RIAA dead cat bounces

Yesterday Pawel wrote a good post inspired by the recent moves by the labels. We are both fans of Pandora. Or I should say we used to be... As starting May 4th, 2007, Pandora restricted access to its site to allow only US-based IP addresses. The move is extremely disappointing for me, as I used to listen to the Pandora personalized music stations for over a year. And now when I go to www.pandora.com, all I get is this: www.pandora.com/restricted. Of course this is not the original idea of Tim Westergren and his team. He has a gun pointed to his head. It really looks like the RIAA and the Labels still believe in their region codes and old economy. Hey, wake up, we have 2007 already and have not you heard about things like the Internet and global economy?

These guys are so scared, they simply do not understand the impact of services like Pandora. Pandora, thanks to its unique music genome attributing system, introduces its listeners to a galaxy of unknown bands and performers. It does this even better than classic radio stations, as being personalized, the new proposed artists fit the preferences of the listeners. So what happens next is they go and buy new CDs. Myself I bought over 100$ worth of music last year, that I would never have bought without hearing the stuff on Pandora. It is unbelievable how such and unimaginative, uncreative approach is taken by a supposedly creative industry... It just looks like they stopped thinking, may be they are simply so scared they can no longer think? You bet they are scared. The revenues coming from record sales are dropping fast. But to recover they have to think forward. Accept the new world and figure out the right business model. You cannot stop the Internet. They learned that lesson hard (again!) last week when trying to hide the news about the AACS crack.

The whole AACS is just another idea from the past. A pure example of security by obscurity, something that will never work. The fundamental flaw in every AACS-like copy protection system lies in the fact that the media (discs) must come with the keys used to decrypt it somewhere on the device or on the media itself. The keys may be hidden here and there, but ultimately people will find them. And due to the nature of the Internet, the world will get the message within seconds, no matter how hard they try. So where should they go?

Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School has a good message, they should listen to. "We need not condone infringement to conclude that 19th- and 20th-century copyright law is poorly suited to promote 21st-century knowledge. The old copyright-business models are inefficient ways to give artists incentives in the new digital environment." - he writes, pointing to the fresh Harvard spinoff - the Noank Media and its motto of "limitless legal content flow". While we cannot be sure Noank will prevail with its concept, it is definitely a forward - thinking example. The attitude and strategy RIAA and the likes should adopt. Otherwise they have just a few more dead bounces left before they will be dead for good.