Slashdot Log In
Media Monopoly: Thomas Edison to Hillary Rosen
Posted by
michael
on Sun Jun 01, 2003 02:45 PM
from the looking-back dept.
from the looking-back dept.
An anonymous reader writes "George Ziemann has posted two excellent articles that explore the early days of the recording and music industry, how their attempts to monopolize their respective mediums in the past failed, and how their attempts to do so strangely mirror those presently being undertaken by contemporary media conglomerates to control digital distribution over the Net. Seems the two industries back at the turn of the century tried to pool their patents to block out competition like the RIAA and the big media companies today pool their copyrights. The first article "The Dawn of Recorded Music and the First Pirates" focuses on early collusion in the phonograph industry. The second "Music, Movies and Monopoly" on Thomas Edison's failed attempts to restrain fair trade in the two new media he gave commercial rise to."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
It's time they take notes on history. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's time they take notes on history. (Score:4, Insightful)
Those who don't learn by history are doomed to repeat it. Why oh why don't they freakin' learn?
Because History class in high-school is largely a pack of feel-good lies and, besides, they rarely get much past the civil war anyways.
Parent
Re:It's time they take notes on history. (Score:5, Insightful)
On top of that, anything truly interesting (read controversial) was simply glossed over -- with the exception of slavery, where I was told that I was responsible today for the sins of my great, great, great grandfather 150 years ago. I shouldn't have to say that he wasn't even in America, and the first of my ancestry to set foot in America married a Native American.
History isn't about learning, if it ever was. It's all about indoctrination.
Parent
Re:It's time they take notes on history. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. There's a sufficiently long interval between when a monopoly begins flexing its control and when it is either stopped by antitrust law or made irrelevant that an obscenely large amount of money can be made, and
2. Changes in law have reduced penalties in most cases to forms like "rebate coupons", allowing the guilty to effectively keep all the proceeds.
Its like Microsoft - technically they're just playing the system, and don't forget that the US has the best government money can buy...
Parent
Re:It's time they take notes on history. (Score:4, Funny)
Well, look on the bright side: repeating history will be forbidden unless you own the copyright on it.
Parent
Speaking of history... (Score:4, Funny)
Funny, I don't remember reading about this three years ago.
Parent
phonograph industry (Score:5, Funny)
Ted Turner's opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ted Turner's opinion (Score:3, Insightful)
What else is new? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason they failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Con Edison (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Con Edison (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Con Edison (Score:4, Funny)
Please insert obligatory "Miscrosoft never does anything original" comment here.
Parent
Against the flow. Fair and balanced. (Score:5, Funny)
Enough said.
A Convo (Score:5, Funny)
Hillary: }=(
Media Monopoly ... (Score:5, Funny)
Why don't we get Parker Brothers/Hasbro/whoever to make a "Media Monopoly(TM)" - instead of streets, you buy towns/cities, with houses representing newspapers, radio stations etc, and a hotel being a TV station or something. We could have Chance cards along the lines of "A new file-sharing app is launched. Lose $200,000,000" or "The American legal system develops collective insanity and passes the DMCA. Collect $5 billion", "The IRS finds out about the $10 billion stuffed down the back of the CEO's sofa, go directly to jail" etc etc.
Come on guys! If we put our heads together, we could probably come up with decent analogies for the utilities, stations, free parking etc, then launch the game in a blaze of publicity, giving the profits (excessive optimism, probably ...) to the EFF or something.
Re:Media Monopoly ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Media Monopoly ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Media Monopoly ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Starr-Gennett (Score:5, Informative)
Because of those patents, Starr-Gennett [starrgennett.org] "along with several other companies" were sued in the early Nineteen-Twenties, which the the American Graphophone Company (Columbia) and the Victor Talking Machine Co. Lost.
The Second Circuit Court of appeals held the patent void for lack of invention and for abandonment.
Not only did the lawsuit effectively end the majors' monopolization of lateral recording, it formed a bond between the smaller companies which had joined the Gennetts in the legal battle. Leasing arrangements between the companies followed, eventually involving hundreds of masters.
