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Sony: Case of Right vs Left Hand
Masem writes "Wired has an interesting article that explains the problem facing several of the megacorporations that have both content and technology divisions, as specifically in the case of Sony. The tech divisons want to offer the consumer all the possible options, while the media divisions are very concerned on DRM. While the two groups are trying to meet somewhere in the middle, they are still at odds about it, and also finding that that middle is becoming rapidly populated by other competitors (including Microsoft) in just how to empower consumers without sacrificing their copyrighted materials. Both divisions are trying to adopt to just changes in the landscape and hoping to find something that will work."
In the current enviornment, Sony may be better off spinning off their music division.
...trusting your customers?
If something's fairly priced, nobody's going to take the time to copy off something to somebody who doesn't wanna pay. "Go buy your own."
While it's interesting that these companies have internal conflict over which way they want to swing, I'd like to remind everyone that we really don't care what they eventually decide. Corporations do not run the country (yet). We need to decide what's right first and then companies have to adapt to that. Crossing our fingers and hoping that "they make the right decision" is worse than useless, as it puts the decision into the hands of the capitalists.
...releasing quality products? If the new music rack is populated by the likes of Eminem, Missy Elliot, Dixie Chicks, etcetera, I think I'll try the good ol 'net for my music infusion.
OMG! Wau!
Corporations do run the country, bud. Hate to break it to you. How often does your representative "represent" you over a large corporation? Never. They have lobbyists and lots of money to contribute. We have a voice and the innate ability to vote for whichever candidate has the most money. Either way corps. win.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
We need to decide what's right first and then companies have to adapt to that...
Wait a minute... the way "we" will "decide" is by buying products that these companies market... capitalism, in other words.
Putting the decision in the hands of the capitalists is exactly what we want to do.
RADIO
it provides a free demo of many artists, and when i used to buy cds, most of my choices were made from what i heard on radio and mtv.
The I heard something along the lines of "What are your plans in light of the undeniable success after Napster of peer to peer file trading software such as WinMX?" The person being queried was Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony Corp. of America.
His reply was mostly the usual babble about legal means, being proactive in providing what customers want through services such as Pressplay, etc., but the he caught my attention when he qualified the foregoing with the statement: "even though we can chase people with viruses" (and that is a verbatim quote - I wrote it down).
I asked myself:
1) Does he just not have a clue what he's talking about?
2) Have recent legislative and minor legal successes given the recording industry a greater sense of omnipotence?
3) Is he aware of some gifts that US government about to bestow on his industry
4) Did he tip his hand?
5) Is he on crack?
My guess is mostly #1, a little #2 and some #3.
Sigs are bad for your health.
1) The tech division wants to make money 2) The Media division wants to make money >> If u wanna save money, dont buy music CDs, download free music and use linux :)
If something's fairly priced, nobody's going to take the time to copy
And who decides what's "fair". Because I sure as hell know that the customer's idea of fair is a lot less than what the company's idea is.
My fair price for the latest Britney album? Free, or even negative.
My fair price for the next U2 album - proably up to $30.
Your milage will almost certainly be varying like a motherfucker.
My Journal
Uh... Lessee...
Agressive mega-corp finds that it has conflicting interests in its 300 year plan to become the most powerful single hive-mind on Earth.
It's interesting in a sever-the-corpus-callosum kinda way, but really. Am I being so slack to say I don't give a @#%$ what 'problems' huge corporations have?
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
Sony has those mini-disc. They used to have computer drives for them, but supposedly the music division balked for fear of pirating. When they came out the 120 or so meg per MD at 2$ was very good price/size.
They also released a 1.? Gig version of MD for those MD video camera, which again would have made a good floppy replacement.
Music MDs have a very primitive digital to digital copy protection scheme.
Sony's technology divisions (PSX, DVD players, etc.) account for a much larger portion of their earnings than their content (mainly sony music).
It would seem to me that the only solution Sony would be interested in would be one that does not impact on their profits. If they were to install some kind of DRM into (for example) TV's that wouldnt let you skip commercials, they would be (rightly so) worried that people would start buying other brands.
Cire
Is Wired owned by Microsoft?
One casualty of this is battle is the Sony NetMD line of MiniDisc recorders. In fact, the entire MiniDisc media has been crippled by Sony just to satisfy their DRM needs.
The NetMD line of players/recorders allows you to record at 44kHz quality on the road. This is great for radio jounalists because you can buy a nice battery powered mic and record interviews wherever you go. The packing for the recorders fails to mention that while you can transfer 'songs' to and from your computer over the digital link, it explictly denies you the ability to import audio that you recorded from a microphone -- presumably to prevent digital bootlegging. So, to protect against the %1 of people that might use the NetMD illegally, the other 99% of us lose out.
There are allot of people pissed about this and there's a petition to Sony to get this featured turned on via a software update here. Over 2,600 people have already signed it. Go sign it too!
