©ollectanea

As we've noticed this year, there have been numerous indications that things may be shifting a bit in a positive way with respect to the business models of the media companies that have most resisted such change. We have discussed some of these indications in earlier posts here on Collectanea. Most are optimistic postings. I tend to be an optimist. But lately I've encountered a few things that bring out my pessimistic (some would say, realistic) side. One in particular seems to signal that even when large media companies finally engage the future and embrace (or seem to embrace) new technologies, their ways of thinking about their businesses can remain largely unchanged. MySpace illustrates this point.

Originally conceived in a way that fully integrates the functionality of Web 2.0, the idea that content can be mixed and matched and shared and reused by applications all over the Web, MySpace now finds itself chafing at the openness of this model. It allows MySpace page owners to link to pages where content is served with advertising. In the complex way revenue streams work on the Web, this means to MySpace owner, Rupert Murdoch, that other companies are making money from the content that "belongs" to him (ie, his users' content). So he has moved to block his users from linking to rival sites that display content with advertisements. In Silicon Valley, this is not playing very well, as might be expected. I wonder whether it suggests that although we may not see copyright as the battle cry in this kind of dispute, the underlying issue has simply resurfaced in a new way. It is still the content owner challenging the upstart technology wishing to make money from some use of the content. Actually, in this case, it's not technically his content under copyright law, but it's his content in the sense that he seems to think of his users as a commodity whose content he should be able to control. It will be interesting to see what effect if any this has on the commodified user.