Streaming Media

We love our media and thats why we spend hundreds of dollars on it every year. Whether its purchasing the latest movie or just purchasing an old classic, the world continues to loves its media. Although we still purchase our media, DVD sales have gone down. Just as CD’s sales plummeted in the past decade due to iTunes and other digital download stores, the DVD is going the same way. The future of media distribution is through streaming. Streaming exists today but its in its early stages. Netflix is a company that pioneered streaming, for a monthly subscription fee you can watch all the movies in the Netflix library and now companies such as Hulu and Amazon are creating their own ways of streaming. Since a majority of movies are already on the internet, it would be easy to push them out for streaming. The future could actually be today! Wrong, the only thing thats in the way of making all movie streamable are the Giant Media Corporations. All they care about is money and if they offer us a buffet of movies, even though they would still be making prophet, they would not be making as much money as they would want. It is this kind of selfishness and stubbornness that is causing people to pirate their movies. People love media so much that if they cannot afford it, they will pirate it. In this past decade CD’s have practically vanished and thats what is going to end up happening with DVD’s. Streaming is the future and is also the best way to prevent pirating. For a monthly fee of unlimited content, pirating would be a thing of the past. 

Media has always been distributed in different ways. At first it was through the VHS, then it was through DVD, now its through Blu Ray and the beginning of Streaming. Streaming will make distribution of media easier for everyone. For the consumer, we would just have to go to any of our devices and choose what we would like to watch and for the media companies they would just have to upload their media online. This easy way to distribute media is the future and I am not the only one who thinks this. Netflix believes that “the future of entertainment is likely not in physical media – the DVDs and CDs that sit and gather dust on our shelves. Rather, it’s in entertainment that is delivered dynamically, streamed from one company’s server directly to our internet-connected devices” (Braun). Netflix has been pushing for streamed media for a while now and even though it has improved over the years, its media library is quite small. Even though it has a small library, you can can stream it from anywhere. You are able to stream Netflix from your phone, tablet, computer, playstation, and even Blu Ray players. All Netflix needs to satisfy its customers more is have better content. Netflix has a decent collection of older movies as well as a huge variety of TV shows but most of the popular content is not available. One thing that Netflix does not have is that it “has no rights to rebroadcast content soon after it airs” (Braun). If a movie is released on DVD or a TV show has just aired, Netflix is not able to put that content onto its server to be streamed. The movies and TV shows that Netflix have take a while to be streamed. Once a movie comes out on DVD you would be lucky to see it able to be streamed within 4 months. The TV shows Netflix has are full seasons once the season comes out on DVD. Hulu another streaming provider, does have power to have TV shows to be streamed the minute the show has finished airing. The difference between Hulu and Netflix is that Hulu has more TV shows and Netflix has more Movies. Both of these companies merged together is what the future of steaming should look like. Consumers should be able to stream the content they want the minute a specific media is released. The technology is already here, so what is the problem? Why are we not able to stream all the content we want? The Media companies are to blame for.

If the future in digital media truly is streaming, then why aren’t studios and networks quick to jump on this bandwagon? Because they have to make sure there is money in it for them!  “The only place that money will come from is by controlling the content” (Indiviglio). Media companies do not like streaming, they do not want to offer a buffet of their content at one flat price. There is always a catch with media. If you buy media on a DVD there is no way to be able to watch it on both you TV and Phone without buying them separately and when you pay for cable television you still get advertisement between the content. Companies do not give Netflix all of their content but they do give iTunes a majority of it. The reason is that iTunes is not a subscription service. In order to watch a movie on iTunes you would either have to buy the whole movie or rent it individually. Companies are getting money out of every episode watched verses being paid a certain amount by Netflix. Media companies have adapted to streaming though and that is through their own websites. The day after a TV show or a special premieres on a channel, you are able to go to the channels website and watch it as many times as you want for free. The only catch is the advertisement through the stream. Since companies do this now we can see that their has been progress through the years, “in the early 2000s it was impossible to watch films and TV shows online and the Internet was still a collection of text and funny gifs back then” (Ernesto 1). The only way media companies would agree with Netflix would be if Netflix offered media as a “pay per view” or if Netflix paid them more money for the content. If Netflix has to pay more for content that means we would have to pay a higher monthly fee as well as having advertisement to pay for the costs we do not cover. If this change ever happens it would be similar to how Cable Television operates. 

