Pho's Jim Griffin on the state of the biz:

the worm is turning at record companies and their media parents everywhere, where financial statements and audits and following trails of money leads you to an industry swirling the drain and praying for the deus ex machinas of technology and government to rescue it from the very technological and government forces that are propelling digits along an increasingly shorter path between source and destination.

Ultimately, the Perfect Storm of forces converging on the business have executives who once feared government intervention pleading for it in Washington and Brussels and wherever they can pay someone to listen to their bleating cries for protection from their customers, who other industries will tell you in declaration and deed are Always Right.

Yes, the economy is going to hell, that's true, and much of it is due to a gross imbalance between expectation and reality, a market that was largely fueled on digital media convergence but stopped in its tracks when content and capital went on strike, the jets cooled by law suits and log jamming that can only come from the highest-priced lawyers and lobbyists.

Ultimately, though, the expectation created by advocates and purveyors of what is called Digital Rights Management software are squarely to blame. They sold a bill of goods to the industry, telling them they'd turn digital music and media and art into digitally controlled products with no marginal cost and infinite protection and data mining, with the result that big media waits and waits and waits for control that will never come. Michael Eisner hypocritically swears Disney won't release content unless it can be controlled at the same time he sends it down a cable wire into a flat-fee market of uncontrolled video cassette recorders, the same device Jack Valenti swore in court would kill the industry like the Boston Strangler.

Technologists everywhere need to become hyper-honest with industry executives who ask: No, we will not in our lifetimes harness and tether art. No, it wouldn't be a good thing if we could. Art and anarchy go hand in hand, and conditioning access to granular pieces of knowledge and art on the ability of a parent to pay is a bad, immoral thing.

Let's be clear: Digitization of music and media inherently liberates that content to find a shorter path to its audience, and whatever speed bumps we can shortsightedly build are quickly obviated by the new digital vehicles we build to move them. Control is not coming back, and there is no need to wait. The next vine is not a mechanism for control.

Fortunately, the next vine can destroy the motive for piracy without mechanisms. Actuarial copyright is our past and our future. Digital networks ought no more ask permission to use songs than should restauranteurs and public address operators or radio or television broadcasters. The fees we can collect from network operators can and will grow the pie dramatically, and technology can help us divvy that pie in fair ways that reward and incent creation.

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