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On the Time Preference for Information...
LL asks: "Altering the price of digital content is a common tactic to capture the time-preference characteristics of consumers (e.g. movie tickets for immediate first releases down to free-to-air a couple of years later). We would all like to get the latest and greatest, but are people willing to tolerate restrictions such as paying more for music that they can share with friends? The polarization of views from the share everything (FSF) to everyone is a selfish individual (digital distribution industry) is being contested through new business models on the Internet with players such as (AOL+InterTrust)|Sony willing to experiment with novel and more subtle forms of control. However, will prosumers protest over the increasing technological obsolescence if they purchase music/software and find out a few years later their hardware is not supported and their music/software collections become worthless? Are we buying a life-time's right to own or merely licensing access for a short time? If an individual/company releases/sells stuff, whether GPL or EULA, should they explicitly warn people of the downstream implications (e.g. if we discontinue hardware support you will be forced to pay for software upgrade fees)? Curious minds would like to know if there is a fairer system."
With any product if the company survives to continue to support the product you purchased is a bet. Of course in the past it has been a fairly safe bet. You don't expect Ford to go under. However, with the economy now and the businesses that do fold and the ones the currently are worth so much, but don't actually provide a service the bet is more risky. Buying something from a start-up with little to no business plan can be risky. What if rather than being bought out they just fold? I don't have a solution for the support, but with the way things have changed there is a need. When my computer broke six months into warrenty I was able to take it back and get a new one. If that support didn't exist I would have been out a mother board. Not a comfortable feeling.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
The thing to remember here is that our physical characteristics don't change. We can only perceive 44Khz worth of audio, and no more than 45 frames per second of video, and as long as our rods are happy, resolution beyond that is wasted. So technological revolutions just change the way it's sold, or the usability of the technology (e.g. nobody ever invented a Walkman 12" vinyl disk player). The content doesn't lose quality (yeah, yeah, audiofiles can supposedly tell the difference between copper and gold connectors, just as they can supposedly tell the difference between transistor and tube amps, and between vinyl, cd's and mp3's. I ain't no audiofile, and yes, we're still in a parenthetical comment.)
-russ
p.s. It's supposed to be a pun, but if you don't think it's punny, don't laugh.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
In search of a fairer system, I think we have to start from the beginning - and that is, we do need to rethink what copyrights really mean.
The problems you have outlined are all very real, and they are all because someone is using the copyright issue to squeeze money out of the people.
I read somewhere (perhaps in
Think of it, if in the current use of copyright laws were used back in the era of Beethoven or Bach, those of us who enjoy the symphonies of those great master would have to fork out $$$ for our enjoyment ! One can't even play the ta-ta-ta-taaa (of the 5th symphony) without violating Beethoven's copyright !
And that's what the people in the future era would be facing, if we allow our copyright laws to be altered to suit the greedy lawyers.
Hopefully one day someone will get to their senses and stop all these madness.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
i think the biggest problem is that many view the whole IP situation as an either/or one shot deal.
Unfortunately, it's not so simple. Courts have ruled that reselling CD's is ok - i can go down to my local Recycle Records and sell them a Metallica CD (not that i own any) for $5. At that point - they can sell it to whoever they want for however much they want. Metallica doesn't get to see one red cent. In this instance, it's easy to argue that you're paying for the CD - or you're paying for your right to own that music. 'nuff said.
On the other hand, you've got programs like Napster. I rip that very same Metallica CD and listen to it on mp3 - everyone's happy. But the minute I distribute any of those copies to friends, or anyone else for that matter...the RIAA throws a shit-fit. And we've already seen what Lars thinks of the good ole Nap.
So it pretty much boils down to two questions. 1)Are you paying for the music, or the right to listen to the music. and 2)If you're actually paying for the media....do you have the right to do whatever the hell you want with that media.
