BITS from NYTimes is facing the issue of copyright and filtering in a week long debate. The two debaters are Tim Wu, of Columbia Law School and Rick Cotton, general counsel of NBC Universal.
My comments:
- Investing money on producing creative material is a tough task today
- Entertainment corporations structured themselves on a single business model behind the shield of the copyright
- This business model is gone because copyright in no longer a shield
- Corporations seem keen to defend themselves and their status quo more than the artists they represent
- And artists are looking for new business model and for new commercial partners (e.g.: Madonna defected from Warner and signed with Live Nation, a concert promoter)
- The model of making live exhibition to support cd sales is gone: you give away digital music to sell tickets for the exhibition, merchandising, etc.
- This is true for the music market, what about the movie market? Apparently box office is stable in the last three years and this should mean that p2p is not such an issue
- DVD market is the one suffering because the platform itself is agonizing: the launch of new movie rental service may prove to be lethal for the platform, as DVD was for VHS and VHS was for I do not remember what.
The real issue in the story to me is that Entertainment Corporations are unable to define a worth business model to exploit the opportunities coming from the Web 2.0 and the future.
In the Middle Age, there were massive castles ready to resist to siege for months, at least until they had food and water: it was just a matter of time....
