One of the best articles I've read on El Reg since a while
The parallel between content creators and IT was surprising, but at the same time shockingly accurate. Thank you for this intriguing perspective; more stuff like this please.
Pirates not to blame for Big Media's sales plunge
The RIAA and MPAA would have you believe that piracy is responsible for their decline in sales. This is all of course blame to be laid at the feet of computers, the internet and the generic "digital boogyman." Even without getting deep into the flawed math in play, there are other reasons for the middling returns on investment …
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Monday 16th April 2012 19:05 GMT Trevor_Pott
Re: Excellent article, but...
Xacti is a good example. But RED was the first one. It changed the market. Drove digital adoption. Before RED everything was 10, 100 times as expensive. After RED, everyone raced to drive the cost down.
Honestly, I chose the RED for a reason. It was singlehanded responsible for driving a sea change in pricing and usability. There is a great article on it here, but alas, it requires creds to read the full text.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 01:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Excellent article, but...
Why does anyone care about the purchase price of camera bodies - I thought you were talking about making movies not opening a hire shop.
My outrage at such a maddeningly glib "assessment" of what is wrong with the modern world, starting with a disconnected and inaccurate analogy about movie making, paled into insignificance after seeing the horde of dimwitted me-too-ers rushing in to praise such a load of sloppy, inarticulate nonsense.
Usually "cutting the cord" means "I stopped paying my TV licensing fee" and it is (to continue the sloppy journalism style) almost always motivated by a tight-fisted stinginess and a self-regarding sense of superiority to the common man's forms of entertainment.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 08:57 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Excellent article, but...
We've not had a TV for more than 8 years. I firmly believe that the significant reduction / elimination of intrusive, thought-disrupting adverts and poor-quality reality shows and soaps has made me and my family better, less material people with better attention spans. Our children are also better behaved, although TV is only going to be one factor in the domestic setup.
That said, it has left us with a lot less to talk about to the majority of people, so I guess I can't argue with the charge of a sense of superiority (right up to the point of admitting that my wife watches "Made in Chelsea" online - oh, the shame...).
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Monday 16th April 2012 20:50 GMT Ashley Stevens
Respect
My view is that it's all about lack of respect. Big content doesn't respect its customers, but neither does it respect its content suppliers either. At the moment NBC is ruining most of its content by splattering adds for Betty White over the lower 3rd of the screen. I don't know who she is, but she sure ruins the rest of the content that they put out. I find it hard to believe that content creators allow their output to be mis0used in this way, but I guess they have no say in the matter? Let's hope the indie movement takes hold and more content becomes available without the Betty White adverts and other distractions in the lower 3rd of the screen.
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Monday 16th April 2012 21:22 GMT Mark 110
Excellent article
Can't argue with any of it.
Another facet that has been bugging me lately is the lack of competition in the IT industry. Pretty much 3 or 4 major players in the data centre / server / services sector - HP / IBM / CSC / Accenture, etc. And if anyone trys to compete they get bought. Really needs some regulation - stop them crushing competition with their wallets and make them compete on product and price. Build their owntechnology and customer base rather than buy someone elses.
The article made me realise that exactly the same thing happened in the music and movie industries. Where once there were scores of record labels and a score of big movie studios if you now actually look at the ownership of big media rtheres 2/3 players in both sectors, even though they are still often trading on the old brands. And the competition and innovation dried up.
The parallels are extraordinary.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 02:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Excellent article
I guess it depends on the scope of the contract being discussed, but there are a lot of big players in services (ACS, Infosys - or is it Unisys, I always get those two mixed up) and depending on industry (Dell is a big player in Healthcare - there are lots of specialist houses for government work) or size of the contract (the smaller the contract, and there are all sorts of new names that tend to pop up) there are a pretty good variety of competitors for most contracts I've been involved with.
Just to share a little insight, but all of those players in the services biz are pulling their hair out trying to figure out what to do about Microsoft coming into the market and - in effect - giving their software away... or competing with AWS or a Rackspace when it comes to provisioning capacity in a timely manner.
Trust me, there is no shortage of companies scrapping for those services dollars, although - and maybe this is your concern - with very large contracts there are few players that can qualify.
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Monday 16th April 2012 22:52 GMT Trevor_Pott
Re: +100 internets to you Trevor
Very kind of you to say, sir. Personally, I think a lot of Richard, Iain and Rik's science articles are light years beyond anything I could pen (El Reg has lots of good writers, IMHO)...but I'll not pass up a compliment when its offered! :)
Beer, becuase the workday is almost over, I've more articles to write, and there's a chair at the pub perfectly formed to my arse.
