There’s a lot of meta going on in this strange little video.
The fact that you’re thinking “Can he get away with this?” the whole time is what makes it worth watching.
Archive for the 'Media Wars' Category
David Pogue points out that there’s a crushing generational wave coming:
Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I’d ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the demonstration bombed.
In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids’ morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.
Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, “O.K., let’s try one that’s a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don’t want to pay for it. So you download it.”
There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.
“Who thinks that might be wrong?”
Two hands out of 500.
I’ll post this without comment, except to say that sticking your head in the sand isn’t a viable business model for the future…
Unable to get the studios to pay them a pittance for online content, some writers are trying to do it for themselves.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this at all, and hastening the demise of the current system seems like an inevitable outcome of the strike. The studios still don’t get that they no longer own the sole means of transmission, and they don’t seem to understand that their ability to package and market content is at risk when you can get all your services ala carte.
There’s already some interesting independent web-centric production that started to show up before the strike began. Accelerating this trend won’t be good for the studios in the long run.
But I’m guessing the current mentality is, for some executives anyway, basically built around logic that begins and ends with “screw those guys”.
At the same time it looks like that some producers are starting to realize that they’re in competition with each other, not the writers. And some of them have more to lose, it turns out.
11
Dec
Amazon Insanity
Corey Doctorow talks about the insanity that overtakes Amazon every time they try to sell downloadable content:
Whenever Amazon tries to sell a digital download, it turns into one of the dumbest companies on the web.
Take the Kindle, the $400 handheld ebook reader that Amazon shipped recently, to vast, ringing indifference.
The device is cute enough - in a clumsy, overpriced, generation-one kind of way - but the early adopter community recoiled in horror at the terms of service and anti-copying technology that infected it. Ebooks that you buy through the Kindle can’t be lent or resold (remember, “when someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book…Everyone understands this.”)
The insanity is twofold really, because the content companies want to apply real-world metaphors only when they work in their favor. “Copying is stealing” only works as an idea when you compare digital content to the real thing, but once that content is in our hands they’re terrified what we might do with it.
As Doctorow points out, in Amazon’s case the personality disorder is even worse, since it’s such a good actor when it comes to physical goods.
It’s not just the Kindle, either. Amazon Unbox, the semi-abortive video download service, shipped with terms of service that included your granting permission for Amazon to install any software on your computer, to spy on you, to delete your videos, to delete any other file on your hard drive, to deny you access to your movies if you lose them in a crash. This comes from the company that will cheerfully ship you a replacement DVD if you email them and tell them that the one you just bought never turned up in the post.
If businesses become frozen with panic the moment they step into digital content they’ll be overtaken by a business model that doesn’t rely on a combination of fear and oppression to make a sale.
Print media loves to take pot-shots at the Internet. The New York Times especially, will often take what seems like a contrarian attitude to conventional web wisdom, and use it as the basis of a “looka whatsa happenin!” style article. But, on further reflection their “unique viewpoint” will often turn out to be one, that if were actually true, would be great for the bottom line of a business much like the New York Times.
Case in point is this article about how Consumer Reports magazine has managed to make money doing everything that no one else on the web is able to do:
Very few big publications have tried charging Web readers, and almost all of them have had second thoughts. The Wall Street Journal has most of its content behind a pay barrier, but its owner-to-be, the News Corporation, is reconsidering that policy. The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times tried charging for some online content, then abandoned the practice.
For a decade, however, Consumer Reports has charged Internet readers the same price as print subscribers, currently $26 a year (or $5.99 for a month’s online access or $45 a year to get the magazine both in print and on the Web). While the rest of the industry sees print readers as more valuable — because advertisers do — Consumer Reports actually makes more money from readers on its Web site, because it avoids printing, trucking and mailing costs.
But in the end it’s a poor analogy. Consumer Reports offer a unique service to an audience that actually comprehends value, so it’s not surprising that there audience is willing to pay to get to the information that they need. And for that particular crowd, paying to figure out what the best is is easily worth two dollars a month.
The whole thing is written in a tone that seems to be suggesting it’s miraculous, and almost adorable, that someone could be making a go of it on the web. But the Times itself is probably raking in some decent advertising money, so the whole exercise is a bit disingenuous.
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