Biting the Hand That Feeds You - Misadventures with Myspace
This week, News Corp's MySpace unit revealed plans to implement an "audio-fingerprinting" technology developed by Gracenote (venerable keeper of the Compact Disc Database aka CDDB) in an effort to block users from uploading copyrighted material. see article in NY Times
My first reaction was to applaud MySpace's adoption of a potentially great technology which I first started followin a few years back.
However, my second was one of astonishment.
For those of you who've been able to avoid MySpace or who are otherwise clueless about the company/website, check out the picture below:
The above is a screenshot of the profile page that a friend of mine's band maintains. You'll notice about 1/2 way down the page on the right side the little media player feature. Take a good look at it, because a large number of MySpace's members use the same (or similar) tool to insert music and movies into their profile pages. What kind of music and movies do you think these millions of members are putting in their profiles?
Yup, the copyrighted kind!
While I don't have access to MySpace's data, conducting a quick informal ad-hoc survey of a number of friends profiles I visited, more than a few of them have music or some other form of copyrighted media in their profile pages. Most of the time users simply embed a popular song(s) or video in their profile using MySpace's media player or a 3rd party tool.
Now with this copyright vigilantism, MySpace risks alienating (read: really pissing off) the same users who made MySpace the premier social networking site it is today. One would think that MySpace would learn from the Facebook faux pas earlier this year when the rival social networking site opened up its doors to basically anyone. Clearly, the installed base of these sites is not to be messed with.
While only the future will tell, I predict a significant protest to come from the MySpace membership, and possibly (although inprobable) a relatively large fallout from this disruptive decision.
My first reaction was to applaud MySpace's adoption of a potentially great technology which I first started followin a few years back.
However, my second was one of astonishment.
For those of you who've been able to avoid MySpace or who are otherwise clueless about the company/website, check out the picture below:
The above is a screenshot of the profile page that a friend of mine's band maintains. You'll notice about 1/2 way down the page on the right side the little media player feature. Take a good look at it, because a large number of MySpace's members use the same (or similar) tool to insert music and movies into their profile pages. What kind of music and movies do you think these millions of members are putting in their profiles?
Yup, the copyrighted kind!
While I don't have access to MySpace's data, conducting a quick informal ad-hoc survey of a number of friends profiles I visited, more than a few of them have music or some other form of copyrighted media in their profile pages. Most of the time users simply embed a popular song(s) or video in their profile using MySpace's media player or a 3rd party tool.
Now with this copyright vigilantism, MySpace risks alienating (read: really pissing off) the same users who made MySpace the premier social networking site it is today. One would think that MySpace would learn from the Facebook faux pas earlier this year when the rival social networking site opened up its doors to basically anyone. Clearly, the installed base of these sites is not to be messed with.
While only the future will tell, I predict a significant protest to come from the MySpace membership, and possibly (although inprobable) a relatively large fallout from this disruptive decision.
posted by Gordon Gekko at
9:46 AM
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