Routing around the problem: Media

At work, I've found success is often gained not by pushing harder against "roadblocks" and "bottlenecks" but by being like the Internet and routing around them.*

The media industry giants have thrown considerable money into throwing up roadblocks and bottlenecks. In the short term, these ham-handed efforts have proven successful. But the tide cannot be held back.

Recent developments are beginning to show that big media's victories in maintaining their brick-and-mortar distribution model will ultimately be shallow and fleeting:

• OurMedia.org: Open-source, free storage and distribution for all forms of data.


• Olivelink: "... allows you to share your personal audio and videos with family, friends—anyone and anywhere you like—with nothing more than a PC and broadband Internet connection." (via the superb PVR Blog)
  


• David LaChappelle: Debuted his movie Rize via WiMax hi-bandwidth wireless tech. (Intel encrypted the digital movie in Oregon, streamed it to Salt Lake City, which transmitted it via microwave to Park City, then via WiMax to a ski-lodge at the top of 10,000-foot mountain, where a HP MCE PC decoded and projected it to a high-def digital projector.)
  


• Decemberists: Debuted their free high-quality music video via BitTorrent.


• Robert Rodriguez: Completely independent, nearly all-digital, blockbuster movie maker (Wired article, due online Mar 29)


• Mark Cuban: Taking cinema completely digital (Wired article, due online Mar 30). Note: Mr Cuban, Mavericks owner and probably the first billionaire blogger, made his billions off his sale of Broadcast.com to Yahoo!

*Taoists might say this is being like water, and flowing around the rocks.