had been in the air for a long time. Then it was written on the wall. Now, it’s graven in stone, and yet the RIAA scratches its collective head. It’s really so simple. Just as vinyl, with its grooves that physically moved a stylus back and forth went the way of the spinning wheel, so will the physical distribution of shiny plastic discs.
But, if the RIAA if has it’s way, you will still have to go out and buy a disc, and then go home and unwrap it and then enjoy it on your home stereo, because that’s the only system that will play it. If, however, the RIAA is wrong yet again, music, and then video, will become purely digital. You will be able to buy content legitimately on line. Once downloaded you’ll be able to carry it around on your favorite MP3 (soon to be AAC) player or iPod and play it wherever you go. ( I do note the iTunes Music Store a little farther on) Whole libraries of video content will be available to buy or rent so it can be streamed to the TV in your den… none of this should sound far-fetched, because the technology is, for the most part, here right now.
So, as always, what is the last piece of the puzzle for a successful business? A large base of consumers hungry for a clean, simple, and flexible way to get what you have. Twenty years ago it was the introduction of a small, light, digitally perfect Compact Disc. Things keep changing, however. Recently there has been the mildly successful experiment with the iTunes Music Store, but it still looks like a very dainty dip into the hungry consumer waters when you remember that Apple users represent barely 3% of the computing world.
In the end, although I behave myself now, I’ve got ‘Roxanne’ from My Father’s Place in ’79, so the RIAA isn't even that relevant anymore. Well, maybe in its ability to slow things down a little, but it sure isn't anything to worry about. Unless you're a twelve-year-old girl.
|
.
9/17/03
Stealing From the Police. Sort Of.
It seems just about everyone is in a tizzy about the RIAA, their lawsuits, and file sharing. Oh all right, stealing music. I guess what I’m surprised by is not that the subject has become a mainstream topic of conversation, but that it’s taken so long to get to this point.
Of course the RIAA has no one to blame but itself for the pitiable state of their industry. Well, pitiable for the stockholders and board members mostly; I doubt there are any musicians starving out there now that weren’t already. But anyway, by the mid to late ‘90s sales of home computers were explosive. Built-in CD burners became common. Broadband had arrived and was promised everywhere soon. Shawn Fanning whipped up a little network solution called Napster so he and his college buddies could share songs. All this, of course, took place lifetimes ago as far as business cycles go. And still, late to the party already, the RIAA did exactly the wrong thing.
Picture, if you will, you’re going through old Uncle Marvin’s garage. You look inside one particularly stinky cardboard box and are horrified to simultaneously see about a zillion cockroaches, at the same time realizing where uncle Marvin has been hiding the rest of those pickled herring sandwiches that aunt Mabel tries to get him to eat. Now, do you, A: slowly close the box and take a moment to consider the best way to control the menace you saw, or do you B: shriek hysterically and jump up and down all over the box making the cockroaches scatter to the four corners of the earth, thus ensuring that you will never be able to find or control them ever again. The RIAA chose B.
Incidentally, broadband wise, I just happened to be the luckiest boy on the block, so to speak. Cable modems came to our neighborhood very early and I had a pretty new machine: a killer Compaq system with a blazing fast 200 MHz speed Pentium with "MMX technology" and a whopping 4, count ‘em, 4 gig hard drive. And, even better, I must have been one of the first people in my neighborhood to be on that network. All the bandwidth in the world, just for me, me, me. I was in Heaven. And then, as if it wasn’t sweet enough already, someone turned me on to Napster. It was like crack, only geeky. My hard drive filled up and the stack of disks grew.
There were people on corporate and university networks with T1 lines and collections of the most amazing, esoteric stuff. (Not of course that I have any of this… but we’re talking rare recordings of authors reading their own material. Recordings to replace my lost cassette of the live WLIR broadcast of the Police’s first U.S. club appearance at ‘My Father’s Place’ on the Island in 1979. There were ‘Goon Show’ episodes, and I mean all of them.) And it was all mine at 2, 3, 4, and sometimes even 500k a second. ‘Bam’ that, Emeril. It was not only the friggin Wild West, but it worked. So, anyway, back to the RIAA.
They chose B, and the roaches scattered. They scattered to the P to P’s. WinMX, Grokster ShareBear, LimeWire and countless others. The Genie was out of the bottle, and it became apparent to even the glacial corporate culture of the RIAA that not only was a foreseeable lifetime of corporate lawsuits not an option, but that there was a new 800-pound gorilla in the corner named Kazza.
Ever subtle in their response to change, they have now settled on a three-pronged attack: First, suing twelve-year-old girls. Second, cutting retail disc prices, and therefore their own revenues, by a third. And lastly, by concentrating on efforts to produce un-rippable, encrypted discs.
You know, it’s really hard to feel sympathy for an industry that absolutely refuses to learn. Sue a twelve-year-old? Publicity-wise, why not kick puppies? (Or do an LBJ on them?) Cut your own revenues drastically? Well ok, I’m sure that pain will get passed on to the artists… heck, go kick some more puppies. And lastly, any technology you produce to protect hard copies of your content will be secure for how long? I’d give it a month before the enterprising sort of crackers who blew past DVD encryption make your product jump through hoops.
The future of entertainment media had been in the air for a long time. Then it was written on the wall. Now, it’s graven in stone, and yet the RIAA scratches its collective head. It’s really so simple. Just as vinyl, with its grooves that physically moved a stylus back and forth went the way of the spinning wheel, so will the physical distribution of shiny plastic discs.
But, if the RIAA if has it’s way, you will still have to go out and buy a disc, and then go home and unwrap it and then enjoy it on your home stereo, because that’s the only system that will play it. If, however, the RIAA is wrong yet again, music, and then video, will become purely digital. You will be able to buy content legitimately on line. Once downloaded you’ll be able to carry it around on your favorite MP3 (soon to be AAC) player or iPod and play it wherever you go. ( I do note the iTunes Music Store a little farther on) Whole libraries of video content will be available to buy or rent so it can be streamed to the TV in your den… none of this should sound far-fetched, because the technology is, for the most part, here right now.
So, as always, what is the last piece of the puzzle for a successful business? A large base of consumers hungry for a clean, simple, and flexible way to get what you have. Twenty years ago it was the introduction of a small, light, digitally perfect Compact Disc. Things keep changing, however. Recently there has been the mildly successful experiment with the iTunes Music Store, but it still looks like a very dainty dip into the hungry consumer waters when you remember that Apple users represent barely 3% of the computing world.
In the end, although I behave myself now, I’ve got ‘Roxanne’ from My Father’s Place in ’79, so the RIAA isn't even that relevant anymore. Well, maybe in its ability to slow things down a little, but it sure isn't anything to worry about. Unless you're a twelve-year-old girl.
