Re: The Web has flexible presentation Re: (Nielsen article)

Rotan Hanrahan wrote:
>  
> > ... if transcoder vendors are there to steal content, ...
> Transcoder vendors are making available a very powerful technology. 
> Used with the kind of mutual respect I outlined in my closing 
> paragraph (which you suggested would have no impact in this 
> discussion) the transcoding technology could be mainly beneficial. 
> Without such respect, the technology can have negative effects. 
> Respect is like what you call "good manners", and this is at the heart 
> of the argument.

Rotan, I commend your attempt to bring the discussion back to sanity. 
The problem is that this approach only works when all parties have good 
intentions to cooperate. Unfortunately, it is not the case here. I think 
that Novarra, ATT and Vodafone have shown with their words (and at times 
with their silences, i.e. failure to answer direct questions) that they 
do not intend to cooperate. They just want to appropriate all of the 
good content out there without paying a dime to content authors. If they 
intended to cooperate, they would have adopted the Manifesto, or at 
least, have adopted the Manifesto rules (mainly: do NOT spoof the UA 
string), which represent the best compromise transcoders can get away 
with (it does allow a fair share of transcoding after all).

If there is no agreement on the basic fact that the rights of content 
owners must be respected, trying to come up with a sensible 
recommendation, guideline, specification or whatever you want to call it 
is a pretty pointless exercise.

Luca

Received on Monday, 23 March 2009 22:06:19 UTC