Turn of the century... (Score:5, Funny)
I did some research on Edison (Score:5, Insightful)
Credited with lots of nice things of course.
I guess a shitload of money, federal friends, a huge orange lab in New Jerz and a billion people doing the research and studies FOR you really lets you invent tons of stuff.
My geek god is Nikola Tesla. He is a straight up ballin G.
Re:I did some research on Edison (Score:4, Interesting)
``If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.''
``I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.''
New York Times, October 19, 1931
Parent
Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
As for Kazaa and others, hell they'll keep going strong but they will get harder and harder to use as the RIAA cracks down. I do not forsee my parents using Kazaa. They used it, and the fact that half the songs are low quality and u get many different results for a single song.. Well they don't care, all they want is to put in the name of a song and get back ONE result which they KNOW will work. Kazaa and napster to them are not worth the effort of searching and seeing if the songs are good quality and error free. They will however happily use iTunes. And that is why iTunes and similar vendors are going to make it big in the next 5 years as normal poeple start using them and discover how convenient they are. It is not the ubergeeks sitting downloading tons of music from kazaa and irc. Hell they can do that all they want it still won't detract from the ever increasing success of pay music. I predict that in the future, people will be like: Yeah, the smiths are really poor, they still use kazaa!
Many different online vendors | all having to deal with the RIAA implies a possible monopoly especially with DRM techonology maturing.
Re:Monopoly (Score:5, Interesting)
If you consider the indies less money hungry (due mostly to their size & efficiency), there's a good chance that those songs/albums offered to you by iTMS will be less expensive than the 99cents/track, $9.99/album. The almighty dollar probably will win out here, generating more interest in the indies.
If anything, I believe such services as iTMS (if successful) will lead to eventual decentralization of power in the music industry. =)
Parent
Edison is like Ogg Vorbis (Score:5, Informative)
Edison's story teaches me that in emerging technology, one must establish a monopoly if there is to be any stability in future markets. If one standard is not a clear winner, the consumer is the clear loser. Consumers will sacrifice quality for market saturation every time.
Re:Edison is like Ogg Vorbis (Score:5, Informative)
Well, that wasn't all there is to the story. Actually, the "phonograph wars" were in some way comparable to the PC vs Mac wars.
Edison == proprietary, Victor, Columbia, etc, == open standard.
It is true that Edison's Amberol cylinders and Diamond Disks had better sound quality than the competing flat discs produced by Victor, Columbia, etc.
Two problems; first, Edison's formats were proprietary, and as noted, Edison was vigorous in enforcing his patents. The only media available was from the Edison Co., and every recording they issued was subject to the personal approval of Edison himself, so consumers were limited to what was available by Edison's personal tastes,as opposed to the plethora of music available to owners of Victor, Columbia, Zonophone, etc. phonographs (technichly gramaphones - a phonograph is a cylinder machine). Also there were a number of 3rd party recording companies that produced records for the gramaphone format that weren't available for the Edison machines. Second, the cylinder format was inconvenient to use, and only allowed for one song to be recorded per record. The plaster core of the Amberol cylinders had a tendancy to swell, making them difficult to mount properly on the mandrel of the phonograph.
While the technical issues were addressed by the Diamond Disk format, by that time the flat disk (Berliner format) had become the standard, and also, the Diamond Disk was again a proprietary format, available only from Edison.
There was a reason Edison wasn't as well accepted by popular artists, too. He was a cheapskate. In those days, recording artists weren't paid by royalties, they were paid only for their performance for the recording session. After 1912, rather than pay the artists to record both a version for cylinders and Diamond Disks, Edison would pay the artist only for recording the Diamond Disk master, and then record the cylinder masters from the Diamond Disk. This also accounted for the reduction of quality in cylinder recordings after 1912.
Parent
Poster doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA members do not pool their copyrights. If they did, you could buy Britney Spears from any number of labels for next to nothing. The RIAA members only pool resources to fight common problems, like piracy. In all other respects, they compete against eachother, label B trying to find the next Britney Spears to sell to the teens and take label A's profits. This is the way it should work. Without the ability to monopolize an artist, a label cannot make money, since all the cost to promote an artist and make him famous can't be recovered if anyone else can sell copies of the album or if people can download it for free.
