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...'"

Totally offtopic

But I loved that huge headline on the article: "Vanilla Ice Arrested."

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Serving notice to all the haters who said he couldn't even get arrested.... that's how he rolls!

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Yea, he gunna smack you up like he did his ho.

What?

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 [latimes.com].
2. Cable company reports record sales [primenewswire.com].
3. Digital sales boost music industry [variety.com].

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

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The first two sentences of the 3rd link: "The music biz can't stem the bleeding, but for now, digital tracks are proving to be a secure Band-aid. Album sales dropped for a seventh consecutive year."

That helps prove his point that fewer people are consuming

Re:What?

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...

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"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."

Couldn't they try to popularize gaming among individuals for whom sexual partnership is not

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Your LA Times link is broken. I imagine that article measures ticket sales in dollars. Measuring ticket sales by revenue is a terrible way to measure the success of an industry because it doesn't account for inflation. [wsj.com] After accounting for inflation, mo

Re:What?

I would like to point out that all of these links are using dollar amounts as a measurement tool, without accounting for changes in price.

I can make more money selling 90 widgets at $6 than selling 100 widgets at $5.

A quick google search for ("movie ticket sales" record high) comes up with about 600 items, most of which reference the same quote.

"Moviegoers around the world pushed global box office revenues to a record $26.7 billion in 2007,

• but rising ticket prices and a weakening dollar accounted for much of the increase,

the Motion Picture Association of America said Wednesday."

If even the mpaa has been forced to admit that the majority of the sales increase has been due to price increases, the odds are "Most" in this case means almost all.

Another quote from the same article http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/ap/20080305/120477504000.html [yahoo.com]

Revenues in the United States and Canada increased 5.4 percent to a record $9.6 billion, with

• admissions unchanged at 1.4 billion tickets sold,

and ticket prices 5 percent higher at an average $6.88.

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I've learned that generally, I'm not very exceptional. It may be true that movie ticket sales are at record highs and digital sales are boosting the music industry revenues, but I'm guessing that a growing number of people are finding "alternative" ways t

the term "disruptive technology"

is often used, like the phrase "paradigm shift" to give oomph to other wise boring corporate blather

however, in this case, the term disruptive technology is entirely functional: the internet is completely destroying the music industry

the book industry and the movie industry are standing in handcuffs on the stairs to the guillotine, helplessly watching their brethren being beheaded. they watch in disbelief as the cheering masses they used to lord over relish the sight of the bloodsport of their demise

i'm sorry, but a free and open network where any media can be transmitted effortlessly and without interception is not a business opportunity. its a replacement for an industry based on distribution. people keep talking about the fact that the music industry could have gotten in front of changing technology and used it to their advantage, rather than change taking place without them while they sat in denial. i have the contrary opinion: i think the music industry would never have been able to get in front of this steamroller

they were never able to, no matter how much time they had to prepare. there is simply no way for the music industry to harness the internet to their continued existence. the internet, the substance of it, is simply anathema to what they do: charge a fee for music distribution. the internet is simply replacing them. effortless free distribution has no economics too it. there's no money to be made

of course there is money to be made in related industries: concerts, advertising tie-ins, band and brand building, etc. but anything having to do with distributing media is simply a free advertising platform, nothing more. the anicllary businesses is what the music industry will morph into, a decimated diminished form of its former self

the only way the music industry could survive unaltered by the internet is to invent a time machine and go back to the 1960s and murder the arpanet researchers. you cannot harness that which means your doom. asking or expecting the music industry to get in front of technological change and make it work for them is like asking the incan and aztec nobility to get in front of the spanish conquistadors and use them to their advantage. as in: no way that's going to happen

your doom is your doom. music distribution conglomerates are simply a business model for the historical dustbin. there is no other way to interpret what the internet means to them. the internet is not a "business challenge" for them to meet with fast footwork and fancy innovative thinking. it is simply an appointment with death. and i will be mourning their passing just as soon as i get over my shock and pain over the passing of the dtuch east india company. as in: who cares. the world keeps turning, life keeps changing. its a done deal. the story is over. goodbye sony bmg, bertelsmann, et al. buh bye. stop banging on your coffin. your dead. realize it

Re:the term "disruptive technology"

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.

agreed, 100%

because we both recognize the fundamental change here: you can't charge anymore. you label as "still in business" what i label as "morph into a lesser self" but this is a trivial semantic meaning versus pragmatic meaning difference

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i'm sorry, but a free and open network where any media can be transmitted effortlessly and without interception is not a business opportunity. its a replacement for an industry based on distribution. people keep talking about the fact that the music industry could have gotten in front of changing technology and used it to their advantage, rather than change taking place without them while they sat in denial. i have the contrary opinion: i think the music industry would never have been able to get in front of this steamroller ...

