While we have many problems with the way MLB.com conducts itself concerning its attempts to claim ownership of factual information, you can't deny that (separate from that), it's built up a nice business by really focusing on giving fans what they want in terms of online video. While the product has had technical problems, on the whole MLB.com continues to improve it, adding many unique and useful features, such that it's actually well worth purchasing. If you order the package to watch baseball games, it gives you all sorts of neat tools that can't be found elsewhere, and are great for tracking pretty much any game you want. There are still some problems -- including silly blackout zones (so it's tough to watch local teams) and blackout times when games are being shown on national TV, but on the whole MLB.com has done a pretty good job making the service worth buying.

Compare that to the Premier League in the UK. It's been nearly five years since the league first started freaking out about people watching unauthorized streams online. But rather than trying to serve those underserved customers, the Premier League has repeatedly lashed out at anyone who might possibly enable these games to be seen online. For example, it's sued YouTube apparently unaware that the company is protected by the safe harbors of the DMCA, and (if anyone) it should be going after those who actually upload the games. It's also suing Justin.tv in the same misguided fashion.

Amazingly, the league seems proud of the fact that it's going after these companies, rather than the appropriate targets. Jeff T alerts us to an article in the Guardian which is basically a case study in what not to do about these things. It hypes up how the Premier League purposely goes after the platform providers, as if that's a good thing. It also (bizarrely) claims that these anti-fan maneuvers are somehow a different and better response than the way the music industry responded to unauthorized file sharing. But that's not true. While it's not suing fans directly, it's still suing to stop fans from doing what they want to do. It's the same exact mistake.

Rather than recognizing the simple fact that the reason fans watch these streams online is because the Premier League has failed to offer it up themselves, the Premier League seems to relish the fact that it makes it more difficult for fans to see its product. The article talks about the "Saturday blackouts" on video designed to get more fans to go to matches, without recognizing that such blackouts have been shown to be pointless. There used to be rules for baseball in the US that games that weren't sold out wouldn't be shown on TV, but eventually people realized that people weren't watching on TV as a substitute for going to the game, but because they love their favorite team and want to watch them however possible. The more they can watch them on TV, the more interested they are in seeing live games.

Jeff, who sent this story in, makes the point quite clearly, by noting that he watches poor quality streams of Premier League matches in Canada because the League refuses to make most of their matches available to watch online. Rather than going after the companies that run platforms that enable such things, there's a really simple solution: offer high quality online webcasts yourself, and actually serve the fans. But that seems far beyond the Premier League's strategic thinking.

Well, this is rather incredible. EMI was one of the major labels that, for a brief period of time, seemed like it might actually have figured stuff out. You see, it got taken over by some folks from outside the recording industry, and they talked about how they needed to pay attention to experiments like Radiohead's and learn how to better respond to customer desires like that. That was two years ago. The company was also the first of the major labels to dump DRM. It then pulled back on its support for the RIAA and IFPI (after threatening to withdraw completely), saying that the strategy of suing fans was a dead end. On top of all that, it hired some Silicon Valley techies. For a while, we actually thought EMI might be the most interesting of the major record labels to follow.

But... old habits die really hard, apparently. The company has been suing pretty much every innovative startup that comes along, often targeting execs personally in attempts to bankrupt them. Sometimes it's been going after hobbyists or investors beyond just the actual companies. Often times, the company seems to be negotiating with innovators on the one hand, while filing unexpected lawsuits at the same time. One of the key techies it hired, Doug Merrill from Google, left after less than a year. More recently, the company refused to agree to more reasonable (but still high) streaming rates to get music back on YouTube in the UK.

Basically, it appears that EMI said it wanted to do something new, but couldn't resist doing everything it could to snuff out innovation. It takes more than words to actually convince both consumers and musicians that you're really adapting. Is it any wonder that people aren't fans? EMI's CEO is now admitting that the company "lost touch" with consumers:

"Music is in demand and the demand is growing all the time, but we've clearly lost touch with our consumers. I passionately believe that if we listen to our consumers, this gap will become our opportunity."

Ok, so start listening! STOP SUING INNOVATORS. Stop suing executives and investors in those innovators. Stop using lawsuits as a negotiation tactic. Start focusing on giving fans what they want. Start focusing on enabling new business models that work for artists. Stop thinking about getting a transaction on every piece of music played, but start looking at ways to use the music to create additional products people want to buy. Stop trying to limit users and limit musicians. Enable them both. Also, over a year ago, Topspin's Ian Rogers wrote a brilliant open letter to EMI execs suggesting a rather smart way it could leverage its existing artist relationships. It doesn't seem like EMI listened at all.

If EMI wants help in listening, why not contact some of us who have been presenting solutions and showing what works? We're not that hard to reach, and I'm sure plenty of folks in our community would be more than willing to provide some incredibly useful suggestions.