Currently we are paying for cable with content that includes commercials. We are so used to this that we don't realize that we are being ripped off. TV should be free since the adds pay to run the shows. This was once the case but the media companies considered their content being shown for free was pirating. “Copyright owners took the cable companies to court. Twice the Supreme Court held that the cable companies owed the copyright owners nothing” (Lessig). During this time watching television was free to us because it was free to the cable companies. This all changed as the media companies gained more power and it became required by law for the cable companies to pay for the media. This then required us to pay for the cable provider. The bad news for the cable companies though was that they had to pay back the media companies for everything they had broadcasted for free. “It took Congress almost thirty years before it resolved the question of whether cable companies had to pay for the content they “pirated” (Lessig). As the years go by cable prices keep going up and we keep paying for it. Cable today is very inconvenient since we have to adjust our schedule to watch our shows by the cable providers schedule. If we already have to pay a high price to watch shows with adds we should at least be able to make TV revolve around us rather than us revolve around the it. There should be a better watch to watch TV and streaming seems to be the answer. 

I believe there is a way to make streaming come sooner rather than later and that is with the death of Cable Television. Cable controls the way we watch TV. If you favorite show is on at say 8PM on Thursday but you have a party to go to, then you either have to miss it or pay money to have a recorder. Subscription services such as “HBO” and “Stars” give you a library of movies but they are shown on their own schedules. Television needs to be more personal with the consumer and less of an inconvenience. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs has a vision for the future and once said "I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use, it would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud ... It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it” (Isaacson). Apple is coming up with the future of the television and while we eagerly await, one thing to point out about Steve's vision is iCloud. Apples iCloud would be a game changer for television. If you like a show or even a movie enough to want to own it, once you buy it off of your TV, iCloud will distribute all of your purchased media to all of your devices such as your Mac, iPad, and iPhone. The second you buy it on your TV you could pick up your phone and start watching. The television is only going to become smarter and more reliable. “The true vision of a smart TV, shared not just by Jobs but by his competitors, is one in which you simply have all of the shows you want to see available, on demand, for a reasonable fee” (Rothman). With the internet we can reimagine cable and only get our media online. If we put together what we have learned from cable, Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, and iCloud, we can get rid of our cable boxes and cable wires running through our homes and just have all of our media streamable to all of our devices. The television will not be the only place to watch all of your favorite shows but on your portable devices as well. We would be able to watch our favorite TV shows weather it be new or not, whenever we want. Instead of a commercial telling us to tune in for a new show at 6PM, the commercial tell us that the show will be viewable starting at 6PM. You will never miss a show again because once its on line it will always be there. This is the the potential of streaming, instead of paying a cable bill, we will be paying a streaming bill and just like cable, streaming will have commercials between your movies and shows. If you prefer not to have commercials, then you will also have the option to rent or purchase the show or movie and will be viewable instantly on all of your devices. I believe that media companies would agree to a streaming service like this more than a service like Netflix. The media companies would be getting money through the streaming provider as well as money through commercials and media purchases. Someday Netflix could even evolve into something like this but for now all we have to do is wait and see. 

The future of media distribution is through streaming. The world has the technology to use its capabilities today. Its now up to the media companies to make a decision and deploy the future. My vision is a great way to stream content in a way that companies would all agree on. Its basically Cable TV reimagined. Who knows what companies could do with streaming, their is always more room for features. The future is bright and once we reimagine cable then the next step could be to reimagine the movie theater, or even possibly have the theater in the comfort of our own homes . 

Works Cited 

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.

Isaacson, Walter. Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011. Print.

Rothman, Wilson. "Steve Jobs' Vision for Apple TV Set Lingers." Technolog. MsNBC, Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/steve-jobs-vision-apple-tv-set-lingers-119894>.

Indiviglio, Daniel. "How Does Netflix Possibly Survive?" The Atlantic. The Atlantic, 19 Sept. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/how-does-netflix-possibly-survive/245317/>

Braun, Michael. "Michael Braun's Blog." Netflix Streaming ⓠA Bad Deal for Netflix ». 26 Oct. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2012. <http://blog.thebriz.org/2011/10/netflix-streaming-a-bad-deal-for-netflix/>.

Extended Copyrights

Extended Copyrights in 1976  stated that after the authors death the copyright would last for fifty years and for a major corporation it would last for seventy-five years.  This act was then extended to 95 to 120 years for corporations. This act is also knows as the Mickey Mouse Protection Act. This law basically "froze" the advancement date for the Untied States public domain where any works that had a copyright date would then be extended. Under this Act, works that were made in the year 1923 and afterwards that were still protected by copyright in 1998 would not enter the public domain until 2019 or afterward, depending on the date of the product, unless the owner of the copyright releases them into the public domain prior to that or if the copyright gets extended again.