This is the wrong kind of thinking, and the exact same kind of thinking which lead to the lawsuits and attempts to stamp down on digital distribution.

You are wrong because of the success of iTunes. That, in and of itself, shows that online distribution ca

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there is simply no way for the music industry to harness the internet to their continued existence. the internet, the substance of it, is simply anathema to what they do: charge a fee for music distribution. the internet is simply replacing them. effortles

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Someone still needs to scout talent; just because you can pound out off-key versions of your classic rock favorites, that doesn't necessarily mean anyone else wants to listen to it.

What, without record companies to help us along we'd have to sift throug

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I shudder to think of how 'television' would work if it was being invented now in the US. There would be multiple, competing broadcast formats (why would the FCC require the use of a single standard, because multiple standards are working so well for the

Richard Stallman on the word "content"

If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say you are "content", but using it as a noun to describe written and other works of authorship is worth avoiding. That usage adopts a specific attitude towards those works: that t

Free Market Economy

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!)

Content value = zero

What has happened is a complete disconnect between the content producers and the consumers. At least most of the content producers view their material as something extremely valuable that took their time, energy and creativity to produce. Consumers are

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What has happened is a complete disconnect between the content producers and the consumers. At least most of the content producers view their material as something extremely valuable that took their time, energy and creativity to produce. Consumers are loo

Nobody is out there reporting

The music industry doesn't really matter, but the decline of newspaper reporting is important to society. There are too few reporters out there digging. Bloggers don't help; they're mostly mouthing off, not out gathering unpublished information.

Call you

Barrier to entry...

There's a barrier to entry for bloggers who do want to do legwork. They don't get the same access as reporters. Can they get into the city council meetings to report on them? Council meetings, probably, but there's lots of other places they can't.

As I said

When you shoot yourself in the foot you lose value

Over all a good article, but could have mentioned other things the content companies are doing which devalue the content they have. Take movies. I used to enjoy going to the movies. Now it easily costs $30 per person (much higher admission and exorbitant charge for food) to be jammed into a theater of inconsiderate people and then herded out as quickly as possible so the next showing can start. While I'm waiting for the movie to start, I'm bombarded with advertising telling me how great of time I'm having or telling me I need to buy something. It's no longer worth it.

For those that don't know, The studios (content owners) take almost all of the admission revenue and the theaters (content packaging) make their money on concession and other sales. In an effort to squeeze every last cent they can out of the goer (customer) they've lost many customers. To try to subsidize revenue, 'lost' from customers they drove away, they squeeze some more, driving even more away (snowball). How many mega-plexes have you seen closed down. Many drive-ins still offer a good experience for a reasonable price.

When a customer no longer finds going to the theater worth the cost/hassle, they might wait till it is released on DVD. If they still remember they wanted to see a particular movie they buy the DVD, pop it in their player and are blasted with an advertisement telling them not to steal the DVD they just paid for. They then have to wait through another notices about not copying the movie before waiting through the same notice in another language.

Do the studios actually believe that bombarding someone, who already paid, with irritating threats and warnings is going to increase the odds they will spend hard earned money the next time they want to see a movie?

Now it's the next time and wouldbe customer has to decide it they want to
1. Spend more money, which is harder to come by, to be inundated with advertisements and other baggage, just to have a less enjoyable experience seeing the movie. OR
2. Download it where they won't have all the other bothers. They may think it's wrong, but it doesn't matter as much to them because the perceived victim (the studio) was trying to take advantage of them and the the RIAA is mean/greedy the way they aggressively go after poor college students

The more the content provider does to irritate the customer, the more the customer will cease to be a customer.

I used to be one of the movie business' biggest customers. Now I go hiking, and the Internet gets the blame.

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Thank you for that! I hope your comment gets highly rated by the mods.

I want to add that I have a SERIOUS problem with this topic's title. NOBODY owns "content", EVERYBODY owns it. I have a legal monopoly on sale and distribution of my content, but I DO NO