Now they have three or four lines. It' s eToy vs etoy. A clash of e-commerce vs the arts online. In September, eToys sued the artists after hearing from customers who went to the art site by mistake, including some who complained about its profane language. Strauss writes, Product is something physical that can be packed in a box and shipped to stores.
Content is something intangible, converted into digital code, and posted on an Internet site.
Strauss writes, Emerging from this cocoon will be either a world in which artists have more autonomy, a new media oligopoly with an even heavier hand over music consumption, or, more likely, the same creeping caterpillar that spun the cocoon in the first place. Never one to let details stand in the way of a major transaction, AOL's dealmakers are suddenly singing a new tune in the open-access debate. Let the market decide, AOL's Steve Case and his new Time Warner colleagues declared in the process of announcing the merger of the two companies, in which the world's largest Internet service provider acquired the world's largest media conglomerate, which just happens to be the second largest cable operator in the country, too. With the potential of offering broadband Internet access to some 13 million captive cable households, the new partners wasted little time in dismissing the need for a federal policy on open access. Indeed, these high-stakes corporate maneuverings are illustrative of the premium that has been placed on staking a claim in the evolving telecommunications landscape.