'The End of Content Ownership'; more thoughts on The Cloud

PC Magazine has an interesting editorial on The Cloud

A couple of weeks ago I dragged some of my favorite super-large hardcover books out of the attic and placed them on a shelf in my living room. I may read them again, but it's more likely they'll live out their golden years as decorative objects. Interestingly, I think most of my old VHS, CDs, and even DVDs and Blu-rays may soon be joining these books as objects d'art instead of useful content objects.

I agree the Cloud is transformative, as anyone who's followed my Roku evangelizing over the past year or so already knows. But I think the author glosses over several problematic spots in his rush to anoint the Cloud as our new benevolent overlord.

I'm clearly biased, but books (and to a lesser extent music, during the era of LP records) have always delivered the tactile joy of possession along with their payload of entertainment. Movies, yeah whatever- the joy of a film is in the viewing, not the possessing. I doubt any of the authors old VHS tapes or blu ray boxes will be proudly displayed as "objects d'art".

DVDs (and cds) are a straight up annoyance, there's nothing good about them. They're unsatisfying as objects, they're flimsy, they get lost, they're polluted with advertising and badly designed menus. All of which helps make the Cloud perfect for visual mediums like teevee and film.

I can see its application for music as well, although people tend to form emotional relationships with their favorite bands and wand tangible artifacts of their work. This I think explains the resurgence of the vinyl record among 'the kids'.

Books are the most satisfying as objects and thus the least amenable to the Cloud concept. There's also a barrier that largely doesn't exist with music and film- everybody's got a teevee, everybody's got a stereo of some sort, and if not even Apple sells a digital player for fifty bucks.

If you want a machine that'll let you read a book without wanting to put your eyes out with a hot poker, it'll set you back a few hundred, at least for now. Books go from being one of the most egalitarian manifestations of creative culture to one of the least, especially in a world where libraries dream of divesting their shelves of actual physical books.

And of course with the greater prevalence of ebooks will come piracy, especially given that you can't loan an ebook, you can't give it to a friend, you can't re-sell it on the secondary market. And authors have much less recourse than musicians and filmmakers to combat piracy. I noted to a friend a while back that the music biz has turned on its head- singles and concerts used to be tools to get people excited about buying your record, where all the profit was. Nowadays records are what you use to get people to come to your show, which is where all the profits are.

That's not so much an option for authors not named Charles Dickens.

Of course, all this philosophical meandering means about as much as piss in a gale.
For the vast majority of consumers convenience trumps all, and they'll gladly rent content from some corporation (which is what retail ebooks are, rentals subject to the whim of the publisher and distributor) while lamenting the curious disappearance of the beloved cultural artifacts like 'the local bookshop'.

I'm sure the 'book as object' will persist, and even at some point enjoy a revival like the current rage for vinyl records. Books have much to recommend them. But the Cloud will take one more slice out of an increasingly dilapidated retail pie and make it that much more difficult for booksellers to justify staying in the game.

And what will we all do when there's nothing left for the little guy to sell, when every digitizable retail good has been locked up by the big corps?

I guess Micky D's is always hiring...