Philosophical Musings

November 13, 2007

(Real) Competition-Blindness

Filed under: Copyrights, business — Elad Kehat @ 2:46 pm

So a major TV network (NBC) has finally launched a service that lets you download shows to your PC. Not surprisingly, they still don’t get it right:

“First off, it’s Internet Explorer only, then once you download the player, if you don’t have the latest .NET framework, you’ll be downloading that also. Next: Windows Media needed a security update on top of it all. On a Mac? Sorry, can’t help. Outside of the US? You’re out of luck too.

Don’t they realize that they have to be better than competition?  They probably do. It’s just that they choose to ignore the real competition. Let’s parse those (non)issues:

1. It’s internet explorer only. Mininova etc. work on firefox as well.

2. You need to download the latest .NET framework. I guess I could live with that one :)

3. Windows media needs a security update. Screw you.  Playing DivX torrents doesn’t require any “security” updates that securely send information about me somewhere else.

4. On a Mac? No problem. Lots of bittorrent clients work on the Mac.

5. Outside of the US? Even better, in most countries MPAA hasn’t got lawmakers in their pocket (yet).

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