What does this have to do with legacy media? Vampire Hunter D perhaps? - Simple....the later cost shouldn't be a factor. 10 years after a movie comes out, everyone should have rights to view that movie for free. 10 years after a song comes out, everyone should have rights to listen to that song for free. Fuck royalties. If you're Don MacClean and you haven't written a good song in 20 years - you should either A)Get your fatass up and write another one or B)Get a new profession. Should i still get royalties off a shell script or a program i coded for a company 10 years ago? Hell NO!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
You know I can't tell the difference between copper and gold connectors. I also can't tell the difference between CX and DX options on a Honda Civic. But the fact remains that I need the DX because my neighbor has a CX and I need the gold because my friend has copper.
If they make it better, well we all know that somebody will pay for it. If for nothing else but to out do someone.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
As the proud ownder of 3000 vinyl, 33.3 rpm, Long-Playing records I gotta say:
1. Yes, people will put up with it. There were a few holdouts against the CD revolution (yrs truly included... digital is for data, art is inherently analog). But the "upgrade" went smoothly.
2. Dramatic switches in media are rare because they are truly qualitative switches. Sure, the introduction of the caseette tape in the 60's looked threatening to the vinyl record, but ultimately they were both analog formats. A $5 cable from Radio shack allowed for conversion to the new medium. Currently, it's all digital so media switches are even less dramatic. We won't need a $5 cable... just a free piece of software.
3. Hardware for old media will always be an non issue. Try finding a turntable today. Now try finding one that plays 78's. Not easy, but far from impossible... as long as a reasonable amount of old media exists, the hardware to use it will be available. Period. Sure that hardware may be "obsolete" but if you're using "obsolete" media and are willing to put up with the limitations of said media, the hardware won't be an issue at all. Player piano rolls suck. So do player pianos. But they're no worse than they were a hundred years ago. If you want better sound, get a better system (media and hardware), but if you like player pianos, you're getting the same quality as you would have 100 years ago.
2 1337 4 u!
First of all, I'll agree with those who say that this question makes very little sense. From what I can gather, there are two main thrusts to this question. The first involves "intellectual property" and the second involves devaluation. Both questions can be answered simply: the market decides.
/. ...
First of all, you can theoretically charge whatever you want for music/movies/etc. I say theoretically because nobody in their right mind will pay $80 for a Metallica CD. The market has pretty much decided that people will pay around $12-$18 bucks for a CD on the average. Now, with Napster, the market is undergoing a sea change. Digital distribution means that the consumer doesn't have to pay $12-$18 for the same music. Now, there has to be a balance between free (Napster) and ripoff (RIAA). It's all a matter of time. Somehow, people will figure out how to make money of MP3 and Napster. Those that charge too much will get axed out by consumers, those who charge too little will starve to death. In the end, the market will tend towards equilibrium until the next Napster comes along to change the system. So basically, any commerical enterprise in a free market system is driven by the consumer. People will pay what they want, be it a micropayment for a single song, or $80 for one of those Diablo II collector's edition sets. (One wonders if Blizzard knew that everyone in their dog would buy this game, so the jacked up the price $10-$20 above normal knowing that the consumers would still take it.)
Now, the second part of the question. Obviously, you're not going to pay as much for an old Abba CD as you would for Britney Spears or whatever moron is on the top 25 this week. Everything devaluates unless it's wine or Renoirs. Once again, the market is going to decide what price they're willing to pay. That's why they have bargain bins.
Now, in the case of hardware and other equipment, that's also a real no-brainer. If you're buying from Bob's House of Komputers, yeah, you're probably not goning to get any support after the three second lifespan of the business. Once again, caveat emptor. That's why name brands are always arond. Sure, you may pay up the wazoo for a Sony, but you know that they're going to be around for a while.