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Monday 16th April 2012 22:55 GMT stu_san
Market change
Maybe "the new open" projects like Openstack or the Raspberry Pi are the beginning of a successful "indie tech" movement. Maybe not; market changes like that take decades, and it is far too early to call it.
Well, maybe, but we have seen markets (and titans) sink faster than that. In the mid 80s, DEC was the company that could do no wrong. By the early 90's it was dead (along with the "minicomputer" market). IBM skated dangerously close to the end of the "big iron" market. (I'm not sure how "big iron" lived through that period, and with the "cloud" we may be heading for another "big iron" test).
Markets can and have changed radically just about overnight. It only takes a few innovations to break to the old market model.
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Monday 23rd April 2012 18:05 GMT YetAnotherBob
Re: Or the RIAA can just sue you into dust.....
no, they outsource that. There are a near limitless number of Lawyers who will take a case on only commission. So, it costs the RIAA nothing. Why pay for what they can get for free?
RIAA only has a few hundreds of employees. They are after all, really only a vehicle to get around anti-competition laws in the EU and US. Same with MPAA, but it's even smaller as a real organization. Mostly secretaries and lobbyists.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 00:46 GMT Anonymous Coward
The power of emotion
Music and video can both bypass the critical faculties and deeply affect us.
That has been abused by the content industries because "emotional" is far easier to do than "clever." That's why reality TV has "evictions", it isn't to see who is the best, its to create drama and a sense of impending doom.
The problem is, that its been done for so long that we have become hardened, or maybe its just me getting old. Hard rock from the 70s and 80s now seems quaint. The only way to make media more interesting is to raise the stakes. More sex, more violence. We can't show more sex without it being obviously porn, so at least one gay character is added to every show. It helps us feel "liberal" and gives the opportunity for fabulous interior decor. Eventually we'll have to add Furries, but that's a problem for another writer. BTW, I've copyrighted the idea of shutting a group of people with more unusual sexual predilections in a confined space and giving them lots of alcohol and a choice of bladed weapons. Endermol can get lost.
Sadly, even the fancy Downton Abbey appears to be a flimsy modern story dressed up in elegant old clothes, rather than a good solid story. It makes Pride & Prejudice look deep.
Perhaps if the networks allowed writers to complete a story with witty dialogue and an interesting and finite plot, things might go rather better than trying to squeeze ten series from a simple concept.
Now gerroff my lawn, I want to get back to reading Henry V, Part 1.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 08:20 GMT MonkeyScrabble
Spot on in this, although every single company in the world is the same.
To use a phrase, "teaching would be an enjoyable profession if you didn't have to deal with the kids".
Every company hates their customers. They are stupid, annoying and cause problems by demanding "product" and "improvement".
Take an examples of banking. Banks want to be left alone to trade commodities, make profit, raise their share price and pay dividends. They don't want to give mortgages, take savings, pay interest etc. Consumer banking is a necessary evil, but all the banks want to do is trade and make profit to show the share holders.
The customer is no longer king, the share holder is.
When someone develops a business model that allows the generation of profit, without any product creation or customer base, they will have created the perfect company and share holders will wet their collective pants with glee.
The companies aren't the real problem, the share holders are.
It's all about money now with no regard for customer service or the quality of the prodcut released. Anything that hampers the generation of the maximum bottom line (i.e. pesky customers) is something hated by the company.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 10:39 GMT Bronek Kozicki
yup
there is a book "Fixing The Game" on this exact issue. If you don't feel like reading whole, you can read about the book here http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/
the times are changing. Current financial turmoil will uncover more than one "the king is naked" when shareholders will discover, with big surprise, that without customers their shares are worth much less than they thought.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 15:51 GMT Anonymous Coward 101
"Banks want to be left alone to trade commodities, make profit, raise their share price and pay dividends."
Oh, but if only they did those things! You may have noticed that banks made mind blowing losses, their share prices have collapsed, and they won't pay dividends for years to come. Share holders in some banks have been all but wiped out.
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Monday 23rd April 2012 18:11 GMT YetAnotherBob
re:Monkeyscrabble
"When someone develops a business model that allows the generation of profit, without any product creation or customer base, they will have created the perfect company and share holders will wet their collective pants with glee."
