Five or six years ago, I wrote a piece with Chervokas for @NY, or the Times, or Inside or the Standard (neither of us can remember which, and digital archiving is poor) that imagined a time when we'd all carry a device that downloaded content constantly - movies, music, books, articles and self-made combinations of all of them. In that world, wideband nodes would handle large packets of information freely, without regard to closed networks, so that whether we were walking through Grand Central or riding down the Turnpike, our content subscriptions would find us. The trick then wasn't the hardware; indeed, only a few years later that kind of hardware is ubiquitous. Nor was it the software per se; again the software exsts.
The trick then - and the trick today - the insanely frustrating, anti-consumer, growth-stifling trick is so damned simple: ubiqutious, cross-platform, device- and location-agnostic digital rights.
As is his wont, Jason had a moment of clarity about subscriptions, and the doom that faces closed networks like satellite radio, while stuck in traffic on the Willis Avenue Bridge and wrote it up over on his blog. Good read. Here's a part:
Consumers are willing to pay for the best network access (I heard recently from a cable TV exec that super high bandwidth Internet services are flying off the virtual shelves--"people want blazing fast," was the phrase the exec used). And consumers are willing to pay for the best content. But they HATE having to pay for one in order to get the other. That's why consumers resent the cable TV model that forces users into a menu of programming (the way auto manufacturers force buyers into more profitable packages of options). I would gladly pay a subscription fee to HBO directly, rather than through DirecTV, if it allowed me HBO video on demand on my TVs, my computers, at hotel rooms on the road, at a vacation rental, on my portable devices.
The universal appeal of peer-to-peer file sharing, of weird "mesh media" impromptu local networks (of the sort I experienced on the Willis Avenue Bridge) in part has to do with the freedom from paying, but even more so has to do with the freedom of use--not "use" in the sense of piracy--redistribution for commercial purposes--but "use" in the sense of personal choice within a neatly legal context. In absence of an industrial infrastructure to provide that choice, end users are doing it for themselves.
Fred Wilson, who puts his firm's money where his digital consumer's gut tells him to - and does it very successfully - agrees with Chervokas (and urges us to get the band back together in the bargain). Fred has riffed on this subject many, many times over the past couple of years - his frustration with the limited rights of iTunes, the insanity of cable and satellite consumer contracts, the limitations of physical media etc. In responding to Jason, Fred goes upside the head to the Time-Warners and Viacoms of the world:
I am sick and tired of paying ten times for the same content. I want to pay once and use whenever and wherever the hell I want to. I am sorry that others use that same freedom to pirate the same content, but I don't and I resent the fact that I am treated like a thief by association.
Great point. And it all comes home to me this spring, because we're doing some work on our house (I hope). And I thought it would be wonderful to really improve the home network, add a music and video server, and make distribution in our little corner of the universe ubiquitous. Well, good luck. I can strong all the high-speed fiber I want, invest in the fastest wireless hubs, and the put in big, far servers. Hell, I can tweak the software and make sure it works everywhere in the house. But guess what? Digital rights screws my plans over big-time. Whether it's my cable contract or the rights that come with my DVDs or the limited playable moves from an iTunes download - it still can't be done.
I bought all this stuff, I paid for the songs, the TV shows, the sports, the movies and I'm a thief in my own house, as Fred said. When the hell will digital rights be about consumer digital rights? A market awaits. For now, I may as well be stuck on the Willis Avenue Bridge.
