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Can Hollywood Learn From Intuit?
Ironica writes "Readers will recall the furor over Intuit's activation scheme for TurboTax 2002, which prompted a lawsuit and subsequently was removed from TT2002 and all future products. Here's an interesting editorial on CNNMoney suggesting that other DRM proponents could take a page out of Intuit's book ... if they have the sense."
The problem can also be laid at the feet of the Copy protection software/hardware companies which see Hollywood an opportunity to sell their product into a new market.
They have had a devil of a time trying to sell other software companies for the last 10ish years on the idea, but now they have a new market open and this market isn't as technically sauvey as the Software Industry was back in the late 80's early 90's when we all decided the copy protection wars were not feasible.
Ted Tschopp
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Wasn't there a DVD recently released of a major picture (Harry Potter?) that has no protection and the publisher said it just wasn't worth the effort?
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I don't see a problem with it. It prevents piracy and also leads to many *schools* to purchase more then 1 copy from me, as I can easily proove from my logs. I don't write to people's boot sectors or anything though - just some simple DSA PKI.
Morphing Software
They'll learn that the copy protection mechanisms must be phased into use, and shouldn't provide enough drastic changes to enrage normally enthralled masses...
Exactly. I'm not sure why they aren't regulated as public utilities, and why our anti-trust, anti-cartel laws have been so poorly enforced lately.
Except they've proven time and again how little regard they have for their customers. Personally I don't give a fsck anymore, they've already lost me. I don't do buisness with anybody that treats me like a criminal.
From the article:
"Customer reviews on Amazon.com (AMZN) tell the tale. For the 2001 version of TurboTax (which had no activation feature), the average customer-satisfaction rating was four and a half stars. For the activation-enhanced 2002 edition, the average rating dropped to one and a half stars, and the reviews bore titles such as "scumbags," "disaster," and, perhaps presciently, "the demise of TurboTax.""
I think the lesson the DRM-and-associated industries will take from this is the Boiling Frog story.
For those not familiar with it (there might be a few), the theory goes that if you put a frog into a pot of boiling water it will immediately jump out. If you place that frog in a pan of warm water and slowly raise the heat to boiling, the thing won't budge until it's dead (and then it still won't budge. =)
In other words, the lesson learned is "erode their rights slowly, don't yank the carpet out from under them all at once. Start with the minor potatoes like so-called "fair use." They're entitled to protection from litigation if they're copying something for their own use but that doesn't mean we have to make the item copyable so we can leverage the DMCA for all it's worth. The politicans are cheap. Consider them as insurance or rent money -- just another cost of doing business. The consumer (and oh how I love that word) won't even know they have rights nevermind miss them in 20 years. Just do it slowly."
Oh yeah. Holywood can learn. The question is "can we?"
My
Limekiller
This time about why inuit would do the whole product activation scheme in the first place: www.gripe2ed.com
I mean software companies would rather sell you a product every year than once for life. (Not including M$ wich wants to sell you 1 product for life.....every year.) Why don't the music and movie companies see this?
I am not a real music person but there are several songs I would enjoy owning, but only if i can get them for a reasonable price. I mean I would be happy to pay a couple bucks to download a song, so long as i can then do whatever i want with it.
My VCR's whole function is to record, TV's, music, etc. So why suddenly do they expect us to pay for everything, every time we want to use it, and to pay more. This whole fight has been had before and its obvious who one, since we all own VCR's (well the majority do), and tape decks. Most of us even have photocopiers at work etc. In all those cases, tape, cassete, book/magazine, if it is something we want and we can purchase it for a reasonable price then we do so. We don't photocopy a 5$ paper back because that would be stupid. You go buy the book.
When record and movie companies remember that then they can drop this whole scam. Until then pirates/hackers/everybody will do what gives us the best return for our investment.
So the real question becomes, not will they learn, but when will they learn, and more importantly how do we help them learn?
Then, TurboTax haggled me to use Intuit's electronic filing service, against for a premium cost
.tax file which you can then upload to the government's site. The file is just a comma seperated file so any spreadsheet program should be able to read it. Something like 70% of the people in my area e-filed rather than mailing last year. I didn't realize the US was so far behind that you need a specialized service to do this.
Your government doesn't have a free e-filing service? Every tax program in Canada will generate a
their revenues went down because the ENTIRE economy went down.
the reason it helps is because of people like me. I never purchased a cd before, the radio took care of all my music needs. But with the advent of the internet, i was introduced to new artists. Because these artists aren't played on the radio, and because I wanted to support them, I bought their cd. Never would have paid for music otherwise.
not to mention that people have been swapping music LONG before the dawn of the internet. tape to tape recording and such.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Intuit's problem was that their DRM was too restrictive. They need a way to allow the sw to be installed on 3 computers for instance, but no more. Then people couldn't complain about legitimate uses of the sw being hampered. However, Intuit is still losing money on people passing the sw around the office, etc., so to maximise profit they need some less noticeable DRM.
Vote for Pedro
This could easily backfire and put more power into the hands of MSFT. Since they're currently the only (IFAIK) OS distributor that is "enabling the consumer by adding DRM to the core OS", some software companies may turn to them in an effort to protect their stranglehold on consumers. I'm not necessarily saying that TurboTax was doing this, but the RIAA certainly is; and as such, they're very likely to help push MSFT's propaganda and ultimately help proliferate DRM.
Here's the bottom line, if we (media users) don't act responsibly and avoid the urge to pirate videos, music, and software (at least buy it or otherwise support the creator somehow), these companies will force DRM onto us.
