At first glance it would seem to me that a service which allows you to set up an audio feed through your phone (or VOIP) would not be something that should cause too many rights issues.
I was alerted to Gabcast by Jonathan Marks on his Critical Distance blog and signed up with the idea that as I will be spending quite a bit of time on the road over the next few months it would be nice to record some book chapters for my kids to listen to. My son Gabriel loves being read classics like Treasure Island and King Solomon's Mines.
But in signing up to Gabcast's T&Cs I agreed that anything I record will have all rights cleared and that I grant the use of the material to Gabcast in a worldwide licence.
Now I don't for a moment imagine that Gabcast is going to take my audio books recorded for limited private use and release them as a worldwide podcast. My reading voice charms my children but that's about it. Nor do I think that publishing houses are going to start chucking War and Peace through my front window.
I know the platform has to pretend that they have no control over rights and it's all my fault if something goes wrong, and I know I have to pretend that I know all about the rights and have a file of waivers and clearances somewhere and I know that publishers have to pretend they really care about people reading their editions as if it would stop them buying books.
It's just a bit silly.
Anything which can be digitally reproduced and copied is essentially valueless, in so far as value lies in the actual product. The value lies in the brand and the advertising and community opportunities it generates. And maybe it would get people to buy some analogue versions, better known as books.
Friday 28 September 2007
Thursday 6 September 2007
Application Wars
Fans of sci-fi will be familiar with the genre that starts in a post-apocalyptic scenario sometime in the future. Terminator and the Rise of the Machines for example, or take your pick of various nuclear meltdown aftermaths.
In my brave attempts to look at the future of content I would base my hit screenplay after the Application Wars.
It seems that there's a new platform - application - client - service every week at the moment. Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, Zattoo, Hulu, iPlayer, 4OD and I'm sure there'll be another by the time I finish this blog.
OK you could download them all and not miss a few gigabytes but experience suggests that people - as in the mass audience everyone is chasing - are not going to download and install more than one or two applications designed to do the same thing.
So there are two scenarios.
Either one application is dominant - the iTunes scenario. That looks unlikely. Major video content owners like NBC, Fox, BBC and others show willingness to distribute widely but also seem keen to avoid a situation where they are dependent on a dominant platform. They are developing their own and supporting others.
The other scenario is that there is a proliferation for some time but eventually the whole idea of a proprietary platform goes the way of the Cold War. Let's call that the MP3 scenario. The barriers to this scenario are that proprietary systems have better control and security but if someone can address those problems then it is undoubtedly the best solution for both content owners and users.
In my brave attempts to look at the future of content I would base my hit screenplay after the Application Wars.
It seems that there's a new platform - application - client - service every week at the moment. Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, Zattoo, Hulu, iPlayer, 4OD and I'm sure there'll be another by the time I finish this blog.
OK you could download them all and not miss a few gigabytes but experience suggests that people - as in the mass audience everyone is chasing - are not going to download and install more than one or two applications designed to do the same thing.
So there are two scenarios.
Either one application is dominant - the iTunes scenario. That looks unlikely. Major video content owners like NBC, Fox, BBC and others show willingness to distribute widely but also seem keen to avoid a situation where they are dependent on a dominant platform. They are developing their own and supporting others.
The other scenario is that there is a proliferation for some time but eventually the whole idea of a proprietary platform goes the way of the Cold War. Let's call that the MP3 scenario. The barriers to this scenario are that proprietary systems have better control and security but if someone can address those problems then it is undoubtedly the best solution for both content owners and users.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)