The tussle between new and old media over the digital spoils

THE TUSSLE BETWEEN NEW AND OLD MEDIA OVER THE DIGITAL SPOILS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Joshua Chaffin and Richard Waters]
Leslie Moonves, chief executive of CBS, summed up the mood earlier this year. “There’s no such thing as old or new media any more,” he proclaimed. “There is just media.” But judging by events of the past two weeks, things no longer look so cosy. It started when Viacom demanded that YouTube remove from its wildly popular site more than 100,000 of Viacom’s video clips, putting an acrimonious end to months of negotiations. The parties apparently could not agree how much Viacom would be paid for its material and how they would divide any associated advertising revenues. Then, a few days later, Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, opened a rift with the traditional record companies. In a manifesto published on the Internet, Mr Jobs called for the removal of anti-piracy protection ­ known as “digital rights management” ­ that restricts which devices songs bought from online services can be played on. Together, the blow-ups surrounding YouTube and Apple’s iTunes service highlight some deep fault lines as traditional media companies face up to what could be a turning point in their industry: with online services like these taking off, are the media companies willing to risk embracing disruptive new ways of doing business online?
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/394c700e-bd34-11db-b5bd-0000779e2340.html
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