Mary on Digital Media Summit

While I was at eTech, Mary Hodder was scooping the Digital Media Summit in NYC:

The first panel I attended was on DRM, and included Mitch Singer at Sony and Ron Wheeler at Fox. Charles Nesson from the Berkman Center and John Godwin at MovieLink were there as well, but it was basically the Mitch and Ron show. They advanced a lot of ideas that were either technically unfeasible, ridiculous from a user point of view or the kicker, that the DRM solutions they discuss, which are technically feasible, would work. The audience, full of media, press, business and ad people took it all in, with very little dissent. Only one question from a gaming company executive, who said he had successfully sold games working with P2P, asked why they didn't consider doing the same. Wheeler said they couldn't do with movies and cable/TV what had been done with games, but did not explain why. Drew Clark asked about some of this, and was not really given an answer as to why these DRM solutions might not work. No one here addressed consumer issues, in this panel, or any others. Basically, we were discussed as though we are baby birds with our mouths open, happy to take anything big media company gives us.

...

Deep down, the mood overall here is fear, but together in a pack, they can collude on the notion that while they can't turn back the clock, they might be able to keep things as the are now, in stasis, with a few controls (IP) and a firm lock on the media business (a few to the many) while chatting excitedly about convergence (it appears to mean using all the many media properties under one giant company umbrella, with many types of media and many platforms, to give them both cross use, and cross marketing, as well as synergy - there, it's been said, since they refuse to say it after the synergy-disaster of AOLTW, between these media companies). The thing they forget is that users will not go back to a time when they have to blithely accept what comes down, that they can't mix, rip, or burn, that they have to be controlled in their playing and sharing, and that they are not part of the conversation. These media companies are the biggest sellers now of cable/TV/Broadcast, movies and music. But if they can't continue to maintain the consolidation and broadcasting they do now, and the fear gives their position away. Once in a while there were a few words uttered about being realistic, often followed by silence, and then everyone moved on to what they perceived as the real conversation, how to maintain what currently exists.