Thanks for all the responses.<br><br>A great number of media companies are now seriously rethinking their digital rights strategies due to the events of recent months. Several things are becoming obvious to them (finally):
<br><br>1. DRM treats all of their customers like criminals, whether they are or not.<br>2. DRM frustrates and angers customers.<br>3. The lawsuits make them look like bullies (which they are).<br>4. The lawsuits are financially nonviable, and increasingly embarrassing.
<br>5. The lawsuits have not slowed P2P sharing of their materials.<br>6. In many cases DRM is fueling P2P sharing because users wish to move their media to another device and refuse to pay again for what they already own.
<br>7. Artists are beginning to circumvent them and go directly to consumers with digital and non-DRM versions of their work.<br>7. The consumers are moving on, and their old business model is becoming nonviable.<br>8. Legal downloads of non-DRM'd media represent a valid revenue stream, although the profit margin will never return to the days of the CD and the captive audience.
<br>9. Apple is so far ahead of them they may never recapture the market.<br><br><br>My predictions for 2008 are:<br><br>1.That by July ALL media companies will have abandoned DRM on music CD's and files. One or two may hold out. Their artists will leave them in favor of direct digital sales. P2P downloads of their materials will continue to erode their market presence until they collapse. The end of `08 will see a completely DRM free internet marketplace for music. Multiple sites will have developed with robust song lists and interactive features to provide a better experience. Apple will continue to dominate by allowing individual artists to participate in it's system without a record label and at an affordable percentage cut.
<br><br>2. The RIAA will grow increasingly quiet through `08. By years end the entity will be almost silent. It may disband in the 48 months following. This will not be a legal maneuver, but rather a PR one by the media giants.
<br><br>3. Set top digital media players for video content will begin to accept more than just DVD's/BlueRay/HD-DVD. By years end most major manufacturers will support the playing of media files via network/wireless connections to home PC's or connected external media such as USB thumb-drives. They may even support direct connections to movie download & play services such as NetFlix's. These capabilities may begin to appear in MiniVans and SUV's by December.
<br><br>4. By November the MPAA members will begin to feel the same pressures the RIAA components felt. Consumers will desire more transparency in the format of their media. The inability to move media between devices without repurchase or complex licensing software structures will frustrate and anger them. Many more will resort to P2P systems than do today. Bittorrent will shift to a decentralized and obfuscated structure that no longer requires the posting of .torrent files on sharing sites and is extremely difficult to filter.
<br><br><br>I try not to look too far down the road and predict more than I should. I feel Ray Kurzweil is guilty of that on many occasions. I also firmly believe in my father's axiom "Men plan, God laughs". However, my general feeling right now is that 2009 will see the collapse of DRM schemata in the video media ecosystems. It shoudl roughly repeat the loop the RIAA has.
<br><br>My best guess right now is that cable companies will see their market cannibalized from within beginning in 2010, as media companies offer more and more content on-demand through internet delivery services. The very internet connection many cable companies provide alongside their content offerings will begin to deliver media when and how consumers want. I don't think 5C and CCI will be discontinued by the cable companies, instead they will simply go away as users move to "on demand" delivery systems that fit their lifestyle better.
<br>In the end, systems like MythTV may become more like browsers with built in media players than tuner/recording systems.<br><br>But then again, I could be wrong. It's happened before :)<br><br><br>Joe<br>