It's already been done. It's called IT.
Don't believe me? ask any IT group to tell you what it does.
What you will hear is that users are idiots, and not customers. IT exists in most practicioners only as a means of keeping the machines running.
Reality of course is that IT is only a cost sink that provides tools for others to use to do the things that make the company it's money.
Same with Software Companies. Microsoft. You don't think that Microsoft cares about what real End Users want, do you? if they did, there would be no Windows 8!
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 10:43 GMT Tim Parker
Very nice article but...
..something else that has also really impressed me with Mr.Pott's writing is his attention to the comments, and his willingness to discuss things with folk. Back in the mists of time, when I saw a Trevor Pott story I would tend to walk on by muttering about 'yet another bloody Windows deployment blog' - that was short-sighted of me, and now the more I read - the more I am enjoying reading.
All in all, I personally find the quality of writing, and degree of engagement, to be in stark contrast to the output and feedback from some of the, shall we say, more established
editorsstaff.Well done Sir, thank you.
(Right, where's me fiver Trevor ?)
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 11:56 GMT Charles 9
Re: Changing how we consume
Guess it depends on where you live, but I still listen to the radio once in a while. Three stations in particular: two FM stations that play a lot of older (50s-70s) music and one AM station that actually plays stand-up comedy clips (trouble with the latter is they have to fill in a good chunk of each hour with commercials).
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 12:57 GMT Inachu
I almost cut the cord.
Reality TV is not where it is at.
I mostly got FIOS so I could watch the SYFY channel for science fiction. But that is not what I get!
Every time I turn on the TV to the SYFY channel all I get is GHOST HUNTERS!
So what did I do? I cancled my tripple package of TV phone and internet and now I jsut pay for internet. THATS IT! If I want a show then I use NETFLIX on my ROKU device or watch Crackle.
I just bought a digital TV antenna and now I watch over the air digital TV with just 22 channels.
Hollywood has pissed me off. Lack of quality content and paying $180 for it? NO WAY!
So now I just pay $89 for internet and love it! I get my phone service from OOMA and no bills AT ALL!
RIAA is crying. All I hear people laughing at them.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 15:28 GMT sam 16
I'm not sure I buy the drop in media revenues being down to user created content being a real thing. But the point about games is a really good one.
Who does the music/film industry mostly sell to? 10-30 somethings.
Who buys all the games? 10-30 somethings.
I think this group spends a set proportion of it's income (anything it has left over after saving and eating for the 20+, same math for the parents for 20-) on media.
Basicly, companies are competing for this cash, and it will be paid to someone. Games has gone from 15 to 40 billion in the past decade, which more than eats the reduction in music / film spending. I'm supprised you don't hear this point more often.
The other thing media competes for is time, because time is advertising surface area. And these days it has to compete against facebook, and the internet in general. Here, user created content, in the form the author means, is a real thing. I watch a lot more horrific user generated content on youtube than I do illicitly posted comercial stuff. Hell, I lost 4 hours the other day watching someone play flight simulator games with witty comentary.
And that advertising revenue goes mostly to google. If anyone noticed, google is making a lot of money out of ad revenue. So subtract everything google makes from TV advertising and ask why the studios are in trouble.
Interesting article, makes things a lot clearer. Thanks.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 16:20 GMT Hnelson
Get a Clue!
The reasoning to their downturn in profits is pretty easy. It's called CRAP. Producers and artists are producing crap and expecting it to have huge returns and instant mega stardom. Sorry to say, most of what the big studios produce and record does not interest me. It's not even worth the time and bandwidth to download and store.
As to Cisco, I have no kind words to say about them. Having Cisco reps selling last years goods and claiming it was cutting edge was not cool. My dumb ass boss believed it and bought the proverbial pig in the poke. Then there is the "maintenance contracts". Crappy IOS programming on Cisco's part does not constitute demanding more money from the customers. If a company is going to manufacture something, at least stand by it with ironclad support. Cisco support is spotty. I had a 7200VXR with problems and it took a threat of flying down to ass rape the support tech and switching all network equipment out to Foundry to get the problem rectified.
Mr. Holmes get his face time, because corporate needs a clue.
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Tuesday 17th April 2012 23:16 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Hate don't change reality
A) Your numbers are way off in terms of the % of people who infringe copyrights.
B) Your numbers are dead accurate in terms of the % of people who can't deal with reality. That % of people are the ones desperately clinging to outdated business models and trying very hard to make criminals out of honest, hardworking individuals.
