Don't try to fight technological revolutions with clumsy, antiquated legal actions. Harassing customers, threatening Web sites, and standing in the way of progress are doomed to fail. These tactics discourage industries from innovating, developing creative business models, and offering customers better solutions. If the executives of the music industry would only spend as much time and money taking advantage of digital technologies as they do fighting them, maybe they could build the next iTunes. Or Boxee. Or BitTorrent.
That strikes me as extremely naive.
The Apple music store, for instance, is not believed to be profitable and exists only to encourage people to buy Apple's iPods, which is where all Apple's music-industry money comes from. And it's not like Apple ever owned, or created, any of the content it sells; for Apple there was never any business risk, only potential upside.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2009-04-17 03:46 pm (UTC)I think I'm just used to the overwhelming majority opinion, such as you find here:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2345442,00.asp
To wit,
Don't try to fight technological revolutions with clumsy, antiquated legal actions. Harassing customers, threatening Web sites, and standing in the way of progress are doomed to fail. These tactics discourage industries from innovating, developing creative business models, and offering customers better solutions. If the executives of the music industry would only spend as much time and money taking advantage of digital technologies as they do fighting them, maybe they could build the next iTunes. Or Boxee. Or BitTorrent.
That strikes me as extremely naive.
The Apple music store, for instance, is not believed to be profitable and exists only to encourage people to buy Apple's iPods, which is where all Apple's music-industry money comes from. And it's not like Apple ever owned, or created, any of the content it sells; for Apple there was never any business risk, only potential upside.