The Copyright Business vs. the Copying Business
Found this interesting post on disrupted business models …
An item in Techdirt that points to an Inquirer article …
Techdirt notes that …
… while most of the stories about businesses failing to adjust to a digital and computer age focus on things like the music or movie industry, there are some other, smaller, industries struggling against the tide as well.
and points to wedding photographers, where the old business model is like this:
[photographers] charge an hourly rate in the hundreds of dollars to take pictures during the wedding, and they retain copyright of the images. The photographer’s lucrative aftermarket consists of charging outlandish markups for additional prints.
This business model is being disrupted, as only the first half of the equation is a solid business; a good photographer who nails great images can lock in important memories that will last decades. That’s a service worth paying top dollar for. The second part of the equation—the copying part—is, of course, utterly out of date, as home scanning and printing have damaged that part of the custom photography business. So the copying business has become irrelevant, just like in the music industry, copyright business is still OK …
In music, the time has never been better to engage in the copyright business, because demand and musical awareness are extremely high. It’s just not a good time to be in the copy business.
and
The music industry is slowly finding new ways to leverage its valuable copyrights, adding value where no additional value was needed in the analog era.
Still the music industry hangs on to old modes of thinking …
The confusion between copyright business and copying business is the source of tremendous wasted energy as the music industry tries to change laws and destroy technology to enforce its right of control everybody’s personal copying. Home replication technology has changed everything, and it cannot be unchanged. Content industries of all sizes must concentrate on the core values of their copyrighted content, not the fringe industry of making copies, lucrative though that fringe once was.
… while neglecting opportunities that may be uncovered by ingenious business model innovation and design.
read on at The Digital Music Weblog