Re:Poster doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:3, Informative)
If you want to see fierce competition, look at soft drinks or snack foods or beer -- notice how there is so much fierce advertising, and price wars going on. Also each company is always trying to come up with something new.
In the record industry there are no price wars. Prices are actually going up
Re:Poster doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclosure: I produce music.
Big Five labels regularly infringe on each others copyrights, most commonly in not clearly all samples on albums (practically all musicians, like Sarah McLaughlan, use samples, usually to beef up the beat
But the issue about them turning a blind eye to their own infringements and then creating an umbrella group to go after people *not* in the circle is clearly an abuse of power, and does show you how they do pool their IP together. You're simply taking the word pool all too literally to see the bigger picture. Most musicians can see this plain as day.
Parent
Re:Poster doesn't know what he's talking about (Score:3, Insightful)
Promoting someone who has no talent but just a body that would appeal to most customers in the target group (according to research) to perform songs that have neither innovative music nor significant lyrics but would appeal to most customers in
Edison (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is the name Thomas Edison so revered?
In 100 years, will all the anti-competitive crimes of Microsoft have been forgotten? and
will Bill Gates be "remembered" as the "inventor" of so many key parts of computer systems?
Thomas Edison, like Bill Gates, was first and foremost a businessman. Yet, he gets "remembered"
as the "inventor" of many things that OTHER people actually discovered.
The genius of Edison and Gates _was_ in making inventions practicable through their employees.
Re:Edison (Score:3, Insightful)
"How the hell can you make a profit out of something you can so easily copy" was a common statement regarding MS dos which was released with no form of copy protection. Before microsoft, operating systems were typicaly made by the respective hardware companies, and were practicaly impossi
Phonograph history (Score:5, Informative)
Edison's invention of the phonograph was a huge breakthrough. There are no antecedents. He himself said, in later life, that it was the only truly original thing he ever invented.
There's a complicated story here, involving cylinders vs. records, vertical recording vs. horizontal recording, and some related technical issues. Originally, there were only original recordings. It took a while to figure out how to duplicate records. Early schemes involved one phonograph playing into the recording horns of many others, sort of like VHS duplication with worse generation loss. Then there was a scheme for duplicating via electroplating. It years to find a set of materials that allowed good pressings.
A more music-industry like issue is that Edison's record company decided that, rather than recording big-name musicians, they'd find less famous ones that sounded just as good. This turned out to be a major marketing mistake. The Victor Talking Machine Company started to gain market share because of this.
On a related note, the history of the incandescent lamp is usually misunderstood. The way to make an incandescent lamp is to find some material with a high melting point, draw it out into fine wire, make a coil out of it, put it in a bulb with vacuum or inert gases, and power it up. This was known before Edison. Swan made light bulbs before Edison, but he used platinum. All bulbs today use tungsten, which was tough to make into wire. General Electric Research, the successor of Edison's lab, solved that problem. It took years and sizable resources.
That's not what Edison invented. He invented a way to make low-cost bulbs with carbonized paper filaments. That was a mediocre technology, but way ahead of gas lamps. It was good enough to get the electrical industry going, and it was phased out as soon as tungsten technology worked. Sort of like CP/M or MS-DOS.
yeah (Score:5, Funny)
Support public radio/television (Score:5, Interesting)
Support it, or it will die.
Find your local radio [npr.org] or television [pbs.org] station and join up.
Ancient Proverb (Score:3, Interesting)
Read This Part of the Articles (Score:5, Interesting)
In other words, the movie studios WERE STARTED BY PIRATES! (i.e., independents who were defying the copyrights and patents of the companies described in the articles).
Not a fair comparison! (Score:5, Insightful)
Big Media Monopolies... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, each of these may constitute a local monopoly in a given area of the media or region of the world. And even if any one giant corporation doesn't have a monopoly on a given area of the media or region of the world, that media is most likely still owned by one giant corporation or another, which--ultimately--is what people object to the most.
