I vividly remember sitting in a cinema half a decade ago and seeing the Universal Studios globe turning in full Technicolor just before the start of the feature presentation.
As the U-N-I-V-E-R-S-A-L lettering made its way to the foreground, my heart sped up and my hands began to sweat. My reaction was only natural, as my last company had only recently been sued by Universal, and 28 other media companies, for a $250bn(£140bn). My partners and I ultimately were forced to settle with Hollywood, sell the company, and start anew in the peer-to-peer space.
At the time, it was my opinion that these media companies did not know much about this chaotic, uncontrollable medium but definitely knew they didn't like what our search engine was finding. So instead of using the precise mechanisms that existing law already provided for their protection (known as take-down provisions in the Search Safe Harbor of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act), these companies were certain they needed to slow things down with a scary, overwhelming message to would-be entrepreneurs and their investors.
For almost an entire decade, innovators in digital media distribution were chilled by the aggressive tactics of the entertainment industry to protect their analogue interests. For many years, we essentially saw a lockdown on Internet distribution of media. Practical licences for legitimate Internet distribution were forbidden, while lawsuit after lawsuit was wielded as a blunt tool and a stern warning against those creators (a.k.a. innovators) who had their sights set on staking a claim in the wild west of online digital media.
This chilly pursuit's last salvo came with the Grokster decision by the Supreme Court last month. The court's principled yet vague decision remains a Pyrrhic victory for the entertainment industry in its fight against piracy. There will be no substantial abatement of peer-to-peer piracy as a result of the decision. Maybe the only lasting innovation resulting from these pursuits will be the advent of distributed, non-commercial, anonymous networks that make for difficult tracking by copyright owners, law enforcement and oppressive foreign governments alike.
Ironically enough, in the decade to come, we technologists should see a reversal of our collective fortune in our relationships with the media industry. The cold winter of media distribution innovation has already begun its thaw and will enter full spring bloom in the coming years.
That may sound a bit iconoclastic given everything we've heard from some of our techie leaders. But it is absolutely clear that technologists and technology companies are well-positioned to win the post-Grokster peace.
After the Grokster decision, there is nobody left for Hollywood to fight. The Kazaa-like "infringers" either lost in the Supreme Court along with Grokster, or the few remaining have basically gotten the message and are finding ways to go "legit" as we speak. Without anybody substantial left to fight (not counting those millions of consumers who might still be using peer-to-peer software to directly infringe), all that is left is to think about taking this huge groundswell in demand for digital distribution and making a big business out of it. The entertainment industry has "won". All that's left is to actually take their own prodigious...
