I thought this might reach a few of the normally deaf and unresponsive buffons in charge of the ongoing campaign of stupidity at the recording and movie industries.
http://www.techliberation.com/archives/027514.phpThe record labels need to focus less on the stick of preventing piracy (although they should certainly do some of that) and more on the carrot of providing users with easy-to-use, convenient, and affordable legitimate download options. They’ve made some baby steps in the right direction, but they still mostly sell low-quality audio files encumbered with irritating and restrictive “digital rights management.” Improving the quality of the songs they sell online, and abandoning digital rights management, would be important steps toward enticing customers back into the legal fold.
In the long run, I think they’re going to need to be more radical. Google is probably the best model. Google gives away online services worth billions of dollars and funds their efforts with ads. So here’s one model: imagine if the recording industry set up free, ad-supported Internet radio stations. They could do things that ordinary radio stations could never do. For example, users could be required to fill out a survey giving some basic demographic information (age, zip code, industry). Then the ads on each Internet radio stream could be targetted at that individual user. Advertisers could also buy up ads to play with particular playlists, of which there could be thousands. The Britney Spears playlist might have ads targetting teeny boppers, while the oldies playlist would have ads targeted at middle aged people. This could conceivably generate considerably more revenue than traditional radio stations, since advertisers will pay more for precisely targetted advertising
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Hmm, I think as much as the idea would probably work fine, the existing stone-faced losers in charge of making the decisions would probably want control of the internet as compensation , jus in case they lost a dime.
