Three stories popped up today concerning CE proving how “ubiquitous” the industry’s products have become in everyday life. Here they are:
Jobs Favors Free Music Downloads
Since a couple of my colleagues here at TWICE beat me to blogging earlier today about Apple’s Steve Jobs online essay on how the music industry should start selling songs online without copy production, I’ll pass on that subject. Well, maybe one comment. TWICE’s resident computer expert and Web editor Doug Olenick noted, “Jobs has gotten good reviews on this essay. What would have happened if [Bill] Gates would have wrote the same thing? They’d probably say he wants to take over the music business!”
Yeah, it’s the old story that it isn’t necessarily what is said, but who is telling the story.
HollywoodTakes Its Concerns About Piracy and Taxes toWashington
That’s the New York Times headline about Mr. Smith (Will that is) going to Washington. With Clint Eastwood, the Motion Picture Association of America and studio execs talking to selected Congressional leaders.
Hollywood wined and dined Congress saying the movie business isn’t all glitz and glamour. The MPAA pulled out the American flag and said it employs 400,000 in the United States and generates $30 billion in wages and $10 billion in taxes. And it took the usual potshot at the CE business, saying all that it needs digital rights management protection, or Hollywood will disappear.
Memo to Congress: Take a look at the numbers. As of calendar year 2004 the CE industry’s estimated factory sales in the United States hit $113.5 billion, according to the Consumer Electronics Association. It estimated that there are over 3,200 retailers in business, operating almost 62,000 stores, many of whom are serviced by 646 distributors in this country. And in 2002, the last year the Bureau of Census made an estimate, the CE industry employed over 1.6 million in the United States. The CE industry’s current economic impact in the United States as of calendar year 2006 has to be bigger across the board, dwarfing the movie business’ economic impact even more than these numbers indicate.
New YorkMay Ban iPods While Crossing Street
The headline is from a Reuters story that appears on MSNBC.com today. I’m embarrassed to report that a New York State Senator from my hometown, Brooklyn, N.Y., is behind the proposed legislation, or at least behind the story that gave him plenty of media exposure. His reason is that three pedestrians have been killed since September stepping into traffic “while distracted by an electronic device,” Reuters reports.
I am certainly not making light of the deaths of three fellow New Yorkers, but might there have been other circumstances besides portable electronic devices that could have caused those deaths? By the way State Sen. Carl Kruger is not just talking about iPods and MP3 players, but cellphones too.
You’d think with global warming and the war in Iraq, among other pressing problems, this State Senator would have something else to legislate against.
I guess all three stories show that this industry’s products continue to change business models and lifestyles worldwide, and that many people don’t like change, no matter how “ubiquitous” it becomes.
