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Back when the Cartel smashed Napster I pointed out that they had only a few years (I think I said two - I was optimistic) until people started trading movies around the way they trade music. We're now halfway through 2004 and it's happening. The MPAA is waving around a survey showing that in eight countries about 1/4th of Web users have now downloaded at least one movie. In some countries where broadband is particularly widespread, such as South Korea, the number exceeds 50%. Despite its continuing jihad against its customers, the Cartel are clearly losing this war. Even looked at as a rear-guard action, their campaigns haven't bought them enough time to get legitimate services up and going. iTunes just passed 100 million songs but it's an oddball, counting more sales than all the others combined. It now stands about where it should have been four years ago, if the Cartel had been wise and not paranoid. Compare 100 million with the estimated 1 *billion* songs available on the P2P nets. There are some downloadable movie services, but they're tiny, they suck even more than the downloadable music services, and they are nowhere near mass market potential. The Cartel simply do not have a viable commercial alternative to the free downloads and in addition they have to wrestle with a big rental market that music doesn't have. They also have a ton of work to do to explain why DVD sales are skyrocketing even as movie downloading takes widespread root. I'm sure their spin doctors are hard at work already. I'm not at all sure what the Cartel are ultimately going to do about this. Clearly they have to do something; they're too heavily invested to simply declare victory and get out. My guess is that they'll continue a multipronged campaign - the MPAA will start suing customers, the full-court press will continue against every company making a product the Cartel doesn't like, and money will continue to wash over Congress. The results will be mixed, publicity will be generated, and sharing will continue to rise. What's most disturbing to me is that I can't see a good end-game for this. I don't particularly like the movie part of the Cartel any more than I like the music part, but the current situation is untenable. We need a sweeping new model, not incremental change. What I'd like to see is an all-media digital ASCAP. Something into which I can - directly or indirectly - pay my fees and thereafter go get my content with some assurance that what I'm doing is legal and that the artists and other creative parties are being compensated by my dollars. Not that I much think it's going to happen. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/ |