Still waiting for the digital economy to produce free stuff
Reuters recently reported that a US court had suggested that "many authors could benefit" from Google's plan to scan books. Some supportive commenters over at The Register quickly jumped at the opportunity to agree that Google knew what was best for those silly authors who resisted their work being posted without permission or recompense for the benefit of the computer industry.
To be fair, the second comment on The Register's article gets right to the point of whether it should be up to authors to decide how they publicise and exploit their work, or up to aggregrators like Google. Numerous businesses use free samples to publicise their work, ranging from fragments of bread in a dish at my local bakery to blasting out ad-supported music on national radio stations. But I'm pretty sure my local baker decides what and how much bread to put on the counter, not some multinational bread information aggregator that doesn't actually bake or sell any bread itself.
Google itself maintains that its service represents a fair use of the books that it scans. Fair use (and similar provisions in other countries' copyright laws) imply that there is some significant public benefit in the copying being done, and/or no significant harm being done to the copyright holder. It's certainly conceivable that Google could indeed do something in the public interest here, even if it serves its own interest at the same time. But that remains to be established by the court.
All this is beside the point, however, for computer enthusiasts desperate to believe that artists could thrive if only they would allow computer users to enjoy the fruits of artists' labour without having to pay for it.
A little while ago, a Conversation article from Karl Schaffarczyk directed readers to Birgitte Andersen's 2010 article Shackling the Digital Economy Means Less For Everyone in support of the notion that "it is widely accepted that people download music and other content due to the failure of the market to deliver what the consumer wants." I couldn't find any such statement in Andersen's article, much less any evidence for it. I did, however, find plenty of selective citation from the literature on the effect of copyright infringement on sales, and unsubstantiated assertions about "outdated business models" of the music industry and (unspecified) "revolutionary business models" of the computer industry, just as I've previously commented on for The Social Interface.
It may nonetheless be true that the market has not offered what Schaffarczyk, Andersen and other consumer-oriented commentators want, if what they want is free access to books and music. But a successful market needs to offer benefits to both the consumers and the producers, and no amount of inserting computer companies into the pipeline between them will make free labour appeal to producers.
Potholes on the road to the couch potato
I've had a couple of conversations with work colleagues over the past few months in which the colleagues seemed to be surprised that I still rent videos from a physical DVD store rather than obtain them on-line. Prior to those conversations, I don't think it had even occurred to me that I could watch videos on-line — mainly, I guess, because I had a routine that I felt was working well and was in no need of change. I've also only fairly recently obtained an Internet connection plan with sufficient speed and capacity that I can actually watch movies over it.
When I later took a look at what was on offer at the on-line video store operated by Internet service provider, I found that said store features a much narrower range of movies than does my local DVD rental store, and that it charges more for each rental. On The Conversation last week, Matthew Bailes also writes about the monopoly-like profits that computer companies can extract once they've trapped customers in the company "ecosystem". (So much for the notion that on-line retailers would run rings around old-fashioned bricks-and-mortar retailers by eliminating the need to pay rent, maintain capital stock, or pay service staff.)
A number of the commenters on Bailes' article ask the obvious question: why, then, use the on-line service?
One comment on Bailes' article observes that "if there really is a monopoly, it's only a monopoly to people who are desperate to avoid going to a shop." I imagine some people might reasonably be in that situation if they live in a remote area, or they have restricted mobility, or, as I recently overheard another work colleague remark, it's raining and they can't be bothered to walk to the video store. But none of those are true of my work colleagues or I — nor of Matthew Bailes, as far as I can tell — and the weather would have be pretty serious indeed to prevent me walking ten minutes to my local store.
There was a time, I guess, when I'd buy bleeding-edge technology without a lot of thought as to whether or not it really was the most efficient way of meeting my needs. I think I was motivated in part by the hobby value of experimenting with such technology, and in part by the price: given that I have the skills and patience to set up a TV card in Linux, say, why pay for a stand-alone television even if the latter would be much simpler and easier?
