Remonetizing Media

Kevin Kelly's recent incisive post on how sharing can be preferable to owning is the most direct reflection of what my own view of the subject of file sharing has been. Though this has been one of my pet peeve issues for years, I've been thinking more and more about what my actual actions are irrespective of my ideology. 

Here it is in 2009, and I still will absolutely not purchase digital downloads from services such as iTunes, or Amazon. Though the later is DRM free, and the former is moving towards that, it still does not make sense to throw my money away on these downloads. Digital information is ephemeral, that's the whole point. When I buy a CD I pay a defined monetary amount for a defined physical object (even if that physicality is mostly an illusion), but if I buy an MP3 all I get is the 'right' to arrange the bits on my storage into a certain configuration. If the MP3 has DRM it's even worse. Under the DRM model, this right is only a temporary allowance until the provider goes out of business or changes its distribution model. If the price was massively lower, say 10 cents per song, I might download simply for convenience sake, but it's absurd to pay full price for such a dodgy product.  

So what DO I pay money for in the brave new world of the 21st century? Services, services, services. I pay for internet access, for mobile phone service (the infrastructure), and I gladly pay a monthly fee for media services. Netflix is the best example of this, and it's nearly perfect. It started with a model where for a small monthly fee, you could access almost any movie or television show that you could want, as long as you're willing to wait a couple days to have the disc mailed. Of course, I don't want to wait that long! Youtube is instantaneous, and Pirate Bay only requires a few hours of download time, so why would you chose the inferior wait of the postal service? It is only when Netflix started introducing their instant access feature that it made sense to me to sign up. 

This is what I want, and I think most people want the same whether they know it or not: instant access to any piece of media at any time. This model is worth money, lots of money. Providing streaming, always on access requires massive storage, massive bandwidth, and a degree of maintenance. This can not be pirated, it can only be competed with. As long as the fee is reasonable, $10-$20 per month or so, it makes sense to pay for the convenience of not having to seek out, download, store, and maintain every piece of media that you want to consume. Pirates can't provide that service currently without some kind of compensation to keep the bandwidth and electricity flowing. P2P is an option, but it can't compete with a well maintained commercial network. 

So here's what I'm waiting for: a digital music player (iPod, etc) with always on internet access, and the ability to play any song that I want at any time, for a small monthly service fee in the $10-$20 range. This might make the most sense as a software update for the smartphones that already exist, but it could also be extended to standalone devices. 

That's the solution to the question of how to make money from media that has been distributed via tape and disc for the last several decades. This can eventually work for other forms of media as well, though special cases (like the traditional physicality of paper books) might require some tweaking.

The beginning of the last year of the first decade of the first century of a new millenia

Well since it's all of those things that the title has brought our attention to, I might as well plaster my first post on this blog. This blog is intended to be a nearly raw stream of whatever train of thought BS pops into my head at any given time. Anything that does not easily fit into a tweet that is. Unfortunately I don't seem to be prone to writing things like this down unless there is some chance, however small, that someone else will actually be reading it. So for that I apologize in advance.

Preamble thus completed, lets get on with it!

In these wee hours of the fifth day of the new year I feel impelled to lay down my brief (ha!), digression laden summery of how I have spent the weekend.
Honestly I've done jack shit nothing.
That said, since the fireworks of the new year have faded (more metaphorical than literal given that mine involved more alcohol and girls, less gunpowder) I've managed to plow through a total of four books, all of them somewhat related, so I will proceed to share my wholly unasked for opinion of them .

1. The Post-American World
This book was a very sharply written summery of the state of the coming world primarily in the light of the rise of the next great powers of the world; China and India.
I'll spare you further summery, you can always just wiki or google that. What I found most surprising about the book, considering that it has a publishing date of 2008, is just how out of date it already is. The last few months have included major events that would have required some serious extra analysis if the book had come out in early '09. Russian-Georgian conflict in Ossetia, The global financial collapse, the outcome of the US Presidential election, and the reopening conflict between Israel and Hamas that had not even stated until I finished the book.

Each of these has a significant enough impact on the subject matter under consideration that it would certainly have required additional ink spilled over it, but their absence highlights a rank inability of work published on thick reams of paper to have much relevance in the area of current events.

2. Glasshouse
This book is absolutely a contender for my favorite Stross book (in competition with the equally brilliant Accelerendo which it apparently follows) and I deem required reading if you have even the slightest interest in postcyberpunk singularity SF, or much interest in the potential future of technology at all. Actually, it's mandatory reading if you have a pulse and like books, so hopefully that only rules out the dimmer capuchins and occasional toaster ovens that have managed to stumble upon this post.
Aside from the firehose of freakish, but strangely plausible ideas spewed forth from page one onward (much like Vurt, but less squishy!), it also manages to be addictive engaging and finish with a thoroughly satisfying ending. READ IT!

3. Simplexity
A very readable and up to date overview of complexity/chaos/emergent behavior that is not entirely exceptional among such books, but I'd still go as far as to recommend it if you're interested in such things. The opening story about the mapping of the spread of cholera made me start thinking about some very significant byproducts of urban/vertical farming, but that's for another post.

4. Tomorrow Now
One of the first books that I found upon finally discovering the location of a conglomeration of futurist related books in the library (starts with 303 in the Dewey decimal!).
Not untypical of the sort of futurism practiced by Bruce Sterling, which means that it is highly outside the norm, escheringly meta, and at times laugh out loud funny. It meanders, jumps to conclusions, some that I disagree with, some that I never would have considered, is broad and worldly, frustratingly local, and can be simultaneously anachronistic and laser sharp futuristic. It's as messy as the future world that it talks about, which is not a small thing. Absolutely worth a read. For extra fun try imagining Sterling reading it out loud as you go through it!

Now I believe its time to pass out for the night.