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[skeeterfood]

It is a bit confusing from the release, but if this deal includes HD video downloads without DRM (particularly TV shows or indie movies) I will:

1. Fall down.
2. Get back up.
3. ???
4. Buy things a bunch off of it and help JRiver to PROFIT!!!

Either way... I look forward to this new service.  In a very short period of time I've become a huge fan of the Amazon MP3 store.  If I can get my digital download purchases even easier and more integrated (and still in nice LAME-encoded high-quality MP3s), I will be an even happier customer.

My main problem with the Amazon store in MC right now is that it is very hard to use from my couch on my TV, because the integrated IE is crappy and doesn't have full page zoom or any other cool features.  Something that worked well from within the MC UI (and especially if it works in Theater View) will be SLICK!!!

I wouldn't get too excited.  Their "High Definition Music Downloads" are just CD's encoded in WMA lossless with DRM for a price >= to that of just buying the CD.    Nothing HD about it in any sense of the overused buzzword...

See here for details.

My favorite quote:

We use Microsoft Windows Media Digital Rights Management software to make sure all the music you purchase is safe and protected.

-John

[JimH]

I split this from another thread to keep the discussion in one place.

The larger movie studios all require DRM right now.  This may eventually change, just as it is currently changing for music, but right now they're standing firm.

Some video content is available without DRM, but primarily from smaller studios.  I expect this to grow.

Our job is to make the best of an imperfect world.  We'll try to keep the hassles to a minimum.

[glynor]

Our job is to make the best of an imperfect world.  We'll try to keep the hassles to a minimum.

I certainly expected as much.  Funny how much of a conflict on this there is between new and old media.  The goal of most "new media" companies (Rev3 for example) is to get their content into the user's hands in as many formats as possible, in the least restrictive way possible, as quickly as possible.  The more formats, less restrictions, and more quickly you get the content out there means you have the highest possible number of users which means you get the most possible ad revenue.

On the flipside, most "old media" companies seem obsessed with just the opposite.  They want to control every aspect of the use, delivery, and consumption of "their" content.  The idea that a user could, without their permission (and more importantly, without paying for it) send a clip out of a show to one of their friends or relatives terrifies them.  Want to use it on your iPod or Xbox instead of your DVD player?  Well, we can sell you that privilege for the low, low price of...

The "new media" companies, by-and-large, understand that the more hands you get the content into, the better.  Sure... Some users could take the time to strip out all those ads and repost ad-free versions to certain torrent websites, but who would bother?  I mean, if you can just download the files directly from Rev3 yourself in whatever format happens to work for you and your devices, in high-quality (often HD anymore)... By the time you got the editing and re-encoding done, you could have just watched it in pristine HD quality with all the ads 10 times over!  Want to send it to your friend or relative?  Please do!  We'd love more exposure!  The more people who watch, the better!

Plus, most of the new media companies are doing much more than the classic "ad" anyhow... It is intertwined with the content.  A perfect example is Leo Laporte's TWiT show.  If you've never listened to it before, he does a segment every week that lasts 15 minutes or so (out of the 1.5 hr podcast) that is effectively an "ad" for Audible.  Audible is one of their sponsors, which he makes abundantly clear, but his segment isn't just a "Audible is cool" ad.  Instead, he picks out 2-3 audiobooks per week out of the Audible collection (mostly things he's been listening to himself) and does reviews and discusses them with his guests.  Often the guests get in on the act too and start talking about great books they've gotten from Audible (and they're not even getting paid for it).  It is an ad, clearly, but it is also valuable content in the show.  And it is somewhat "intertwined" with the other content, so it's difficult (and even undesirable) to "TiVO-skip" past it.

It's quite effective.  I listen to TWiT weekly, and despite the fact that I'm a "true-believer, anti-DRM, crusader" I am strongly tempted to sign up for an Audible account.  If only they offered DRM-free MP3s, I would immediately take the plunge.  I just might do it anyway... Were it not for the Audible section of the weekly TWiT I listen to, I probably certainly wouldn't even consider it.  As it is, I'm reminded weekly of 3-4 books that I'd love to take the time to read/listen to, if only I had an Audible account (and it helps that MC works well with Audible, BTW).  Eventually, I'll probably take the plunge (though I really hope they back off their stupid DRM requirements sometime soon -- there are some good signs coming out of the industry).