As for the MiniDisc media, if Sony would stop charging ludicrous licensing fees for players, we'd finally have a nice, caddy protected, alternative to CD-Rs.
No seriously, look at the porn industry.
There's more free porn than you could throw a stick at, but there are still pay sites and I presume they do quite well (or not too bad).
There's not that much porn on Kazaa and that that is is more freek show than porn!
Porn is the uncrowned king of distributed media.
Maybe the RIAA and MPAA should swtich to porn grove and when hary meet sally.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Actually he's not delusional, I guess you missed the slashdotted article about the RIAA report that only saw 10% of people NOT buying CD's AND downloading. I would assume that 90% of the people surveyed were either not buying CDs or downloading, or they were downloading AND buying CDs.
I don't want to JUST preview music, I want to buy it, albeit, one track at a time, if they sold me an mp3 in 320kbps for $1, I'd buy it--even before napster, they were lucky to get one CD out of me per year. It's all about selling a product with a value people will pay for.
I'm not saying people don't like getting stuff for free, they do, but you're even more of a pessimist than me if you believe people will steal from you at EVERY opportunity. People are generally willing to pay a fair price for a fair product. Of course, if you try to fleece people out of their money, they'll strike back, and they don't need to do so in a legal manner. Remember, if you're too busy watching for the knife in your back, you'll just find it in your chest one day.
So, when's lunch?
RADIO SUCKS
Sony sues Sony; Sony couter-sues (AP) ....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
Why can't they get it straight?
Hey when you are done slashdotting, check out the chics at Pajonet.com
Even though the only real decision makers are the executives and board of directors?
So, when's lunch?
Corporations are not people, they are a corporate entity. They do not have the same rights as people. When was the last time you saw Microsoft walking down to the polling booth to place their vote?
Of course they should get a bigger say, this is a democracy.
This has to be a troll, a) because they shouldn't have any say, and b) because we don't live in a democracy. Voting once every five years for one of two viable candidates based on information fed to you by publicications and media who have interests in one or the other is certainly not a democracy.
"Will of the people" my arse!
Remember how 3Com split Palm into it's own company, I can't think of any other examples, but this one fits perfectly.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
If the Sony corporate heads can't find a resolution to deal with DRM within the company in such a manner as to remain profitable, it will remove the un-profitable segment.
While the music industry (RIAA, MPAA, etc..) is attempting to bring the cross to bear against IP infringments onto tech comapnies, evryone knows that DRM is ultimatly impossible. Not in that you cant make it hard for copiers to copy and distribute them, but in that if someone can hear/see what you have to show them, they can ultimatly record it, or re-create it.
Given that fact, most mega-conglomerates with .02 cents of knowledge will tell their music arm to re-adjust it's buisness model and become profitable, mainly because the fault does not lie with the technological arm.
It's highly unlikely any major company is going to tell it's profitable tech arm "stop making computers consumers like and buy" because they dont support their less profitable media arm.
something has got to go, the inherent un-balence between arming consumers with weapons that will hurt your own sales of other items has placed the mega-corps into a situation in which whey WILL have to choose what to drop.
DRM is not gonna cut it, file-sharering software will just incorporate DRM crackers or other such means to turn Copy Protected media files into standard media files (that seem to be non-commercialy owned).
Consumers will rebel against measures that are any more intrusive than behind the scenes protection, so you can forget about selling completely crippled systems..
As such, you can choose between forcing your tech arm to stop making computers that ultimatly can hurt sales in your media arm. Or you can tell your media arm to shape up or ship out.
Lastly, when you look at the nature of music and video, in that the average home user is now able to make their own easily distributed movies and music with relative high quality, you can see that the RIAA and MPAA are under attack from more than just piraters, but by home users making music themselves. The average joe (like me) can record his band for under a grand. If im not a "aucoustic" band, or musician, then my expenses vs. quality improve ten fold.
producing high quality music (without Microphones and other analog/acoustic gear) is CHEAP, and even live sounding music isnt too much more
As such i think we may be going full circle back into an era that resembles the times when local acts were the biggest shabangs, And THIS is what is ultimatly the killer of the music industry.
the film industry may not be too far behind. Although the average Joe is NOT gonna leatn maya or other film and 3d software at the drop of a hat, nor have those fields improved Enough to make their use quick and easy, they are on the road to becoming quick and easy. I dont see holo-deck style easy of creation in our near futures... but it isnt THAT far off (im talking about the ability to make chracters and render them interactivly with chracteristics almost on the fly, not about creating a full 3d environment around you)
once people can start making their own stories &or imaginations take shape with ease... the film industry will be having some serious problems.
ultimatly the buisness aspect to selling OTHER peoples content creations will suffer... and it should... the only reason these industries are so enormous and powerfull is due to the in-accesibility of the equipment they use to the average joe. I've been in several LOW-budget films and the expense for high-quality is greatly reduced from what it was due to tech. and this is only going to continue. As smaller firms (even individuals) become increasingly capable of creating competing quality products, the big guns will find themselves being shredded by hosts of little pirhanna's.
