Traditional Media Companies Want You…To Live Analog
April 23rd, 2008 | by Brad King |I wrote a piece yesterday about the not-so-great numbers posted by all major newspapers last quarter, despite some apparent growth in their metrics. I’ve been commenting directly on Alan Mutter’s blog, where the original post appeared.
The discussion is whether newspapers are seeing a growth in certain areas because of better design or a decline because newspapers still don’t get how people use the Web.
Honestly, it’s an intriguing discussion, one that I certainly wouldn’t have engaged in had it not been for blogs. I was even half convinced that newspapers had possibly figured out some things that helped them leap forward.
Then I came to my senses after seeing this Boing Boing post.
EMI is suing a company that enables people to make back-up copies of their music, store them in a virtual locker and access them wherever they are, regardless of computer.
EMI’s contention is that digital backups in a virtual locker violate copyright law.
In other words, the very aspect of a technology that makes it different than the previous iteration (atoms to bits, as they used to say) is deemed illegal because the backup is an exact duplicate and it’s easily accessible from anywhere, which means there is no secure way to verify the backup isn’t being re-copied or stolen.
Of course, we could always burn CDs of all of our MP3 files (which is the opposite of what we did in 1999) and cart them around. That’s also illegal, but a lot more difficult to prosecute since you can’t physically follow everyone.
(And yes, in this example, the music is still at bit but it’s contained on an atom — leave me alone.)
Storage and portability are the driving forces behind the Web 2.0 technology explosion. Well, that and search. Removing the storage and portability factors is tantamount to hamstringing the technology.
It also sets an unreasonable expectation on consumers: corporations control the rights to your bits even after you walk out of the store. You can make a copy, but only if the company decides that you are either not worth prosecuting or haven’t been found yet.
Either way, it’s a losing proposition. Let’s get digital, digital.
