Cory Doctorow
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04-30-2002 05:33 PM ET (US)
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You're right that commercial-supported broadcast TV will have to change in order to be sustainable in a world of universal TiVo ownership. That doesn't mean that TiVo should be enjoined from producing its devices until/unless it can tell Hollywood how it's going to make money on the new regime. We've *never* operated on this principle, and it's turned out pretty good.
As to what the model is going to be, I dunno. I will point out, though that new bizmodels for distruptive tech are fantastically bizarre before they're implemented:
"So, Mr. Vaudevallian, don't trouble yourself at all about this radio thing. In a few years, we will have serial dramas, underwritten by soap manufacturers. They will pay you big bucks to perform your music on stage and then the recordings will be replayed. These replays will generate huge dollars by means of a rights-society created by an act of Congress that will randomly sample the airwaves to determine what's being played; the rights-society will get its money from honor-system payments generated by braodcasters who will keep track of their own volume of titles played. When it's all said and done, your industry will be tens, if not hundreds of times larger than it is today."
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