It's gonna take a while before these changes sweep through, and the old fuckers will fight it to the end, but ultimatly tech HAS been bringing increasing power to the end user. Go pick up ProTools Free from www.protools.com , or iMovie from apple to see the beginings.
now if you were a mega-corp... what would you choose?
--Enter the sig--
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
Am I in trouble if I'm copying Celine Dion's newest album (courtesy of the l33t marker DRM-breaking technology), on my SONY CD-burner, using SONY blank CD-R media?
That seems to imply that Pressplay subscriber numbers is at least in the tens of thousands. Quite frankly, I'm shocked that it's even that high given the restrictions they put on the use of the content.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Once again, as seems to be the case with so many of these kind of problems that involve the digital world, i believe the real problem is summed up on the last line of his (excellent) article:
If only it didn't depend on a bunch of music men who've yet to wean themselves from shiny plastic discs.
I think the real underlying issue that confronts us is simply a lack of understanding of the technology that is becoming available. These men have grown up in a "shiny disk" world, and judging by their actions i cannot help but think that they are fundamentally (and by no fault of their own) incapable of understanding the kind of societal and logical changes that are taking place as technology allows us to manage content more freely.
In short, i would predict that these problems wont really find resolution until the next generation that has grown up with this technology takes over the big businesses and is able and willing to do what they known needs to be done.
I just hope we can survive until then.
Has anyone else thought about the fact that maybe we would be better off without copyright? Seriously, one moment please, don't mod me down so fast. Sure, we've lived with copyright laws for a while now, but what would it be like without them? Have you ever REALLY thought about it? I've done a lot of thinking and a lot of reading (I do mean a lot). I know most people don't even question it, they just question one thing, the work put into it. Yet ask yourselves this, do the construction workers, road builders, etc. get payed royalties everytime you drive down the road or use your house? How come we treat information like this?
Question everything.
It's sad to see that some replies in this topic have shown obvious confusion regarding the role of corporations versus the role of government. In the US, the Constitution was not written by corporations, nor should amendments (codified or de facto) be done so. That corporations have more sway than Joe Public is a given at this time, but times change and so do governments, for good or ill. The more apathetic the public, the more "oh, it's too late, they're already in power anyway" responses, the more things will decay in favor of the corporations. The more motivated the public, the more politicians will put the input of corporations in a subordinate (or at least equal) position compared to the input of their voters. Corporate money can only buy an election when the public is apathetic and detached from the political process, and thus open to glitzy ads. If there is a strong sentiment in the public to reduce or eliminate the effect of those ads, then the role of corporate money is also reduced or eliminated. In the end, the vote counts, not the advertising.
No Laughing Allowed!
All your media are belong to us ...
,steal ,and distribute your media no matter how hard you try to lock it up.
:-)
I've said this before and I'll say it again, the only media companies to succeed in the coming years are the ones who either:
a)Have a government sanctioned monopoly.
b)Accept that media is worthless and move on.
People will copy
Get over it and offer products, not control mechanisms.
TV is free, but people pay for Cable/Satellite.
Radio is free but people pay for XM.
Mp3s are free but people will still pay for CDs if they are fairly priced ($20 aint fair for 10 year old technology).
In addition, people would pay for an online music service but the record companies have fucked music publishing to the point that no-one will play ball for fear of betting screwed , again.
the 'slide
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
1. Sell customers CD-Burners to copy copyrighted material.
2. Upgrade DRM technology on media to prevent media copying.
3. Sell customers NEW CD-Burners to bypass DRM technology (try harder than markers...)
4. Go to step 2....
The left hand washes the right hand, but only because it doesn't know what the right hand has been doing...
SIG: HUP
How about offering a complete end-to-end production setup that is streamlined to be able to produce small quantities of merchandise, records, etc for artists who aren't signed? How about investing in companies like PropellerHead so that they can guide the development of production tools so that they can reduce studio costs and eventually build "micro studios" that can be fit inside a garage. Imagine say..... TimeWarner buying PowerMacs, installing a lot of great production software and building quality, low-cost "studios" for artists they sign. That'd be a hell of a lot less expensive than plunking down $250K-$1M for studio time. All they'd have to do is get the band's best cut, send it to the techs to clean it up and press it. They could probably save as much as $800K per record or maybe even more doing that.
The first big label to say, "no no, technology is ou--my--friend" is the going to be the one that owns the industry. I'm surprised that one of these labels hasn't already contact Steve Jobs and asked him to help them "get with it" technologically. You'd think that at least one of the bean counters in accounting would realize that personal computers could greatly cut down on their cost. DRM isn't good for labels, versatile PCs which can hold lots of cheap digital music are. They should be offering free 64-96k oggs as samples and downloads for say.... $.75 a song for a 350K VBR Ogg or MP3. I give my friends music occassionally to sample, but if the labels did that, I'd just tell them to stop being a cheap mofo and buy the damn downloads.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
IBM used to be Microsoft.
