Why Make a Sequel of the Napster Wars?

6 writes "Cory Doctorow has an interesting article over at Information Week about Hollywood's strategy of suing sites such as YouTube. Says Doctorow: 'It's been eight years since Sean Fanning created Napster in his college dorm room. Eight years later, there isn't a single authorized music service that can compete with the original Napster. Record sales are down every year, and digital music sales aren't filling in the crater. The record industry has contracted to four companies, and it may soon be three if EMI can get regulatory permission to put itself on the block. The sue-'em-all-and-let-God-sort-'em-out plan was a flop in the box office, a flop in home video, and a flop overseas. So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?'"

Comments

Well

[spiritraveller]

So why is Hollywood shooting a remake?

Unlike the Napster case, Youtube has revenue sources (and Google can invest the additional funds needed to keep it afloat).

The studios, quite rightfully see a source of revenue there. It's not just a bunch of cheap bastards sharing amongst themselves. It's a multibillion dollar company making money off of THEIR content.

Should copyright just be abolished because we want free access to tv shows and movie clips?

Re:Well

[jc42]

Should copyright just be abolished because we want free access to tv shows and movie clips?

Nah; the copyright system should be abolished because it leads to our current mess in which a few giant companies use it to deprive the artists of their rightful income. We should toss such copyright laws, and devise a revised scheme that guarantees that the artists get most of the money.

Or we can continue along the path of zillions of skirmishes that hurt everyone, until it settles down to a new system. And hope that that new system can't find a new way to steal most of the artists' income and give it to a few fat cats who have a stranglehold on the distribution channels.

Curious

[David Hume]

Assume that the major movie studios produced high-quality full-length first run downloadable movies with no DRM whatsoever at a reasonable prices. (You define what is reasonable.) Any DRM-less format you prefer.

How many of you would "share" then with your friends? (By "share" I don't mean watch the movies with friends. I mean make copies of the movies for friends.) If so, how many friends?

Would you see anything wrong with posting your copy to an FTP site or the equivalent?

Would you see anything wrong sending copies to your closest 100 friends?

Just curious.

Re:Cory: It's called money

[kebes]

Now Napster was great for you, me, and all of other hepcats, but it kind of sucked for the artists and the recording companies.

But Cory's point was that Napster could have been transitioned into a wildly successful business, bringing cash to the recording companies. According to him:

Napster's plan was plausible. They had the fastest-adopted technology in the history of the world, garnering 52,000,000 users in 18 months -- more than had voted for either candidate in the preceding U.S. presidential election! -- and discovering, via surveys, that a sizable portion would happily pay between $10 and $15 a month for the service. What's more, Napster's architecture included a gatekeeper that could be used to lock out nonpaying users.

So if Napster had kept its tens-of-millions of users, and 50% of them were truly willing to pay $10/month, then that's billions of dollars a year that could have been pulled in. If that's not enough to support record companies and artists, then there is something seriously messed up with their businesses. The point is that users were willing to pay for the convenience of Napster: easy access to a massive catalog. The subscription model was also appealing to alot of people: you don't have to worry about how much you're downloading. There's a limit to how much music a person can listen to... so alot of people will actually end up spending more money on an $10/month subscription that they do on buying CDs. They will do so happily if the service suits their needs.

Cory believes there was a huge missed opportunity for the industry to re-invent itself, and make money in a new age.

The success of iTunes drives this point home: everyone knows you can get free copies of music from various websites. However people are willing to pay iTune prices for the convenience. The labels are still caught up in an old business model ("each copy a person listens to must be a trackable sale we have made") rather than accepting a new business model ("charge people a monthly fee for access to an exhaustive catalog").

pickup basketball with old guys

[BewireNomali]

Ever play pickup basketball with old guys? I'm a run and gun type player myself - and the old timers neutralize all that with the ground and pound. They back up the whole way down the court at two meters an hour, talking shit the whole way while swatting at you when you try to steal the ball. You get overzealous, he threads a backdoor pass from the three point line to the basket for an easy layup. It you tap the ball away he cries foul and complains that the young guys are beating up on the warhorses. Or he'll pump fake you like 14 times until you give up and he banks in the shot. old guys ALWAYS use the glass.

the lawsuits are that old guy - taking a speedy process and slowing it down to their pace in order to give them time to catch up. they call fouls all the time and make the whole process generally unpleasant at times. But they are doing what they need to do to WIN.

pointing out that the lawsuit strategy failed is assuming that it was to attempt to deter change - it's not. Big companies are about slowing down the process and milking every dime they can out of it. Innovating is an interesting thing. For every innovator who succeeds, countless others fail for reasons other than technical viability. The smart thing to for large moneyed firms to do is to wait - let the innovators do their thing; when the market reacts in kind - bully into the market with dollars and positioning. It's the lion chasing off the hyenas after they've made the kill. The king of the jungle feeds off carrion something like 30% of the time.

I'm certain I'll get modded down for this, but the future of this business is not in selling music. What the internet has taught us is that content is devalued by an inability to secure exclusivity of access. The future of media is not ITUNES - that's another example of slowing down change. It is not change itself. It is still selling music. the paradigm shift is that they are not going to sell MUSIC at all.