A Brief Foray Into Telecommunications

So tomorrow I begin a course at Boalt Hall on Telecommunications Law taught by Howard Shelanski. I'm quite interested in the subject matter and apart from my above-average rate of consumption of various media, I consider myself a novice to the legal terrain. I'm hoping it will be a type of professional calling. I am taking Patent Law, Copyright Law, Trademark Law and Constitutional Law as well, so many issues from one class often blend into issues from other classes.

The following are two observations I've been mulling over the past few years about the way in which certain markets have been developing. I suppose both of them are only tangentially related to my coursework, but they are issues that I've been wondering about.

Observation 1:

Recently I have been pondering the way in which markets for movies, television, music (and other consumable goods) are starting to converge in very interesting and distressing ways. It is not the idea of convergence that bothers me, but convergence based on proprietary models. This means that if we want devices that merge more than one media function (a computer, a digital jukebox, a television, a radio, and DVR), we're probably going to have to purchase the devices and the content from just a handful of huge companies who are intent on making it difficult for me to mix and match anything.

It boils down to how companies are going to use differences in formats and employ various digital locks to make people pay for every use possible. I suppose this has implications mostly on copyright and anti-circumvention law, but I think it falls into the category of telecommunications as well.

Take for instance the new Motorola RAZR V3C from Verizon, which I recently upgraded to. In terms of aesthetics, it is spectacular (though I think it is a little too thin. In fact, it is so thin that the battery itself is very thin, resulting in poor battery life. The thinness actually forces the rest of the phone to become very wide, making the wide and wafer-thin phone difficult to hold up to your ear. Anyway, enough about the phone itself . . .). The RAZR has a mini-USB port on the side of it. Of course, the phone has no mini-headset jack, so of course I have to purchase a whole new set of accessories for the phone (like a handsfree microphone). So I broke down and bought a handsfree set.

Intent on not making anymore purchases, I figured I had a mini-USB cable at home, so why not just plug that into the phone and transfer files, songs, and pictures and also charge my phone via my computer? Well, the powers-that-be have conspired to cripple my phone. I can't use bluetooth nor the USB cable to transfer music or pictures. Instead, I have to log onto Verizon's website and upload a picture and send it to my phone (which, not surprisingly costs 25 cents per message).

What if I want a song on my phone or a custom ringtone? I can't just drag one of the songs from my own library; I have to pay for that too. And if I take a picture myself with the cameraphone and want to put it on my computer, I have to send it via Verizon's shitty network and pay more money to them. And guess what, Verizon just unveiled it's new V-Cast music network so that if I want to listen to music on my cell phone, I have to pay for that too now.

What if I want to transfer my phonebook from my old phone or from my Outlook address book? I have to buy a software suite from Motorola for 30 dollars. And guess what, the software suite is bundled with the same crappy USB cable and a set of drivers I need. This is pay per use at its apex. It's greed personified.

Well you know what's happened? I stopped caring or using any of the features. I don't care if my phone can take pictures, send or receive pictures. I don't care if I can watch shitty movie clips on the V-Cast network nor do I care if I can listen to music. I'll just use the phone as a phone. And you know what else? I worked three times harder at finding the drivers on the web and got my own USB cable to work to charge the phone and use it as a dialup modem.

Just to spite Verizon, I have my laptop hooked up as a modem hours at a time on nights and weekends. All it costs me is minutes, which are free during those times. If Verizon wants to treat me like a cash cow, I'll go ahead and clog up their network as much as I can. Here's to abusing Verizon. Cheers!

Observation 2:

A slightly related observation. If the market is moving in the direction of a pay-per-use or a subscription model, then what happens to advertisers?

It used to be that the whole purpose of broadcast television or radio was to attract listeners and then sell them things via advertising. It was nothing more than a delivery method for goods and services. But as people make more and more attachments to the programming itself, they are demanding less or no commercials and are willing to pay for it (like a movie station on cable TV or satellite radio or Internet radio).

So what sort of mystifies me is this: what happens to the advertisers in this shuffle?

Let's use an example. Let's say a station broadcasts a TV show and has no commercials because the station is available only to subscribers. The subscribers pay money and that helps fund the station. The station also makes money by releasing DVD sets and various other CDs. Well if the viewer and broadcaster are happy with this setup, it is a kind of self-sufficient relationship. So what happens to the whole body of corporations who want to sell us products and services? How do they enter the equation of the subscription model?