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Sunday, November 13, 2005
Popping points on the 'sphere 
| | So here's this guy, 35 or thereabouts, who's going through some tough times, and he's pretty well off financially, I guess. These places aren't cheap. (I'm just a renter.) He's in my socio-economic stratum anyway. He lived probably 50 feet from where I'm typing these words. And not only did I not know him, or know of his problems, I didn't even know he died until my daughter told me. |
Forward... into the past!
| | Also, Mitch, please... come back from the Dark Side! |
| | Om Malik has more as well, including lots of links. Check the commments. Lots of back and forth between Mitch and others, including Om. |
Hearing aid
| | Mitch Ratcliffe's More on the Future of Podcasting is a huge post that makes so many points, each with so many contentious assumptions (especially about Dave), that it's hard to know where to begin. |
| | Doc Searls, whom I deeply respect, in his posting, Yo, Libraries: say No to DRM, also sees the forest but not the trees, seemingly preferring to find an enemy in Audible rather than one of the helpful partners he envisions (BTW, libraries love Audible): |
| | Key piont: the silo-builders can't lead us out of the dark ages. They can help, but they can't lead. That's our job. |
| | Unless I am very much mistaken, Doc has asked companies to talk and participate, to open their technology, which Audible is learning to do (listen) and has done (anyone can access the developer tools and use them). If the definition of "we" cannot include companies that don't fit the initial definition of what is acceptable based on the prejudices of participants in a market, then markets are not conversations but a form of tyranny. |
| | Mitch is very much mistaken. My post said nothing about Audible, nor did it call for making enemies of Audible, or even of NetLibrary, the company whose unclear and highly limited service offerings (audiobooks that only run on players that decode DRM'd Windows Media files) and have led its customers — libraries — to unwanted conflicts with their own members (and worse, the citizens whose taxes pay for services that are locked into one vendor's proprietary and unpopular format). |
| | My post was about something I have spoken and written about often: markets where the demand side supplies itself. Podcasting is one of those markets. Audible deserves credit for pioneering downloadable audio and players for that audio; but none of the big boys, including Audible, invented podcasting. The demand side did that, and they did it with far more help from independent developers (Dave especially) than from the big dependency-game players like Apple and Audible. |
| | My other point was that DRM itself is broken, because it only works for the supply side, and only by limiting usage. I doubt it will ever be fixed by castle- and moat-builders like Audible, Apple, Sony and the rest of them, regardless of whatever other Good Stuff they've done in the world, and regardless of their Good Intentions on behalf of copyright holders. They have too much to protect, too many inter-Big deals and partnerships, and too much of a "let's cripple it" approach to controlling usage. Those of us with nothing to protect and everything to gain will provide the leadership here, for the simple reasons that 1) we're already doing it (witness podcasting and syndication); and 2) we're the only ones who can — because we're the only ones working creatively for both supply and demand. |
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