Slashdot Mirror
Music Rights Holders Sue YouTube Again
bennyboy64 writes "NewTeeVee reports on a criminal investigation that has been launched against senior executives of YouTube and parent company Google in Hamburg, Germany over allegations of copyright infringement. The case started after a complaint was filed by German music rights holders. Hamburg's prosecutor has formally requested assistance from US colleagues to compel YouTube to produce log files identifying who uploaded as well as who viewed 500 specific videos."
Logs to get who viewed the videos. Is that not crazy?
As the supply becomes infinite, what happens to the price? As people have the ability to copy and now distribute data, text, music and movies at virtually zero cost, why is this data worth anything anymore?
I disagree with your terminology here. Not your argument or conclusion (I have yet to take a stand on those), but your terminology.
(maybe that makes me a pedantic, but so be it. If the mods don't like this, oh well; I have karma to burn and I'm willing to have it be burned to say what I want to say.)
Value and price are two differen things. Value is, roughly speaking, how much we like having something and/or how badly we want it. Price is the amount of resources we trade away to get it.
I value much of the software I run. I value listening to JT Bruce's "A skeptic's Hypothesis". I value watching "Big Buck Bunny". But I pay aprice of 0 for all of these. (There's a transaction cost toall of these, sure, but no price).
What will happen to the value as supply rises? Pretty much nothing. The price will likely drop to zero. Also, people might get a closer approximation of their real preferences if there is more competition.
But they'll still like listening to $BAND just as much.
(someone used to call this "value in trade" versus "value in use"; I think it was a greek, but you're armed with the power of Google, so use it if you need.)
This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.
$0.17 Musicians' unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists' royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6558540/walmart_wants_10_cds
When the label _profits_ are greater than the artist royalties, and when online retailers want to charge me almost the same as if they were selling me a CD, the moral urge to buy music is weak.
Dilbert RSS feed