Executives grapple with Grokster ruling

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Logic versus reality

---If you have a product worth having it will also be stolen.
Undesireable products do not get stolen. Will you steal a Lexas
or a Yugo? It really is a no brainer. So most businesses will lock
their content and the grade B authors will have to give it away. It
is a supply and demand.---


Then how can the iTunes Music Store be selling any songs
whatsoever? They have a product that is available freely
elsewhere. Yet they've sold more than 400 million songs. As
Steve Jobs has said, you've got to compete with free, and make
your product more compelling, which he appears to have made a
good start at doing. Any type of business is going to face some
sort of threat. Grocery stores have to deal with shoplifters. It's
part of the cost of doing business. You have a choice of either
ignoring it (which I don't recommend), implementing some
security measures which don't hurt your honest customers
(putting a security guard at the door, or using rudimentary DRM
like iTunes), or locking down your product so its less usable and
your customers are inconvenienced (strip searching everyone in
the store and not allowing them to touch the produce or
implementing the DRM system you're calling for).

No matter which you choose, people are still going to beat the
system and steal from you. The person taking the middle choice
will have spent a lot less money on ineffective security schemes
than the person who takes the last choice, and, because his
customers will be happier, his business will prosper despite the
slightly higher level of freeloaders.

---All I can say is, do not lock your content and see what
happens. All you have to do is see what is going down now---

Every book chapter we put up on the web for free results in
higher sales for that book. Again, look at Doctorow's results,
he's built a lucrative career around giving free access to his
works. Look at the bands on http://www.myspace.com who are
rising to fame from free giveaways. That's what is going down
now.

---DRM files of the future will burn you machine code info into
the files, so they couldn't be viewed on another machine even if
you took the key too. That is why hardware is being DRMed.---

And it will be broken, just like every other DRM scheme that has
ever existed. And the companies that spend fortunes on
implementing, updating and supporting it will all have much
higher costs to deal with.

Posted by: tic swayback   Posted on: 06/29/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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