Submitted by Engberg on Sat, 2012-05-19 09:07

A root cause analysis of content would point to two basic problems in media.

a) The market is seriously distortet by the "free for data" business model. Content is not paid for but used as bait for consumers while the media providers are hit by the "free" model paid through abuse of personal data.

b) DRM have both proven unable to protect content while often implementing dis-empwoering model that comes at the expense of personal data security and lock-in to unflexible technical structure.

Both of these problems are serious, but not easily solved.

Successfull DRM are hard, if not impossible, to achieve through security controls and these meassures create bigger problems than they solve - it appears to be more an economic than a security problem as security is unlikely to provide a solution.

The economical destabilising network effects from behavoural profiling require a serious effort to restore both media and other markets to function.

The is a deep and urgent need to establish Empowering structures that enable small payments for media & digital services without feeding behavioural profiling and the negative spiral of network effects, ie. without identification (end-to-end) and without intermediaries getting access to content.

Group audience:

Converged media platforms

Comments

Good points, Stephan. I agree

Submitted by JohanCamp on Tue, 2012-05-29 08:59

Good points, Stephan. I agree with the fact that free access, although often not in a legal way, is a difficult element to overcome. In an article on Cable TV revenue split from Bill Niemeyer in 2009 (http://billniemeyer.tv/2009/05/10/todays-cable-tv-revenue-split-and-why-...) he already indicates that advertising-only models will be difficult to be sustainable. That's also what we experience. So, although users are used to 'free', it is a very difficult model for TV or video. It is not that the production companies and actors get extra income from 'live performances', as musicians do (what makes ad a viable business model for music, not video).

On the DRM part, it is indeed an economic consideration. Considering most DRM technology is hacked by the time it gets into the market and that it then takes a couple of months to patch it, I think managers pay too much for this 'umbrella' (but that's a personal opinion and maybe a little to black/white).

On the micro payments, I wonder why the internet providers (be it Telco's or ISPs) haven't jumped into this yet (at least nog in Belgium). Since they invoice users on a monthly basis, why don't they all offer micro payment functionality to their users? I know websites would still need to support multiple systems, but like with banks, intermediaries would pop up to support all major ones. There are start-ups in this area as well, like www.paycento.com. Does any one else know of initiatives, maybe by internet providers in other countries?