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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
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.
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.
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?
Sony sues Sony; Sony couter-sues (AP) ....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
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?
" 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."
The market decides. Hes not saying go tell Sony, "youre going to charge this, and no more!" Hes saying that Sony should give thier customers what they want, while still getting what Sony wants. Theres a balance and its called market price. The problem here is only Sony is getting what they want, the customers are getting screwed.
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!
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....
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
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.
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.
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"
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?
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)
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.