Television services have benefitted from the same three funding models that we have now - Adverts, Subscription and Pay-as-you-go rental and owned.
Services like netflix are subscription, while YouTube and Vevo are largely Advert funded - although this is changing. Media companies like HBO and Virgin offer subscription and rental options, while iTunes, GooglePlay, et al are offering the new model of PAYG Owned DRM.
Meanwhile, traditional piracy always had the edge against slow-delivery, quality-limited or poor-choice content providers but is struggling to keep up with HD and 4K On Demand-PAYG services. Its the convienience, not the cost, driving the consumption market.
So, why do I think the consumer lost out on the last step? Well as long as the content providers service is more convienent than piracy then they will take our money. My background concern is a very shallow one - its about limited access to a century of education and entertainment that we potentially - but not actually - have access to.
But this isn't a loss to the consumer, its a loss to humanity and far beside the road I'm travelling at the moment.
The loss to the consumer is the fractured nature of the market. Fractured and competing music companies retailing vinyl had little cost to the consumer, who could easily walk into a record shop and buy music. And actually, competition between artists and record labels was probably a good thing for the consumer, leading to musical and eventually technological revolution. Ok there were a few record shops but the retail was divided from the production by physical distribution. The system was PAYG-owned-media, but you had a freedom to store and use the media as you wanted and it was easy to find and buy.
Under the new system, as I browse Netflix, Vevo, YouTube, Picturebox, Blinkbox, iPlayer, BSkyB, iTunes, GooglePlay, SteamPlay, Virgin, HBO and a dozen other services they all have one thing in common - a limited subsection of content and they are often moving toward a PAYG owned model instead of a subscription or PAYG consumable item cost. I don't mind a PAYG consumable item because I pay for it, watch it and I'm done. The transaction is complete, like a cinema ticket or a bucket of popcorn. It's cheap and once its gone, its gone
But when I'm forced into a PAYG owned purchase its going to cost a lot more than the rental and I'm at the whim of the content provider still carrying and supplying my content to my device, OS and country. Some aforementioned providers are better at support than others, but each has a similar yet different selection of content.
Imagine having to go to the Virgin shop to buy virgin label records and going to the EMI store to buy EMI vinyl. And some of your vinyl will self destruct after X paybacks or a set number of days.
Or all of your HMV CDs would self-destruct when the HMV shop closed down, or your DVDs would skip and stutter during peak hours.
But this is where we are, led by the leash of modern DRM. If I buy a film on GooglePlay, I can later buy the same film on another service. I might have to if GooglePlay stop providing it, or don't support my playback device. Digital Rights - as the are - are a stop gap. I don't want to have to browse a dozen content providers, each asking for unique login credentials and push-button access to my wallet. I don't want to check which provider I bought BattleStar Galactica from or stand puzzling if I should spend £1.89 on a single episode of Dr.Who or if I should series-link it from a different provider.
For every preceeding format my media could sit on a shelf - albiet a digital shelf in the case of MP3s - without this additional barrier between me and my content. But I wouldn't have gone this far without proposing a solution. The 21st century solution is as always, to go meta.
For every preceeding format my media could sit on a shelf - albiet a digital shelf in the case of MP3s - without this additional barrier between me and my content. But I wouldn't have gone this far without proposing a solution. The 21st century solution is as always, to go meta.
Lets assume that a cloud-hosted or better yet distributed database with an authenticated token vending machine manages all of my accounts. I have a single login and it records which media is bought from which service, so just provides me with sort/search and filter options to playback to the requested device.
Now, lets go multi-user. We each have a login and can watch our own media. Each encrypted token represents the digital rights to watch an episode, movie or whatever and is authenticated by the network.
My Meta ownership of digital media means my distribution network can publish new tokens for other users. Perhaps I wanted to gift you my copy of Ghostbusters - its in my account and I can watch it, so I instuct the network to publish a new token for you and BAM! one set of Google, Netflix, iTunes et al. accounts with meta-layer for authentication to prevent abuse - My Ghostbusters token would of course be revoked. It'd still exist in the cloud somewhere, on GooglePlay or Blinkbox or somewhere as a purchased digital right but I'm extracted from that by my single-sign-on meta account layer.
We *could* de-restrict it and just share accounts of course, but the meta-layer with access to multiple content providers gives me a single sign-on and single-interface so we might as well go one step further and respect the DRM only allowing me to watch the content I've paid for and adding sharing by issuing and revoking tokens. Lastly, this does pose the question - what if we both pay for the same film - well, the collection of accounts will already own the film. The cost could be divided equally between users - so the secound user gets it half-price and the value is credited to the other account.
Or the money could be given to the content provider, or directly to the artist. Or to a local childrens charity. Or my personal favorite, it goes into a fund and can be used to "upgrade" purchase from SD to HD, or from HD to 4K. Because I really hate having to buy the same film over and again as each format changes. The fund would also be used to Re-Buy content in the case that one content provider stops carrying something we've paid for, or if we have to switch content provider to support new hardware or codecs. This latter point is in the best interest of the content provider - if they have a better selection of long lasting content, then we'll switch to them and the re-buy fund goes straight into their filthy gold-laden pockets.
We *could* de-restrict it and just share accounts of course, but the meta-layer with access to multiple content providers gives me a single sign-on and single-interface so we might as well go one step further and respect the DRM only allowing me to watch the content I've paid for and adding sharing by issuing and revoking tokens. Lastly, this does pose the question - what if we both pay for the same film - well, the collection of accounts will already own the film. The cost could be divided equally between users - so the secound user gets it half-price and the value is credited to the other account.
Or the money could be given to the content provider, or directly to the artist. Or to a local childrens charity. Or my personal favorite, it goes into a fund and can be used to "upgrade" purchase from SD to HD, or from HD to 4K. Because I really hate having to buy the same film over and again as each format changes. The fund would also be used to Re-Buy content in the case that one content provider stops carrying something we've paid for, or if we have to switch content provider to support new hardware or codecs. This latter point is in the best interest of the content provider - if they have a better selection of long lasting content, then we'll switch to them and the re-buy fund goes straight into their filthy gold-laden pockets.
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