I think Napster has it all wrong. Napster is playing victim and is trying apease RIAA. All it has to do is turn the tables in the following manner.
I have the customers. This is probably going to be your last chance to setup a system that works with all those people in one place, and with the exposure we have. More people have heard of the "Napster" brand name that any one label. The news mention it so often. We have more customer loyalty than any one label.
So here is the deal, I leave it to you to come up with a working scheme. If you stuff it up, the customers will get burnt. In the advertising industry it is 100 times more expensive to get an upset customer back than it is to get him the first time.
People will continue to want the "Napster experience TM", but they will never ever trust RIAA to do it right again. They emerging technologies will be RIAA proof. That is open source (or democracy if you may) for you.
The difference until now is that content providors did not side with content producers. If Sony makes music available only through a secure format tied with the OS the is little you can do if you want to hear it come from your speakers.
Microsoft has two problems...
One is that too many people have CDs. So Sony will produce for that market.
The other is that MS cannot force people to buy their OS. They have secure ways to destibute windows and make sure everybody that has it pays for it. If they do that you would probably get half a billion more people using Linux because they can't afford Windows. (Windows becomes more expensive if you have to pay for everything you use like word processors)
That may trigger a new eara in open source were a new generation of programmers and contributers come to open source.
If it wans't for Linux, the computer/music industry would be very different.
I pray for the day MS windows becomes subscription only and veryfiable via the internet:-)
Slashdot Mirror
I think Napster has it all wrong. Napster is playing victim and is trying apease RIAA. All it has to do is turn the tables in the following manner. I have the customers. This is probably going to be your last chance to setup a system that works with all those people in one place, and with the exposure we have. More people have heard of the "Napster" brand name that any one label. The news mention it so often. We have more customer loyalty than any one label. So here is the deal, I leave it to you to come up with a working scheme. If you stuff it up, the customers will get burnt. In the advertising industry it is 100 times more expensive to get an upset customer back than it is to get him the first time. People will continue to want the "Napster experience TM", but they will never ever trust RIAA to do it right again. They emerging technologies will be RIAA proof. That is open source (or democracy if you may) for you.
The difference until now is that content providors did not side with content producers. If Sony makes music available only through a secure format tied with the OS the is little you can do if you want to hear it come from your speakers.
...
:-)
Microsoft has two problems
One is that too many people have CDs. So Sony will produce for that market.
The other is that MS cannot force people to buy their OS. They have secure ways to destibute windows and make sure everybody that has it pays for it. If they do that you would probably get half a billion more people using Linux because they can't afford Windows. (Windows becomes more expensive if you have to pay for everything you use like word processors)
That may trigger a new eara in open source were a new generation of programmers and contributers come to open source.
If it wans't for Linux, the computer/music industry would be very different.
I pray for the day MS windows becomes subscription only and veryfiable via the internet
George