They had an effective monopoly in computer equpiment. Sure there were competitors, but they ate the crumbs that IBM couldn't be bothered to bend over to reach. They had been the subject of a long standing antitrust investigation by the Justice Department which was dropped by the Reagan Administration.
Along comes the microcomputer which IBM names the PC. But, IBM wants to protect it's mainframe business, so they try to deliberately hobble the nacent PC so that it won't take away desktops holding a 3270 terminal. They don't build PCs with Intel's new 80386 chip.
The result, competitors fill the markets which IBM's internal politics won't let them fill. Compaq sells 386s hand over fist and IBM loses the market they made.
Now Sony makes the same mistake.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it -- Satayana
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
We need to decide what's right first and then companies have to adapt to that.
What?
Umm, if you don't like what a particular company is doing, then simply don't support them (i.e.- don't buy their products). Unless they're doing something illegal, which in the case of Sony is no, then why do we need to set policy for them? I mean really, who died and made you God? How about I decide what I think is right for your personal life first and then you have to adopt to that.
Regulation has a place. Law is important. But you can't regulate and legistate things to suite your case, especially if there is no crime being committed. We're talking about music here, and not that great of music at that. The only crime Sony and related companies have committed is providing really horrible service and treating customers like criminals. So forget about them, or compete and offer better music and better service. But until you've run a multinational corporation and figured out how to do it "right," I think you should not be so quick to regulate their business according to your values.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
snicker, snicker... and, what country do you live in? you really do need to get better informed! we are about to go to war for oil... even those who are very well informed on the subject, and feel that saddam needs to go for plenty of reasons, acknowledge this point.
oh dear, we really are in trouble!
You're trolling, right? I mean you can't really be that stupid, can you?
yeah, hi
don't they get payed by your taxes?
I was a little disturbed when this article stated that "Major acts like Radiohead have flatly refused to make their music available online." This was very much contrary to everything I knew about Radiohead. I decided to pay their web site a visit just to check. Sure enough, while their site does not contain MP3s of actual album songs, they have several music videos and dozens of bootleg mp3s. I've always thought of Radiohead of the kind of band that thinks it's really cool when they do a show and the audience already knows the words to their unreleased songs. Everything I've read suggests that they are one of the few bands that have fully embraced the online music trading trend.
I think I'll just listen to the voices in my head until they get this thing straightened out.
There's always one other way to do something - your way. -- Waylon Jennings (1937-2002)
> Corporations are not people
Umm, the Supreme Court thinks differently:
Back in 1886 the US Supreme Court ruled during in a railbed dispute titled Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad. The ruling held that a private corporation was a "natural person" entitled to all the rights and privileges of a human being.
As I'm reading these Britney vs. U2 comparisons, I can't help but think how much I disagree with them.
U2 is the product of marketing hype, even moreso than Britney. How many Grammys does U2 have? Realize that U2 is marketed towards thirtysomethings, Britney to teeny-boppers.
Look, it's a matter of personal preference. Personally I'm not going to be downloading any U2 or Britney anytime soon, I'd rather listen to Skinny Puppy or Muslim Gauze. YMMV.
But comments like $30 a CD of people who fall for marketing bullshit remind me of why we need to all boycott the MP....OMG the new LOTR movie is out I'm gonna be first in line!!!
Okay, back to the topic:
Sony's biggest problem is that, on both sides of the house, their (consumer-oriented) products are disposable. Or maybe that's their strength. I don't understand a civilization whose raison d-etre is the quick-flip, the economy of which has relegated works of lasting value (be it CDs that you'll want to listen to in ten years, or CD players that will still work in ten years) to a cultish minority that remembers when things were made of metal and lasted forever. Sony used to "get it", my Betamax built in 1981 outlasted four latter-day VHS machies. Not anymore.
Perhaps, if we're lucky, Capitalism will eat itself. Certainly, the sea change brought on by lossless copying vs. crappy content has Sony et. al. burning the candle at both ends.
Given that fact, most mega-conglomerates with .02 cents of knowledge will tell their music arm to re-adjust it's buisness model and become profitable, mainly because the fault does not lie with the technological arm.
It's highly unlikely any major company is going to tell it's profitable tech arm "stop making computers consumers like and buy" because they dont support their less profitable media arm.
According to the article, the hardware division is barely profitable at all (like Matsushita, Hitachi, etc. not able to make things as cheaply as other Asian compititors). It said that the media arm brought in a fraction of the revenue, but virutually ALL of the profit!
