There's really little reason to do P2P any more seeing as how sites like last.fm, Pandora Radio, and other places let you essentially program your own radio and listen to whatever songs as long as you have a network connection.
I'm a heavy user of Pandora Radio, and what I can tell you is that when it suggests songs and plays them for me, many times, I'll pop over to Amazon and buy the CD.
Now, much to the record company's dismay, I will buy them used most of them time, since it's usually 50% cheaper, but I think anybody who loves music and listens to a lot of music is always looking for something new, interesting and so the more you're exposed to music, the more you buy.
The only difference between now and 15 years ago is (a) the internet gives us a chance to listen to music the record companies aren't interested in pushing (b) the internet gives us the ability to purchase music in ways the RIAA aren't interested in selling.
I'm guessing all this talk about falling CD sales simply means "falling RIAA CD sales". I'll bet music sales are up overall.
I looked in my DVD collection the other day and I realized had purchased well over 300 DVD's. It just sorta happened. And I realized it's a tremendous waste of money and space for discs that, for the most part, are watched once and done. But the price point is low enough that they're an impulse buy every time we go to the warehouse club, and so everybody throws one in. I should probably sell them on ebay.
Anyway, to my point. When I go to the store, new releases are $13-15, and 2-3 year old releases are typically under $10. I can't believe anybody copies for that price, particularly when you only watch once.
So DVD piracy is effectively solved by lowering the price so it's just not worth it to the vast majority of people. If they get high definition disks down to under $15, this is really a moot point.
The only reasons I can think spending this much time and effort by the record companies is either (a) They think that they'll eventually drive piracy out of the market allowing them to raise prices or (b) they're crazy control freaks who aren't completely rational. Or maybe both.
"suggests to you this person is willing to pay anything for a tv show?"
Not enough information.
But what if you paid $10 for an entire season, and you simply plugged your ipod in once a week and the shows went to your ipod without doing anything. I might even pay for that.
I realize that's probably less than the $100-200 per season (per show!) that Zucker would like me to pay. But to be fair, I wanted a billion dollars last week and nobody gave that to me, either.
Well, they will stop. But charging $2/episode for 1 TV show? That's a lot. Especially considering I already pay for cable, and Tivo. And Tivo lets you copy the stuff to your PC to watch it there. I could record it to my DVD recorder instead, I suppose. The big difference between music and TV shows is the networks already "give" this stuff away for free to the customer. So trying to charge $2/episode for something that they already gave me seems....um... expensive.
Now, if you make the argument that you don't subscribe to cable TV, and are only interested in 1 show, then yes, that's a better deal. I suppose there's something to be said for the novelty of watching content on your iPod (especially the Touch).
They could make a great case for just releasing this in an open format with the ads in it. Make it easy and convenient and people won't even cut out the ads.
"After all Zucker is in charge of creating content."
Actually, he's not. He's in charge of getting content from TV production companies and then figuring out a way to get people to watch it and make money on it.
Consumer Reports came to this conclusion over a year ago. Here's some free synopsis of the the controversial issue where they used virus kits to make variants of existing viruses to determine how good virus scanners are.
Anti-virus software actually used to work much better, but I think that the variants have grown to such a large number it's more difficult. The cynic in me says that the virus makers do simple fingerprint based updates simply because it requires you to keep your yearly subscription up to date.
I think they add almost no value, but on the other hand, people will happily run viruses if you tell them it's the latest picture of Brittany.
"Of course that mean I should be upset about the unlockers who are preventing them from giving me an even larger discount."
Well, you're making the assumption that if their margins were greater, they would reduce the price. But why would they do that? If you're paying $60/month for your phone, then if AT&T reduces their overhead, they generally don't reduce their price unless there is competitive pressure to do so.
It's the same old lesson about how the selling cost is only marginally related to the manufacturing cost. People always assume there is a direct link, but there's no link.
"does not change the fact that the airlines are still the safest way to travel by a large margin"
I suspect you're correct, but I have two thoughts on the matter.
First, as we get more planes into the same space over airports and across the skies, out systems and rules need to become better to maintain the same safety standards we have today. To put it more succinctly, if we don't improve, we'll have worse safety.
