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Editorials
Illustration by Bloomberg View
By the Editors Sun Feb 26 15:30:57 GMT 2012
It seems cosmically appropriate that gambling house odds are on “The Artist” to win this year’s Academy Award for best picture. The Weinstein Co.’s paean to the end of the silent movie era is an apt metaphor for an industry upended by new technologies.
Whether or not “The Artist” gets an Oscar statuette, the film can teach Hollywood an important lesson: Once technical barriers are broken, they can never be rebuilt. The arrival of talkies required the industry to rethink an antiquated business model. This time the existential threat -- the one that should compel Hollywood to rethink its business model anew -- is the ability of digital pirates to bypass the industry’s distribution system.
Studio executives and their Washington lobbyists continue to hope that Congress will adopt a revamped version of the Stop Online Piracy Act, the legislation that was withdrawn in the face of opposition from the technology industry. The measure would have enabled studios to shut down pirate websites located overseas and out of reach of U.S. law enforcement. But SOPA’s provisions -- requiring law-abiding search engines and websites to deny copyright infringers access to credit-card payment systems and search listings -- would have darkened pirate sites only temporarily. They would have quickly popped up elsewhere in a game of digital whack-a-mole.
Megaupload Model
Perhaps perversely, one infamous pirate site, Megaupload, could provide a model for the film industry’s future. Though the site was shut down by authorities in January, the Megaupload cyberlocker (cloud-servers that store movies and other large data files too big to e-mail) was one of the 100 most popular websites in the world. Megaupload claimed 150 million registered users with an average of 50 million visitors a day. Over seven years, a U.S. Justice Department complaint says, it pulled in $175 million (with just 30 employees) distributing mostly stolen films. Clearly, there are millions of film buffs eager to watch movies when and where they desire, not when a studio dictates.
Kim Dotcom, the mastermind of Megaupload, awaits extradition to the U.S. We have no intention of glorifying his methods, regardless of whether the courts find Megaupload to be a criminal enterprise. Hollywood films are proprietary content and deserve to be treated as such. But the market is all but screaming at film industry executives to change their ways and honor consumer demand.
Studios should abandon their tightly controlled distribution system, in which a film is released serially to U.S. movie theaters, overseas theaters, pay-per-view television, DVDs and network TV. The industry now makes most of its money from overseas releases and DVD sales, and is fearful that simultaneous digital releases on all platforms in all markets will kill the golden goose that produces blockbuster hits -- and profits.
Why can’t the film industry compete on the basis of price and service, and beat the pirates at their own game? A fully monetized, legitimate version of Megaupload, paired with lower- cost digital filmmaking, could expand markets and revenue for the film industry. Hollywood could still produce its blockbusters and reap the rewards of the mass market. (If the VCR didn’t kill off cinemas, digital distribution won’t either.) The industry might also develop valuable niches that bypass the local multiplex. Older audiences, for example, might be willing to watch more films if they could pay less for each viewing and watch in the comfort of their own homes.
UltraViolet’s Proposition
Netflix (NFLX), which streams movies to TVs and personal computers for a monthly subscription, has been a breakthrough, but it isn’t the only digital distribution model. Warner Bros. is testing a service with You On Demand Holdings that streams movies to consumers in China, where the studios complain that copyright violations are a way of life. Warner and other Hollywood studios have also quietly formed a consortium in the U.S., called UltraViolet, to distribute content digitally. It’s the right approach but the process is still clumsy, and the value proposition is undermined by fears that the studios aren’t fully behind it.
The industry should move beyond baby steps. Surveys show that iTunes, Spotify and other music websites have turned millions of music pirates into paying customers. The movie industry should give film buffs the same opportunity to go legit.
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Hollywood Should Beat Digital Pirates at Their Own Game: View
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Visually impaired second grader Kyle Beasley uses touch screen technology to select a menu while reading a book with his Refreshabraille 18 bluetooth device at Roosevelt Elementary School.
