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Cory Doctorow Calls Death To Music, Movies, Print

Posted by timothy on from the low-hanging-fruit dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow depicts an unfortunate near-future for a handful of media industries being transformed or killed by the Internet. Predicting a large-scale transformation of the music, movie, book, and newspaper industry, Doctorow says, 'The Internet chews up media and spits them out again. Sometimes they get more robust. Sometimes they get more profitable. Sometimes they die.' While the Internet has the potential to help the dying book industry, for example, Doctorow predicts the 'imminent collapse' of the American newspaper industry because advertisers are uninterested in spending money on the remaining offline readership, such as senior citizens, who prove less valuable."

7 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  2. don't forget radio... by SuperBanana · · Score: 2, Informative

    Television news didn't eliminate the newspaper, and neither will the internet. Change it, of course, eliminate, no way !

    Don't forget radio, the second-oldest medium. Still alive, kicking, and well. Why, we even have a huge radio system supported in large part by private donations...gasp! Shows like Lake Woebegone and Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me live and indeed embrace new media; I listen to WWDTM all the time via my my iPod, downloaded via podcasts.

    This latest is just the gasp of a flunkie, uneducated has-been science fiction author whose work is so spectacularly bad that he had never had a commercially successful work.

    Cory Doctorow learned that people didn't like having to pay to watch movies, TV, and movies. A simpleton pundit who appeals to naivete; at the end of the day, nobody's forcing you to pay to listen to music. While Doctorow has bitched and moaned about copyright, the rest of the world keeps right on truckin', same as always, writing and performing in all media without much care towards copyright. I can go right now to three local bars and listen to bands perform songs, and a fair number of 'em will probably be covers, copyrighted work by someone else.

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    Please help metamoderate.
    1. Re:don't forget radio... by David+McBride · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can bash the man if you like, but you'd be more convincing if you laid off the ad hominem attacks and got your facts straight:

      This latest is just the gasp of a flunkie, uneducated has-been science fiction author whose work is so spectacularly bad that he had never had a commercially successful work.

      On the contrary; his latest novel "Little Brother" made the New York Times Bestseller list (Childrens), reaching the #8 spot after 6 weeks. It's had multiple print runs, been published in both the US and the UK, where they've sold well, and has been nominated for and granted a range of literary awards.

      I'd say that qualifies as a commercially successful work by any reasonable definition!

  3. The death of the newspaper by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative

    The death of the newspaper is getting close. As the article says, is that "newspapers are fundamentally an advertising-supported medium", and they're not a very good advertising-delivery medium. They're not targeted, and they're not searchable. Classified advertising is dying.

    But nobody is taking over general news reporting. Blogs don't have real reporters, just pundits. TV covers the big stories, but there's no depth.

    Only a few services aimed at the investment community do real reporting and make money by selling their content. The Wall Street Journal makes most of its money from subscriptions, not ads. Dow Jones (the WSJ's parent) makes more revenue on line than from the print edition. The future of news reporting is Bloomberg. Bloomberg is entirely on line, has more reporters than any newspaper in the US, and to get the good stuff in real time, hundreds of thousands of traders pay serious money. After some delay, Bloomberg puts out summaries for free.

    There's still noise about "micropayments", but having watched everybody from Digicash to Cybercoin to Beenz go down, I doubt micropayments on the Internet will ever catch on. Phone-based systems, though...

    Also, "crowdsourcing" a movie is a fantasy. Every once in a great while, somebody produces a good movie on a low budget, but that's rare. Roger Corman could do it, but nobody else seems to be able to bring it off.

  4. How can I dig this down? by gadlaw · · Score: 2, Informative

    Cory Doctorow has a Crystal Ball into the present - big woop. He's 'predicting' what is happening now. This looks like someone just trying to get clicks to that site which I ignore. Nothing cool or interesting there and there's nothing like some pronouncements into the future that are just rehashing the headlines of today.

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    Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
  5. 10 years late? by Sir+Holo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Isn't Cory's brilliant insight coming about 10 years late?

  6. Sony PRS-505 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    What you ask for exists on the market today. The Sony Reader supports the latest open e-book format (EPUB), as well as TXT, RTF, and HTML, and syncs via USB as a Mass Storage device.

    Runs for months on standby, and about a week or two of hour-a-day on-the-bus reading, in my personal unscientific experience.

    Would not travel without it.