It wasn't always like this, you know. There once was a much larger place for small businesses and innovation in radio, music, TV, and newspapers, where people could get in on the ground floor, and offer something new, interesting, and unique. But those days are over, and the sort of power that the big media corporations hold is absolutely stunning. They have more power to censor [onlisareinsradar.com] now than the government ever had.
Ultimately, some big corporations are evil; it has to do with the amount of power they have, and how power corrupts. If you have lots of small companies around to keep them honest, then you can expect fair competition. But if you don't, well then you have the mess we have now.
Parent
Re:What Media Monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it is.
In this case, the article is discussing the issues that can result from a group that pools its patents, creating a "virtual monopoly" - more like an oligopoly, but not really.
As to the myth of the "big media monopoly", I believe the "monopoly" is more of a statement of frustration regarding the fact that most people get their news from organizations that toe one of two party lines: you have the somewhere-in-the-socialist-field CNN, NYT and company. Then you have the somewhere-in-the-authoritarian-field FoxNews, and company.
This is probably because most people only accept the first story they hear regarding an issue that does not immediately contradict their preconceptions, and if they hear anything else to the contrary, it's filed under B for Bullshit.
This leads to homogenous news organizations.
Also, there are about two major cliques in the news media, and journalists seek approval from one of them. This results in a dichotomous but homogenous sub-culture that pervades news organizations. This culture picks who gets to be a reporter, and who doesn't.
So, is the "media monopoly" a myth? Yes. There is no one select group that controls and commands the news media. But there certainly is a behavioral system that regulates the news media.
To clarify what I mean by this, and to show how meaningless yet meaningful the conclusion is, let me compare this situation to Asshole Drivers(tm).
Asshole Drivers are everywhere. They seem to be a bit different from city to city, but they are everywhere. They cut you off, they slow down traffic because they refuse to merge, they speed up to keep you from merging. We know them by sight.
What causes there to be so many of them? Hard to say, but I think it's pretty easy to say that a combination of environment and human nature combines to create the self-centered bastards. I don't think they are employed to be that way by a business, nor do I believe that it is a form of religious worship (though some days I have my doubts....).
If this is true, then Asshole Drivers are not created or controlled by a monopoly, but there certainly is a behavioral system that produces them.
Now, I'll make this last part quick. Your comment about "I see plenty of choices on tv, radio, and the Internet than ever before."
Yes, they do compete, but the movie and music companies (who are the ones at issue here) not only compete with one another, but they gang up to destroy smaller companies. You can do that without being controlled by one person or board of directors.
There are numerous cases (that I wish I had links to so that I could cite them) showing collusion amongst RIAA and MPAA members to oust independents. Strong-arming distribution companies, prevention of advertisement from stores that wish to keep their "special deals." Etc, etc, etc.
Now, having said all this, let me tell you that I do not believe "all big corporations are evil." I believe that most problems with society right now come about because entities are not equal before the law and law-makers. I do not know how to solve these problems, but I do know they are a problem, and I'd like to hear solutions.
Parent
Do you follow the news at all? (Score:5, Informative)
control the vast majority of media outlets in the US.
If you'd follow the news, you would have stumbled
upon some articles mentioning this, because the FCC
currently plans to further deregulate the market.
If you'd followed the news even more closely, you'd
also have read about a little scandal about 2500
sponsored flight tickets for FCC members.
After short googling, this article seems to be quite
informative:
http://www.corpwatch.org/iss
Parent
Re:What Media Monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
When you have N companies that are in cahoots and dividing up the market or locking out independents, it can be just as bad as a monopoly. But when you use the term "monopoly" you are inviting people to pooh-pooh the problem by picking on your poorly chosen word.
If all you can hear when you twiddle your dial is N stations playing the same co
Re:All big corporations are evil!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Pulling statistics out of our ass now, eh? "Odds are" that any given person is not employed by a big corp. According to US Small Business Administration stats for 2000, out of 5.8 million non-farm employer firms, about 100,000 had over 100 employees, and only about 16,000 had over 500 employees. You do the math.
Now, if you were to say that large corporations wield more power than their minority status should allow, then I'd agree...
