(Sony is on the ball, or so it seems. This is my second post today on Sony BMG’s forward-looking business strategy. )
Cory Doctorow waxes euphoric in this Boing Boing item about a UK ISP called PlayLouder MSP that has secured a license from Sony to allow its customers to legally share any song in the company’s music catalog.
Cory can’t contain his excitement over this development: “I’m prepared to say that this is the best thing to happen to the copyfight all year — maybe all century,” he writes.
More, this is a chance for the labels to extract themselves from the unsustainable quicksand they’ve sunk up to their necks in: suing their customers by the thousands in the hopes that some day, with enough lawsuits, the music-buying public will finally see the light and go back to the malls.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:59 PM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cory Bergman has posted excerpts from an interview with the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and Executive Producer Ben Karlin that appear in this month’s Wired magazine, which focuses on reinventing television. (The issue is not yet available online). Stewart’s take on TV-over-the-web:
“I’m surprised people don’t have cables coming out of their asses,” Stewart said. “Everything is geared to more individualized consumption. Getting it off the internet is no different than getting it off TV.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Chris Anderson muses in the Long Tail Blog about why over-the-air TV networks don’t embrace P2P technology and what kind of workable model might entice them to do so. What spurred his thinking was a conversation with Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent. Anderson contends that since broadcast television is free anyway, the networks should take advantage of this distribution mode as yet another way to get more eyeballs.
I suspect it will take some form of content protection [that prevents viewers from skipping or stripping out ads] to get the networks to follow suit (they are, as you might imagine, incredibly risk-adverse when it comes to their golden geese). But one way or another, that day will come. The economic efficiencies of BitTorrent’s distribution model are too compelling, especially for non-mainstream fare. The question is not if, but how and when P2P TV takes off.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:59 AM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CNET’s John Borland has a colorful, lengthy piece today on how Sony BMG Music Entertainment came full circle and backed legitimate P2P sharing of music. The article details how outspoken P2P maverick Wayne Russo, former head of Napster and a foe of record companies, and Sony BMG’s CEO Andrew Lack set down their swords to form MashBoxx, the first P2P company authorized by a major record label. MashBoxx plans to launch in September using filtering technology developed by Snocap, headed by Napster founder Shawn Fanning.
CNET’s Declan McCullagh has a column today about an upcoming “competitiveness” summit organized by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA). The closed event will be held at Stanford University in September and invitees include prominent high tech, biotech, telecom, and venture capital executives, along with academics from the university.
The goal is to bring these folks together in an informal setting to hammer out legislation that can “address all the aspects of competitiveness” Eshoo told McCullagh. Among the ideas that will be bandied about: simplifying the tax system, public school reform that boosts math and science education and amending the Patriot Act to allow more foreign scientists to work in the U.S.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:29 AM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bill McConnell from The Deal has a piece on how the FTC is looking at regional cable sports networks in the context of the Adelphia buyout by Comcast and Time Warner. The issue: whether cable operators have too much power over the pay-television market. Specifically, the feds are examining whether Comcast, which owns terrestrially delivered regional premium sports channels such as SportsNet Chicago and SportsNet Mid-Atlantic, should make its content available to competitors.
DirectTV, Dish Network and RCN all have asked regulators to require that Comcast submit any disputes over access to sports channels to arbitration by an outside mediator so that rivals have a chance of carrying networks at a fair price. There is already one precedent for such an arbitration requirement. As a condition of News Corp.’s acquisition of DirecTV in 2003, the FCC required that an arbitrator resolve any programming disputes between cable operators.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:02 AM | Print | Comments (0) | TrackBack
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