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Friday, October 11, 2002
Flying wide 
| | I'm in Seattle now, at a hotel with nice wide broadband. The bellman handed me a yellow ethernet cable when I arrived. Nice. [Later...] Chris Pirillo is here too, digging our shared T-1. |
| | Now I'm headed out to dinner with Beth and the other Microsoft folks and guests who I'll be talking to at 9:30 tomorrow morning. The whirlwind won't end until late tomorrow, when I'm back in Santa Barbara. |
| | Losses so far on the trip: one firewire cable and one camcorder battery. I'm sure I left them on the table in the room where I gave my talk yesterday morning at DIDW, right behind where Frank was sitting. Frank has a nice rundown on my talk yesterday, by the way. He'd heard some of it before and was right to assume that some of it was also presented at OSCON (here's that one). He also wants me to get more familiar with work OneName and Drummond Reed have put into XNS. |
| | I had hoped to get more time with Drummond at the conference. On the first night's cocktail party I got to talk for awhile with David Watkins, OneName's CEO; but I only met Drummond briefly. Frank's also right that I failed to tune in to Drummond's presentation, which was way too abstract and buzzwordy for me. I'm sure I'll learn more by reading about the subject and interviewing Drummond, which I hope to do soon. |
A new mistake
Read it and creep
| | Got an email yesterday thanking us for keeping up the good fight defending the Net from the record industry's jihad. In it the writer pointed to a presentation by Jay Berman, Chairman and CEO of IFPI, in a JP Morgan seminar. |
| | It's depressing stuff; no less paranoid than the kind of rantings we get in the U.S. from the RIAA. I'm not even sure where to begin with it, so I'll just run with the conclusion: |
| | ...our efforts of many years to secure a strong global legal framework for music delivery in the digital era are now coming to fruition. In May of this year the World Intellectual Property Organisation Phonograms Treaty was finally ratified. It lays down the essential elements for our industry to deliver and protect our music in the age of the internet. |
| | The European Copyright Directive, part of the WIPO ratification process, is being implemented in Europe. The Directive gives us a package of rights and technical protection. In the United States, the DMCA has already provided the recording industry with vital weapons to fight piracy and enforce its rights. The Copyright Directive will bring similar benefits to Europe... |
| | Our foundations are solid, demand for our product continues to grow and is stronger than it has ever been, we are finding ways for technology to assist us in protecting our music - not just make it readily available without consent - and we now have in place - or will very shortly - in most countries in the world, a modern legal framework to do business in the 21st century. |
| | Coupled with this, we have a highly effective enforcement machine that is capable of protecting our industry both online and off line, for many years to come. |
| | We are an industry facing interesting challenges, and with challenge comes opportunity. Our ongoing strategy is twofold - on the one hand to defend our existing business and on the other build and exploit the new business models of the digital era. |
| | I'm willing to grant Berman and the IFPI some grounds for concern. The organization's Music Piracy Report 2002 lists the U.S. and Canada among the countries with the lowest levels of domestic music piracy (by which it means copying and distributing unauthorized CDs). They say 28% of all CDs sold worldwide are pirated. In many countries — Bulgaria, China, Pakistan, Mexico and Egypt, to name a few — the number exceeds 50%. In other words, there's a better than even chance that the CD you buy in one of those places was produced by a pirate. |
| | It's only natural for the industry to protect itself. But there also needs to be some introspection about the changed market conditions that invite the piracy in the first place. The Net and http://bdot.blogspot.com/the CD-R are facts of market life now. What the industry is trying to protect is an obsolete and overpriced distribution system. |
| | No matter how much lobbying muscle they put behind their efforts to illegalize the Net and cartelize the PC business, they'll fail. |
| | I could go on, but I've got a speech to finish. |
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