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.
