Slashdot Mirror
Information Wants to Suck
RebornData writes: "Suck is running a biting commentary on how the software industry could serve as a role model for the RIAA and MPAA as they look for new, draconian ways to keep control of their digital intellectual property after it becomes clear that litigation isn't going to solve the problem." And from another submission, we have an article in Slate about the same topic - information wanting to be free, or $0.27/pound, or something like that.
I don't think consumers will be dumb enough to allow the record and movie industries to move from selling copies to selling licenses. Nor will they allow themselves to be duped into high-costing service contracts.
First, service contracts exist in the computer industry because computers are relatively complicated beasts. Most people have a hard time figuring them out. Most people, on the other hand, can play videotapes, DVDs or CDs. Would people switch from something they know and understand to something they don't and costs more and gives no additional benefit? Nope. If Sony and Phillips decide to stop making CD players or VCRs and move to proprietary formats with high service costs, they will quickly learn why OS/2 failed to catch on in the late 80's : clone killers don't work. (NB: It failed to catch on in the early 90's for different reasons). If Sony and Phillips don't make it, the 2nd tier players will fill up the space.
Second, licensing in the software industry exists for a number of reasons. Again, it is more complicated than songs or movies, and has a high probability of having bugs in it. If you sold software, all sorts of people would cash in their warranties. With licensing, you don't need to make warranties, and you get away with having bugs. How many bugs are there in music or video? That's right - unless the CD or videotape is broken, there is nothing stopping you from using the product.
In short, Suck is spewing without understanding why things are the way they are in the software industry - namely, software and computers are hellishly more complicated to use than movies or music. I don't see how the MPAA or RIAA can use software tactis in their industries when it is so easy to "just press play" to use their wares.
Lets now go and take that quote in context:
"But a recent article in Presstime, the house organ of the American Association of Newspapers, reported that a typical newspaper gets about 22 percent of its revenues from readers, while spending 12 percent on paper and ink, 6 percent on running the presses, and 13 percent on delivery and distribution. That's every penny the newspaper gets from its readers plus another 9 percent of its revenue going to expenses that virtually disappear on the Web."
I think that it is fair to say that paper, presses, ink and distribution costs vanish on the internet. Please moderators don't mod up a speed poster for a quote unless you check he was correct first. I look forward to seeing that post -1 Trolled into oblivion where it belongs.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
The ratio of ads to content on the internet is way lower than it is in any other medium.
One little banner ad at the top of this page is nothing compared to the full-page ads in your paper, the pages with six column-inches of Human Interest and three square feet of brassieres, the 8 minutes per 30 that commercials take over your TV or Radio, the Vogue and Byte where the ad pages outweigh most other magazines, or the billboards where there is no information and all paid advertising even if the ad is a PSA. Some pages like Slate's now have the Big Picture instead of the Banner, but very few are 10% content and 90% bras, mortuaries, and golf discounters.
The internet producer makes no money because the internet sells its reach short.
Except, of course, porn links, where the banner ad is the content.
And the producer can't get per-user fees because that burden on the user is paid to the pipe mechanics. No user wants to pay two people for the same thing.
The problem here isn't it seems that the internet can't be profitable, it's that the people trying to make it profitable haven't figured out that to be profitable it has to work like all the other profitable businesses that came before it.
Bold new world, indeed.
--Blair
I'm not sure how you can say this. While I may disagree with Bill Gates' philosophies towards business, I've never seen/heard/read anything that would indicate that he is a "horrible human being". The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is doing some pretty good work all around the world. Perhaps your ideology is distorting your view a little?
(By the way: they're semi-indie now, spun off into a company called Automatic Media, which also runs Slash user Plastic.)
sulli
RTFJ.
Uhhhh.... No.
You have it almost diametrically the opposite of the way it really is. Startup costs for papers is actually pretty low. You can outsource the printing of a specialty paper without much cost. Visit any street corner in a large city and/or college town, and you'll see papers given away for free that follow this model. They typically are left leaning, and filled with personals, and ads for music acts coming into town.
Unfortunately this doesn't scale very well. The costs per-paper remain about the same, whereas advertisers tend to be interested only in the local audience - for obvious reasons.
Even finding a qualified systems administrator (and knowing who is qualified and who is not) is often simply too hard a task for many non-technical people. However, if you manage to do it, the costs per viewer drop dramatically. It costs you no more to service 10,000 page views a day than it does 1,000 or 100. You're site may be a bit less responsive, but you're saving huge amounts of money per viewer.
The essential problem is still the same however. Most specialty advertising tends to be local. Most advertisers couldn't care one whit about how many New Zealanders who are reading their ads if their product isn't available in New Zealand.
However, global advertisers tend to like T.V. because that has an even lower price-per-view. Plus, the audio-visual TV experience tends to allow for ad campaigns based on emotional manipulation. Highly priced overpolished cars streaming through maple leaves on some country road with an announcer intoning "The new Midlifecrisisia - with 780 horses under it's massive phallic shaped hood" (or something like that) is more likely to get someone to buy the car than any dull page view.
That's why webzines are in trouble.