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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
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
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.
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
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!
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.
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 .
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