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Visually impaired second grader Kyle Beasley uses a Refreshabraille 18 bluetooth device to read a book from his iPad using his fingertips at Roosevelt Elementary School.
JANESVILLE — Kyle Beasley is a smart second-grader with an infectious grin.
He's also functionally blind.
Until last fall, the 7-year-old used, 8-by-11-inch Braille texts that teachers printed for him on a special machine.
Each page cost about $1. He once had four lockers just to store his textbooks.
Today, the student at Roosevelt Elementary School easily carries his own iPad and a special Braille translator that allow him to read all his textbooks, send emails, access the Internet, check the weather and do just about anything anyone else can do with a computer.
It's new technology that is fundamentally changing how blind people interact with their world, but it appears the digital revolution is just getting started when it comes to improving the lives of people with all sorts of disabilities.
Some of the developments border on the magical, compared with what was available 20 years ago. Schools are the places where people first encounter them.
Educators are scrambling to keep up with developments for those who can't see, can't hear, whose minds have trouble with the written word, who can't use their arms or legs and even those who can do little more than move their eyes.
The Janesville School District employs a teacher whose job is to find the technology that best suits each student who has a disability. Her name is Kathy White.
"Technology is exploding for us," White said.
Keeping up is a challenge, but colleagues said White is very good at it.
"Kathy White is a master at figuring out what students need then finding, adapting or building what is necessary to further enhance a student's ability to learn," Superintendent Karen Schulte said.
White keeps abreast of developments and matches the emerging technologies with the hundreds of students in the Janesville School District who have disabilities.
Kyle's translator—called Refreshabraille—is just one example. It has a Braille keyboard that allows Kyle to write as well as read. It communicates with his iPad, translating his Braille into English, and English into Braille.
Plastic Braille dots pop up instantly on a pad, corresponding to a text displayed on the iPad. Bluetooth technology lets the two devices "talk" to each other.
Kyle expertly reads the dots with his index finger. When he's done with one set of dots, the next set pops up.
Keeping up in class is easy, Kyle said with a proud smile.
Asked how he likes his Refreshabraille compared with paper texts, his face glowed proudly.
"I can read it faster," he said.
There's a learning curve, and Baumunk teaches Kyle problem-solving strategies for when he gets stuck, but he appears to have learned quickly since he got the devices last fall.
"It's making him incredibly independent," Baumunk said.
White gets calls from teachers who have students stymied by disabilities. White looks for a technology to overcome the barriers. She works with every age in the school district, from 12th-graders to 3-year-olds. The range of needs is wide.
Consider Correy Winke, who was slated for a slow-paced science class when he entered Parker High School about 18 months ago. College "was the farthest thing from my mind," he said.
Correy has dyslexia. His mind has trouble processing the printed word.
White figured Correy had what it takes to reach higher. She helped him get an iPod and a laptop computer, along with software that will read any text to him out loud and guess at the words he needs as he writes a class assignment.
He deftly manipulated a cellphone application and writing programs on his laptop as he showed a visitor how it all works.
Now a sophomore, Correy is pulling down A's and B's and taking courses such as honors geometry. Asked if he can handle the work, he responded with a confident, "Oh, yeah!"
There was a time when Correy would have had an aide assigned to him or perhaps even been placed in a special-education class.
"I'm in all regular classes," he says proudly.
Correy has a questioning mind. He is learning guitar and hopes to become a music producer. He recently decided he wants to read "Macbeth."
"I like a challenge," he said.
He's focused on getting into college.
"That wasn't even on the radar" when he was in middle school, White said.
White checks in with Correy about once a week. Now that he has gotten more adept with the technology, she will back off, she said.
White often has to prove that a particular kind of technology is what's best for a student. Once she has the proof, she can apply for the money to pay for it, often through Medical Assistance.
Funding is crucial because anything that is made to help with disabilities is bound to be expensive, she said.
One such case was a young girl who had never moved unless someone moved her. White thought she could handle a motorized wheelchair, but the girl could not control her hand well enough to drive one.
