Disrupting Hollywood's business model

Engadget just posted my interview with Blake Krikorian, the CEO of Sling Media in Silicon Valley. They make a new device, the Slingbox, which allows you to watch your home television no matter where you are. I talk with him about his product's disruptive effects on Hollywood business models and the notions of place-shifting and personal broadcasting, among other things. Excerpts:

When we set out to make this product, you can bet we did a whole lot of homework up front to make sure that what we were doing was under the fair use provisions of copyright law. After all our analysis and the functionality we introduced and the limitations, we feel really, really comfortable. Some of those limitations include making sure the Slingbox is not a one-to-many device. Certainly it will stream to multiple devices, but it will only do so one at a time. ...

Look, any time a new technology comes about, it disrupts old business models. Any time there’s a new technology that empowers the consumer, some people in the industry get nervous because it’s all about control, and there are a lot of people in the industry who don’t want to see the consumer have control. But you gotta deal with this. Let’s look at the benefits that come out of this. ...

There’s a battle going on and it will only heat up further. It’s going to be about control and does the consumer get control, or does the industry get to decide everything? It concerns me. Those are battles that need to be fought. If we start going down the path of hobble-ware, no one knows what implications that has for us in the future. It could start to stifle innovation. We could get surpassed by other countries who start out-executing us. Or new technologies are not going to come to market.