As consumers we do have significant "wallet" power, however, if we don't act responsibly, the powers that be will make sure that we do [act responsibly].
Call me conservative, but the creators of digital content (videos, audio, etc) should be able to make a living; however, they also shouldn't be able to destroy consumers by partnering with an unavoidable monopoly either.
If we don't take responsibility for our actions (and our peers' actions) now, we can't complain about losing our [said] rights in the future.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
dear god, i know exactly what you mean. I have family members calling me at all hours of the day to tell them how to run winamp or install morpheus and what not. There is definitely a large portion of older people who still don't know waht they are doing.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
You have now met one. I haven't bought a new CD in approximately a year (when I heard that copy-protected CDs were gonna hit the shelves en-masse; don't know if it has happened). Before then, I bought ~50 - 100 CDs a year (some new, some used).
My strategy is to call in to radio shows that interview artists (whether "big time" or "small time"), and tell them that I would like to buy their CD, but probably won't, because of my concerns over not being able to eject a CD from my iBook (these are apparently VALID concerns). Many seem to be unaware of the situation, but the ones who are, aren't happy about it (they realize that their fans will blame THEM, even though they have little control over distribution).
The business people will never be on our side (their jobs are directly threatened, not just because of revenue, but because their jobs are only relevant if they have control of distribution). But the artists need to know that we DO care about them, and are willing to support them, even if we hate their corporate masters. The artists DO have media clout (fans want to hear from them, not the marketing drones), and they are the ones who can bring these concerns to the attention of the masses. At least, I hope so.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
The RIAA makes money by sorting through the crap, picking bands they think people will like, and promoting them.
To be more accurate, the RIAA makes money picking the bands that most people will like enough to buy the album. This is different, in that someone who really likes one style of music won't be pleased, as the music they find of that style will have other styles blended in for largest audience.
I won't even go into the economics of bands producing music with no chance to earn money from their work.It is not necessarily true that bands who give away their music legally on the internet can't make money. System of a Down recently released an album on the internet along with the actual physical album. I don't know the exact numbers but they sold pretty well.
I would tend to agree with you, except this.
Napster let the cat out of the bag. I put it on the machine I built for my parents in the early days of Napster, expecting that she maybe possibly might use it, but not really expecting her to.
She used napster until it's dying day, I haven't put another p2p on the machine (burn it on cd, remember the cd, remember to install, hamster is in my name for a reason), but I'd be willing to bet she would be downloading again. The nice VCR I bought her still flashes 12:00, but she can work the TiVo I gave her.
So I believe the average technophobe has moved up quite a bit, if for no other reason than free and easy. We know most Linux users are all out for that free beer, which is why ESR might have a stroke one day while waving his banner.
Our investment management firm was, for the time, highly IT intensive. All of our investment selections were based on statistical/computer models; the only way anyone could order a trade was through a (mainframe) computer interface. We started buying PCs early on, together with an early version of Lotus 1-2-3.
Then, Lotus introduced copy protection. Initially, we didn't have a big problem with that, in principle; but then we started to encounter the practical realities of unusable machines, software that we could not reload, and so on.
I can remember a meeting with some senior people from Lotus in my office. I told them a couple of things:
--We liked 1-2-3: it was really useful.
--We would never, from that time forward, buy any software with copy protection, under any circumstances.
As I told them then, and as I want to make clear now, we were NOT trying to cheat or get more licences than we were paying for. We were, however, unwilling to do business with another firm that treated us under the assumption that we were criminals.
This story had a happy ending. we were able to negogiate a deal for a "non-copy-protected" version of Louts's software. Not long after, the offer was made generally available.
I'm glad to hear that Intuit has figured things out. Perhaps some day others will ;-).
Rich
Intuit has plenty of competition, there are many equivalent DRM free SW packages that can produce the same results.
Hollywood has no serious competition, even less than MS. Nobody can match their global marketing prowess and astronomical budgets. Certainly none can match their political clout either, the lobbying power of the RIAA is but a shadow of the MPAA.
My rights don't need management.
If file sharing is helping them out, why are revenues down?
Crappy product ? Seriously how many artists have some kind of a "message" today ?? Very few, They all look alike and are as much food for the mind as corbonated water with colorants is to the stomach.
Your arguement makes no sense. They had no copy protection and revenue went down.
No, actually while they had no copy protection, the revenue was at a all time high. It didn't start going downhill until Napster was shut down..
Personally I think that's a coincidence but people should remember the things as they were.
Intuit started using copy protection and their revenue went down. Two entirely different situations.
Says who ? The recording industry for sure, but they (belive they) have a good reason to want you to belive that .
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
They also had 'competition' internally as well, at least from a DRM standpoint: the online Turbotax (the same programs) which I used again this year, required no downloading or installing of any DRM, only the boxed versions had that crappola.
You still get to keep the e version of your tax files for reference, and Intuit keeps them on record as well (they do for all versions), handy if you suffer a data loss, mildly troubling if you worry about grand conspiracies, Big Brother or corporate stupidity.
After looking at all the other tax preparation software, online and otherwise, Intuit was still the best for me, and I was satisfied for one more year to use them again.
I'm glad they've seem some light on their boxed verisons, but there were other options for folks if they bothered to check.
heh. Personally I don't want to pay $15-$20, but I don't really want to pay $0 either, I'd be happy to throw some money to THE ARTIST. Personally, I'm not all that interesting in funding the RIAA...
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...