Mike,
I have been a reader of yours and Techdirt for a long time and I appreciate your passion and your brain. I am reluctant to get into this because I was really just playing around over the wekekend with my thouhts on SOPA. But you are interpreting my tweet to Jay wrongly and given that your words started this discusion, I will give you my thoughts directly. This is what you said in your piece:
"Thus, the real issue is that this is a business model problem. As we've seen over and over and over again, those who embrace what the internet enables, have found themselves to be much better off than they were before. They're able to build up larger fanbases, and to rely on various new platforms and services to make more money.
And, as we've seen with near perfect consistency, the best way, by far, to decrease infringement is to offer awesome new services that are convenient and useful. This doesn't mean just offering any old service -- and it certainly doesn't mean trying to limit what users can do with those services. And, most importantly, it doesn't mean treating consumers like they were criminals and "pirates." It means constantly improving the consumer experience. When that consumer experience is great, then people switch in droves. You can, absolutely, compete with free, and many do so. If more were able to without restriction, infringement would decrease. If you look at the two largest contributors to holding back "piracy" lately, it's been Netflix and Spotify. Those two services alone have been orders of magnitude more successful in decreasing infringement than any new copyright law. Because they compete by being more convenient and a better experience than infringement."
And so my response was "Think analog" not as in analog policy vs digital policy but think of the real world we live in and the ethical issues we face every day. My point was that I can be pissed that the GAP doesn't have an outfit that is as stylish or fit as well as I want. And I can think that they arent serving their customer when they give me ugly clothes that dont fit well. ie: their busiess model sucks. But I don't think that gives me the right to take any of their clothes without paying just because I am an unhappy customer. That was my ONLY point. Do I think that the content industry has moved way too slowly in putting their content online? Absolutely. Do I think they could have been and should be more innovative? of course. But I also know that these are huge ships turning around in creeks and however easy the answers seem to you , they are often really hard. When people screw up their business, their sales go down. That has happened in the entertainment business. They are paying a price for their pace of change. BUT, there is also stealing. Pure old simple unethical stealing. Call it whatever you want - the march of technology - the inevitable cost of innovation, etc. To the writer or songwriter who makes their money on SALES, it is stealing. (Even if they might be thinking about making their money another way.)
And while I love the dialog by for and about consumers and fans on these issues, I have no patience for big companies like Google who not only throw huge sums of money out there buying professors and economists and think tanks to kill any effort at copyright protection, they make a fortune on search advertising for those same illegal products.
So, your first sentence was right, I have long been willing to shine an unattractive searchlight at my old compatriots when they deserve it But I have no patience for the finger pointing and nastiness of the so called tech fans in this debate. Thank god I don't have to care so much anymore.
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(untitled comment) (as hilary rosen)
SOPA
I have been a reader of yours and Techdirt for a long time and I appreciate your passion and your brain. I am reluctant to get into this because I was really just playing around over the wekekend with my thouhts on SOPA. But you are interpreting my tweet to Jay wrongly and given that your words started this discusion, I will give you my thoughts directly. This is what you said in your piece:
"Thus, the real issue is that this is a business model problem. As we've seen over and over and over again, those who embrace what the internet enables, have found themselves to be much better off than they were before. They're able to build up larger fanbases, and to rely on various new platforms and services to make more money.
And, as we've seen with near perfect consistency, the best way, by far, to decrease infringement is to offer awesome new services that are convenient and useful. This doesn't mean just offering any old service -- and it certainly doesn't mean trying to limit what users can do with those services. And, most importantly, it doesn't mean treating consumers like they were criminals and "pirates." It means constantly improving the consumer experience. When that consumer experience is great, then people switch in droves. You can, absolutely, compete with free, and many do so. If more were able to without restriction, infringement would decrease. If you look at the two largest contributors to holding back "piracy" lately, it's been Netflix and Spotify. Those two services alone have been orders of magnitude more successful in decreasing infringement than any new copyright law. Because they compete by being more convenient and a better experience than infringement."
And so my response was "Think analog" not as in analog policy vs digital policy but think of the real world we live in and the ethical issues we face every day. My point was that I can be pissed that the GAP doesn't have an outfit that is as stylish or fit as well as I want. And I can think that they arent serving their customer when they give me ugly clothes that dont fit well. ie: their busiess model sucks. But I don't think that gives me the right to take any of their clothes without paying just because I am an unhappy customer. That was my ONLY point. Do I think that the content industry has moved way too slowly in putting their content online? Absolutely. Do I think they could have been and should be more innovative? of course. But I also know that these are huge ships turning around in creeks and however easy the answers seem to you , they are often really hard. When people screw up their business, their sales go down. That has happened in the entertainment business. They are paying a price for their pace of change. BUT, there is also stealing. Pure old simple unethical stealing. Call it whatever you want - the march of technology - the inevitable cost of innovation, etc. To the writer or songwriter who makes their money on SALES, it is stealing. (Even if they might be thinking about making their money another way.)
And while I love the dialog by for and about consumers and fans on these issues, I have no patience for big companies like Google who not only throw huge sums of money out there buying professors and economists and think tanks to kill any effort at copyright protection, they make a fortune on search advertising for those same illegal products.
So, your first sentence was right, I have long been willing to shine an unattractive searchlight at my old compatriots when they deserve it But I have no patience for the finger pointing and nastiness of the so called tech fans in this debate. Thank god I don't have to care so much anymore.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Hilary Rosen.
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