[DMCA-Activists] How to fail in e-business with a record effort

[IBSHQ]

interesting article at:

http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/GAMArticleHTMLTemplate?tf=globetechnolo

gy/TGAM/NewsFullStory.html&cf=globetechnology/tech-config-neutral&slug=TWKAPI&

date=20021010


How to fail in e-business with a record effort

JACK KAPICA

Thursday, October 10, 2002


It's easy to fail in e-business; what's hard is failing magnificently.


The Big Five music recording companies have been transcendent in this respect.

Their combined efforts have gone beyond killing their e-businesses 

and are close to destroying an entire industry.


The following are 10 rules of e-business failure, a list inspired by 

the recording industry's imaginative approach:


1. Refuse to change: 
Computers are just tools, and useful only in 

making your existing marketing model more efficient. Give word 

processors to your secretaries and install computerized 

stock-tracking systems so you can lay off staff. Declare the future 

to have arrived. Collect your performance bonus.


2. Ignore the Internet: 
If you can't imagine any way of making money 

on-line, then no one else can, either. Act surprised when the 

Internet starts to carry multimedia. Cry, "Who knew?" and insist the 

whole multimedia thing was invented only to ruin your business.


3. Be sanctimonious: 
Claim to be more concerned about the artists 

than about your profit. You are selfless; your only interest is 

paying the musicians, without whom you would be nothing. Pray that 

nobody remembers the countless rockers who signed away their souls on 

recording contracts and were dumped the moment their sales slipped.


4. Misunderstand your market: 
When you count the songs being swapped 

on peer-to-peer networks, do not notice that most are moldy oldies. 

It's still theft, you argue, even if you stopped paying royalties for 

those songs in 1961. Blame piracy, not taste, for your inability to 

sell new songs that no radio station will play.


5. Lie: 
Go on Kazaa, count the MP3 versions of songs you produced, 

old and new, and multiply that number by the current retail price of 

a CD; howl that you are losing a fortune. Forget that a Buddy Holly 

album sold for $2.95 in 1958; you sell records for much more now, and 

that's the price you use when calculating your losses -- it's more 

impressive.


6. Kill it: 
Hollywood failed to make VCRs illegal, but you're going 

to succeed with peer-to-peer technology. Spend millions on lawyers to 

sue Napster and Scour into oblivion. Sure, paying lawyers has 

suddenly become more important than paying your artists, but so what? 

Hedge your bets by setting up your own Web site, offering songs that 

aren't selling well in stores. When your e-business proves to be less 

than a thundering success, blame it on the pirates -- meaning all 

your customers.


7. Pray it will all go away: 
Your noble efforts to shut down Napster 

and Scour will so terrify pirates that they will decamp immediately 

and other industries will lose all interest in P2P. Act as though 

U.S. Court rulings in your favor apply to all other countries, 

regardless of their different legal principles. Do not make 

contingency plans.


8. Insult your market: 
After calling your customers "pirates," 

antagonize them further by threatening to release a flood of "empty" 

MP3 files to frustrate swapping. Do not understand the technical 

reasons why this won't work. Threaten to hack into the P2P networks 

like real criminals. Forget that some of these networks are based in 

foreign countries, which (for reasons you also cannot understand) do 

not subscribe to your system of justice. Then say you will launch 

denial-of-service attacks on pimply faced file swappers, even if they 

live in those other countries.


9. Make government your accomplice: 
Demand exemptions from criminal 

prosecution by the U.S. Government for your hacking and 

denial-of-service attacks. You're doing this for a Higher Cause, 

after all, which is paying royalties to your artists (remember 

them?). Drag Verizon Communications, an Internet provider, into court 

and demand it surrender the name of one of its subscribers allegedly 

sharing 600 music files, so your expensive lawyers can crush this 

kid's skull. Then get the Canadian government to impose a levy on all 

recordable media sold here, whether it's used for burning pirated 

music or archiving corporate data. Make mortal enemies of Apple and 

Sony because the levy adds something like 20 per cent to the retail 

price of their portable jukeboxes, pricing them out of the market. 

Collect more than $30-million without disbursing a single cent to 

your artists -- after all, you're Fighting the Good Fight, and you're 

going to have to tighten the artists' belts for them if you hope to 

win.


10. Go back to giving it away: 
Organize British record companies for 

a Digital Download Day. Charge £5 ($12.50) and claim it's "free." 

Reason that people would rather pay for music than get it for nothing 

on Morpheus. The "free" fee entitles people to listen to 500 streamed 

songs, to download 50 songs or to get five songs that can be burned 

on a CD. Ignore the math, which shows your £1 price for every 

burnable song is higher than the retail price per song on a British 

CD. Pretend you haven't noticed that your "day" is actually a week 

(Oct. 3 to 9), further proof that you can't count. Act surprised when 

your music servers can't handle the traffic and grind to a halt; 

blame the technology that put you on this terrible road in the first 

place. Angrily dismiss anyone who says that what you're doing is 

something you once told a judge is sheer piracy.


Got it?


Now get out there and fail. Oblivion awaits.


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