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Ruling Confirms Postal Service Discriminated Against GameFly
An anonymous reader writes "It took almost two years, but the US Postal Regulatory Commission just ruled (PDF) that the US Postal Service '...had unduly discriminated against GameFly.' GameFly recently complained that the additional postage was costing them $730,000 per month."
I think, by definition, a summary should give people an idea of what the article is about. The summary doesn't tell me:
1. Who is GameFly and what do they do?
2. What the discrimination entailed? Did it just cost them more money to send postage?
3. If GameFly recently complained, then surely it couldn't have taken 2 years?
So many questions, if only I read TFA...
Besides game rentals, which is Gamefly's bread and butter industry, they also make a decent amount by selling used games. Their sales are regularly featured as some of the best on the 'net over at CAG. They don't really sell new games, so until physical copies of games disappear (which may only be a console generation away), they should be fairly resilient. This change just makes them more profitable, but again, they are in a dying market, so unless they position themselves to survive it, as GameStop is trying to do by making some purchases of game streaming services, they won't be around in 10 years.
Is this discrimination against Gamefly or favoritism of Netflix?
Maybe not Nintendo, Sony or Steam, but full-price rentals are very popular with the likes of EA and Ubisoft.
Gamefly is primarily a console game distributor. Nintendo only distributes Wiiware/similar titles online, Sony is mostly the same for their own network, and Steam is only for PC games.
The point he's making makes no sense whatsoever. Gamefly's market is virtually untouched by all of these services.
The same applies to "copyright infringement is theft".
Anyway, copyright itself IS much more similar to theft because it implies infringement on physical property rights.
Uh...really? Because I think that would result in a lower balance in my account. Now, I could be wrong about this (I feel like i have to point out my sarcasm here), but those numbers in my bank account represent physical money that I can withdraw at any time. I'm not saying that everybody should be free to copy games and movies all they want, but that it doesn't liken to the proper definition of theft when I copy the items in question. I don't know why I'm responding to this...we've seen this argument here a zillion times.
The teachers will crack any minute, purple monkey dishwasher.
Not everyone lives in an area with broadband. Until they do, Gamefly has a huge built-in audience. It's rather comical to see people from urban areas comment on such things as if the rest of the world lived just like them.
It cannot exist without raising fees year to year and dicking people around.
My local postmaster is a totally uncommitted douche who will stand around and yak with a pal while there's a line six deep. I know, because I've gone through that line while he did it and I could hear every word of his entirely personal conversation.
My local carrier has been changed up repeatedly and now I have a couple of them, one is okay, the other is a douche who can't go up and down my driveway without sliding around in a Jeep despite the fact that every FedEx driver and one of my two UPS drivers can make it in their poorly designed box trucks (poor for the country, anyway) without any difficulty.
Finally, about 90% by number or 99% by volume of the mail I get is spam. Do you have any idea how many trees are cut down yearly to produce that shit? And yes, they really are cutting down trees, and yes, a significant percentage of that is not farmed timber, which does not make the best paper. And a truly puzzling percentage of this spam is printed on heavy, glossy paper. I could do without that nonsense. I really have no need whatsoever to receive anything from the USPS.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
(Not really directed at the parent, but all the analogy-fans)
Analogies aren't useful within a forum of people who understand the matter at hand.
Attempts to re-frame the matter into a different context will run into the obstacles of the new context's characteristics. At best, they can only achieve an equivalent understanding of the issue within an alternate context that runs so deeply parallel that there was no point in changing context at all.
The analogy is only useful when explaining a topic for which the audience has absolutely no knowledge /and/ no frame of reference through which to grow an understanding of any new information presented directly. Let's give people enough credit, and admit that they, at least on some level, know what "software" is.
Any attempt to discuss subtleties of an issue will need to discard the analogy, and address the issue directly, in order to have a productive discussion about the issue, and not the shortcomings of an analogy.
In time, publishers/developers will charge an unlock fee for the entire game. They are currently priming the market with DLC and pay-to-play multiplayer modes.
This will let them take a cut of the used game sales, and though it will reduce initial sale prices (since some gamers offset initial prices with the resale proceeds), the payoff will be worthwhile to them since they were previously receiving nothing from the subsequent sales. Note also that the sales lost from the increased effective price to new buyers won't be clear, but the income from used game unlocks will be in real dollars they can easily recognize. When other developer/publishers see the used game sale income stream being taken in, they will jump on the bandwagon until this becomes an industry standard
Even farther in the future, there is potential for scaling unlock fees to adjust for the demand. Popular used AAA games continue to sell near full retail price for months. Other games fall pretty quickly. Scaling unlock fees will help them match the market more effectively than a fixed unlock fee. This will take time since MS/Sony/Nintendo will need to provide the implementation for it. Steam is already providing a great avenue for developers to scale prices to match demand for their game, so developers will eventually ask MS/Sony/Nintendo to give them similar flexibility. Heck, Sony is already implementing Steam into the Playstation Network in a limited fashion, so it may happen pretty quickly once used game unlocks come around.
Uh, yes I'm actually familiar with the facts in the case, the order says they were discriminated against by having their mailers machine processed instead of hand sorted. The *reason* they aren't hand sorted is that Gamefly *chose* to make their mailers not stick out to reduce theft. You can't complain that your mailers aren't being pulled before the sorts *and* try to make them not stick out. Gamefly *also* chose to use a tougher but heavier mailer to reduce their breakage costs but which result in higher fuel costs for the USPS, forcing the USPS to lose money on heavier envelopes or increase rates for the companies that were willing to reduce their fuel costs is stupid bureaucracy at its best.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
When you have to ship via USPS because nobody else is allowed to handle that particular class of mailing, and the people working at the USPS keep stealing the discs, and when you act to correct that they start charging you more, does it really still seem like Gamefly is being unreasonable?
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
I think there's a big huff because how it's labeled affects how it's treated in the court of law.
If you aren't suspicious of your government's actions, you aren't doing your job as a responsible citizen.
They're not being forced to subsidize anyone. They're being forced to either subsidize everyone in that class or none of them. They are perfectly free to choose none.
The real question is why were they freely choosing to subsidize Netflix?