So many of the "old media" companies just don't "get it".  Why in god's name is ABC selling/giving away commercial-free copies of LOST online?  Why don't they simultaneously release it online, ad-supported and in HD, and appeal to the widest possible audience?  Because some people with entirely too much time on their hands are going to strip out the ads and torrent them?  They do that anyway, and I end up watching them half the time so that I can watch it in HD when I want.  If I could just subscribe to a LOST HD Video Podcast, I would, and I would probably actually watch the ads (especially if they got clever and put the little "pop-up" extras running along the bottom of the feed during the ads).  It is just absurd.  How much ad revenue are they losing by being obstinate?

[JimH]

A big part of the problem is the complexity of licensing.  An "old" media company may not have sufficient rights or be able to acquire them at a reasonable cost, so they live with the restrictions of their contract.

Some of the "new" companies seem, uh, less concerned with agreements.  Youtube, for example.  If we published the same copyrighted material that they do and distributed it so freely, we'd be sued back into the stone age.  It is clearly not legal.

We (JRiver) are stuck in the middle.  As I said, we try to make the best of it.

[hit_ny]

The goal of most "new media" companies (Rev3 for example) is to get their content into the user's hands in as many formats as possible, in the least restrictive way possible, as quickly as possible.  The more formats, less restrictions, and more quickly you get the content out there means you have the highest possible number of users which means you get the most possible ad revenue.

Why do you think that is ?

not that i disagree with what was said

On the flipside, most "old media" companies seem obsessed with just the opposite.  They want to control every aspect of the use, delivery, and consumption of "their" content.  The idea that a user could, without their permission (and more importantly, without paying for it) send a clip out of a show to one of their friends or relatives terrifies them. 

The answer to this is directly related to the first question.

The "new media" companies, by-and-large, understand that the more hands you get the content into, the better. 

Uh-huh

So many of the "old media" companies just don't "get it". 

One word

Catalog

[skeeterfood]

I split this from another thread to keep the discussion in one place.

I have no problem with you splitting this off, I felt kinda bad adding it to your press release thread anyway, since you guys aren't the ones causing the problem, but I was commenting on the Audio, not the Video DRM...

If they're going to call it HD Audio it better be something better than CD.  Ripping a CD, encoding it in WMA lossless, and adding DRM in NO WAY makes it HD Audio, unless HD stands for "Handcuffed to DRM".  I have no problem with DRM for subscription services, but it has absolutely no place in the purchased Audio/Video world.

-John

[hit_ny]

Does the word 'lossless' mean anything ?

For a big company to be doing that must be a first i think.

So the diff is b4 it was lossy+DRM now its lossless.

Things change

[glynor]

A big part of the problem is the complexity of licensing.  An "old" media company may not have sufficient rights or be able to acquire them at a reasonable cost, so they live with the restrictions of their contract.

You somewhat misunderstood what I was talking about, Jim.  I'm talking about content creators, not distributors.  So, not Facebook or YouTube, but Revision3 and TWiT (and me or you or marko for that matter).  On the "old media" side, I'm talking about the studios, not the TV Stations or BestBuy or Amazon.  The licensing problems are caused by those "old media" studios and production companies.  My diatribe was over the stupidity of their obsession over those licensing complexities.  They're just wrong.  And they'll either eventually figure it out or they'll perish and be replaced by the new media studios and by you and me.

Look at the recent statistics... Many people in the current young generations get the vast majority of their entertainment online.  I know tons of college kids now who don't even bother to have cable TV once they move out of the dorms.  Except for the rare hippy, extremely frugal kid, or true-believer, that was effectively unheard-of when I was going through college.  And as you get to younger kids, its looking even worse for the TV studios.  And much of this entertainment is NOT coming from the established media.  It is user-created content.  Youtube and podcasts.  Does this mean they don't like well-produced content?  Certainly not.  The problem is the terrible and convoluted distribution means caused by the arcane licensing restrictions enforced by these old media content producers.

And, as an aside, what YouTube does is certainly not illegal, so long as they pull offending content down when notified via the methods established by law.  Under the DMCA this gives them safe harbor protection, just like any ISP or Web Hosting company.  Whether or not those laws are good ones is another story... I think they give the content owners far too big of a "stick" with which they can, and do, issue takedown notices and quell free speech for things that they do not own rights to, but that is currently the law.

[JimH]

OK, I changed the title.  Sorry I missed that.

With music, I believe the prevailing thinking at the major labels is that MP3 at 320Kbps is the max they will go for unprotected files.  Independent labels are sometimes allowing lossless with no DRM.

[JimH]

You completely misunderstood what I was talking about, Jim.  I'm talking about content creators, not distributors.  

