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Media Monopoly: Thomas Edison to Hillary Rosen
An anonymous reader writes "George Ziemann has posted two excellent articles that explore the early days of the recording and music industry, how their attempts to monopolize their respective mediums in the past failed, and how their attempts to do so strangely mirror those presently being undertaken by contemporary media conglomerates to control digital distribution over the Net. Seems the two industries back at the turn of the century tried to pool their patents to block out competition like the RIAA and the big media companies today pool their copyrights. The first article "The Dawn of Recorded Music and the First Pirates" focuses on early collusion in the phonograph industry. The second "Music, Movies and Monopoly" on Thomas Edison's failed attempts to restrain fair trade in the two new media he gave commercial rise to."
Seems the two industries back at the turn of the century tried to pool their patents to block out competition like the RIAA and the big media companies today pool their copyrights.
Because of those patents, Starr-Gennett "along with several other companies" were sued in the early Nineteen-Twenties, which the the American Graphophone Company (Columbia) and the Victor Talking Machine Co. Lost.
The Second Circuit Court of appeals held the patent void for lack of invention and for abandonment.
Not only did the lawsuit effectively end the majors' monopolization of lateral recording, it formed a bond between the smaller companies which had joined the Gennetts in the legal battle. Leasing arrangements between the companies followed, eventually involving hundreds of masters.
His tech was better fidelity, less backing by popular artists, and less accepted by the public. The book "The Invisible Computer" really does a good job of telling Edison's story, I highly suggest you read it.
Edison's story teaches me that in emerging technology, one must establish a monopoly if there is to be any stability in future markets. If one standard is not a clear winner, the consumer is the clear loser. Consumers will sacrifice quality for market saturation every time.
Pulling statistics out of our ass now, eh? "Odds are" that any given person is not employed by a big corp. According to US Small Business Administration stats for 2000, out of 5.8 million non-farm employer firms, about 100,000 had over 100 employees, and only about 16,000 had over 500 employees. You do the math.
Now, if you were to say that large corporations wield more power than their minority status should allow, then I'd agree...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Right ... record companies are not in competition with each other.
... and going up in unison. Whenever you see all the market participants raise their prices in unison without any apparent reason you dont have competition you have a cartel.
If you want to see fierce competition, look at soft drinks or snack foods or beer -- notice how there is so much fierce advertising, and price wars going on. Also each company is always trying to come up with something new.
In the record industry there are no price wars. Prices are actually going up
Actually in France people have free healthcare, free education, 6 weeks of vacation a year and a move towards a 6 hour work day...
Edison's invention of the phonograph was a huge breakthrough. There are no antecedents. He himself said, in later life, that it was the only truly original thing he ever invented.
There's a complicated story here, involving cylinders vs. records, vertical recording vs. horizontal recording, and some related technical issues. Originally, there were only original recordings. It took a while to figure out how to duplicate records. Early schemes involved one phonograph playing into the recording horns of many others, sort of like VHS duplication with worse generation loss. Then there was a scheme for duplicating via electroplating. It years to find a set of materials that allowed good pressings.
A more music-industry like issue is that Edison's record company decided that, rather than recording big-name musicians, they'd find less famous ones that sounded just as good. This turned out to be a major marketing mistake. The Victor Talking Machine Company started to gain market share because of this.
On a related note, the history of the incandescent lamp is usually misunderstood. The way to make an incandescent lamp is to find some material with a high melting point, draw it out into fine wire, make a coil out of it, put it in a bulb with vacuum or inert gases, and power it up. This was known before Edison. Swan made light bulbs before Edison, but he used platinum. All bulbs today use tungsten, which was tough to make into wire. General Electric Research, the successor of Edison's lab, solved that problem. It took years and sizable resources.
That's not what Edison invented. He invented a way to make low-cost bulbs with carbonized paper filaments. That was a mediocre technology, but way ahead of gas lamps. It was good enough to get the electrical industry going, and it was phased out as soon as tungsten technology worked. Sort of like CP/M or MS-DOS.
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it" --George Santayana
There was a sign that said the same thing over Jim Jones' corpse in Jonestown.
There's no monopoly. However a few companies now
u es/PID.jsp?articleid= 6850
control the vast majority of media outlets in the US.
If you'd follow the news, you would have stumbled
upon some articles mentioning this, because the FCC
currently plans to further deregulate the market.
If you'd followed the news even more closely, you'd
also have read about a little scandal about 2500
sponsored flight tickets for FCC members.
After short googling, this article seems to be quite
informative:
http://www.corpwatch.org/iss