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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.
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
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?
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!
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?
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
That's what happens when you make so much music, then basically give it away to consumers over FM radio (or on TV) for 30 years... The entire broadcast business is based on this model:
Consumer: Mooches for free. Changes channels to avoid commercials.
Customer (advertiser): Pays broadcaster for commercials that consumers change channels to avoid.
Broadcaster: Pays for playing movies or music.
Labels & Studios: Churn out more crap that is simmilar to the crap that sold the most commercials for the broadcasters.
Exception: Theaters and live performances - customer pays outrageous price for tickets...
The problem with the internet is that it's the ultimate commercial skip.
-- $G
First, the law of large numbers over the internet (like with GNU/Linux) shows people will create without direct financial incentive.
Second, this article:h tml
discusses how scientific studies find that for creative intellectual work, reward is often no motivator, and can in fact have negative effects on performance.
http://www.isi.salford.ac.uk/staff/ab/motivation.
From the article: "The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is based on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findings as these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likely to draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun of it. Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the games less and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards. Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffer a drop in motivation."
So, while what you say is essentially the "conventional wisdom" of our age, it may well not be correct as regards creative works.
Also, note that in order to enforce copyright in the internet age, we will need something equivalent to scope in the "War on Drugs" as a "War on Sharing". The War on Drugs effort keeps about a million U.S. citizens behind bars at a direct cost of 20-40 billion dollars a year. And before you laugh and say it is not possible for a million people to be locked up for using Napster and Kaaza, consider that people in the 1960s would have laughed at the notion of a million americans behind bars for non-violent drug offenses in the 1990s -- but it happened.
For the same amount of money, the U.S. could provide grants of $100K a year to around 400,000 artist, musicians, and writers who make their work freely available.
So, you choose which society you want to live in, however you label some part of it. And by the way, copyrights are monopolies, and monopolies are generally considered anti-capitalist.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.