Plus, we don't know how DRM will (if ever) become reality. In a free, competitive market I would hazard a guess that it would eventually fizzle and die. But I would think that Sony would want to keep this together as long as the issue of *forcing* DRM (through legislation) is still a distinct possibility. Even if Sony splits off the media from the hardware arm, the RIAA/MPAA will still be there, still pushing for legislated DRM. If it becomes reality, then there is no more conundrum on Sony's part: their hardware and media will be perfectly suited to one another!
Look at the tomato! Isn't it sad? He can't dance! Poor tomato!
To save its electronics business and make its dream of digital services a reality, Sony needs a system that doesn't punish consumers yet somehow satisfies the entertainment industry.
This system is not possible. The only system that will satisfy the entertainment industry is one which punishes consumers. The industry doesn't just want to protect it's copyrights (a goal with which I agree), but restrict consumer rights, making legal practices technologically impossible.
For example, the practice of burning a CD you legally own, so you can take that copy in your car with you leaving the original safely at home. To the consumer this is perfectly normal. To the courts, its perfectly legal. To the industry, its a perfect wasted, a lost opportunity for revenue. They want to make you buy two copies of the CD.
For the entertainment industry, DRM isn't about protecting copyrights, its about opening up new revenue streams. The problem facing the technology industry is the fundamental fact that consumers don't want to pay more for less.
The fifties, the transistorradio .. it's a Sony .. it's a Sony .. it's an Apple.. ..with 30% of the mp3 player marked it seems..
The eighties, the walkman
The naughties, the iPod
That can't but hurt the gadget part of Sony.
Based on the system of welfare there is really no need to be trully accountable or responsible for actions much less ever spend time, money or thought on the quality of work and producing what the end user needs. Instead of a middleman (which would seem to indicate a smaller part of the whole with disproportionally large influence... we have here a situation where the non-middleman is a minority.
I have heard many refer to the recording industry (non-artists and direct band reps/managers) as being like this. (at least they are not funded by tax dollars and add to that the added travesty of not providing the needed systems to the defense department.
The solution as always is a form of competition. Government created monopolies definitely are not the solution.
CORPORATE RADIO SUCKS, try some alternatives sometime. You might be pleasantly surprised.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
Eee gads. A quick glance at the topic and I thought this was a survey on masterbation preferences.
Well, at least Philips did the right thing in 1998 when they sold of their music divison Polygram. The reason they did this were exactly the kind of problems mentioned in this article, they foresaw conflicts between their CD-recorders/copiers and their record company (so now they can focus on copiers that do read copy-protected pseudo-cd's). The time that hardware builders needed their own content providers to sell their equipment has long gone. Welcome to the 21st century, Kimura San.
Um... you do realize that we vote more than once every five years, right? Even if you only voted for the president it would be more frequent than every five years.
Actually, there were seven people in black robes who in 1886 wholly disagreed with you. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, The US Supreme Court ruled that corporations do actually have the same rights as "natural persons". That case was specifically about California taxing corps differently than people, but it set the precedent that corporations are people too. blech...
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
I believe you meant to post this response in the Slashdot poll.
Sony Music Japan did the [b]excellent[/b] reissues of Miles Davis' back catalogue a few years ago, so we're not exactly talking about a few pop artists. Sony Music is HUGE.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
And when you are comparing the price of anything to a nearly-equivalent version of the product that is offered for free, almost any amount of money, no matter how small, will not be considered "fair" by most people.
/. readers might, but not most normal kazaa users.) Most people copy music, and let other people copy it, because it doesn't cost them anything, except a little bit of time. And most people don't properly value their time.
Most people don't copy music to spite the record companies. (Oh, a sizable percentage of
This is one of the problems that unlimited internet access causes. (Don't get me wrong, I love unlimited internet access and would be very upset if I were charged per-megabyte fees.) I don't mind giving a friend a lift across town in my car. It doesn't cost me much at all, maybe $0.25 in gas or so, and 10 minutes of my time. I will think seriously about driving a friend from one coast of the U.S. to the other, because that is a non-trivial expense, just in terms of gas and vehicle maintenance. Time expense also becomes unreasonable.
There should be a similar thought process with sharing music. Giving a friend a copy of a cd you bought, so they can listen to it and see if they want to get more stuff by that group, is a reasonable thing to do. Giving 2000 copies of it to people all over the world isn't.
But with unlimited internet access... Giving 2000 copies away to total strangers costs you the same as giving one copy to a good friend. The only "cost" to you is your time to set up the client and music files on your system.
It's hard to compete with free.
Competing with quality or convenience? Quality won't work. It will be too easy for P2P networks to add the equivalent of karma. Add a crc value to the information transmitted in a file search. After a verified good transfer, compare the crc value. That lets you verify the other client isn't lying about contents. Then you can listen to the music, and "moderate" on quality of the rip. Not if you like the song, but if the rip is good quality. Enough "nothing but skips and cracks" votes and that client drops to the bottom of the search results. You just solved the quality problem on p2p networks. Convenience can be handled also.
