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Description edit
How did the newspaper, music, and film industries go from raking in big bucks to scooping up digital dimes? Their customers were lured away by the free ride of technology. Now, business journalist Robert Levine shows how they can get back on track. On the Internet, “information wants to be... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Quotes edit
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“France has subsidized newspapers and considered a tax on search engines that would mainly affect Google. (pg 193)”
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“Blanket licensing won attention in the technology world in 2004 when the Harvard Law School professor William "Terry" W. Fisher III published Promises to Keep: Technology, Law, and the Future of Entertainment. The book proposed a government-controlled plan to fund music and other art with tax revenue. Culture would be "free" to consumers, with tax revenue distributed to content creators according to the popularity of their work. (pg 214)”
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“My Dad, the union negotiator, told me that if both sides are unhappy, you made a good deal. Until you give up you fantasy, you can't achieve your dreams.”
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“Media companies want the Internet to work more like cable television, while technology companies want cable to run more like the Internet. Just as the Web is open, cable is closed: broadcasting requires permission, and watching requires payment. Apple's iPhone operates much the same way, since apps must be approved for sale and, generally, purchased by users. (pg 230)”
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“Do we really want to risk destroying a centuries-old market for cultural products to ensure that the Internet can continue to work the way it did in 1995? (pg 233)”
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“... under the principle that copyright is "the engine of free expression", widespread piracy endangers free speech by reducing the incentive of artists to create new work. (pg 242)”
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“It would be both ironic and tragic if the United States finally developed an information economy only to find that information isn't actually worth anything. (pg 244)”
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“It's never been easier to distribute creative work. At the same time, it's never been harder to get paid for it. (pg 245)”
- Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
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in Silicon Valley, the information that wants to be free is almost always the information that belongs to someone else.
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By making it essentially optional to pay for content, piracy has set the price of digital goods at zero. The result is a race to the bottom, and the inevitable response of media companies has been cuts—first in staff, then in ambition, and finally in quality.
Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers -
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
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This isn’t creative destruction; it’s the destruction of creativity.
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Traditional media companies aren’t in trouble because they’re not giving consumers what they want; they’re in trouble because they can’t collect money for it. It’s the natural outcome of an online economy that transfers wealth from “each according to his ability” to “each according to what he can get away with.”
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Amid the Internet’s astonishing array of choices, statistics show that most consumers continue to engage with the same kind of culture they did before—only in a way that’s not sustainable for those who make it.
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the Internet as it exists now has empowered a new group of middlemen, like YouTube, that benefit from distribution without investing in artists.
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Most online companies that have built businesses based on giving away information or entertainment aren’t funding the content they’re distributing.
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This “user-generated” business model has such significant advantages that it’s soaking up investment capital that might have gone to companies that produce the content they present.
Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers -
It’s time to ask seriously whether the culture business as we know it can survive the digital age.
Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 364.1662
Subjects edit
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