Work that is completely original should always belong to the author. Mickey is a great example of this; Disney owns Mickey because of the fact he came up with it. If Mickey fell into the public domain people would create work that would sell a hundred percent due to the fact that Mickey is such a well known character. Disney would not get a single dime for this iconic charter that he created. It is not fair for the creator to lose control over who gets to use his work.

   In Chapter 5 of Free Culture it talks about how we wouldn't walk into a store such and Barns and Nobel and take a book off of the shelf without paying for it. Since we wouldn't do this then we shouldn't do the same thing online. I believe this is a double standard. For instance a book in a store cost the publisher money to make a hard copy of their writing where online they spend no money at all. Its like saying that its steeling to read my blog because if my blog were turned into a book you wouldn't steel it. I would have to spend money to turn my blog into a book so therefore if the book was stolen it would be unfair. But I am spending no money at all typing on this blog so thefrefore I don't care if you read it or save it to your computer. We don't go and directly steal from a site that sells digital books such as iBooks and Amazon, we pirate the books from websites that offer the for free. There for if we did steal from a store, we wouldn’t from stores such as such as Barns and Nobel. We would go to a store that offered the books for free and that allowed us to steel. Of course a store like that would not exist because of the money the the owner would loose. The same owner could offer books for free online and cost him nothing. We basically get the books for the manufacturing cost of free!

Out of the 87% of Photoshop users, 58% pirated the software.

 Pirating can also benefit companies. I never purchase photoshop since it too expensive but if I had the money for it I would rather buy it than go through the trouble of installing it for free. To get software for free its a hassle. You have to wait the long hours of the download and then you have to find a way around the access code and set up. If I had just bought it it would be a a less than 10 minute process. This is the same for the world. When the economy goes up more people will buy companies software. As of now the economy is stable but if people get the software for free now, when if if they have more money they are benefiting the company and is also free advertisement to the piraters friends.

For my upcoming essay I would like my main topic to be about media distribution. My main focus will be on cable television, Netflix and iTunes. The future is digital media, DVD's will be gone sooner than later but sites such as Netflix are struggling to get studies support. I want to talk about how companies want money for every movie and show we watch. With Netflix we only pay eight dollars a month for unlimited media compared to iTunes three dollar for one TV show and ten dollars and up for one movie. I also want to talk about how the only way for companies to participate with Netflix is if Netflix pays them more or by throwing in adds with every show we watch just as on cable TV. I want to show how studies only care about their money over our enjoyment of their product.

Music Pirating

Music is the top form of media that is pirated today. Music labels are complaining that the public is steeling from the artist by pirating music when in reality a majority of the artist steel ideas from other artists. Its like the circle of life, the artists steels the music from another artist, the selfish music labels takes ownership of the artists life work, and we steel the songs from the music labels. 

Lion King Copyright Walt Disney

Dj's are the main artists that steel from other artists.  Dj's only use turn tables and the beats and vocals are from other artists drums and voices. This should not be considered steeling though. Artists should be able to share there music with one another. For just using 3 seconds of a song costs more than using a whole song from another artist. Artists that want to change other artists songs there fore have to make covers off of other artists. Today music is so widely distributed that its hard not to pirate. Pirating is todays radio, if we like a song we pirate it it we want a song we purchase it for the high quality or buy a full CD. Artists are still getting there millions and the music labels are getting even more. They are all just being selfish and want more money. This is why we pirate, the public wants music but we cannot afford it. Music should be more affordable and then maybe we will get music legally. 

Rovio CEO Mikael Hed announced, "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."

It does not mater who owns a product or media, if pirating continues it is basicaly free advertising. The companies trying to stop pirating are only in it to get more money but even if they continue to try and stop it people will still continue pirating and the companies are only wasting their money on stoping it. Rovio knows that their angry bird game is being pirated into plush and board games but see it as free advertizment that now they are opening an angry birds store in China. Their largest market is china so they believe with all the pirated plush they can make huge prophit.  

Rovio owns its game angry birds and thats thanks to apple and its app store. I could even make a game in i wanted of the iPhone and it will be fully mine but of course apple gets 30% of the prophet. That is still a good deal in the end though because it if fully yours. All companies should be like apple and just take prophet for games instead of owning them. This world has to be fair with its developers and artist. Only the creater should own its property. 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57369388-93/angry-birds-ceo-sees-opportunity-in-piracy/

http://www.thekiaa.org/intellectual-property/piracy-vs-copyright-infringement.html