Category: Four pillars

I referred to The Freedom Premium in my last post, covering the recent announcement by EMI and Apple. I’m still thinking things through. There’s a sense of unease about the principle. It may not matter with the EMI digital inventory, but I have this nagging worry.

The problem with the Freedom Premium is simple. The people who need it the most can’t afford it. As I said, it may not matter in this particular instance, but it will matter. When it comes to medical matters it will matter. When it comes to educational matters it will matter. When it comes to independent news sources it will matter.

So now the announcement has been made. EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire.

I guess it’s safe to predict that the story will make No 1 at Technorati, so there are a zillion places for you to go to if you want the details. Instead of adding to that list, I want to concentrate on one key issue. The Freedom Premium.
SIMfree phones. Advertising-free digital content. DRM-free music and video. Device-independent anythings. Pollution-free anythings. They’re all the same thing. Either you put up with some corruption provided “free of charge”, or you pay for the freedom. A redemption price.

It’s not new. Today, if I want to buy a dishwasher that I can integrate into my kitchen cabinets, I have to pay more for that than I have to pay for the stand-alone device. Far more than is defensible in the context of shipping and packing costs. If I  want to unlist my phone number I have to pay for it, in most geographies. If I want an air ticket that can be transferred between airlines (or for that matter modified in any way) I have to pay.

The idea that freedom of movement (of digital goods) and freedom to change (digital contracts) are made available, but at a price, I find this idea reasonably appealing. Because this choice is more real than much of the snake oil we get offered today in the name of customer choice. I wonder how long it will be before someone gives me this equivalent for films, at least partially doing away with the nonsense that is Region Coding. Would I pay a premium for a Region Free DVD? Probably, as long as it’s a reasonable one.

Freedom at a price. Ironic, two hundred years after the abolition of the slave trade.

A coda. One of the things we have to watch out for is alluded to amongst the small print in the EMI news release:

EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by ad-supported services).

The problem with that sort of statement is that it provides an opportunity for lock-in specialists to Trojan Horse their way back in, often without people realising the implied price.  So we have to be careful.

More later.

Everyone’s waiting to see what the Apple and EMI joint announcement is going to be about. Rumours abound. To the extent that people are even talking about the Death of DRM. So for once I will be commenting on news, primarily because of the importance of getting DRM right. More later.

There have been  quite a few posts around the blogosphere about the Kathy Sierra Meets Chris Locke CNN segment to be aired today. I found one aspect of the posts intriguing, almost beguiling.

I quote from Accordion Guy:

Don’t worry if you’re too busy in the morning to catch the segment. Someone will upload the Sierra/Locke summit segment to YouTube within an hour of its initial broadcast, and the analyses should appear online shortly afterwards

For a while now we have had news events being made available on YouTube, in effect time-shifting news on to the Web. In itself this is nothing new. What feels new to me is the expectation that something will be made available on YouTube or its equivalent. And it made me wonder about what else we’re all starting to expect. How our reading and viewing and listening patterns are changing (along with our purchase patterns for the same things) as a result of all this.

Some of the concepts referred to above are Web 1.0, so you may wonder why I bring it up at all. I guess it’s partly because I can’t articulate what I want to say well enough, and wondered if you could help me. I sense this has something to do with The Intention Economy that Doc and others proposed quite some time ago.

I think it goes something like this…. I won’t buy a book until I can Look Inside it. I won’t record something that I expect will  appear on YouTube or its equivalent, but I will plan to watch it on YouTube. I won’t buy an album until I have listened to sample tracks via the web, be it iTunes or an equivalent. I won’t meet someone for the first time unless I have Googled them, maybe even Linked them In.

Just thinking. Of a world where we’re going to see a whole new set of trademarked verbs and nouns entering our speech? Comments welcome.

Rumours continue to grow that Apple will announce a special edition Beatles iPod today as part of making Beatle songs available via iTunes. An event that has been predicted for a very long time, so let’s see what surprises are in store. We’ve had the trademark lawsuit settled once and for all. We’ve had a Beatles song playing in the background while Steve talks. So what will he do for One More Thing? I hope it’s more than iPhone-only Beatle ringtones.

I still haven’t met anyone who would refuse an iPhone.