What the suits are saying about the iTunes revolution

So I’m sitting in an IHOP on Sunset Boulevard, on lunch break from the Digital Media Summit in Hollywood before I head south for a few other meetings. The DMS session that stood out to me was a panel of company execs who all have a fairly transparent axe to grind when it comes to Apple’s dominance of the digital content landscape. Sorry, but getting up in front of a room full of people and bragging that you’ll never buy music from the iTunes Store doesn’t change the fact that the train already left the station a few years ago and your company missed it. Other sarcasm along the lines of “the iPhone is great but I’ve had all that for four years now” (paraphrased), or claiming that ninety percent of the public is thrilled with DRM, just makes these guys look more lost in the headlights. Especially when the gist of what they’re saying is that they want to find ways to make DRM more restrictive.

One audience member got up and told them exactly what I’ve been saying for years: the content companies did this to themselves. For decades they were in a position to screw customers over and over again, and they took advantage of that situation at every point along the way. Now that the technology has shifted and it’s the consumers who are in a position to screw the content companies, what do you expect? Didn’t they know that the day of reckoning would arrive sooner or later? Content piracy isn’t justifiable, but it shouldn’t surprise anyone that we’ve arrived at a place where so many people have so little problem taking content without paying for it.

But still, it’s good to check in with these suits every now and then to see what their latest line of thinking is (or rather, what they want us to think their latest line of thinking is). The verdict: their current strategy appears to involve building a time machine, traveling back five years, and preventing the iPod/iTunes revolution from happening. Or maybe they just hope to convince the public that it still is 2001, and it’s not too late for their plans for variable (over)pricing, confusing usability, no user rights, etc. to yet rule the day. Yeah, good luck with that.

Gotta run. My complimentary hour of wireless internet access at the IHOP is about to expire…