Once of the risks of the P2P culture's ethics -- "it's our music and we have a right to steal it" -- is that consumers will end up worse off. Content creators, to obtain any return on their investment of time, energy, and money, will be forced to partner with particular hardware makers or distributors and tightly tether content to the specific channel. The result would be a loss of flexibility and interoperability.

According to the WSJ (subscription required), it is happening. In South Korea, Warner Music and SK Telecom are entering a joint venture to create a "technology-content hybrid that is supposed to smooth the path for music to be made broadly available on cellphones and other digital platforms."

Mobile networks are more tightly controlled by their operators than the wide-open Internet, and are thus much less prone to become the kind of digital free-for-all spawned by file-sharing technologies. . . .

And while Warner executives say the SK Telecom deal is unlikely to serve as a precise blueprint for other markets, they and others in the music industry have long called the cellphone the heart of their business's likely future. Many music industry executives believe that ultimately a single device will allow users to access music wirelessly, store it and listen to it, and that this will all take place in an environment that is more conducive to paid transactions than to free file sharing.

posted by James DeLong @ 10:21 AM | Internet: P2P, Search Engines...

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