I thought this was wonderful, the kind of stuff I wouldn’t hear about except for the Web. Take a look at this site, where someone is selling merchandise consisting of animal shapes traced on the iconic London Tube map.
Thanks to Konrad for the tip-off. [Yes, I make it a habit to visit blogs that link to me, more out of curiosity than courtesy, but a combination nevertheless.]
Interesting times. Following Steve Job’s Heartbeat post, Edgar Bronfman, the head of Warner Music, is reported to have made scathing comments about Jobs’ vision of a DRM-free world. Here’s a quote:
“The notion that music does not deserve the same protections as software, television, films, video games, or other intellectual property, simply because there is an unprotected legacy product available in the physical world is completely without logic or merit.”
That, on a day when Warner Music announced a 74% drop in first-quarter net income. Interesting.
At the same time, EMI announced that they were considering ditching DRM completely, and going for protection-free MP3s; it appears they are assessing the value of upfront guarantees from online retailers, having been delighted with their DRM free experiments involving Norah Jones amongst others.
Two firms. Two firms in markets similar enough for them to consider merging not that long ago. Two firms with diametrically opposed views on a key strategic issues. I wonder what would have happened if the merger had gone ahead…..
Makes me think of the old Paul Simon song….
There’s been some hard feelings here
About some words that were said
There’s been some hard feelings here
And what is more
There’s been a bloody purple nose
And some bloody purple clothes
That were messing up the lobby floor
It’s just apartment house rules
So all you ‘partment fools
Remember : one man’s ceiling
is another man’s floor
Remember: one man’s ceiling
is another man’s floorPaul Simon, One Man’s Ceiling is Another Man’s Floor
The divide is going to get that stark, floors and ceilings. Interesting how the Apple suit between the Beatles and Jobs gets sorted out shortly before this kerfuffle. And you know something? I thought I heard Beatle music during the last MacWorld Stevenote…..
Two aliens were visiting Earth to research the local customs. They split up so that they could learn more in the time allowed. When they met to share their knowledge, the first alien told of a religious ceremony it had seen.
“I went to a large green field shaped like a meteorite crater. Around the edges, several thousand worshippers had gathered. Then I saw two priests walk to the centre of the field to a rectangular area and they hammered six spears into the ground, three at each end. Then eleven more priests walked out, clad in white robes. Then two high priests wielding clubs walked to the centre and one of the other priests started throwing a red orb at the ones with the clubs.”
“Gee,” replied the other alien, “what happened next?”
“Then it began to rain.”
I’ve been following cricket for so long now I thought I’d heard them all. Live and learn….
[With thanks to cricinfo. com; only minor edits performed.]
I could never have predicted it. Obviously there’s a lot of buzz about what Steve said; no surprise, some people want him to run for President now.
What wasn’t obvious to me was the nature of the buzz. It isn’t about the “what” of the argument, removal of DRM. It isn’t about the “how” of the argument, the process by which we are going to see the removal of DRM.
Surprisingly, much of the debate has been about the “why”. Looking for deep philosophical reasons (or for that matter deep-pocketed business reasons) that would explain why Steve said what he did. [Reminds me of Jim Morrison and Mr Mojo Risin].
Yesterday, we had many people commenting on the Europeanness of the Big Four music-related “content owners” ….. suggesting that Steve had some ulterior motive for attacking Europe. What tosh. Suitable only for the ostriches who think that Steve’s attitude towards DRM was about music and music alone.
Now today, I’ve seen more unusual variants on the story. Mr Jobs did what he did because the “European” regulator was going to insist on it anyway; tosh again. The unadulterated variety. Only suitable for the ostriches who think that “European” regulators have some unforseen power and efficacy.
And there’s a third group who believe that Jobs can’t do it anyway, accusing him of playing to the galleries with zero downside.
I prefer not to look for hidden agendas and conspiracies and vested interests. That’s as bad as expecting people to behave rationally…..
So what do I think? I think that Jobs has worked out that implementing DRM will not scale. That the experience he’s had with Vista (yes, Vista) and with the iPhone has finally irked him beyond tolerance. That he recognises DRM for what it is, a Path Pollutant. And that he sees an opportunity to stop the pollution.
Strangely enough, Vista may prove to be a real boon in this respect. Finally showing people what a load of $%£ DRM is, how difficult it is to implement, how terrible the impact on the common man, and how futile the effort anyway.
Personally, I like what Cory said about it. Go take a look. Particularly the Disney bit.
The walls are coming down. And the gardens are getting connected again. Not channelled.
With the Steve Jobs missive yesterday, everyone’s talking about DRM. And I’ve been listening. One of the things that occurs to me is that the proponents of DRM are often the opponents of Web 2.0; it’s not clear to me whether this is due to a lack of understanding, an inbuilt animus against “openness” in general or something else. One way or the other, I feel it can’t hurt to expand our understanding of Web 2.0.
Which brings me to this fabulous video by Michael Wesch of KSU. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop whatever you’re doing and take a look. It’s only 5 minutes long and well worth it.
Towards the end of the video, Professor Wesch talks about a dozen things we need to rethink. He lists them as:
Copyright, authorship, identity, ethics, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy, commerce, love, family and ourselves.
And in a way that’s what this blog is about. Almost.
I don’t think we need to rethink love, family and ourselves. I don’t think we need to rethink ethics. All we need to do is to regain what we’ve lost.
But for the rest: copyright, authorship, identity, aesthetics, rhetorics, governance, privacy and commerce (inclusive of sales, marketing and all forms of “relationship management”), I could not agree more with Michael.
Thanks as usual to RageBoy for reminding me of this while I was reading the Jobs article again and again.