Second, much of the work of the government related to air travel is a lot of emphasis on apparent safety rather than actual safety. X-Raying shoes, for example. That doesn't materially add to anybody's safety, but it makes people feel like something is being done to make them safer. If people feel risks are not being accounted for, they'll be less likely to fly.
"Perhaps use some of the revenue to release extra content for the game."
More revenue means more profit, not more "stuff" for the buyer. Your transaction is done.
Put yourself in EA's shoes. Anyway they can make more profit they'll do it. They'll kill kittens, throw your mother in jail, do whatever it takes to make more money.
Most games are mediocre. They're not horrible, they'll kill an afternoon or 3 with some fun. But they're pretty unmemorable. So you can go to Eletronic Gaming Stop and buy the latest mediocre game for $60. By the same token, hardly any gamers have played more than a handful of titles. For most gamers on a system, there are probably dozens of really good games that are a little older. I'm always curious why people won't just buy a used copy of a 1-2 year old game for 1/3 to 1/2 the price of new and actually have fun.
Now the game stores try to convince you that you should trade in your "good" old game for $5-10 which dries up supply, but it seems to me that there's always a way to get good 18 month old games for about $15-20, which is a way better deal than buying the latest bunch of junk from EA (for example). If you know an avid gamer, let him know you'll give $15 for any game he/she wants to get rid of and you'll build a library of good games for a fraction of what it costs new.
Copyright is a legal right certainly. Let's not pretend it's a moral right. Copyright as it was put together was intended to prevent commercial exploitation of another's work (http://www.advogato.org/article/323.html). It was not really intended to prevent you and I from swapping CD's. That's a recent idea pushed by the record companies not to protect a moral interest, rather it was intended to maximize revenue.
As to the idea that professionals make stuff that is good, my counterexamples are "American Idol", "Dancing with the stars", and "Survivor". If that's what the professionals are producing, I guess I'll just read a book.
No seriously, the tension between media cartels, consumers and creators of content is always going to be there, if only because their interests are different. But don't pretend the tension is a moral struggle; it's an economic argument about how much we should pay and when. The smarter companies (which don't exist yet) will try to find a middle ground between the three interests. Right now, the media cartels are just trying to get lawmakers to set up the ground rules that favor them. Voters and artists, apparently, have no one representing their interests.
I disagree. If you're selling to that warehouse mentality, you can't get a price premium at all. People are buying for lowest price, period.
The interesting part of the market is laptop computers, not desktop. In that environment, Apple actually has a really good lineup with the Macbook and Macbook Pro. Not warehouse cheap. But enough to get the people who care about more than price.
I just bought Parallels yesterday and this isn't encouraging. Some forum members seem to feel that support is not forthcoming for this bug, but since this is only a few days old, I'm assuming Parallels is working on a fix.
Here's a somewhat tongue in cheek suggestion then...
Charge a large amount for the ticket. Make the assumption the team is going to win every game and win the superbowl.
For every game the team loses, they refund part or all of the admission to the original owner. If they don't make the playoffs there is an amount refunded, if the team wins everything, the club keeps all the money. If the club loses all the games, they refund all the money.
In fact, maybe the NFL should mandate that approach, because it forces the teams to try to win, not to simply take in the most revenue from ticket sales.
To those versed in statistics or the scientific method, find the flaw in this statement (as taken from the article):
"with the little data we have so far, we are finding that there's a strong correlation between criminal activity and at least the installation of steganography programs on those [confiscated] computers"
With the little data I have so far, I think the researchers are pulling our leg.
", thereby possibly artificially inflating the cost of tickets."
If people are willing to pay $10,000 for a ticket, then by definition, that's the value of the ticket. That's not an artificial inflated value, that's the actual value.
It doesn't seem immoral, I don't see that it should be illegal.
If a ticket scalper scooped up every patriot ticket and was selling them for $10,000 per ticket and they sold them all, god bless them for being clever entrepreneurs. If they scooped up every ticket and couldn't sell them, well, the team got their money and the scalper got...um... scalped.
I'm mainly disturbed that courts and lawyers don't say to these large corporations "We realize you try to get people to sign crazy documents giving away their rights, but we don't accept any of them. Case dismissed".
If the patriots are angry about this, then what they ought to do is charge more for their tickets. This is a professional sporting event, not a government function where they need to maintain the fiction of fairness.
"I read in a xbox hacking book that the Sega Dreamcast died when they could pirate games for that system"
No, not really. The Dreamcast died when Sega was in it's last days as a hardware vendor. They could or would not properly advertise or support the system. Plus, once the rumors were out that the Dreamcast was dead, it was for all practical purposes dead. Rumors are like that in the gaming industry. Pirating was not a large phenomenon until after it was pretty clear the Dreamcast was dead.
In my opinion, the Dreamcast began to die the day that Sony ran it's successful campaign that convinced people the PS2 was the future of gaming not the Dreamcast. Sega did nothing to counter that feeling, either, because after the wildly successful 9/9/99 launch, they basically did very little to push the console.
Consider:
1) The Telcos will not build. Congress nor the Administration will not compel them to wire anything but profitable areas.
2) EvDO broadband from Verizon is not terribly efficient for things other than web surfing (and uses other than web surfing and email are probably against Verizon's TOS)
3) Your cable company won't build for the same reason the telcos won't.
3) WLAN and other emerging technologies will be buried by the FCC because they compete with the wired infrastructure. This FCC is really beholden to large corporate interests.
Your only hope is that Google wins the spectrum auction (unlikely) and then produces some really marvelous technology that will push broadband out into the countryside. But that is years away, even if things go well.
"if this person is not cooperating then they have something to hide"
If a person replies as AC, does that mean they have something to hide? Or does it mean that there's an expectation of privacy in going about your business.
I seem to remember SCO released all its technical employees several years ago. Towards the end, they consisted of a handful of people who just handled the books and the lawyers.
Slashdot Mirror
There's really little reason to do P2P any more seeing as how sites like last.fm, Pandora Radio, and other places let you essentially program your own radio and listen to whatever songs as long as you have a network connection.
I'm a heavy user of Pandora Radio, and what I can tell you is that when it suggests songs and plays them for me, many times, I'll pop over to Amazon and buy the CD.
Now, much to the record company's dismay, I will buy them used most of them time, since it's usually 50% cheaper, but I think anybody who loves music and listens to a lot of music is always looking for something new, interesting and so the more you're exposed to music, the more you buy.
The only difference between now and 15 years ago is (a) the internet gives us a chance to listen to music the record companies aren't interested in pushing (b) the internet gives us the ability to purchase music in ways the RIAA aren't interested in selling.
I'm guessing all this talk about falling CD sales simply means "falling RIAA CD sales". I'll bet music sales are up overall.
"should not be given the rights of someone who holds a press card."
What legal rights does owning a press card give you? Probably about the same rights as a Boy Scout card or a Student ID.
I looked in my DVD collection the other day and I realized had purchased well over 300 DVD's. It just sorta happened. And I realized it's a tremendous waste of money and space for discs that, for the most part, are watched once and done. But the price point is low enough that they're an impulse buy every time we go to the warehouse club, and so everybody throws one in. I should probably sell them on ebay.
Anyway, to my point. When I go to the store, new releases are $13-15, and 2-3 year old releases are typically under $10. I can't believe anybody copies for that price, particularly when you only watch once.
So DVD piracy is effectively solved by lowering the price so it's just not worth it to the vast majority of people. If they get high definition disks down to under $15, this is really a moot point.
The only reasons I can think spending this much time and effort by the record companies is either (a) They think that they'll eventually drive piracy out of the market allowing them to raise prices or (b) they're crazy control freaks who aren't completely rational. Or maybe both.
"suggests to you this person is willing to pay anything for a tv show?"
Not enough information.
But what if you paid $10 for an entire season, and you simply plugged your ipod in once a week and the shows went to your ipod without doing anything. I might even pay for that.
I realize that's probably less than the $100-200 per season (per show!) that Zucker would like me to pay. But to be fair, I wanted a billion dollars last week and nobody gave that to me, either.
Well, they will stop. But charging $2/episode for 1 TV show? That's a lot. Especially considering I already pay for cable, and Tivo. And Tivo lets you copy the stuff to your PC to watch it there. I could record it to my DVD recorder instead, I suppose. The big difference between music and TV shows is the networks already "give" this stuff away for free to the customer. So trying to charge $2/episode for something that they already gave me seems....um... expensive.
