Thread: Apple Ruins My Life (again)

This kind of business practice is not uncommon at all. Most large businesses own bits and pieces of their direct competators, indeed some own the whole lot. What is now the VW group for example.

Also, it's not unusual for a company to have complete control of the products it produces. You might find that the companies with the best reputation for quality are more expensive and also more particular about the materials they use and also where the product is made.

I use Spotify (listening to Cat Power while I type this), and love it! It does not have absolutely everything, but more than enough for background listening while at work....and is free, just a few adds now and there, although a lot less than in any commercial radio.

Spotify is good.

Originally Posted by gregs656

This kind of business practice is not uncommon at all. Most large businesses own bits and pieces of their direct competators, indeed some own the whole lot. What is now the VW group for example.

Also, it's not unusual for a company to have complete control of the products it produces. You might find that the companies with the best reputation for quality are more expensive and also more particular about the materials they use and also where the product is made.

gregs, I'm no stranger to big business (I'm a part of it). I know how mergers and acquisitions work.

My point is that in this particular case, they are almost absolutely going to dumb down a superior product because the format does not contribute to their bottom line.

They bought the company to serve as an injunction for them to compete at a higher level with a better product. Now, they will likely cripple the better product.

Usually, big companies gobble up smaller companies for increased market share and new technology. This acquisition just doesn't seem to play out that way.

We'll see. I hope I'm wrong.

Originally Posted by GadgetGeek

thats already happening, and happening a lot. the threat to new artists, be they musicians or authors, is obscurity, not "pirates"

In my line of business, I hear this line almost every week, ever since Cory Doctorow coined the phrase (or was it Tim O'Reilly? I forget.)

I agree it is true: the greater threat is definitely obscurity. But if only it was a case of one or the other. The biggest threat may be obscurity, but in my opinion the second biggest is piracy. The former must be addressed by the creative industries -- it's their responsibility to ensure they represent their artists properly and publicise/promote/list/catalogue their products such that end users can discover/find/buy the products easily.

The latter is much harder to tackle. But I believe you cannot rely on punitive measures alone. Instead, you need a three-legged stool of:
[1] law/punitive measures;
[2] new business models which the creative industries MUST explore and implement, including alternatives to the current model of scarcity and possibly alternatives some of the historical models of copyright;
[3] schools, higher education institutions, and universities teaching the value of intellectual property and the importance of copyright as a way to protect that IP and reward the efforts of the content creator.

It's not just about content either. Take the case of pharma companies and their R&D. Without IP protection or copyright or patents, they would have no incentive to spend millions researching new and better medicines.

I like the idea of Spotify. It's a real sign that music companies are (albeit begrudgingly) engaging with point 2 above. It does not rely on old models and instead works along licensing and subscription as a way to deliver money to artists and publishers. I don't for one minute believe it will replace the old revenue streams and keep them as profitable, but it will keep them alive until such time that they find a more equitable model.

Majurey, I think we do agree in principal on this. My personal opinion though is that things are far and away out of hand.
1. Yes we do need laws and punitive measures to protect the IP, however right now those laws are so insane that they do more to kill creativity than to protect those creating right now. most law makers are so worried about protecting the now, that public domain is being lost, which I think is tragic. Also given that internet access is becoming as much a right as electricity, the current 3 strike rules are kinda scary, especially considering that there is no real judicial process in it. its like being charged for DWI just because someone saw a red car driving funny, and you own a red car.

2. yes we need a new business model. If these companies would treat their customers like customers, and not like criminals, I think their problems would be over quickly. (DRM and such has been the worst thing for media companies imho) Case in point, several non-DRM Ebooks have been released, and sales have matched projected sales estimates of the DRM version.

3. I agree that education is a huge part of this, and if schools could use the public domain easily and show "this is old and free, this is new and paid for, here are the differences, and why" then we would be far ahead, however if universities are stuck with relatively few works to pull from, there is no incentive for them and the students to just go find what they need, regardless of who owns it. Its a case of the miser holding on to everything, using little, and as such getting robbed of it all. Another case of this is the recent move by CBS to not release tapes of the Jack Benny show, even though they are public domain, they have the only copies, so they can just bury it because they feel like it. its not like they have to do any work, and a piece of culture dies. how much more has been lost? This as well as the recent court cases of "sell now, pay later" practices show that its not about copyright at all, its about profit.

As for the pharma companies, shorter patent protection actually forces more innovation, and the current model means that a lot of research dies in the filing cabinet long before production. there is also the problem of ethics, in that these drugs can save lives, and the drug companies withhold them from people who cannot afford first world prices. And instead release drugs of questionable safety simply because there is a large and profitable demand for them.
I don't think that they should be forced to allow poorer countries to produce the drugs, but I do think that they should not be able to keep those countries from producing them. simple fact is that eventually those countries will develop that same compound in isolation, it is bound to happen, so why not just let them have the formula. And its not like these countries want to produce the entire pharmacopoeia, just a few, like say the AIDS drugs, or maybe anti-malaria meds. just the ones that, you know, keep everyone from dieing. something tells me that south africa isn't needing cheap prozac.

Edit: Sorry its kind of rantish, I just don't find many people willing to debate, most are one side or the other. hopefully I can learn something.

Yes, I think we do agree mostly. Three years ago I would have been more at the DRM end of the spectrum, but... well, a lot can happen in three years to change one's opinion.

My company is currently looking at shifting our DRM policy from 'hard' DRM (technical restrictive methods) to 'social' DRM -- primarily secure watermarking, at a transactional level, so that people can do whatever they like with the file, but there's a message that encourages honest behaviour, and an invisible watermark which, if found on a fileshare site, can be traced to a specific transaction in time. In other words, the warning is still there, but the restrictions are gone. If you are so moved to torrent it or put it up on a fileshare site, then you can, but it can be traced back to you.

Would we prosecute someone who leaked their file? It all depends. There's very little value in seeking a jail term or even a fine. We've been there with music. Pointless. But we might look at our most at-risk products, for example textbooks. I believe if we got colleges on board, the threat of kicking someone out of their university course for copyright infringement and the idea that they might jeopardise their own degree, is a far bigger deterrent to sharing a £60 textbook than saying "you'll be fined/jailed".

The fact is, as a college textbook publisher, we're up against beer money. No contest! Where we used to sell 20 print copies to a class, we now might end up selling one copy which gets emailed to all other students. (And it has happened with many of our texts -- I've seen it with my own eyes.) That can't carry on long before we have no business left. My own thought is that we stop selling downloads, and instead sell access online, with all content held in the Cloud. That would have a huge impact on the rate of piracy. Technologically, it's starting to happen. Streaming book content is peanuts compared to streaming music and film. Amazon has started things off, and this year Google will sell ebooks which are held in the Cloud.

But yes, I'm beginning to think DRM has no place today. Be it Apple's music, Universal's films, or ebooks from Amazon. The models like Spotify, Hulu and Google are far from being the saviour of the creative industries, but they may just be a stepping stone.

from the sounds of it, your industry has had all of the negatives, and few of the positives, ie, the students can pirate the book, but they already knew it was there, so its not like you get publicity out of it. I agree with you that the cloud is probably part of the solution, making getting the book for pay easier than it can be had for free. the used market for hardcopy textbooks is huge, but one copy remains one copy, unlike in the digital world.

like I said before, it would be easier to teach respect for copyright, if there was an equally available public domain. and ultimatly that is the only way this can work, more laws just make more crimials.