As part of our continuing discussion of copyright law and the music industry, here is a speech by Register San Francisco bureau chief Andrew Orlowski, at the In the City convention in the UK. He was telling the cream of the music industry it's never had it so good, that it's been swindled by the technologists, and that it should dump DRM and embrace freedom. What a great speech.
Excerpt:
What happens when people want to share music? They find a way of doing it. Since it costs next to nothing to leave an iPod broadcasting, each clothes stall or launderette will leave one running. Down the street you go, collecting music. Now, iPods are pretty expensive. What if people had these capabilities for free? They will.
In a few years phones will have much more processing power and the storage of today's iPods. Today WLAN drains the batteries, but there will be lower-power short range wireless technology that does the job, Ultra Wide Band. That's a T1 pipe over a few feet. There are still technical issues: its effectiveness diminishes as more devices are in use, range is quite short, but it's potentially hundreds of times faster than Bluetooth.
The carriers subsidize phones by hundreds of pounds. They're more interested in driving up the ARPU (average revenue per user) once they've got you as a customer. What would you rather have, a phone with a built-in iPod, or not? Or one with sharing, or not? Tough decision.
Put another way, do you think they'll even be able to shift a phone without these capabilities?
So you don't need an iPod. But you might not even need something as sophisticated as a phone. Here's something else to think about. In 1997 IBM demonstrated two men shaking hands, and exchanging an electronic business card. The body is a natural electricity conductor, and where there's electricity, you can transmit bits. It's still in the laboratory but speeds are increasing.
So hello, [Universal UK boss] John Kennedy. Nice to meet you. Thanks for the CD you've just given me!
