Looking Ahead

The week between Christmas and New Years is often a time retrospection on the happenings of the past year. So far I've read several articles citing the technical winners and losers of the past 12 months, as well as a few that mark predictions for the coming year. So I will not attempt to add to the collection of prognostication and near term nostalgia. Instead, I'd like to focus on the overarching topics that neither began yesterday, nor will be resolved in the next year.

As we press into the second half of this decade, several stories have lingered with us. In a way the time has passed quickly, in others it's almost shameful that some things have yet to be resolved. First and foremost is the RIAA's battle against music piracy. Never mind that I played my first mp3 in 1996, or that the format dates back to 1991. The RIAA became very concerned with the technology in 1999 when a service called Napster launched. In defense of their intellectual property the group launched a lawsuit and eventually shut down the site in March 2001. I'm sure that the group celebrated what they believed to be a victory. However, as we approach five years after the fact they must now realize that the lawsuit did not stop file trading nor did it secure their future in the digital world.

While the RIAA has been accused of many things, you can't attribute the loss of the file sharing war as short sightedness. No one could have predicted the rise of alternate resources for swapping and downloading music. While it was clear that something would come along, no one dreamed it would actually be more convenient and reliable than Napster, most of all the RIAA. Where the RIAA did fail was in their ability to spot the trends that lead to folks downloading in the first place. Much of the music produced was of poor artistic quality, with recording companies focusing primarily on mainstream, predictable results instead of music that pressed the boundaries. Given the dilution of the music brand as a whole, folks were less inclined to plop down real money in exchange for an album that may or may not be good.

As the battle continues, leading parties on both sides claim that they are "winning the war". Record execs now blindly claim that legitimate music downloads are surpassing illegal ones in popularity, even as they try to squeeze more royalties out of services like iTunes. Pirates contend that newer and better technologies will help them stay ahead of the RIAA and keep the music flowing. Caught in the middle are the musicians and the consumers. Musicians want to do what they love and create works or art. Consumers want to obtain that work at a fair price. The shameful part is that if the parties caught in the middle could simply do business the entire music industry would be much healthier. However, the battle of egos continues between bull headed execs and rebellious technology.

Following closely on the heels of the RIAA/Piracy battle is the war over digital video content. When the MPAA witnessed the struggles of the RIAA they decided that they would prevent the same fate from befalling them. The MPAA has lobbied Congress for changes to intellectual property and copyright law to protect it's self. One of the more controversial campaigns was to extend the term of copyright law, as well as invoking the DMCA against technologies that sought to circumvent DRM. The first was largely seen as a push by Disney to extend its exclusive lock on characters and movies that would become public domain. This was controversial because copyright assumes exclusive right to something for a set period of time, after which it becomes public domain and can be used to create new, innovative works. The change in the law was viewed as an attempt to indefinitely extend this protection. However, few consumers concerned themselves with this change. Oh the other hand, the anti-circumvention of DRM became a more hotly contested topic because of fair use rights. Essentially the DMCA made it illegal for a person to circumvent the embedded DRM for their own personal use. In effect the MPAA was selling consumers discs that wouldn't play under certain circumstances, and buyers were powerless to "make it work" with some devices.

The real dirty laundry of the MPAA's DRM campaign is the realization that media companies want to control how we consume their product. While it may seem like the DVD you purchased is your legal property, the content on it is not. The MPAA chooses to dictate how and when you view its content. The real trouble here is the status of content. While consumers believe that movies and music is property that they buy and then own, media companies refer to it rather as a service, which they allow access to. In truth content is both and neither. If anything it is a hybrid item whereby some rights are transferred with the physical media and others are expressed or implied as an intangible item. As long as a single copy of a movie is tied to a single store bought disc we are ok. The problem happens when digital distribution enters into the picture. Since I no longer have the physical disc, I must rely upon DRM to limit my ability to make loss-less copies of the content. However, in the process I'm also limited in how I can transfer my content. This latter bit is what really gets consumers angry.

Until a technology comes along that allows consumers to transfer a single copy of content between dissimilar devices, the battle between media providers and media consumers will continue. As a provider I am reluctant to put high quality content on the Internet for fear of it escaping into the wild. Likewise, if I am a media consumer I am reluctant to buy anything via the Internet that could possibly limit my ability to consume it how I choose, especially if there is a chance I'll have to repurchase the content in the future.

Oddly enough, a good portion of the DVD piracy that takes place now days isn't perpetrated via the Internet or file sharing. Instead it relies upon the time honored tradition of renting videos, ripping them and then burning copies. The MPAA can't blame file sharing as easily as the RIAA, and thus must develop more creative ways to protect its content.

Finally, the topic of grass roots digital distribution deserves a few words. In mid 1994 something called Pod casting was created, and with it came resurgence in the belief that grass roots media could change the world. Within a year everyone who was anyone was doing a pod cast. The problem is that for the most part the content is locked inside the computer realm. If you don't have access to broadband, chances are your not listening to casts of any kind. The birth of pod casting was similar to the birth of blogging, which carried its own promises of changing the way people consumed media. As we draw near toward the two year anniversary of Pod casting, little has changed except the crossover of mainstream media into the digital distribution world. Pod casting has not changed the world, but it has provided a short distraction before the coming wave of innovation.

The real winner in the digital distribution arena is vidcasting, or Internet TV as some call it. Though it's in its infancy, the concept is much more novel than previous attempts to distribute content. For the first time in the history of the web, residential DSL and cable modem connections can deliver full screen, high quality digital TV. The key was not faster connections, but instead distributed download technologies like Bit Torrent which help to reduce the overall cost of distributing content. The paradigm shift that is currently underway is that big media companies no longer control the sole means for distributing high quality content.

But there are challenges, most notably in how folks consume the vidcasts. At the moment the process is quite manual. Viewers must check the shows website and either initiate the download via standard protocols (web, ftp, etc) or queue up a Bit Torrent file. Once the file is downloaded, another program is required to view it. Finally if you want to watch it on a TV you'll need to attach your computer to your TV. This is flat out too complicated for the casual viewer. If new method is to gain wide acceptance it will need a firmly defined standard for publishing the content, notification of viewers that new content is available, and a one step method for acquisition and consumption. Essentially what consumers need is a network capable appliance that downloads their shows for them and plays them back when they wish. In other words a Tivo-like device. Until this comes to pass, Internet TV will be little more than a novelty for technologically savvy viewers.

In closing I'd like to say that though these three items are neither new nor quickly resolved, we should keep a keen eye out for future developments. By some accounts the technological innovation that drives developments such as these is predicted to happen more quickly than ever before. The average tech advancement cycle is expected to shorten, and changes will happen sooner rather than later. It's quite possible that in these problems will be solved in the next five years. The question is whether consumers and providers can agree on the terms and if the technology implemented is a smart, robust and durable solution.