Select Page

Digital analyst Phil Leigh interviews Yankee Group Senior Analyst Mike Goodman:

Our guest [Goodman] believes that even though the record labels have been wining all the legal battles, they are badly losing the war. It’s not even close. They could be headed for extinction if the Internet becomes the vehicle for both promotion and distribution.

Will suing individual P2P users significantly curtail illicit file trading?

No. P2P usage is up. There are too many networks. It will be like online gambling. They (the P2P guys) will find, and operate out of, the political jurisdictions that will tolerate them. 

Will copy protecting CDs work?

No. They will all be hacked. Even if they are not, they must permit at least one instance of ripping to the PC. Once that is done the consumer has a dot-MP3 copy that can be replicated infinitely and the genie is out of the bottle. The consumer will not buy a CD if it can only be ripped into a proprietary format that will not play in her primary music player, which is increasingly iTunes.           

Is TiVo’s plan to port programming to the iPod Video and Sony PSP significant?

The implications are hugely important. TiVo-To-Go essentially makes all television programming available on the iPod, as well as the PSP and laptop computers.  

You can hear the interview here.

Alex Eckelberry