Finally, here's the gratuitous Open Source plug. Because older hardware has probably already been hacked, you can usually find OSS drivers for it. Yeah, they won't be shiny and new, but they'll work, and they might even have some developers still working on them. In the end, even an old 486 has value. My POS 486 built by companies that no longer exist still serves as my OpenBSD firewall. Once again, the market (me) places value in a commodity (that POS 486) based on what they perceive it to be worth (not much, but I'll still pay a few bucks for it).
So, now I've managed to praise both market-driven laissez-faire capitalism and Open Source in one diatribe. All I need to do is put in a plug for gun rights (NRA4EVER) and mention how in the post-Columbine world geeks are perceived as social outcasts and I'll have managed to impersonate ESR *and* Jon Katz. If I only had a Beowulf cluster of petrified young actresses pouring hot grits down my pants I could be a one-man
The main question that has never been answered is what security system out there can actually work. All these dumb startups can proclaim to have some system that does x, y, and z, but really once the encryption is broken it doesn't matter.
A DIVX type system, even without circumvention, won't succeed because consumers have rejected it, and will reject any other pay per play system that is released.
Therefore I beleive that in the end, any business model will have to rely on some level of trust with the consumer, for these additional reasons:
* You can't throw everyone in jail for copyright infringement. We already have the highest incarceration rate in the world, which is under increasing scrutiny as it is. Seeing a 13 year old that was running napster being hauled off to jail on the 5 o'clock news will turn into a PR nightmare for all parties involved.
* The government is inefficient, and increasingly under corporate control, but I think they still understand (I beleive this more so after Hatch's comments a few days ago) that if the US is to maintain technological leadership, it can't allow "old world" copyright laws to continue to dominate. The longer they do, the more any new technologies will get sucked directly into the legal system from where they will not return, while China, Japan, Europe, etc goes along with the new technology and finds a way to make it profitable.
* Capitalism in general. American consumers have been trained to have very little morality when it comes to how they spend their money, and simply buy the lowest price product if possible (of course advertising/marketing can change that, but this basically holds true here). They don't care about what affect those purchases might have on the world and others (fuel inefficiet SUV's for example). Now the corporations get to reap what they sow. Mp3's cost nothing more than the bandwidth you need to get them, and the risk of being punished is near zero.
* Bandwidth. This is a legitimate issue today when napster use might clog up an entire university's bandwidth, but the day will come when downloading mp3s doesn't bog down the network, and limit the number of mp3s that can be passed around day to day.
* The internet as a consumer/social force. This is highly debateable as to how much of an effect it has but the internet is obviously suited well for consumer empowerment. I think a lot of the reason DIVX failed was because of all the websites that proclaimed how pathetic it really was. These websites are all run by regular consumers, and therefore gave a fairly unbiased debate. Magazines and other corporate controlled sources tended to give DIVX a lot more credit than it deserved (although even they were fairly rough on it). Now I'm not claiming this will eventually lead to the end of capitalism and some sort of marxist revolution, but I think I see a consumer attitude forming of "we're not going to take this BS anymore."
Based on this I think at best record companies could get a monthly flat rate pricing model for unlimited unrestricted music access, similar to how ISP's charge for their service. With the unrestricted (no copyright) measures comes the trust. It might be able to work. All media have had to deal with piracy for some time now, granted today's issues make it tougher to deal with. In the past, oh 20 years maybe, piracy was kept low by making the barrier to piracy fairly high, keeping the number of people involved low. Today that barrier is near 0, making it very hard for this to work. Consumer "morals" might be the only hope.
Personally I don't care if it works or not. If it doesn't, I think we end up with copyright anarchy, after all the blood has been shed and the dust has settled. I'd love to see copyright go away and artists live on small donations from whoever likes them enough. That way you get artists who are in it for the music, not the money, something sorely lacking today.
Since technology is today's driving force for the economy, I think it wins be default. For once the headless monster might inadvertantly work in favor of the average guy.
It doesn't make sense after all isn't the original intent to protect the creator? I think now we are just trying to protect the rights of those companies that often for example give musicians crappy music contracts. Why?