Only complete peckerheads who think they are entitled to infinite remuneration for minimal work believe in the ever-expanding extension of copyright, making copyright infringement into a criminal offence and otherwise putting the rights of the few above the rights of everyone else.
The rest of us have no problems whatsoever paying a fair sum for honest work, and we expect a fair wage when we put in an honest day's work. We won't support copyright industries that seek to radically alter the balance of power such that copyright holders make out like bandits – forever – at the expense of both creators and the public at large.
We will instead work towards fair and balanced copyright legislation and enforcement. Legislation and enforcement that punished serial copyright infringers, but also sets reasonable limits on infringement penalties for non-commercial purposes. (Infringements should scale dramatically for repeat offences.)
We will work towards fair and balanced approaches to copyright duration that see creators rewarded for their efforts while still recognising that artistic works belong to society at large.
We will not tolerate perpetual copyright. We will not tolerate copyright trolling. We will not tolerate $150,000 fines for a single MP3. We reject the notion of the $8 Billion ipod that somehow magically destroys 75,000 jobs. We reject copyright math just as we reject copyright infringement itself.
It is not okay to pirate someone’s work for free. And yet, the extant reach and extremism of current copyright legislation and enforcement is equally abhorrent.
Since copyright holders have all the money, and copyright holders are the ones who are buying lobbyists and entire governments, we are at a societal impasse. The copyright holders are unwilling to meet the creators and the general public in a fair, balanced and civilised negotiation. Quite the opposite; they insist that they have inalienable moral and legal rights to perpetually monetise the work of other people.
We do not recognise those rights, moral or legal. We will fight you with every tool at our disposal. If that means creating a culture of piracy and the tools to enable that, fine. None of us like it, nor do we really think that it is moral, proper or the decent thing to do.
What we do know for a fact is that we do not have the money or resources to fight you in the legal arena. We do not have the money or the resources to corrupt the governments of entire nations and turn them against their citizen as you have so very clearly done.
So we will play the long game. We will change culture itself. We will make copyright infringement so simple and so common that nearly every single person does it. We will embed the idea in every facet of society. We will raise entire generations on this. We will slowly but surely change the public opinion of copyright across entire generations. From one that – today – would be willing to compromise and reach an amicable agreement into one that – tomorrow – will have no part in copyright whatsoever.
Millions, of people around the world are actively engaged in this form of social dissent. You can not – and you will - not win. You can protest, and you can bluster. You can rage and you can threaten. It does not matter. Unfairness on the level currently exterted (and certainly proposed!) by the current copyright cartels is always reversed with time. The people rebel against that which they feel to be innately unfair.
People support copyright as an idea. People emphatically, vociferously and by the billions do not support the current implementation, legislation or enforcement of copyright. It is broken. It is unfair. It has been abused, twisted and stretched beyond the original meaning, beyond fairness and reason beyond any possible moral justification whatsoever.
If you and yours want to see copyright survive past the death of the current crop of bought-and-paid for politicians, I suggest you get off your high horse and meet creators and the general public itself at the negotiation table. Put your greed and your ego aside, indulge in some fucking hubris and work with the other 7 billion people on this planet to try to make a society that works for us all.
By all means, let us condemn, ostracise and prosecute those who would attempt to take the works of others and profit from them. By all means, let us ensure that artistic works of all kinds are paid for and not something that we evolve our society towards expecting for free.
But this can only be done - will only be done – in an environment where the public domain is ultimate destination for all copy written works, where reasonable and fair graduated punishment systems for infringement exist, where creators are put ahead of copyright holders and where mechanisms exist to ensure that the fees demanded for artistic works are fair, reasonable and non discriminatory.
If you and yours cannot agree to this, then you are openly declaring your support for a culture war.
One you simply will not win.
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Friday 20th April 2012 07:40 GMT steeleword
Zero Logic Here
According to Cisco 24% of all global internet traffic is used for P2P filesharing. Envisional tested the top 10,000 torrents and every single one was posted without the permission of the content owner. That amount of data traffic represents 100's of billions of movies and music downloaded globally. To say that has no negative economic effect is beyond ridiculous. Bittorrent search engines debuted in 2004 and home video revenues have dropped 25% since then. If the author is right, why didn't they start dropping in 2002? Napster debuted in 1999 and music revenues have dropped 50% since 2000, why didn't they start dropping in 1998?
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