This is really unfortunate. eMusic used to be a great example of how treating customers right and with respect and trust could win over more customers -- but in the last month or so, it seems like the company is throwing all that out the window and pissing off customers left and right. Beyond the big price increase at the same time as signing its first major record label (bad PR to announce both together), the company has censored critics and removed the feature that let you redownload songs you'd purchased before, at your convenience. However, now we're hearing that there were a bunch of other features that were removed as well. An anonymous reader notes:

"July 1 was the first day in the Sony era over at eMusic. Despite published interviews with eMusic executives, FAQs on the eMusic web site and messages from eMusic employees on the eMusic forums attempting to clarify the new pricing structure, there were quite a few surprises. Some of the changes I've noticed (or read about in the forums) include:

• Certain tracks can only be downloaded with "paid" credits, not the free credits eMusic hands out for trial memberships.
• Individual track downloads disabled for tracks longer than 10 minutes - you must download the entire album
• Certain (popular) sub-10-minute tracks disabled for individual download
• No downloading individual discs in multi-disc sets
• Most new albums use 12-credit album pricing (very few reports of 6 or 9 credit album pricing)
• Many (a significant portion in the classical section at least) albums with fewer than 12 tracks cost 12 credits
• Many albums previously available on eMusic have been re-priced (in some cases, tracks available for 1 credit on June 30 now require 12 credits)

IMO, the fact that eMusic did such a poor job communicating these important changes suggests that they deliberately withheld (or downplayed) this information, possibly to keep from fueling the outrage generated from last month's Sony/pricing announcement."

This seems like an increasing disaster. Hopefully some of these changes are mistakes, rather than permanent. But the way this whole situation has been handled is going to make a terrific case study in how not to do PR. eMusic has turned from a company that customers really loved into one that many seem to hate... and it's happened in an incredibly short time frame. That's really unfortunate.

We've already seen a bunch of nearly identical studies, but it's worth pointing out that there's yet another study coming out this week that says that those involved in file sharing also tend to be the best customers of the entertainment industry. Now, it's worth taking the study with at least some grains of salt, given that it was funded by Vuze, a company trying to sell licensed videos via BitTorrent and has had trouble getting content companies to sign on. However, given how many other studies have said the same thing, can we finally put to rest the idea that those who file share "aren't customers" as many in the entertainment industry insist? They do tend to be customers, and frequent ones as multiple studies have now shown. The issue is just that they also file share, meaning many file share, in part, to find out what's worth buying. So the focus should be (once again) on giving them reasons to buy rather than trying to stomp out file sharing.

The world of Twitter got its collective knickers in a twist earlier this week when the company made a change to the settings of its service. The particular change was pretty small, but seemed to disproportionately effect "power users" and early adopters, so, of course, the uproar over it was pretty intense, and Twitter changed the change. The details of the change aren't all that important, but like with the response to Facebook's recent TOS change, it's dragged out some rather interesting opinions. A personal favorite of mine is the response to the backlash that since users aren't paying anything for these services, they have no right to complain. Apparently users should "pay up" so they have the right "to voice [their] displeasure as a customer rather than as a user" -- and this coming from a guy who writes a blog about open-source software. It's one thing for a business to ignore complaints that don't come from customers or potential customers, but in the case of free services, to imply that users' opinions don't count because they're not ponying up any cash is fairly ridiculous. Most free services rely on their users to create revenue in other ways, such as by providing traffic to monetize; alienation of users that results in a downturn in traffic, and in turn, ad revenue, has exactly the same effect as losing paying customers' repeat business. The distinction between "customer" and "user" is, in many cases, becoming increasingly irrelevant. And never mind that in many instances, such as with Twitter and Facebook, it's impossible for users to become paying customers. It's hard to imagine that either company thinks it's okay to ignore its users simply because they don't pay.

Given our earlier posts about Stardock's new game, Demigod, and how the company was dealing with the fact that there were plenty of unauthorized copies, this shouldn't be a surprise at all: The company's CEO has taken to his forums to make it clear that, while no one likes unauthorized copies, his job is not to worry about "pirates," but to focus on pleasing his customers. And on that front, the game has been a huge success. In his post, he points out that even if the game had been a failure, he wouldn't be blaming it on pirates, but on the company's own mistakes -- but, of course, the game hasn't been a failure. It's been selling like crazy.

This isn't new or surprising. It's what Stardock has always said. And it's the same sort of attitude that others who have found success with content these days have had, as well. It's never pleasant to find someone is copying content/software/whatever you've made, but you can't worry about them. It's a waste of time and effort. People will always make unauthorized copies, and any effort to stop them will only hurt those who actually want to give you money. So focus on providing real value for those who want to buy, and stop worrying so much about everyone else.

