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Recommended reading - September 2, 2007

Media Wonk is on vacation this week. Here's some recommended reading in the meantime:

* Philips Consumer Electronics CEO Rudy Provoost delivered a fascinating keynote on the meaning of "convergence" at last week's IFA electronics show in Berlin. In it, he threw around a lot of marketing gobbledygook about "consumer-centricity" and "immersive experiences," blah, blah, blah. But he also slipped in a couple of observations about the state of the consumer electronics industry worth pondering.

Like this: "Consumer electronics is no longer about assembling boxes containing electrical components to perform a specific function. Nor is innovation solely about adding additional technology and functions."

So what is it about?

• We have to think through the whole consumer experience: not only what the consumer buys, but how they buy it. For that, we need to work in partnership with the retail community.
• We have to think about what products do, and that requires partnership and open innovation amongst content providers.
• We have to ensure that consumers can get full value out of their purchases, which requires active and meaningful partnerships with suppliers and all elements of the product creation value chain.
• As president of EICTA, I have been involved in many of regulatory issues within the European Union – and I know that regulatory authorities like governments also play their part, for example in legislating on issues such as the environment or digital rights management.

Indeed.

* In a similar truth-telling vein, Provoost let slip at IFA that the market for high-def home video is not meeting its promoters' fondest hopes. "I would say HD has developed somewhat slower than we had expected," Provoost admitted to the New York Times. "There are highlights, such as last year's World Cup or next year's Beijing Olympics. But to give it the next big boost, the movie studios have to release more movies in Blu-ray or HD DVD formats." The full story (via the International Herald Tribune) is worth reading.

* University of Georgia professor of American history Stephen Mihm reminds us in a long piece in the Boston Globe (based on his upcoming book) that for much of its history, the United States was the "outlaw nation" when it came to "piracy" and intellectual property protection. He suggests that many of the complaints and calumnies we heap today on China would have applied equally to us as recently as Reconstruction.

"China may be a very different country, but in many ways it is a younger version of us," the professor writes. "The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can realize that China's fast and loose brand of commerce is not an expression of national character. . .but a phase in the country's development. Call it adolescent capitalism, if you will: bursting with energy, exuberant, dynamic. Like any teenager, China's behavior is also maddening, irresponsible, and dangerous. But it is a phase, and understanding it that way gives us some much-needed perspective, as well as some tools for handling the problem. Indeed, if we want to understand how to deal with China, we could do worse than look to our own history as a guide."

In addition to American manufacturers' enthusiasm for selling adulterated food products in order to boost profits, including, we learn, the revolting practice of selling "swill milk, taken from "diseased cows force-fed a diet of toxic refuse produced by liquor distilleries," the U.S. was a hotbed of copyright piracy.

"In the literary realm, for most of the 19th century the United States remained an outlaw in the world of international copyright," professor Mihm notes. "The nation's publishers merrily pirated books without permission, and without paying the authors or original publishers a dime. When Dickens published a scathing account of his visit, 'American Notes for General Circulation,' it was, appropriately enough, immediately pirated in the United States."

Too bad Dickens couldn't just send a take-down notice.

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