White got a motorized toy car from a store, rebuilt the seat and re-wired it so the girl could flip a switch to make it go.
White's father was a millwright at the Kenosha Chrysler plant, she said, so she inherited some of his skills.
"I like to do things like that when I have time to play around," she said.
The experiment was an instant success for the girl.
She was laughing so hard … we kept telling her to breathe," White recalled.
With that proof in hand, White was able to request that Medical Assistance cover the cost of a modified power chair.
Dealing with a computer keyboard is a challenge for many of White's students. She has found keyboards with larger- or smaller-than-standard keys, alternative key configurations, and keyboards for use with one hand.
White recently borrowed a computer system called a Tobii Communicator in hopes it would help a few students who don't have the use of their hands at all.
Developed for the paraplegic war wounded, the Tobii includes a camera that tracks a person's eye movements. Gazing steadily at designated spots on the computer screen is like pressing a button or clicking a mouse. It allows someone whose hands don't work to access the Internet and much more.
With the right connected hardware, a person can switch lights or a TV off and on, drive a powered wheelchair or even open a door. Users can write and send email or do just about anything else with a computer.
Three students are using borrowed equipment, and White hopes to document their efforts so they can get funding for their own machines.
"The students who are using it are using it extremely well," White said, and they're "extremely excited" once they see the possib
ilities to do things they have never been able to do for themselves.
"They become so empowered," White said.
One drawback: Constant concentration on controlling the dot on the screen can be draining.
White estimates she visits 50 to 60 students a week, helping them learn their new software or hardware, but that's not the biggest challenge.
"The hardest part for us is to keep up with what's going on," she said.
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Digital revolution changing lives of students with disabilities
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This Week in Money: February 18, 2012 - Video
The Digital Marketer newsletter explains why social media is costing mobile carriers billions of dollars.
Austin, TX. (PRWEB) February 26, 2012
Social media is the topic in the recent Digital Marketer newsletter, discussing why social media is costing the mobile carriers so much money. The newsletter asks the question, “Who really wants to give their mobile carrier more business?” Chances are, the Digital Marketer newsletter explains, is that people have felt slighted or burned in at least one of their dealings with their wireless provider. Customer service just doesn’t seem to be priority #1 at AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc., the newsletter reveals.
So people probably won’t feel sorry for them when they learn that mobile carriers lost a projected $13.9B in SMS revenue in 2011, according to a study conducted by research firm Ovum the Digital Marketer newsletter revealed. According to Ovum, the Digital Marketer newsletter adds, smartphone users are turning to social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to send the messages they once sent through SMS. The Digital Marketer newsletter reveals that iOS users, can send other iOS users messages for free.
It’s easy to see how social platforms are shifting things to the customer’s benefit, the Digital Marketer newsletter explains, and this change has left the SMS providers in the lurch.
The Digital Marketer newsletter advises people should absolutely not feel bad for them, for at least two reasons.
1) Business models change, consumer demand changes, and it’s a mobile carrier’s responsibility to compete, understand what consumers want, and deliver. Companies that can’t achieve this should lose money.
2) The more people rely on social media, and abandon one-to-one text messaging, the greater the reach of your social media strategy. Customers and marketers are the ones benefiting!
When technology makes a process cheaper and more efficient, the newsletter explains, there’s a word for that, progress. The Digital Marketer newsletter says that companies that align themselves with it are the ones whose customers freely choose to do business with them. Companies that dig in their heels and try to throttle this progress down so they can save an obsolete business model, the newsletter adds, those are the companies that people feel trapped into doing business with.
For many years now, wireless providers have stood on the wrong side of the line, warns the Digital Marketer newsletter, slamming customers with massive overage fees, and hiking prices — while companies like Apple and Facebook have been building models that allow users to do more for less money.
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Dennis Murphy
Digital Marketing Labs, LLC
512-892-3022
Email Information
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“Social Costing Mobile Carriers Billions?” is Discussed in the Recent Digital Marketer Newsletter