2004 saw a lot of digital media battles fought and for the first time those battles spilled over into the homes of average consumers. Most notable was the Recording Industry Association of America*s (RIAA*s) quest to stamp out file sharing by forcing ISPs to turn over their customers information and then suing those customers (learn more).
It wasn*t hard to predict that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wouldn*t be far behind in adopting draconian tactics to maintain the status quo. One of my favorite technology voices Cory Doctrow has written an article for Popular Science which doesn*t have any revolutionary news but sums up what is happening with the movie industry quite nicely.
Think of all the things you can do with a track from a CD now that you couldnï¿œt do 10 years ago: rip it to your laptop, turn it into a ring tone, send it to your friends, burn a mix. Many of these capabilities are illegal, and the recording industry has tried to stop them all, but theyï¿œre out there, challenging the old rules and feeling their place in the market. Innovators have tried to enable the same flexibility for the DVD. Last year 321 Studios released software that let you back up prerecorded DVDs, but the MPAA sued it into bankruptcy before a court could rule on whether or not the product was legal.
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The VCR exists because a behemoth with deep pockets stood up for it. But today, only easily crushed upstarts are willing to take chances, and the big tech firms are all in the entertainment business themselves. Sony recently bought MGM to secure content for Blu-Ray. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and of the animation studio Pixar, told studio heads and tech leaders in a private meeting that studios shouldnï¿œt release anything for the DVD-HD format until they get a promise that recorders will never appear in a PC.
And just to really spit in the eye of the media industry, Entertainment Weekly named DJ Danger Mouse*s Grey Album its Album of the Year despite the fact that it was created in violation of antiquated copyright laws.
So what does 2005 hold? More of the same in all likely hood. In case anyone from the aforementioned industry groups read this I*d like to point a couple of things out.
1) I will not be buying any music through traditional channels in 2005. I will not be purchasing CDs from Borders or the mall*s smattering of music stores. This is not because I*m stealing your product from a P2P network. Its because your product is over priced and I can find quality music much cheaper by simply looking up artists from CD Baby or better yet just going to the artist*s site and downloading the tracks leagally.
2) If you would like for me to buy your products you are going to have to come to me. Sell me non-DRMed content at a reasonable price and you will get my money. iTunes is great but the restrictions placed on the system make it not worth the effort. Let*s try something like what Stuart Davis is doing. Now, I know that you won*t do this because a system like that only benefits the artist and not the multi-billion dollar company running the lawsuits. But then, you*ve always said that you were just protecting the artists right?
Ok, enough soap-boxing for this morning. Instead of reading, why don*t you go check out Joe, Ryan, Shannon, Front, Scott, and Brad. They are all happy to offer you good music at reasonable (or free!) prices without all the hassle of a lawsuit.
