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the ’90s telling them bad science fiction stories about impossi-
ble DRM technology that would let them charge a small sum of
money every time someone looked at a movie — want to fast-for-
ward? That feature costs another penny. Pausing is two cents an
hour. The mute button will cost you a quarter.
When Mako Analysis issued their report last month advis-
ing phone companies to stop supporting Symbian phones, they
were just writing the latest installment in this story. Mako says
that phones like my P900, which can play MP3s as ringtones, are
bad for the cellphone economy because it’ll put the extortionate
ringtone sellers out of business. What Mako is saying is that just
because you bought the CD doesn’t mean that you should expect
to have the ability to listen to it on your MP3 player, and just be-
cause it plays on your MP3 player is no reason to expect it to run
as a ringtone. I wonder how they feel about alarm clocks that will
play a CD to wake you up in the morning? Is that strangling the
nascent “alarm tone” market?
The phone companies’ customers want Symbian phones and
for now, at least, the phone companies understand that if they
don’t sell them, someone else will.
The market opportunity for truly capable devices is enormous.
There’s a company out there charging
$27,000
for a DVD juke-
box — go and eat their lunch! Steve Jobs isn’t going to do it: he’s
off at the D conference telling studio execs not to release hi-def
movies until they’re sure no one will make a hi-def DVD burner
that works with a PC.
Maybe they won’t buy into his BS, but they’re also not much
interested in what you have to sell. At the Broadcast Protection
Discussion Group meetings where the Broadcast Flag was ham-
mered out, the studios’ position was, “We’ll take anyone’s DRM
except Microsoft’s and Philips’.” When I met with UK broadcast
wonks about the European version of the Broadcast Flag under-
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