The reality that most PC game publishers ignore is that there are people who buy games and people who don't buy games. The focus of a business is to increase its sales. My job, as CEO of Stardock, is not to fight worldwide piracy no matter how much it aggravates me personally. My job is to maximize the sales of my product and service and I do that by focusing on the people who pay my salary -- our customers.

You can waste an awful lot of energy and resources "fighting pirates" and losing, or you can focus on actually serving your customers and making money. Which seems more intelligent?

An anonymous reader sent in the following story about how some large software companies are suddenly increasing the number of "software audits" they're doing of enterprise buyers. Most enterprise software contracts include license terms that allow the software provider to "audit" the buyer, to make sure they're not abusing the license. As the article notes, however, such audits usually only come at one of two times: (1) when a company threatens to switch to another vendor or (2) when the company has received info from a reliable source that the license was being abused.

However, it looks like with the economy in freefall -- and IT spending being cut back, some enterprise software companies might be thinking that another way to squeeze some money out of customers is to audit them and force a larger bill on them. Of course, this seems like a plan that could backfire in a big, big way. As noted in the article, being audited is not a pleasant experience at all. It's basically a vendor claiming that it thinks you're breaking your agreement. It's not the best way to build up a strong relationship of trust. Because of that, a sudden increase in totally unexpected and uncalled for audits may seriously damage a company's reputation and drive them to proactively look for alternatives from companies who trust them. Treating your customers like criminals is never a good idea...

The entertainment industry has a long and sorry history of treating customers like criminals, despite plenty of evidence that suggests that treating customers like criminals makes them more likely to act like criminals, rather than less. SteveD writes in with an example out of the UK, where the proprietor of a small shop decided that his store should be open the day after Christmas, but he didn't want his employees to have to work -- and he didn't want to work either. So, he opened up the shop, put up a note and a box for people to put money in and left the shop entirely unstaffed. It actually worked out well. He made a fair bit of money and didn't find any damage or products stolen.

This reminds me, quite a bit, of the Freakonomics story about the "Bagel Man" who delivered bagels to a variety of office buildings around Washington DC and left out boxes for people to pay. On average, he ended up with around 90% of the money requested, and some interesting lessons in which types of people and companies were more likely to be honest. There's also a scene in the Kevin Smith movie Clerks where the lead character Dante does the same thing -- though his explanation for why it works is: "Theoretically, people see money on the counter, and no one around, they think they're being watched." And, as his girlfriend notes, this is "honesty through paranoia." I'm not sure which it is, but it seems that there's ample evidence that honest people don't need to be "kept honest" and treating your customers like criminals isn't necessarily a very good idea.

While the Associated Press was wasting time stupidly threatening to sue bloggers for pointing people to AP stories without paying, perhaps the folks there should have been paying a bit more attention to actually making sure its business model worked. As we've been noting, over the past few years, its strategy has put it in pretty much direct competition with its members (the AP is made up of numerous member newspapers).

That's creating problems, as we've seen a variety of newspapers have recently been refusing to renew their contracts, notifying the AP that they don't want to participate anymore. There have been some notable names, from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, but none of the "major" newspaper companies had bailed... until now. The Tribune Company, publishers of the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Baltimore Sun and others has surprised many by telling the AP it's not renewing. That could be the big domino, as many other newspapers may follow suit. The article here notes even that some newspapers have been experimenting with picking days when they try to publish without a single AP story to see how it goes.

What's amazing is that, so far, it doesn't seem like the Associated Press recognizes that there's a real problem. They simply seem to shrug off each defection. At some point, the AP needs to realize that it needs to change, rather drastically, if it's going to survive. While the AP isn't like an ordinary company -- it's a non-profit cooperative made up of member news organizations -- that doesn't mean it doesn't need to have a working business model. Without that, and with big members dropping like flies, it won't be able to exist at all.

It would appear that gaming company EA got the wrong message concerning DRM after its Spore DRM debacle. While EA eventually backed down, it certainly did plenty to damage its own reputation in the gaming community. Hell, when we recently posted an article about EA that had nothing to do with DRM at all, a bunch of commenters used the post to complain about EA's DRM policy anyway. That suggests a Metallica-like reputation problem.

So, how is EA dealing with this reputation issue? Apparently by dismissing it as nothing to be concerned about. A whole bunch of our readers sent in this story about an EA exec claiming that only 0.2% of users would even notice the DRM used in Spore -- basically suggesting that the complaints were hyped up and out of proportion to the issue. That's sort of missing the point. While some users who complained might never actually encounter problems with the DRM, that doesn't mean that they're comfortable with the idea that EA has significantly limited how they can use a product that they purchased. Even a quick review of the history of DRM would show EA execs two things: it does nothing to stop piracy, and it seriously gets in the way of legitimate users, no matter how artfully designed.