I'm not surprised that I misunderstood.  I don't think of twitter as new media.

Where will the next James Bond come from?  User content?

It is possible for a great musician to self publish, but people who like making music don't often do business well, and people who do business well don't usually make good music.

But I should just stop talking and let you debate the merits of services and DRM.  I only started to try to add a little background on what goes on behind the scenes.  Contracts, law, rights, business models, etc.  They seem like a necessary evil.

[JimH]

And, as an aside, what YouTube does is certainly not illegal, so long as they pull offending content down when notified via the methods established by law.  

If they were actually making an attempt to police their site, I'd agree.  I've read that they say it's too hard.  I don't have any sympathy for that.  We designed a system to do that more than five years ago.

In my opinion, google has a very disappointing attitude toward copyright law (or what's left of it).

OK, now I'm really going to stop.  Have at it.  glynor, you should really take my side of the argument as well as your own.  It would be a lot more interesting to read.

[glynor]

Where will the next James Bond come from?  User content?

It is possible for a great musician to self publish, but people who like making music don't often do business well, and people who do business well don't usually make good music.

Surprisingly enough, there is already plenty of well-produced, fantastic "user content" out there, and plenty of fantastic new media "studios" that do get it and are making great stuff.  As cost-of-entry continues to fall the pressure from "home brewers" will only get more intense.  That said, there will certainly always be a market for professionally-produced content.  That doesn't mean the existing distribution system and existing studios will be the ones that create it!

For counter examples to your doubt on self publishing? Jonathan Coulton for one.  But I don't think that's even needed.  Why can't they use a label that isn't stupid like Nettwerk, for example.  Same goes with "video" content... Revision3 is a perfect example of a "new media" content producing studio.  Why couldn't that next "James Bond" come from someone like them?  And, besides, are big-budget movies really the entertainment format of the future?  I would guess that they will be largely displaced by videogame-like interactive entertainment vehicles that fall somewhere in-between today's video games and movies.  As 3D rendering quality approaches being indistinguishable from film, how long do you think it'll be before there is the first "movie" that is actually something closer to a "game"?  A world and story that you can walk around in and interact with, but still experience in a limited 2-3 hour window of time?  Not to mention that virtual actors are probably going to be much cheaper (and lower-maintenance) than real actors in the very-near future...

Just like the music industry, the old studios will be forced to evolve or die.

[glynor]

I certainly do see the other side of the argument!  I am a content creator myself!  I just don't believe the best way to make money is to fight your customers and try to stop technological progress.  It is designed to fail.  Imagine if the old ice manufacturers had sued to stop refrigeration companies at the turn of the last century.  How absurd would that be viewed now?

My point is effectively this... They seem obsessed with punishing the pirates, while failing to understand why these places exist.  The way to win is to beat them and make it easier for your legitimate customers to get what they want the way they want it than what the pirates provide.  That is called capitalism, and it works.

If they were actually making an attempt to police their site, I'd agree.  I've read that they say it's too hard.  I don't have any sympathy for that.  We designed a system to do that more than five years ago.

Old info, and you believed the spin from the MPAA.  YouTube can and does police their site.  They remove infringing content all the time.

The "too hard" argument was that the MPAA companies didn't want to have to notify YouTube when something was infringing.  They wanted YouTube to do it themselves, without input or assistance from the creators.  In other words, the conversation is more like this:

Viacom: "Look at all this infringing stuff we found on your site!  Oh, the humanity!"
YouTube: "You never told us about any of that stuff until you filed the lawsuit.  We have a procedure in place to take that stuff down.  Notify us of the infringing content, and we will immediately pull it down while we investigate whether or not it does actually constitute an infringement."
Viacom: "But that's too hard!  We don't want to have to hire people to constantly scrape the site for infringing content.  Every time we pull stuff down, people just keep uploading new stuff."
YouTube: "We'll check fingerprints on the files and block exact-duplicate re-uploads automatically, but we can't be expected to visually inspect each and every video uploaded and determine on our own what is infringing!  How would we even know who owns half the stuff, and even if we do, there is such a thing as fair use for parody and other purposes!  Either way, the law says we don't have to.  Safe Harbor, so suck it."
Viacom: We don't care.  Our lobbyists will just change the law, and we're going to sue you for one beeeellion dollars.
YouTube: We got bought out by Google.  So good luck with that.

