4th Generation Media

First, let me recommend this 4GM note over at kfmonkey. For a while it’s been pretty clear that ‘appointment based’ teevee was and is getting battered by new technology – TiVo was the thing that really crystallized out a couple of trends (time shifting, ad skipping), and as we move forward content pops up in more and odder places. Additionally the range of entertainment options available keeps growing; games (computer and console based) are an entire genre that didn’t exist at all in the heyday of 3 (here in the US) networks. It’s never been easier to be creative – there are lots of tools to make stuff: music, video, even writing – and to get your work in front of people. Sure, much of it is of questionable quality but 80% of everything is crap and a certain amount of work is produced for the pleasure of creation. So, on the one hand we have blossoming diversity and on the other hand? We have folks like the RIAA and MPAA who are desperately trying to, if not put the genie back in the bottle altogether, at least control something they can’t. The record industry’s anti-piracy efforts are a joke. They can’t be bothered to obey their own rules. They sue first graders and grandmothers. They vandalize their customer’s PCs. They’ve also managed to cripple an entire distribution channel – legal music downloads. The DRM the industry insists on is such a pain in the @ss that, in my experience, it often drive folks to abandon online music services in favor of other approaches. I don’t mess with the iTunes store or with p2p stuff – I buy used CDs, rip ’em (FLAC format – lossless) and either keep or re-sell the CD. The RIAA/MPAA customer-hostile approach is about to jump to the next level with all the ‘protection‘ features built in to Windows Vista and the hardware Vista will run on. The protection being engineered in will protect copyright holders from the folks that bought and are using the computer. I’ve got no plans to upgrade – in fact this may be the event that causes me to exit the Windows world (on machines that I own) in favor of Linux and OS X – but as someone who fields a lot of computer questions, I’m afraid… Aside from pissing a lot of folks off, I wonder what effect this mess will have on consumer electronics manufacturers and the adoption of HDTV. Sony’s consumer electronics wing is the poster child for serving 2 masters – the customer and the content folks (Sony Pictures, Sony BMG), but unfortunately, it looks like all the big guys (MS, Intel, AMD) are rolling over and playing dead rather than serving the paying customer – not usually a good business plan. Although I wouldn’t mind a nice new 16:9 teevee, I’m going to wait until the dust settles – I have better things to spend money on and I can’t shake the feeling that this is yet another attempt to rope me in to monthly fees for something I don’t need.