The Many Battle Fronts of Content Owners

museumpeace writes "This community constantly chews on stories like the first sale doctrine and the endless maneuvering of RIAA, MPAA, follies of DMCA and DRM in general. I think of each of those stories as like trying to make sense of a particular earthquake. In the Huffington Post, blogger Jonathan Handel succinctly lays out six tectonic market and technology forces that provide a map for all of this. Sample his point #5, the media is the money: 'Fifth is market forces in the technology industry. Computers, web services, and consumer electronic devices are more valuable when more content is available. In turn, these products make content more usable by providing new distribution channels. Traditional media companies are slow to adopt these new technologies, for fear of cannibalizing revenue...'"

Comments

What?

[esocid]

It's true that people still consume media the old-fashioned way -- but fewer and fewer do so every day. Most of the content industries are seeing flat or declining revenues and audiences.

I'm sorry but you sir must not be aware of what is going on in the world.

1. Movie ticket sales at record high.
2. Cable company reports record sales.
3. Digital sales boost music industry.

Should I go on?
He may be correct about newspapers declining, but the other points I believe are false.

Re:What?

[jedidiah]

Well, for cable you figure they already have a saturated market. All they can really
do is tread water. They continue to provide what they have always provided to whom
they always provide it (much like Microsoft).

The status quo is for cable companies to stay more or less in the same place.

If people were really doing what the commentator says then you would see a sudden
drop in cable revenue as people begin to cancel their cable subscriptions. I know
torrent freaks that have done this.

However, this is a relatively rare thing.

This article also ignores the possibility of people buying conventional
content for the express purpose of using it for thier new technology. A
bunch of DVD's ripped into a media center can be a thing of beauty.

Ultimately all content has to compete with each other. One game studio
owner once said that their games have to compete with everything else
a person could do including sex. So their games have to be better than
sex.

One part of the media market could be getting sacked by another. If the
RIAA is whining it could be because of the rise of DVD collections and
video games. It doesn't even need to be due to some other sort of "sea
change".

As I often like to say... I got distracted on my way to the CD aisle
buy that big bin of $5 DVDs and those racks of $7.50 DVDs...

Free Market Economy

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

If companies won't provide the goods the market (read:the population) desires, then someone will. And if necessity is the mother of invention ... and the market isn't supplying what 'we' want - then someone will find it necessary to modify the offerings of various companies to fit our 'needs'.

Plain and simple, if you aren't supplying a product that people want ... then don't complain when people use alternatives (legal or not!)

Re:the term "disruptive technology"

[nine-times]

i think the music industry would never have been able to get in front of this steamroller

I think your point would be better served to agree that the music industry could have gotten in front of this steamroller, but they would have gotten run over anyway.

I half agree with you and half disagree. The music industry cannot survive as-is in the Internet-age because their business model, centered around distribution, is obsolete. However, that doesn't mean that they can't survive in some form. There's still room for them to act as agents, marketing/branding whatever they can, and making money of merchandizing and general crap.

Also, there can be a business model from the Internet distribution. Being the content host (or even just the tracker site) and providing recommendation engines can still be a feasible business. Whether you charge a nominal fee per transaction, a small subscription fee, or live off ad revenue, there would be a business model there.

Think of it this way, if copyright law was dismantled tomorrow, Apple could still make money off of iTMS. Not having to pay labels, I think they could still have a viable business. You might think people would just find other free sources, but the fact is that customers are willing to pay a little bit of money (at least a little) in order to have a site that's easy to search, has good/uncorrupted content, a good shopping experience, and a decent recommendation engine.