You can’t play by the rules.<\/p>\n
Now when it comes to speeding and not paying your taxes, you’re fucked.\u00c2\u00a0 You just can’t beat the system.\u00c2\u00a0 Questioning the laws will do you no good.\u00c2\u00a0 But everybody knows that copyright is the tool of bullies and the present laws are completely outmoded\/not in sync with digital reality.\u00c2\u00a0 If you played by the rules, you’d never have any progress.\u00c2\u00a0 The only hope is to strike out into the land of infringement and take your chances.<\/p>\n
First there’s the issue of licenses.\u00c2\u00a0 Seems reasonable.\u00c2\u00a0 You ask copyright holders to use their work for a payment in return and a deal is struck.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you believe this, you’ve never broken bread with an entertainment executive, whose main goal is to keep things exactly the way they are, they HATE surprises.\u00c2\u00a0 So, forgo licenses completely.\u00c2\u00a0 Build your enterprise, gain traction, and deal with the fallout.\u00c2\u00a0 And, if you’re lucky, the copyright holders will realize that you truly are their new best friend and allow you stay in business.<\/p>\n
The model for this is Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 Not the newfangled high burn rate operation, but the original Shawn Fanning sued by Metallica company.\u00c2\u00a0 The best thing that ever happened to the music industry.\u00c2\u00a0 That one.<\/p>\n
Best thing that ever happened to the music industry?<\/p>\n
OF COURSE!\u00c2\u00a0 Because it exposed people to new acts, it blew up those already known by the public, it made available music that hadn’t seen a retail store in years, it got people EXCITED about music.\u00c2\u00a0 But, the music execs, the first ones to experience this model, shut it down and killed it.\u00c2\u00a0 And CD sales went from their highest ever to their now deflated rate.<\/p>\n
Despite all the chest-thumping by Edgar Bronfman, Jr. and Eric Nicoli, the failure to license Napster was single-handedly the worst decision ever made in the history of the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 And it will haunt the major labels forever.\u00c2\u00a0 At best, the iTunes Music Store is a\u00c2\u00a0 CD replacement business.\u00c2\u00a0 Copy-protected tracks for the same aliquot price as songs on a CD.\u00c2\u00a0 Furthermore, with free acquisition opportunities rampant, with new P2P services and IM and hard drive swapping, killing Napster was like killing a fly in a swarm, utterly futile and irrelevant.<\/p>\n
Now, a couple of years and a couple of changes behind the music industry, the TV business has been hit.\u00c2\u00a0 With YouTube.<\/p>\n
No self-respecting, law-abiding Fortune 500 company was going to steal copyrights, which is what YouTube did to build itself.\u00c2\u00a0 The landscape was left to this renegade company, willing to bet its ENTIRE company on the edge of legality.<\/p>\n
And what happened with YouTube?\u00c2\u00a0 The EXACT SAME THING that happened with Napster.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, digital exposition, FOR FREE, blew up underlying copyrighted material\/shows.\u00c2\u00a0 The classic case being "Lazy Sunday" from SNL.\u00c2\u00a0 After MILLIONS of viewings on YouTube, ratings for SNL WENT UP!\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, it was all based on copyright infringement, but if said law-breaking had not taken place, SNL wouldn’t have made all that extra MONEY!\u00c2\u00a0 Because exposure begets revenue.\u00c2\u00a0 The more people who know about something, the more people who are interested in buying it.<\/p>\n
So what did NBC do?<\/p>\n
They told YouTube to take the material down.<\/p>\n
But now NBC has woken up.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather than build from scratch their own site, a la Pressplay, a place with fewer eyeballs that no one cares about, they’ve thrown in with the company with all the action, where all the people are, YouTube.\u00c2\u00a0 They’ve made a deal with YouTube, they realize it’s to their ADVANTAGE!<\/p>\n
This is business.\u00c2\u00a0 And the music business is run on intimidation.\u00c2\u00a0 But hell, we now know that paradigm is over, look at the labels’ failure to have prices raised at the iTunes Music Store.\u00c2\u00a0 The labels’ business will implode just as IBM’s did.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, the majors have the catalog, but when it comes to new material everybody doesn’t want to play by the old rules, they don’t want to be kept down, they want to do it themselves and throw in with tech players THEIR AGE WHO UNDERSTAND THE NEW MODEL!<\/p>\n
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