Much of the reporting on the subject got it exactly backwards.  There is a procedure codified by law (the DMCA law that the media conglomerates got shoved through congress, and wrote themselves, btw).  YouTube (and Google) are following this law exactly.  Viacom is complaining that this law is too hard to follow, and saying that YouTube needs to somehow identify all infringing content themselves before it is ever posted and filter it out themselves.  How they're supposed to accomplish this feat while staying in business and without stifling legitimate fair use and free speech is irrelevant as far as Viacom is concerned.

More info here:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070501-google-cites-safe-harbor-fair-use-in-viacom-v-youtube-defense.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080527-youtube-viacom-dumping-piranhas-in-our-safe-harbor.html

[hit_ny]

In my opinion, google has a very disappointing attitude toward copyright law (or what's left of it).

Google is seen worldwide, what does that equate to in terms of free publicity ?

The way to win is to beat them and make it easier for your legitimate customers to get what they want the way they want it than what the pirates provide.  That is called capitalism, and it works.

Heh, that is *the* solution. They can reduce the black market significantly this way. No need for expensive legislation.

Only problem is they are worried that if they get it wrong there will be no way back  ?

They will only try when their bottomline is threatened, thats why the newer companies are more open.

[glynor]

They will only try when their bottomline is threatened, thats why the newer companies are more open.

By then it will be too late.  You should have seen the groundswell of people at NAB last year who were angry at the studios and production houses for limiting their distribution means for no good reason.  A ton of people were talking about leaving and going a different way.

We'll see, but if they don't change, they'll die.  Mega-budget super-movies keep flopping and little indie low-budget things keep doing very well.  Spiderman 12 isn't the future.  We'll see what is, but I'd guess it will be a lot closer to Half Life 2: Episode 2.

[hit_ny]

By then it will be too late. 

We'll see, but if they don't change, they'll die. 

The demand for entertainment will not change i think it will actually increase. As people become aware they ask for more. Who is going to meet this need then ?

What will the entertainment industry look like post meltdown ?

[glynor]

The demand for entertainment will not change i think it will actually increase. As people become aware they ask for more. Who is going to meet this need then?

What will the entertainment industry look like post meltdown ?

It certainly won't change or diminish!  No, I'd say it is quite likely for demand to increase dramatically if our current system is reformed.

I'm not sure what you mean by "who is going to meet the demand?"  If there is a market there, someone will fill it.  It will, of course, be a blend between the surviving elements of the current top-down organized system.  I'm not talking about, ever, the end of corporations being involved in the creation or distribution of entertainment content.  I'm simply saying that those corporations that refuse to change to compete with online, connected, internet savvy, new media producers will have an increasingly rough time over the next few years.

I just think that part of what will make the "new" companies increasingly successful is the more open attitude that most of them take over formats and DRM, which I explained above.  Maybe I'm wrong, but if the history of how these things have gone in the past is any guide...  In years gone by, VCRs, Audio Cassette Tapes, and CD-Rs have all been widely decried as terribly damaging because of Piracy and dire warnings about the "end of entertainment" were issued... Then, the technology came anyway because it is impossible to stop progress and the companies that evolved to use the new technologies used them to make even more money than their predecessors ever did.  Home video machines were supposed to kill the movie industry.  Now they make far more money from home rentals and sales of DVDs (and before, VHS) than they ever did in the Theater-only environment.

The change happened in the newspaper/magazine business a few years ago.  Companies like Yahoo, MSNBC, Slate, Politico, CNET, and Google (along with so many others) and blogs like Huffington Post, Balloon Juice, and DailyKos have dramatically altered the traditional print newsmedia market.  The same thing is coming to most other entertainment media companies, and those who ignore it do so at their peril. Just like print newspapers... The change won't come all at once, but it will come (and will come on many fronts at once).

I would guess these would all be involved:

• video game companies: Valve and ID and Rockstar (selling low-cost, episodic, shorter-form, interactive dramas)
• professional podcasting companies: Revision 3, TWiT.tv, ChannelFlip.com and hundreds of other professional video podcasting companies (some existing and some that don't yet)
• the thousands of indie production companies that are already out there self-distributing.
  
• the many thousand more independent studios that now do contract work for media conglomerates and corporate video.  You think that BBC or PBS (or NBC or ABC for that matter) actually MAKE those documentary nature shows you see?  In many cases, they don't.  They pay for other people to make them, many of whom are independent contractors.  Even big TV network dramas work that way somewhat.  Think about Chuck Lorre Productions or Ten Thirteen Productions.  If Google wanted to pay Chuck Lorre to do a TV series for the internet, and was willing to pay, and was going to ad support it, you think he wouldn't at least listen to what they had to say?  Or what about Apple, for the Apple iTunes Store flush with iPhone cash?  I mean, they already have a stake in Pixar...
• a big hunk of the current "bloggers"
• whichever of the existing big MPAA and TV studios figure this out best and react in the most agile way.
• bizarre 13 year old girls, fat guys in closets, and people like this on sites like YouTube.  Go to most highschools in america (well, at least those that make the digital divide cut) and ask a roomfull of kids at random who "Charlie the Unicorn" or "the Leave Britney Alone" guy are...  You'd be surprised at the results, I think.  They'll all have a small place as well.
  

