Digital Downloads - a nest of vipers
BusinessWeek brilliantly illustrates the problems that digitally-downloaded movies pose in the consumer market...by using the book industry as an example:I wasn't aware of ALL the restrictions regarding downloadable movies - they are utterly ridiculous, depending on the vendor (or your operating system) - and BusinessWeek is utterly right...with all this chaos and shackling, it's no wonder the market's been slow to catch on.Imagine a bookstore that sells only works published by Random House. If you want a HarperCollins title, you have to go to the store down the street. In this world, you're permitted to read Penguin books either on the train or lying in bed, but Vintage books can only be read on the couch. It's absurd?but no more so than the world of video downloads as they exist today.
The beauty of a physical product is that it can be shared with anyone. Once I've finished a newspaper, I can leave it on the subway seat for the next rider...who doesn't have to pay. Once I've finished "Memoirs of a Geisha", I can give it to my 13-year-old daughter. Once I've finished listening to a Stevie Wonder CD, I can loan it to my 8-year-old who is studying "Sir Duke" in her music class. In the digital world, I can't do any of this - the "pass along" market doesn't exist. I can't lend an ebook version of a book to my 13-year-old for her laptop. I can't give a song to my 8-year-old for her Nano.
And why? Because the content provider sees no profit in the "pass along" market. No transaction, no market. (Publishers have, for years, gotten a bit huffy about the used-book business for the same reason - why shouldn't they be participating in the sale of one of their books, even downstream?)
By untying content from its media (the physical book, the CD, the DVD), content providers are shackling it to something else...the machine it gets played on. And that's a much more limiting, much less profitable proposition.
What I offer:
