The content industry finally sees the light… fifteen years on

Instead of finger pointing at everybody and arresting 14-year olds, the answer is making our product accessible in as many formats and distributive services as possible at price points they can afford. We are discovering that works.”

(Chris Dodd, MPAA Chairman and Chief Lobbyist)

Chris Dodd’s comments could be interpreted as a sign that the Motion Picture Association of America has finally decided to park its manifestly ineffective strategy of pressuring governments to introduce ever-tougher legislation to prevent downloading, as well as pursuing users.

The content industry has taken 15 years to emerge from the cave and to accept what hundreds of analysts and academics around the world have been saying: the solution to the problem is not blindly turning away from the opportunities new technology offers, but to take advantage of it to create a range of options for the public to access a complete catalogue of entertainment, and at reasonable prices.

As I have said here on any number of occasions: I want to be able to access a work, to do so quickly, and knowing that there are alternatives, along with a range of possibilities such as free downloads financed by advertising, to paying for downloads, along with streaming, all-access subscription, and any other choices that the market can come up with that are economically viable. I don’t want any restrictions or failures to meet demand that will only encourage people to access material through irregular channels.

The industry has spent the last 15 years refusing to see that increased bandwidth and improved transmission protocols allow for its products to be distributed via a wide range of means, and that if it doesn’t take advantage of them, somebody else will. Fifteen years of mounting proof showing that countries with low levels of irregular downloading are precisely those that provide consumers with easy, affordable access to entertainment.

In other words, the solution is not to continue creating artificial shortages, but joint what we might call the economy of abundance. By protecting the intermediary industry, governments have become allies of those who are part of the problem. This has led to the hounding of users who, as many of us have tried to show, were not scroungers, thieves, and who did not believe that everything on the internet should be free; all they were trying to do was access products by using the technology available to them while the industry that controls much of that material stood by and refused to offer it to them.

Will we now hear somebody from that industry say that they are sorry, or admit they got it wrong? Or will we just have to content ourselves with hearing them say that this other approach works. If nothing else it might open the eyes of other industries on how NOT to deal with technological change. I’m not so sure…

(En español, aquí)