Now, if you make the argument that you don't subscribe to cable TV, and are only interested in 1 show, then yes, that's a better deal. I suppose there's something to be said for the novelty of watching content on your iPod (especially the Touch).
They could make a great case for just releasing this in an open format with the ads in it. Make it easy and convenient and people won't even cut out the ads.
"After all Zucker is in charge of creating content."
Actually, he's not. He's in charge of getting content from TV production companies and then figuring out a way to get people to watch it and make money on it.
Jay Leno aside, of course.
Consumer Reports came to this conclusion over a year ago. Here's some free synopsis of the the controversial issue where they used virus kits to make variants of existing viruses to determine how good virus scanners are.
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/?p=6674
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2006/08/consumer_report.html
Anti-virus software actually used to work much better, but I think that the variants have grown to such a large number it's more difficult. The cynic in me says that the virus makers do simple fingerprint based updates simply because it requires you to keep your yearly subscription up to date.
I think they add almost no value, but on the other hand, people will happily run viruses if you tell them it's the latest picture of Brittany.
"Of course that mean I should be upset about the unlockers who are preventing them from giving me an even larger discount."
Well, you're making the assumption that if their margins were greater, they would reduce the price. But why would they do that? If you're paying $60/month for your phone, then if AT&T reduces their overhead, they generally don't reduce their price unless there is competitive pressure to do so.
It's the same old lesson about how the selling cost is only marginally related to the manufacturing cost. People always assume there is a direct link, but there's no link.
"Vista juggernaught"
You use that word "juggernaught"... I don't think it means what you think it means.
"does not change the fact that the airlines are still the safest way to travel by a large margin"
I suspect you're correct, but I have two thoughts on the matter.
First, as we get more planes into the same space over airports and across the skies, out systems and rules need to become better to maintain the same safety standards we have today. To put it more succinctly, if we don't improve, we'll have worse safety.
Second, much of the work of the government related to air travel is a lot of emphasis on apparent safety rather than actual safety. X-Raying shoes, for example. That doesn't materially add to anybody's safety, but it makes people feel like something is being done to make them safer. If people feel risks are not being accounted for, they'll be less likely to fly.
"Perhaps use some of the revenue to release extra content for the game."
More revenue means more profit, not more "stuff" for the buyer. Your transaction is done.
Put yourself in EA's shoes. Anyway they can make more profit they'll do it. They'll kill kittens, throw your mother in jail, do whatever it takes to make more money.
Most games are mediocre. They're not horrible, they'll kill an afternoon or 3 with some fun. But they're pretty unmemorable. So you can go to Eletronic Gaming Stop and buy the latest mediocre game for $60. By the same token, hardly any gamers have played more than a handful of titles. For most gamers on a system, there are probably dozens of really good games that are a little older. I'm always curious why people won't just buy a used copy of a 1-2 year old game for 1/3 to 1/2 the price of new and actually have fun.
Now the game stores try to convince you that you should trade in your "good" old game for $5-10 which dries up supply, but it seems to me that there's always a way to get good 18 month old games for about $15-20, which is a way better deal than buying the latest bunch of junk from EA (for example). If you know an avid gamer, let him know you'll give $15 for any game he/she wants to get rid of and you'll build a library of good games for a fraction of what it costs new.
Copyright is a legal right certainly. Let's not pretend it's a moral right. Copyright as it was put together was intended to prevent commercial exploitation of another's work (http://www.advogato.org/article/323.html). It was not really intended to prevent you and I from swapping CD's. That's a recent idea pushed by the record companies not to protect a moral interest, rather it was intended to maximize revenue.
As to the idea that professionals make stuff that is good, my counterexamples are "American Idol", "Dancing with the stars", and "Survivor". If that's what the professionals are producing, I guess I'll just read a book.
No seriously, the tension between media cartels, consumers and creators of content is always going to be there, if only because their interests are different. But don't pretend the tension is a moral struggle; it's an economic argument about how much we should pay and when. The smarter companies (which don't exist yet) will try to find a middle ground between the three interests. Right now, the media cartels are just trying to get lawmakers to set up the ground rules that favor them. Voters and artists, apparently, have no one representing their interests.
