First Google and Yahoo decide to start throwing their money away- Google to Dell and Yahoo to searchers. Now HBO aims a gun straight at its foot by trying to get the right to prohibit people from recording its shows on TIVOs or VCRs. Next they’ll say it’s illegal to remember the last episode of Deadwood without paying them extra.
How stupid and consumer unfriendly is this? Let me count the ways.
If people can’t record HBO shows, they just won’t watch them. The days of planning your schedule around a TV show are over. If people can’t time-shift HBO shows via recording them, they’ll just record content from other providers. And this business of paying HBO again for on demand watching? That is the most greedy, consumer unfriendly idea I have ever heard. No one is going to pay again for content they’ve already paid for. Eric Bangeman nails the true goal when he says “[T]his not about stamping out piracy. Sure, it will cut down on piracy- at least the casual file-trading that goes on. But at its heart, its about finding new ways to monetize the content. And by “monetize the content,” I mean “charge you multiple times for the same thing.”
Once again someone is trying to get deeper into our pockets by making us pay over and over for the same thing. The record label cartel has been trying to do this for a long time via DRM and suing dead grannies. Now HBO wants to get in on the action. Not to stop piracy, they know they can do that. But to get more of our money. In a way, they are asking us to subsidize piracy.
All that’s going to happen if this somehow gets approved is that HBO will have to decide to do the right thing and let people record shows they’ve paid for or do the wrong thing and go ahead and blow off its foot. HBO will be at the crossroads of greed and right- and we simply can’t trust these media companies to make the right turn. That’s why HBO needs to be told no now, before all this imaginary additional profit gets too embedded in its revenue projections.
Punishing the many for the sins of a few in the name of a greater profit is simply not a good or acceptable strategy. The HBOs and the record labels need to get rid of the greedy technophobes who are making these decisions and hire someone who understands that you have to work with, not against, technology and with, not against, your customers
Otherwise, we’ll just find other ways to spend our entertainment dollars. Can you say Netflix?.
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