The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has filed a lawsuit against Google “over its plans to digitally copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owners”. I liked how John Battelle summed it up:
“I really don’t get this. I have been both a publisher and an author, and I have to tell you, these guys sue for one reason and one reason alone, from what I can tell: Their legacy business model is imperiled, and they fear change. Of course, if they can get out of their own way, they’ll end up making more money. But that never stopped these guys – the MPAA, the RIAA, and now, the AAP.”
Emphasis mine. It reminded me of my response to Nicholas Carr’s Web 2.0 is Amoral post. Whereas Mr Carr and the 2.0 bashers over at The Register want to remain in cosy old 20th century mainstream media land, the reality is the Internet is changing media business models – right under their feet.
Just as you can’t control who creates “quality” content in the age of the Web, you can’t control how content is catalogued and made available to the masses. Wake up and smell the coffee MSM: you need to adjust to 21st century media business models, before they make you irrelevant.
And lest you think I’m a bit stir crazy, there are plenty of examples of MSM that are taking this seriously and leading the charge into 21st C media. BBC, Yahoo!, even Barry Diller in his funny way. Those are all great role models (well, perhaps not Diller…).
