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Help wanted: CTO at Warner Music.
Gill_Bates writes "It looks like Warner music group are looking for a CTO. I'm intrigued by the sentence that reads "Builds prototypes and evaluates alternatives for on-line music delivery, P2P warfare, copy protection, etc." " How many job descriptions include the phrase "Warfare"?
How about some guerilla action here?
Wouldn't it be fun to apply for this job, and once you're in the interview process, begin espousing pro-P2P views. What if, one after the other, these guys had to confront a parade of rabid, file-sharing geeks with CTO-level qualifications?
Even better, *don't* mention your views until after you've accepted the job. Then work to sabotage Warner's "P2P warfare" efforts. Yeah, that's the ticket.
There's probably enough of you unemployed CTO's out there - who've undoubtedly spent your idle days using Kazaa - to pull of this Ken Kesey-style prank.
C'mon, baby, kiss The King.
At this point, Warner can do one of two things to survive: (1) change their business model, or (2) "go to war" against the many innovations that are making their business model obsolete. So it doesn't surprise me that they use the term "warfare".
It would appear that Warner is not capable of significant change. And that's easy to understand - Warner is a very old company, stuck in it's way, and hasn't had any ground-shaking innovation in the past 50 years. When you feel like crap, it's more satisfying to "go to war" than to intellegently address a serious issue.
It's kind of like Apple in the early 80's. Apple could have stuck with the comfortable Apple II line, or change. Apple changed and propelled the entire marketplace forward.
It's like IBM in the 90's... it could continue to be a big-iron shop, or change. It changed. IBM is much more of a service oriented company, embrassing the likes of Unix, Linux, and Java. They leveraged their former glory with new innovations.
But remember, like them or not, Apple and IBM have ALWAYS been innovators. Warner is more like US Steel in the 80's. US Steel could have continued to be an old-school steel producer, or change to react to new steel producing innovations happening overseas. US Steel decided to stay the course, and the steel industry in the USA is still plumetting and out-of-control.
Warner has chosen the path of US Steel.
I am a technical person, I support copyright protection, believe in patents, have a brother working in the music industry and make my own music in a not-amateur-anymore band.
And yet I still think that the US patent system is horribly broken and that the music and movie industry are on the wrong path and that they must be stopped walking it.
Your point being?
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You may like my a cappella music
"Warner Music is cool. Wait... are they part of the RIAA? Argh"
Exactly.
Ever heard of a decoy? Someone to take the anger of consumers, someone who isn't recognisably the same as the Warner Music you might be considering buying a CD from?
Do the truth a favour: next time you want to critisize the RIAA, pick one of their member companies as your target instead.
"And Warner Brothers, who represent the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, are campaigning to make it legal to sabotage your computer in the name of 'compliance'"
Honestly this is a job I would consider doing.
I will now pause for everyone to finish going rabidly insane.
OK.
Yes, there are one or two phrases in the job description that are, at least on the fact of them, objectionable to the Slashdot crowd.
My personal concerns about this are whether this is a real CTO job, where there is a person who can set technology direction on behalf of the company, or whether you would be one CTO among dozens, and have no real power to implement changes at any fundamental level.
Unless it's the real thing, it's likely not going to result in anything at all, and you can all stop your paranoid worries. And if it *is* the real thing, and they get someone competent (a big "if"), you can all stop your paranoid worries.
Now look at the big picture: why is the music industry afraid of P2P and other online digitial distribution, when it's pretty clear that the primary use for these channels is for content that they would not usually consider distributing themselves?
My answer to this question is that the eventual results of this technology, if it prospers, is going to be disintermediation of artists and consumers.
There are a number to consequences to this which are -- believe it or not -- generally undesirable, and there are a number of *other* consequences to this which break their revenue models, and damage their ability to continue to do business.
To paraphrase what I think they've realized, "you can't piss in the wind"; it's reasonable for the company to seek alternatives to protecting their revenue model -- and, as a side effect, protect the generally desirable things which come with that revenue model, such as the ability of individual bands to make enough money that they can *be* bands full time, and have a reasonable chance of paying the rent when they are 65 and no longer interesting to their former primary markets. Bands die out because they're old, or because they've lost their social relevence, or their superstar lead singer has died, or any of the dozens of fates which can befall a band. If you have to stay in school for that accounting degree "to fall back on", in the full expectation of "falling back", it *will* effect your ability to make music.
At least Warner is looking out there, and noticing that things have in fact changed out from under them, and that they need to do something, other than just "business as usual".
Actually, there are literally dozens of ways they could deal with these issues technologically; several of them even involve the record companies themselves setting up *real* P2P networks, which don't actually suck for their revenue models, like Napster or GNUtella (the first because of the central control given to a single company, the second because of lack of scalability -- neither because of real piracy concerns).
It's amusing that they've emphasized "Agile development" (corporate code from a particular corporation for "Extreme Programming"). Most likely, they already have someone in mind, and the posting is to satisfy legal requirements.
-- Terry