Parent
Re:Slashdot and the RIIA (Score:5, Insightful)
Bwuahahahaha. Paramount can do anything it pleases. If it wants to 'risk' releasing the LoTR trilogy under current copyright laws, so be it, but your argument reads like: "They have the right to release something and then claim that no amount of protection is enough." You don't say anything that hasn't been said before, and you nicely sidestep aknolwedging that there IS a point at which the mechnanics of the protection of copyright violate MY right to put food on MY table while still being able to enjoy the fruits of my participation in capitalism.
Furthure more, of course Joe Blow doesn't know who the RIAA is or hate them. But they *do* hate the results of their actions
Your post is yet another 'me too' for the status quo, which is about as hollow and moot a point as one can make.
Maybe you could tell me at which point you would NOT feel sorry for these people who, as you say have to put another BMW in their driveway or put their kids in a good university. The idea that they have to put food on the table is a joke; they could just go work for Walmart. If some guy on the street is robbing people, just to put food on the table, you tell him to go find another way to do it
You clearly feel that current copyright laws (tho they've drastically changed over the past 10 years, I can only assume you're referring to current laws) constitutes a valid amount of legal protection to the copyright holder, and thats all you're saying: "I agree with current laws." Woopdedoo. Obviously many people don't, so sit down and shut up if you havn't anything to say beyond the mindnumblingly obvious.
Parent
Re:Slashdot and the RIIA (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't even matter if it's "mindnumbingly obvious" to the average member of the public. Most people are aware that radio sucks compared to even a few years ago, but not many know why. When asked "would you be in favor of all radio and TV stations being owned by a single monopoly or a small oligopoly of partnered corporations", most people answer strongly in the negative even though they don't know the names of the lobbying organizations that are pushing for this. Demanding that the average citizen be familiar with the RIAA and MPAA, and that they be in opposition to them specifically, is an unreasonable requirement. Lobbying organizations certainly don't advertise their existence to the general public. They don't want to be "mindnumbingly obvious".
And you aren't recognizing the damage that a nonfunctioning media can do to a democracy. When there are only several TV stations and newspapers in a given market, and they're all owned by the same guy who's decided he hates one candidate and wants the other one to win, the election is reduced to something with mere ceremonial value.
For a prime example of how media consolidation harms democracy, look at the FCC vote tomorrow. There is practically no public support for further media consolidation, and yet nobody seems to know about the coming FCC action on Monday. I haven't seen anything about it on TV, in the newspaper, on radio, anywhere. The only places you see people talking about these issues are sites like this one. You can take that in two ways. Either Slashdot is just full of weirdos who like to complain, or there has been an organized media blackout on a public policy issue where the media holds a conflict of interest.
Clearly you've jumped to the conclusion that we're just a bunch of whiners. After all, you don't see anyone talking about this on TV!
Also, if you buy a CVD and expect it work in your DVD player, then tough luck.
"C" and "D" are next to each other on the keyboard, and any reasonable person should be able to figure out it was a typo.
When your rhetoric descends to pointing out typos in other people's posts, it's a sign you've been trounced and have already lost the argument. You might as well mention Hitler. I might point out that your subject line mentions the "RIIA", which is ironic considering your argument that many people are unfamiliar with the RIAA so it must not be a big deal.
Parent
Re:Slashdot and the RIIA (Score:3, Insightful)
Joe's friend who shows him P2P, he can get all the music he would like, but can't afford.
Joe's friend saw it on a TV show on some tech channel, hey if it's on TV it must be legal, they even gave his friend a hyperlink to download the necessary software.
Joe soon has the RIAA and MPAA pounding on his door and sueing him, taking the money he had saved
Re:Fast forward or fast rewind? (Score:3, Funny)
And the copyright on that song expired. The RIAA would like to make sure that never happens again.
Re:I'm so sick of media bashing (Score:3, Insightful)
"They wouldn't be spending the money if they didn't think they were losing money."
They spend the money because they would like more of it. Losing money, no. If someone doesn't buy something of theirs, they don't lose money. They simply don't make any. Too many people on slashdot don't understand what "lose" means. Businesses don't lose money if someone doesn't buy from them, THEY JUST DON'T MAKE MONEY. Thank you.