It's hard to compete with free.
We love this when talking about Microsoft, and any other propreitary vendor competing with an open source product. But the recording industry (and the artists that want to distribute their own stuff without dealing with the Major 5 Labels) has this problem also.
I admire the problem... and I wish I could offer a good solution. I really think it will just end up being a version of Apple's solution. An advertising campaign "Don't steal music" and almost no real limitations enforced. Because nothing else will let the industry keep the honest customers, which I like to think are the majority.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
"people don't photocopy newspapers".
I was going to write more, about how there is an optimum price, la di da, but I think that sums it up if you think about it.
I'll take a U.S.-centric view, because, hey, that's where I live.
:(
The U.S. is not a democracy. It's a republic. Do some reading, learn the difference. It was made that way 200+ years ago on purpose.
Yes, the Founding Fathers that we respect so much didn't really fully trust the unwashed masses. And the more I see, the more I think they were right.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is... Oops. Frank, I've got your sig again! Where's mine?
Ah, but you're missing a point. Our control over companies is as consumers, not as citizens. If enough people disagree with a company (and exercise that disagreement by not buying the company's products), then the company will change.
But, you might argue, the record company's aren't changing, even through lots of people aren't buying their products. To which I would point out, that the slashot/tech savvy crowd isn't really indicative of the general population. Enough people are still buying CDs to make the record companies think that there might be hope for their existing business model. Record sales are dropping, but not really by that much. If record sales dropped by, say, 60% in a year, you can bet your ass that the big five would turn on a dime.
Maybe he'll overdose on #5 and we won't have to worry about it.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
Now, if the companies that loved DRM would stop deliberately screwing people, they'd probably let most ordinary people come to accept DRM. Then in the future, when they clamped down, people would be more used to DRM. Sure, people like me would still worry about how DRM could be used, but if it were not being used in objectionable ways, we'd be stuck with theoretical arguments. A lot of these people will look at me like I'm a wild eyed fanatic if I start up with doomsday scenarios based on theoretical abuses of DRM. However, if I can tell my sister that her favorite old TV series won't play on her DVD player because of it, she immediately starts to care.
Personally, it makes me happy when DRM loving companies turn the screws in a way that ordinary consumers get screwed. It is music to my ears when a large number of CD players can't play DRM "enabled" (i.e. disabled) CDs. Because it irritates people, and if enough people are irritated, you might get enough public support to take on the plutocrats (who still depend on consumer good will at the end of the day, no matter how much they may hate them.) and get rid of DRM. It won't happen if they manage to keep the vast majority happy, though.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
And where do corps get all their money? From all _your_ contributions (aka "shopping").
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I think Sony has other problems too. For instance, the Playstation2 as a game console is nice, but is severely limited as a "home entertainment system." Also with the PS2, the sony memory stick was around long before PS2 was introduced, but instead they decided to use a proprietary memory card and they charge you $25 USD for 8MB of RAM on the slowest possible interface.
I do not mind a company trying to make money, but milking their target audience for everything they are worth goes a little too far in my opinion.
Next the court will be telling us that dogs are people too.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
No, I'm not.
U2/Britney comparison seemed handy, since already mentioned in parent's post. Judging as objectivelly as possible, U2 produced music of immensly better quality than Britney ever will. I personally stopped listening U2 stuff released after Rattle&Hum but that's another story.
What I was trying to say and obviously failed to do, was the fact that there is much greater possibility someone will copy quality stuff (in this case U2) over trash. People whose preference is U2 are not likely to buy/download any of Britney's crap but kids who buy Britney would probably want U2, as well, moreso due to the fact that U2, as you correctly pointed out, is overhyped, too.
Now, that's only 'content' part of the whole story. You are absolutely right about the 'technology' part. Somehow, I just can't see us getting lucky anytime soon.
http://www.memes.net/index.php3?request=displaypa
and also Brian Martin's essay "Against intellectual property" (part of a large book -- _Information Liberation_)i l03.html
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/98il/
You can also see lots of ongoing discussion on Lawrence Lessig's blog http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/ which I have been posting at specifically in this Doc's diagnosis topic comments section here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/mt/mt-comments.cgi?en try_id=889
It's simple. Copyrights allow people to make their living making intellectual property by giving them ownership of their work so they can control it. If copyright did not exist, no one could charge for it. If no one could charge for it, no one could make their living making it. If no one could make their living at it, they'd have to make their living doing something else, like building bridges, so they wouldn't have enough time to devote to making good IP. If there were no people who had enough time to spend all day writing songs or stories, then all we would have is campfire songs and legends. No one would have time to learn the skills, or time to use them.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
These conflicts of interest should be a non-event, in that even if a company such as Sony didn't have to think about it's media arm, they shouldn't release devices which blatantly encourage piracy. This is not least because of some desire for the general good, but also to help the rapidly converging entertainment and consumer technology industries. And this convergance is happening towards the same goal. Us, as consumers will eventually win in our desire of freedom over our digital media. The gadgets will facilitate this freedom at just the right time. Monolithic companies who refuse these freedoms will eventually lose out - don't forget they are now operating in an industry with significantly reduced barriers to entry to what there was only ten years ago..... Apple occupy an interesting position, in a niche for people who like to be creative with their machines - home video, audio, DTP. I think Apple are the only firm with a small chance of justifiying their device....