I can't see much hobby or educational value in purchasing slick consumer products like Apple TV and Bigpond Movies, though. In fact, walking to the shop is more like a hobby these days: I enjoy the exercise, the contact with my local area, and the experience of looking around at all of items for rent or sale. And, thanks to the school of economics attended by Apple, Telstra and others, it even seems to be more financially rewarding.
Digital media and the, ahem, business model of the future
After lurking on the edges of the IEEE Society of the Social Implications of Technology for a while, wondering if I can and ought to get more active, I finally found the inspiration to contribute an article to The Social Interface, which was published last week.
Digital media and the, ahem, business model of the future is a topic close to my heart as both a researcher in intellectual property protection and a lover of music (and books, though the electronic book industry never seemed to make as many headlines as the former). The article grew out of what I perceived to be lazy and hackneyed advice to the music industry to "get a new business model" without offering any constructive suggestion as to what this magical business model might be, let alone show a willingness to make a living using whatever model the artists were supposed to adopt.
In one or two of the job interviews I did in the period after the conclusion of my time at the Multimedia Security Lab in Wollongong, I was asked what I thought the solution might be. Being thoroughly sceptical of bold predictions, I said something along the lines of "I don't know but we can keep experimenting and I'm hopeful we'll work something out."
Insofar as music is still being produced and sold, and music companies appear to remain in business, one might say that we have, indeed, worked something out, at least for now. It's hard to say exactly what it is, possibly because it's far more complex than what anyone could summarise in a pithy answer to an interview question. Maybe it's improvements in the user appeal and financial architecture of paid-for download services; maybe it's the recording industry's hounding of file-sharing networks; maybe it's a change in culture; maybe it's even those "movie piracy is theft" ads that film-goers continue to endure.
Most likely, it's combination of all of those things and more, and it'll continue to evolve as technology changes and new services emerge. At least I hope so, because I hate to think that there'll come a day when it's no longer profitable for artists to pursue their craft in the same way that I and other technologists pursue ours.
Another step sideways for electronic cash
In his contribution to the September 2012 issue of IEEE Computer Magazine, Neal Leavitt asks Are Mobile [Computer] Payments Ready to Cash In Yet?
A few years ago, I participated in a workshop on future technologies during which my discussion group was asked to answer the question "When will cash be replaced by electronic payments?" I, and a fellow group member whose name I forget, quickly gave the answer "Never". Of course "never" is a long time, and history is well-supplied with infamous statements that heavier-than-air vehicles would never fly, that the world had a market for about five computers, and that home users wouldn't need more than 640 kilobytes of memory.
Nonetheless, I think Leavitt (probably unconsciously) tells us something in his summary of why mobile payments have not yet superseded cash. According to his "industry observers", such payments are hampered by "inadequate security, a lack of standards, and limited interoperability between systems".
I'm sure these are all genuine difficulties with mobile payments, but the industry observers seem to have forgotten to ask: in what way do mobile payments improve upon cash? Why switch to payment by mobile computer when cash, EFTPOS and credit cards already provide effective and convenient methods of portable payment? (The mobile computing industry presumably considers getting a cut of the payments to be reason enough.)
Towards the end of the article, Leavitt summarises the thoughts of a market analyst by the name of John Shuster. Shuster, as paraphrased by Leavitt, conjectures that users "may see no compelling reason to adopt them", and I think this might actually be the most significant reason for limited interest in payment by mobile computer.
Electronic cash looks to me to be one of those science fiction ideas that futuristic writers always assumed would come about, but somehow never did. Like videophones, flying cars and talking computers, it's not that electronic cash is necessarily beyond us, it's just that it isn't particularly useful compared to the established alternative. This is why we haven't replaced our telephones with Skype, our cars with helicopters, or keyboards with microphones. And why I think few outside the mobile computing industry are rushing to replace cash with gadgets.
