Shocker: Entertainment Industry Worried About File Sharing
from the gee,-thanks... dept
In what may be the most pointless study done in quite some time, a research firm has determined that (no! really?!?) entertainment industry executives are worried about “digital piracy.” The study also found that many feel it’s already impacting their bottom line. Of course, what it doesn’t say is that just because they’re afraid of something, doesn’t mean it’s bad. This is the same industry that was once deathly afraid of the VCR and claimed it would completely destroy the movie industry — when it actually revived an industry that was in trouble. Also, just because something impacts your bottom line, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. The automobile business impacted the horse and buggy industry, but most people realized that was a good thing in the long run. If the horse and buggy makers had realized they were in the “transportation business” and not the “horse and buggy business,” they would have made out better. All it means is that the companies impacted need to learn to adjust to the changes they face in the market. So far, however, the entertainment industry hasn’t shown the ability to do that with these latest changes. Instead of realizing what the “entertainment industry” really means, executives think that they’re in the business of selling content on a specific medium (CDs, film etc.) rather than realizing that what they can provide encompasses a much broader picture, which opens up many new opportunities, beyond just selling individual units.
Comments on “Shocker: Entertainment Industry Worried About File Sharing”
No Subject Given
The entertainment industry, like nearly any industry, is in the business to make a profit.
I’ve yet to see a convincing argument how any business model that encompasses unrestricted digital copying can turn a profit. At least any one presupposed around 100,000s or millions of sales at “moderate” prices. I.E. any “big budget production”…
Which may be the point: Entertainment of the future may not involve blockbuster movies, mega-bands, high production value games, etc simply because there is no way to sell enough “copies” to remain profitable. It may be the independant film targetted to a specific audience, the small band playing to the same group of loyal fans, and the little addictive game produced by a 1-2 man team getting a few payments from a rabid group of players that “dominates” the entertainment industry of the future.
Not a horrible future, but not one you’re going to see Spiderman 3 or the like in.
Re: No Subject Given
Yeah, and the industry said the same thing about the VCR. However, once they were forced (kicking and screaming) to embrace it, they found that the markets were actually BIGGER. I don’t buy the “there is no revenue model” argument. If there’s demand, there’s a business model.
The argument that all of us have been making is that, like every time in the past, embracing where the market is already heading means bigger markets. Fighting it, means doom. The market is heading there with or without the existing players. They may not like what they see, but that doesn’t change where the market is going.
Re: Re: Journey, as well as destination
It’s the method of getting there that worries me. Way back when Napster was a rebellious son-uv-a-diddly peddling mp3s assisting in copyright violations, we could all see that the way to get ahead is to cut the litigious crap and work positively for a better solution – legal downloads at 70cents a hit. Now it’s the same with movies – I had the MPAA on my tail a few days ago and their methods are abusive and spammish, sending long legalistic crap to people listed in whois(1) with absolutely no evidence to help solve a problem – when they could be working on something useful like a legal p2p movie-transfer system: take bittorrent, put a similar authentication system into the protocol like iTunes does with *.m4a, and whizzo you’re talking. But why do we have to get there via a system where non-americans are penalized (Region 2, my arse!)?
I live in hope that one day, the yanks will recognize that making the customer happy is the “secret” to also making the stockholders happy.
Re: Re: No Subject Given
I don’t buy the “if there’s a demand there’s a market” argument. You do know in basic economics there are supply/demand trendlines that don’t meet at a positive price right? In such a situation, a sale is not made, and generally that means the supplier departs the market, and the demand goes unfulfilled. And its not some vacuum of nature that a demand goes unfulfilled. That’s what scarcity is all about.