Vacancy for signature. Apply within.
thats the problem the music industry now faces- how will they continue to make gobs of money off very bad 'artists' who put out a bland product, and often only have one good song per album?
I will admit that the downside to being able to buy per-track will be that, in many cases, certain artist's songs needed to grow on me (which generally happened because I was too lazy to turn off the CD player and replace it with something else).
Back to the point, however, is that MOST of the music that comes out now is very bad and/or very derivative. How many from-the-grave best sellers did Biggie Smalls and Tupac have? I think they do more work dead than they did alive.
But when you are selling to a discriminating customer, who actually wants to hear something good, it makes the whole process a lot more difficult; you have to actually hire people with talent! Gone will be the days when Billy Idol or Puff Daddy can make money, because instead of paying ~$15 for the album, you will pay $1 for the digital single, which is the only good song ON that album. Net loss to the record industy= $14.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
For support for elimitating copyrights or greatly reducing their terms, see Richard Stallman, especially here:g e&NodeID=650
http://www.memes.net/index.php3?request=displaypa
and also Brian Martin's essay "Against intellectual property" (part of a large book -- _Information Liberation_)i l03.html
http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/98il/
You can also see lots of ongoing discussion on Lawrence Lessig's blog http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/ which I have been posting at specifically in this Doc's diagnosis topic comments section here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/mt/mt-comments.cgi?en try_id=889
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
The article makes clear that the hardware side of the company is actually losing money; the content stuff (music, movies, Playstation) is funding the whole thing.
Basically, the profits from the music is what allows them to invest in developing new hardware products.
This is to all the posts that support copyright. I understand the way you see things, I used to think the same when I was a little kid. When I entered high school the subject really caught my interest and I began to read into it. I thought about it every single day and still do to this day, but fortunately now I take a break every once in a while. I ask you all, please, do some reading on the opposing side. Also, for just one moment, seriously consider the option of no IP laws.
Btw. almost everyone defending IP mentioned the fact that without compensation, intellectuals would produce no works of art or new ideas. I first must ask, are you an artist? writer? music composer?
Art and technology advances are fueled by interest, passion, wants, needs, and pleasure. Yes, money can be linked directly to this and even without IP laws money can be made (do some reading to find out how). I could go on forever stating all your defenses for IP with counter arguments against them, but this isn't the place.
Question everything.
All they have to do is give up on DRM, and then take everyone's money.
Tape trading and copying was around in the 1980s. Last I heard, the music industry didn't disappear. VHS tapes, like audio cassettes, were easy to copy. Last I heard, the home movie industry didn't disappear. Most software isn't copy-protected. Last I heard, the software industry is still around, and actually doing ok if you ignore the ex-dot-commers.
If you publish enough crap, they will buy it. The zombie horde of consumers will relentlessly pursue you and when they catch you they will mindlessly moan and shove money down your throat. You will gasp and choke and then another wad of bills will be shoved into your mouth as you desperately try to get a breath. You can try to run, but then you'll trip and the zombies will surround you, burying you in money until you can't move and are crushed beneath the weight. What a horrible death for Sony: to be drowned in cash.
The push for DRM is just the gasping and choking. Eventually Sony will learn to tolerate the taste of money being thrown at them, and decide it isn't so bad. Or they won't get over it, and somebody else will get the money instead.
Sony stockholders, tell Sony you don't like the mismanagement in the media division. Tell them that instead of running away from money, they need to accept. Sony needs to be reminded that their goal is to mercilessly and amorally make as much profit as possible, and saying no to customers isn't the way to do it. Sell the people what they want.
You should care about their problems, because they tend to become your problems if the big corps are left to solve them by their preferred means. "Preferred means" = passing costs on to the customer, limiting customer choice, cutting jobs to boost share price, suppressing criticism with SLAPP suits, etc.
Note, I'm not advocating we sympathize with them. But the gov't and citizenry have no obligation, and often no material interest, in helping corporations out of holes they dug themselves. Nor should we allow them to compound their mistakes to the detriment of the greater good. This especially goes for "industries" like the recorded music companies, who victimize both their resource base (the artists, via usurious contracts) and their customers (by predatory pricing and anticompetitive actions).
Freedom: "I won't!"
If I paid for my music, I would probably share it with my friends... possibly, but I wouldn't make it available to the masses because then it would feel like, rather than stealing from Sony or something, like stealing from me.