I hope to god people aren't listening to today's music in 125 years so much that it needs a copyright.
Kate
_________________________ Visit me at http://pornforcomputers.com
The whole idea of democracy is predicated on the notion that "the people" are capable of governing themselves. In order to ensure that "the people" can do this well, the freedom of speech was guaranteed (in the US Constitution), as a means of fostering an "intellectual commons".
Just to add a little extra incentive (to encourage "the people") to contribute to this commons, they also added a limited notion of copyright, so that people could reap a fair profit from innovative ideas -- for a limited time -- before those ideas pass into the public domain (to the benefit of all).
The key to all this, of course, is that time limit (14 years, originally, wasn't it?). Without that time limit, you essentially allow individuals to stake a claim on an idea. It's as if we've all become gold-rush prospectors, grabbing up choice real-estate in idea-space...
Think about it. You can't come anywhere close to mimicking a Disney cartoon character without risking a nasty lawyer-letter. The castle in the theme-park may be just a mock-up, but the one in idea-space is a very real barrier to the would-be trespasser on Disney's "intellectual" property.
Simply put: this has got to stop!
Allowing extra-long copyrights and patents smothers the free exchange of ideas, which turns that all-important "intellectual commons" into a no-trespassing zone.
-- TaiwanJohn
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
The difference between reselling that Metallica CD and sharing it with a few thousand of your closest net-friends is that in the former case there still is only the one CD, while in the latter case thousands of copies have been made and distributed. These are two very different situations from the perspective of those who assert rights to the recording (and profit from those rights). That's not to say that there is anything "natural" about a one-medium, one-copy rule. But that is pretty much the condition under which the current system of music distribution has evolved, for good or for ill.
The problem with a purely free-for-the-downloading approach to music is that there is no money in it for those who make the recordings. Recording music would be pretty much a hobby activity, or at best one subsidized by musical performances. And making good recordings isn't cheap, with $1500 microphones, $40,000 mixing consoles, and so on. True, digital technology is going to reduce some of these costs a bit, through hard-disk recording and the like, and some forms of music (computer- based electronica, for instance) are especially cheap to produce this way. But recording live performances is always going to be labor- and gear-intensive, with at least a certain amount of expensive equipment and personnel required to produce a quality result. All-free, all-the-time isn't good for music or musicians, or ultimately, music-listeners. (And those luddites who feel that such a situation will benefit live music enough so as to be a positive trade-off -- save your arguments for later.)
So the question boils down to this: how can music recording make enough money to be self-sustaining when anyone can make copies at will, for free? The fact is, it can't. And unlike free software, where services to, with, and about a free product provide ample economic opportunities, a recording musician can't make much money with a free recording.
The RIAA members may grossly overcharge for their services, but at least sometimes musicians get recorded and paid. The 'net provides an alternative to what the RIAA does in manufacturing and distributing recorded media, and at much less cost; they want to be able to continue to make fat profits on a system that is rapidly becoming antiquated until they find a way to fill their money pipeline via electronic distribution. You and I don't expect, or want, that to happen. But the fact remains that free distribution won't pay for artists and it won't pay for recordings to be made. What will replace the RIAA members, and how will it make its money? Answer the latter question, and the former will take care of itself.
I personally don't think that having individuals rent music is a particularly viable solution to financing recordings -- I just don't see any enabling technology on the horizon that the average music listener would accept. And that's what this discussion boils down to. But I could be wrong: this could be a very fruitful discussion. It's not going to go anywhere if we keep focused on RIAA vs. Napster, however -- I don't see either of them as representing viable solutions.
as somewhat of an audiophile, i can argue that i do hear the difference between vinyl and say, a CD, or an mp3. OK, I'm something of a heretic, but... have you actually done a double-blind test of this? Has anyone ever done a large-scale double-blind study asking whether people can distinguish these things? I'd love to see the results, just to see.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach