Copy doom looming
Net vet sez digital protection always fails
"Copy protection won't work, and technically it can't work," said Net vet Marc Andreessen on Monday in the new media keynote address at the National Assn. of Broadcasters confab in Las Vegas. "If a file is digital and a computer can see it and play it, then it can copy it."
Andreessen, the founder of Internet browser Netscape and co-founder and chairman now of Web service company LoudCloud, addressed Hollywood's online piracy problem by comparing it to the software industry's woes in the 1980s. Back then, software companies, including Microsoft, had a hard time stopping computer users from copying and sharing programs.
Software squeeze
"That's exactly what's happening to the media industry," Andreessen said. "All the software companies thought that they could implement copy protection. They couldn't do it. So it's ironic that software companies now come to Hollywood and say, 'We've got a copy protection solution for you.' They couldn't do it themselves."
The way to combat piracy is through educational campaigns, the same way that the software biz slowed down the copying of software, Andreessen said. "Make it available and educate them on an ethical, moral and legal standpoint that it's wrong. Most people don't want to go through their lives as criminals."
While the entertainment industry already is stressed out about the amount of entertainment that consumers are storing on computer devices, their worries are about to grow, Andreessen said, because the amount of stored and shared programming is only going to increase as computers become faster, hard drives become bigger and overall systems become cheaper
'Hungry for media'
"Over the last two years, consumers for the first time have figured out how to access media on their PCs, legally and illegally," he said. "The audience exists. They're hungry for media."
Where a $600 PC can currently store 1,600 hours of music, a PC with a much larger hard drive selling for the same price in five years will be able to store 12,000 hours; in 10 years, 400,000.
And where a $400 TiVo can record and play back 60 hours of TV programming, the same device in five years will be able to store 2,000 hours; in 10 years, 64,000.
The numbers are based on trends that have shaped the computer industry over the past 30 years.
"Consumer entertainment is going to drive the technology industry," Andreessen said. "It will be so cheap that consumers will adopt it. They will find it natural to store all of their entertainment on a computer.
"Everybody's going to have this capability. Digital is the biggest opportunity that the media industry has ever seen. Devices that can store large amounts of media will exist. Feed them."