[datdude]

  And, besides, are big-budget movies really the entertainment format of the future? 

Big budget movies will always be popular.  People like going to a movie they don't have to think about too much, and simply be entertained, nothing more.  Not that you have to have a big budget movie to do that, but it's kind of like drugs, you could run to get a euphoric high, but that's too hard for most people, so why not just take a pill or watch a stupid big budget movie.

[glynor]

Ultimately, this is very good for companies like JRiver and MediaNet.  Heck, it's what MediaNet is banking on.  They think they can be the next HBO.  They can sell the content directly to us.  I certainly feel for Jim's company's predicament stuck in the middle...  My opinion is that most of those issues will sort themselves out.  The DRM battle has been, mostly, fought and lost in the consumer's mind.  The music industry is just starting to get it.  The TV studios won't be that far behind.

Mostly, it's a huge opportunity.  I just hope the end result falls slightly more on the freedom end of the scale, rather than the corporate profits end of the scale.

I think the "real" problem is bigger.  We're stifling content creation with draconian copyright restrictions, and should go back to Founder's copyright (or at least Nixon copyright).  The current copyright regime is completely out of control.  The goal of copyright is to create a temporary monopoly market (otherwise "bad" and counter-capitalist) in "intellectual property" in order to encourage its creation.  Laudable goal.  However, copyright is now being used as a bludgeon for people to control speech and to prevent content creation or distribution.  So many documentarians are constantly terrified of producing anything for fear of being sued.  How does allowing Yoko Ono to control how John Lennon's musical works are used in documentaries help encourage the deceased John Lennon to create more music?  It doesn't, and it has the counter-effect of squelching the ability of people to re-use, re-mash, and re-mix his works without license until so much time has passed that the original art no longer has cultural relevance.

If this was done with music or literature in classical times, we would never have had Shakespeare or Mozart or Jonathan Swift.  That problem will take government action.

[datdude]

I actually think right now for consumers, things couldn't be better, so long as you have a high bandwidth Internet connection.  You can find just about anything on anything for free or for a little bit o cash.  Yes, the laws are stifling things from a mainstream perspective, but that's never stopped an artist from making something or a consumer from consuming if they want it bad enough.  I'm sure there are individual examples of this happening, but in general information and creativity can't be stopped.

I just love watching these big mega corprobloat conglomerates fight for a small sliver of their overall revenue.  It's quite interesting to understand their thinking and see their strategies come down to pure bean counting.  They don't have to take risks like a smaller company does.  It's a war of attrition, not a firefight.  I don't think the entertainment industry will melt down unless consumers stop consuming, it will just evolve.  They will buy whoever they need to buy out, as they are doing right now!

Occasionally you get a company like Google that changes the whole thing, but entertainment has been around for a while unlike the Internet.  Formats may change (holodeck anyone?) but what emotionally entertains people, isn't.

[hit_ny]

I just love watching these big mega corprobloat conglomerates fight for a small sliver of their overall revenue.  It's quite interesting to understand their thinking and see their strategies come down to pure bean counting.  They don't have to take risks like a smaller company does.  It's a war of attrition, not a firefight.  I don't think the entertainment industry will melt down unless consumers stop consuming, it will just evolve.  They will buy whoever they need to buy out, as they are doing right now!

Exactly what i was trying to get at with the word catalog.

These companies have huge ones dating back decades. Think about that for a moment, something that sounds good today that was made decades ago has held its value. Compared to something made recently. How long will that remain good ?

Proven vs Unproven.

Classics vs Hip or Fashionable atm.

If you want what they have then you have to go through them at some point.

After all there is no end to ppl wanting to get (re)acquainted with the classics, they have a certain momentum already, can coast longer.

Where is the dire need to change in that case.

We want change as we see more to gain than they do i feel

[datdude]

Exactly!  It would be great if we could just blow the whole thing up and start fresh, but it ain't going to happen.  That being said, I still think if you want your enertainment non-mainstream, it's not that hard to find and there are tons of options!