One of my good friends up here was recently caught stealing cable (oops, sorry Matt, INFRINGING cable). He figured out how to splice some box on a telephone pole and concoct some funky wiring and divert signal to his house. This guy also had help from an electrical engineer.
The Weed rationale: why should he pay $45 a month for 100 channels of programming when he only wanted ESPN? Infringe it!
Control is assertable in markets in which technical competence, access or concealment is not available to the consumer.
The general public doesn’t know how to splice cable. The general public doesn’t know how to steal satellite. The general public doesn’t know how to steal the reel before it hits the movie houses. The economics of the media business is built on control and detection.
I think the decline of the control stems from the frailty of the distribution model. They choose to use the casette and CD media because it’s cheap. It’s also replaceable and repeatable by the consumer. You can’t enforce the economics of the business because there’s a loss of control.
I foresee a future in which music labels become entertainment wholesalers that license catalog to consumer electronics hardware and service fulfillment providers. These providers will operate as clearinghouses of multiple media banks and service delivery to the home through “smart boxes” that are interactive. I’m not sure if this box will be a computer. I’m not sure that the personal PC interface will even be the same! Thus, I think that as it gets harder and more expensive to build celebrity, the economics of recorded music won’t show enough yield to warrant the investment into a stable of artists for a direct-to-consumer distribution model. Instead, music firms will become production houses that work to populate broader media channels that own stronger control.
Get In Groove, Sammy G
Consolidation of all media
What’ll probably happen is that you’ll get all your media via high-speed internet. You’ll feel like seeing “Slapshot” tonight, so you’ll get on the box you’re cable company provides, browse their all-encompasing library of title, select “Slapshot”, pay a fee, download it to your bax, and watch it as often as you want.
Since the signal has to go from digital to video/audio for your TV, there’s nothing stopping you from recording it. They’ll never be smart enough to prevent that. And those recordings will be shared. That can’t be stopped either. But like Sam said, it’s not easy to do, so a lot of people will pay your Comcast and DirecTV for the right to download the movie easily.
Intellectual property has long been ruled by companies that had the bulk to provide distribution. Book, music, video, software, etc, all had to be shipped to the four corners of the globe, and that took a lot of money. Now all it takes is an internet connection and a PC. People still want their entertainment, but now they don’t have to pay for it.
What will people pay for? Live concerts. Going to the movies. Things that are tangile, as opposed to a song or a movie. The experience is where the money will be.
My $.02 Weed
Infringement vs. theft in this case
Actually, splicing a cable is legally considered theft (as is splicing into, or running some kind of transducer against, a power line):
The most direct problem for a cable company is that of a degraded signal (A direct, measurable cost, though a good splice should keep this as minimal as a standard run to a house). This is the most common cause of signal theft detection: a neighbor complains of a poor signal, the cable guy comes out to check, traces down the problem, and boom, you’re nailed.
Also, if you’re a subscriber and use a box to decrypt the signal, you’re double-nailed for violating your subscription agreement, too. But splicing into a cable or power network is legally considered theft, and damage to a utility.
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Matthew P. Barnson
Easy Fix
So what you’re saying is that if I want to steal cable from my neighbor, I need to be sure to run it through an amplifier to lessen the chances of detection? 🙂
My $.02 Weed