Of course, my friends who borrow these musics might not feel like this, but I have to expect my friends would feel similarly and share their music with me, and wouldn't be sharing their bought music with the world, so they wouldn't share my bought music either.
That's just how I see it though.
GPL Deconstructed
Well, since I love arguing...
It's likely that the people who are most into napster et.al. are the "kiddies" who have more of an interest in Britney than U2. People who are past college age are probably not so well represented on napster.
Also, people who are older (and thus more likely to be U2 fans) are probably more likely to buy the CD:
1. they can afford it since they're not poor college or high school kids
2. they are more mature and might think that "stealing music" was okay when in college but wouldnt do it now
3. they would like to be able to listen to the music in their (new) car (with CD player), something they didnt even own when in HS/college
Just my thought. But i bet that both U2 and Britney are HEAVILY traded on P2P, because they're both quite popular.
I wonder if there's some study/survey of like the 100 most popular P2P files being shared (this month). Kinda like google's zeitgeist. That would be kewl.
...Is they all have media divisions that are too big, too unimaginative (one has only to watch television, check out the latest "hit" records, or look for the current showings at the local cinema to see how bad it's gotten), and too full of lawyers.
As consumers, the intelligent elite are severely outnumbered by the ignorant masses. The peons oppinion is the only thing corps care about anymore (thanks Wal-Mart). Therefore, our oppinion will never be sufficiently conveyed to the corps. That coupled with the US's severely flawed IP division (which the world is using as a model for their own flawed IP division) gives us very little choice indeed, and further proves that we are truly powerless.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Read my reply to billtom above.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
This is a very interesting conundrum for Sony. The Eastern philosophy of business seems to implore Sony to ensure that all members of the corporate family are healthy. In this way, the Sony media division would be compensated for any loses by the money made in the Sony hardware division. They can charge a premium on themselves of, say, two dollars on every media device with a hard drive. This can be shared in the entire "family", with a neutral revenue impact.
On the other hand, the Western philosophy demands that Sony sell everything but the MOST profitable, SHORT TERM solution. Then they can lobby the government for protection from competition.
I think that Sony could do quite well by subsidising themselves.
Really. Hadn't thought (obviously) about it.
/. had a failure to communicate. ;)
And here I thought me and
Drink the coffee before posting;
Read the books before burning.
Keep your packets off my GNU/Girlfriend!
"The tech divisons want to offer the consumer all the possible options, while the media divisions are very concerned on DRM. While the two groups are trying to meet somewhere in the middle, they are still at odds about it, and also finding that that middle is becoming rapidly populated by other competitors (including Microsoft)"
I think an appropriate analogy of the situation would be this:
If the current situation at Sony were represented by a hand, the tech division's wants and needs would be represented by the pinky and ring finger. The media division's wants and needs would be represented by the thumb and the pointer finger. If you put those divisions' wants and needs at odds with one another, you would only have just one finger left. The big ol' bird pointing right at the consumer.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
Consider this: Not all people are talented/motivated enough to create all kinds of content. Now some people might consider releasing their song etc for free just to entertain people but what about those who don't? They are probably going to figure out a way to illegally have secret societys that only the selected ones are invited too (cash). There this valueable content will be provided, while the common marked is flooded with crap. Also, a lot of potential great content might never be produced since without copyright, creating content equals no money whatsoever. Given that we are not living in a socialistic/communist society very little time-consuming quality content may see the light of day. Not saying it's gonna be that way, just a thought. Also, personally I dislike the thought of forcing people to give away their creations for free. Isn't that a sign of a truly totalitarian state? Pardon the English, not my native language.
I'm glad that an American company (Apple) is beating a Japanese company (Sony) on the quality of their product. Personally I'm not hoping that Sony gets over this problem of their's. The more profit for corporations here in the USA, the less for foreign owned companies, the better.
Congratulations! You have been correctly indoctrinated into the North American Liberal Intelligensia(TM)! This involves accepting that institutions should concentrate power in the hands of the Better People on behalf of the Average Person, because (of course! why question it?) the Average Person is incapable of understanding anything or contributing to governance in any meaningful way. In fact, they just get in the way, always taking about injustice and how tough it is. Whiners.
So, hurrah for the self-serving, privileged, elitist upper-middle-class! If you feel bad about the way things are going, just move into a gated community and buy a new Benz.
(I find this as anti-democratic an attitude as "one person can't do anything... that's why I don't vote". Either you are for MORE democracy or less, and most people I talk to are for less. And you seem to be, too.)
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
I bought one of these things (the MD pkg 5) with a deck and portable player. It featured the ability to copy CD to MD but not CD to MD to MD. And the media was cheap $9 for a disc when CD's were $17.
Problem is: they never marketed it, ever. I saw like 2 magazine ads and that's it. Even now, when someone sees my MD player, they're like "what's that", "minidisc" "what's minidisc". So the solution was there, then they never marketed it, and noone bought it and the prices rose.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch