Posted by a smart guy on other forums. Posted here with his permission. Thank you, Robert. While I think his example of 50 cents is a bit extreme, I think he got the right, fundamental ideas down pat.
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The conflict between the present and the future is heating up.
The analog creators business model is faltering into the Recycle bin of history.
That which worked fine in 1950's tech - ad-based tv, is in stormy digital seas.
Don't get me wrong. I am pro-business and pro-creators. I am also a computer scientist. The technology is WAY ahead of the business models. The media frenzy on stealing is WAY over-estimated. The fascist mentality pervades the business media moguls. The fallacy that some great future will arise out of some new good law. Just as enforcement of the past via regulations is believed to preserve the status quo. They think that screaming theft! will somehow get a law to coerce viewers into behaviors they prefer. Forgetting that information tech is not classically regulatable. That rebound popularity of suppressed items is nearly istantaneous. Attempt to create a legal OS and the illegal OS will proliferate at light speed.
Not understanding that it's time to roll-out huge digital pipes and light the million miles of optical fiber that has been laid down the tv networks are, instead, up in arms and angry as hell. Not understanding that if micropayment was fully available with the above, nobody would bother to store (why should I waste my disk space), and would gladly pay 10 cents every time we ordered up the Matrix digitally.
-- those of us who use PVR (digital VCR) DO skip most commercials to squeeze down an hour viewing to 43 minutes. (Yes, there are upto 17 minutes of commercials)--
Turner Broadcasting CEO Jamie Kellner is calling PVR users thieves. When asked why personal video recorders are bad for the industry, Keller says 'Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.'
Like, duh, noone fast forwards on the VCR.... which uhhh, let's people actually watch shows that otherwise they would have missed... with ads they wouldn't have seen. 0-0=0 anyone?
I am so , so tired by all this. Let's get it straight. The new contract is as follows in the digital era.
Whatever content I get, paid or free [eg. ad-based tv], I have the right (and ability to do this regardless of what laws are passed, so get with the program):
Until such time that the micropayment digital pipe is available. Then the combo of price and performance will obselete any need for PVR's---
1. Make a copy for personal use. Period. End of story.
2. Space shift. I get to move it from CD to DVD to hard-drive to optical storage to my terabyte raid cluster.
[Don't have a terabyte raid cluster... yet...]
3. Time shift. If I'm not around, I get to store it for later viewing. See above.
Now, a bunch of morons out there that can't distinguish between making a copy for personal use and broadcasting to the Internet, which is THEFT. However, the nature of the digital universe is that if one copy can be made infinite copies can be made.
Now, all computation involves bit shifts and copies. It is therefore IMPOSSIBLE, to create a situation where copying does not occur. Think about it. Take a super-duper encrypted stream where I have the device that decrypts. Think a DVD disc and the DVD player if you don't like the abstraction. No matter what, I can make a carbon copy of the stream or the DVD disc. And there is no way to prevent it because it is intrinsic in COMPUTATION to COPY. You move data around, redirecting a stream is trivial. Pipe it back out to a recording device (or a hard drive) and your done. Note that decrypting the disc was NEVER necessary.
If you deploy a vast digital rights media control in ALL the operating systems, it still won't work. The transaction volume, the Intellectual Property Police cost, the trials, the ill will, the fact that incomplete suppression will result in increased profit of middlemen like for drugs, will result in an apathetic industry - technically and creatively.
This is the result of not realizing that long cash streams are not coherent with digital media. By now, there should be a massive subscriber model. Eg. Imagine Starwars Episode II. Released worldwide, simultaneously, on digital pipes to 2 billion individuals at 50 cents per viewing. Tadaa $ 1 billion in the coffers. No forward going costs other than digital distribution. No problems even if its a flop!!!
It's time to grow up.
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posted 05-02-2002 22:38
