Content Revolution: Winners and Losers

The very concept of broadcasting is falling to the wayside. TiVo and Yahoo! and all the next-generation content distributors are going to leverage the ubiquity and freedoms inherent in the Internet. It will become increasingly easy to download, legally or otherwise, any show you ever want to watch off the Internet. Does anybody really need the cable companies to house and distribute the content anymore? For another few years, yes, but into the 2010s? No way.

That's why the Grokster capitulation isn't news either. I don't care how many Supreme Court orders shut down how many peer-to-peer software companies, content piracy simply cannot and will not be stopped.

Grokster can try to become legit, and I applaud its move to try to monetize its business, but the floodgates have been opened, and millions of consumers understand how to download and use what will be, over the next century, an infinite selection of completely distributed and anonymous P2P programs. Stopping Grokster is like blocking a set shot from your grandma while her teammates, Dwayne Wade and Tracy McGrady, are flying down the wings. Good luck with that, RIAA.

The content wars are rapidly escalating. Yahoo!, Google and Apple remain some of the best positioned for the next phase. The cable companies such as Comcast and Charter Communications, along with the studios such as Viacom, and the music labels such as Warner Music Group(WMG Quote), remain on the wrong side of a secular shift.

They can't stop the revolution.