Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/19/rip-robert-tarlton.html
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In my opinion big tech and big media are missing the point, because at the end the consumers, given a cumbersome experience, will stop to buy. I have to pay TV licensing, and Italian public broadcaster has a decent programming https://www.raiplay.it/guidatv/ (your mileage may vary). Why I have to get a subscription service with cumbersome contracts to watch the telly? If I like to watch a really new movie, I have a couple of movie theatres at walking distance.
The fact that some new services are at a constant loss it’s because they aren’t innovating for the consumers but for the venture capitalist and are selling them a gamble.
On the other hand Nespresso given up compatible capsules, because the mere fact that are compatible ones mane people to buy the espresso machines and some of the capsules. The other standard coffee capsule that is used is the ESE one that was open as a start. Other capsules are way less available.
Would DMCA be able to stop a foreign company to develop the VCR in the 70s?
It certainly could hinder the adoption in the US, but I’m not sure how long it would be able to hold it.
Maybe we will see something like that happening in the future and along with its direct benefits, it might also take the DMCA down.
I wish the EFF all of the luck possible. Overturning DMCA 1201 would be fantastic, as long as it didn’t lead to something worse. Which these days…
I’ve always thought that today’s laws being so favourable to the current big companies is a deterrent to tomorrow’s new technologies and business models. (And in no way is that an accident.)
On the other hand, the customers and the architects of tomorrow are going to react, and that means either doing something that routes around the current laws or ignores them altogether.
How many times have the big companies thought that they’d killed Pirate Bay or it’s descendants?
And I can’t help but wonder if these laws will be quite the boon that the big companies think they will be.
I seem to recall that CD sales increased while Napster was around, and decreased after it was shut down.
And to use the example of the VCR, had the big companies been able to shut it down like they wished, there likely would not have been the incredibly lucrative home video market. With no sign that the movie box office would have increased.
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