We Need To Regulate TiVos Now?
from the oh-boy dept
What is it with uncreative business model suggestions today? First we had Lester Thurow saying the music industry has no business model without copyright enforcement and now (found over at New Media Musings) is this story that an analyst at Sanford Bernstein actually thinks that TiVo and TiVo-like devices should be regulated – to force people to watch commercials. He claims that this is the “only way” to save the broadcast TV industry. Yes, and the only way to save the horse and buggy industry is to force people to walk in front of automobiles waving a lantern (as was the law in some places). It makes sense for the entrenched interests – but makes little sense for consumers. What happens instead, is that old business models become obsolete, and new ones come in and take their place. That’s business.
Comments on “We Need To Regulate TiVos Now?”
"Dumb Laws"...
Mike, you should be careful pointing to sites which contain lists of “Dumb Laws”, but don’t actually contain references to the actual law in the law books. This stuff is all over the net (google has no less that 152 pages with the “law” on them, most of them “comedy sites”), but I have yet to find one that actually has a reference to the particular section of the code which lists this law. I only looked into three of the laws on the site and all of them are bogus (and the Alabama barefoot law is a well known urban legend.) If three out of three laws checked are bogus, that isn’t a good record. Some of these laws may have been repealed, but I suspect that most of these are bogus since they do not actually attribute any vehicle code section/subsection to them.
There is no law in the CVC book which states the maximum speed of a driver-less or “unmanned vehicle,” nor is there a law forbidding a women from wearing a housecoat (or any other coat) while driving. [UrbanLegends.com]
And Alabama does not have a law which says anything about driving barefoot (unless you are driving barefoot on a motorcycle.) [Unfortunately, urbanlegends.com seems to be dead with snopes now taking up the charge, but snopes doesn’t have this email on it nor does it have any of the dumb-law debunking in it…]
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Good point… I actually spent some time (as did Dennis who was helping me with the search) in trying to track down an original reference on that – and we failed. It’s possible that you’re right.
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Good point…
Probably should have sent feedback instead, but someone may read the dumblaws site and propagate them more…maybe it is time for me to start trying to get these debunked on snopes so that we have an “anti-reference” to these dumblaw sites that seem to be everywhere.
Another law debunked is the one that says: “It is a misdemeanor to shoot at any kind of game from a moving vehicle, unless the target is a whale.” (linked to from your reference.) This isn’t true at all: CPC 374c makes it illegal to discharge a firearm on a public highway, no matter the circumstances; CFG 3002 makes it illegal to shoot any game bird or mammal, including marine mammals, from any vehicle; and CPC 12031m makes it illegal to carry a loaded weapon in a vehicle (obviously there are a ton of exceptions to 12031m.)
This is fun, I can see how the snopes guys like doing this…
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Still, if there is currently no law against gorillas in back seats I think we need one.
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Still, if there is currently no law against gorillas in back seats I think we need one.
I am all for a law outlawing any type of animal (gorillas, lions, tigers, bears, oh my) which can cause massive amounts of damage to the driver and passengers from being in the back seat of a vehicle. They should be carried in a trailer or in the back of a pickup, but then again that just makes common sense, which is most likely why I am not a politician.
old business models
I think you have it a little backwards.
Old business models don’t become obsolete and have new ones replace them.
Instead new business models come along that obsolete the old ones.
Small but very important difference. We did not do away with buggy whips and then get the automobile.
When a business model comes along that makes commercials obsolete we will loose them. But to try and force them out without the replacement in place is not going to be very productive. Commercials are what pay for the content we want, and until someone finds a better way of paying for the content we will have them. There are TV channels that don’t have commercials in the content, HBO and the like. And you pay in a different manner for that content.
Re: old business models
You mean the business model isn’t selling PVR devices and services?
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What does selling PVRs and services have to do with the content we are watching?
The new recorders are probably going to replace the VCRs, so in that there is a new business replacing an older one.
I supose we could have the PVR providers replace the content providers, but I am not sure what we would use the PVR for then.
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Go one step further here… You’re thinking too linearly about PVRs being one business and content being the other. They’re connected. The biggest PVR seller isn’t TiVo… it’s EchoStar.
If PVRs only sell if there’s content, then guess who has the incentive to figure out ways to make content?
commercials
I don’t watch commercials on regular TV so why the hell would I watch them on TiVo?
maddening
You know, I’m getting really really really tired of stuff like this. It seems like more and more companies now behave as if they have a godgiven right to your money/time/attention.
Next they’ll legislate having to BUY the products in commercials.