I disagree. If you're selling to that warehouse mentality, you can't get a price premium at all. People are buying for lowest price, period.
The interesting part of the market is laptop computers, not desktop. In that environment, Apple actually has a really good lineup with the Macbook and Macbook Pro. Not warehouse cheap. But enough to get the people who care about more than price.
I went to install Ubuntu 7.10 on Parallels and there is a problem.
http://forum.parallels.com/showthread.php?t=17069
I just bought Parallels yesterday and this isn't encouraging. Some forum members seem to feel that support is not forthcoming for this bug, but since this is only a few days old, I'm assuming Parallels is working on a fix.
Still, it is disappointing.
Here's a somewhat tongue in cheek suggestion then...
Charge a large amount for the ticket. Make the assumption the team is going to win every game and win the superbowl.
For every game the team loses, they refund part or all of the admission to the original owner. If they don't make the playoffs there is an amount refunded, if the team wins everything, the club keeps all the money. If the club loses all the games, they refund all the money.
In fact, maybe the NFL should mandate that approach, because it forces the teams to try to win, not to simply take in the most revenue from ticket sales.
Kids,
To those versed in statistics or the scientific method, find the flaw in this statement (as taken from the article):
"with the little data we have so far, we are finding that there's a strong correlation between criminal activity and at least the installation of steganography programs on those [confiscated] computers"
With the little data I have so far, I think the researchers are pulling our leg.
", thereby possibly artificially inflating the cost of tickets."
If people are willing to pay $10,000 for a ticket, then by definition, that's the value of the ticket. That's not an artificial inflated value, that's the actual value.
It doesn't seem immoral, I don't see that it should be illegal.
If a ticket scalper scooped up every patriot ticket and was selling them for $10,000 per ticket and they sold them all, god bless them for being clever entrepreneurs. If they scooped up every ticket and couldn't sell them, well, the team got their money and the scalper got...um... scalped.
I'm mainly disturbed that courts and lawyers don't say to these large corporations "We realize you try to get people to sign crazy documents giving away their rights, but we don't accept any of them. Case dismissed".
If the patriots are angry about this, then what they ought to do is charge more for their tickets. This is a professional sporting event, not a government function where they need to maintain the fiction of fairness.
"I read in a xbox hacking book that the Sega Dreamcast died when they could pirate games for that system"
No, not really. The Dreamcast died when Sega was in it's last days as a hardware vendor. They could or would not properly advertise or support the system. Plus, once the rumors were out that the Dreamcast was dead, it was for all practical purposes dead. Rumors are like that in the gaming industry. Pirating was not a large phenomenon until after it was pretty clear the Dreamcast was dead.
In my opinion, the Dreamcast began to die the day that Sony ran it's successful campaign that convinced people the PS2 was the future of gaming not the Dreamcast. Sega did nothing to counter that feeling, either, because after the wildly successful 9/9/99 launch, they basically did very little to push the console.
Doh! I mean CAN'T. This is not a question of morality.
You can make a case from Apple's standpoint why they want to discourage you from changing it, but you certainly can couch this as a morality play.
I think Apple is being a jerk on this one, but I realize some people view Apple differently.
Does Spock have the beard in that parallel universe?
You may never get broadband the way you want.
Consider:
1) The Telcos will not build. Congress nor the Administration will not compel them to wire anything but profitable areas.
2) EvDO broadband from Verizon is not terribly efficient for things other than web surfing (and uses other than web surfing and email are probably against Verizon's TOS)
3) Your cable company won't build for the same reason the telcos won't.
3) WLAN and other emerging technologies will be buried by the FCC because they compete with the wired infrastructure. This FCC is really beholden to large corporate interests.
Your only hope is that Google wins the spectrum auction (unlikely) and then produces some really marvelous technology that will push broadband out into the countryside. But that is years away, even if things go well.
Good luck.
"Why is it that what is ok for Big Government and Big Business doesn't necessarily translate to hobbyists? "
For the same reason that the government runs the numbers racket, but you'll be thrown into jail for the rest of your life if you do the same thing.
It's done under the guise of protecting the family and children, if that's any consolation.
"if this person is not cooperating then they have something to hide"
If a person replies as AC, does that mean they have something to hide? Or does it mean that there's an expectation of privacy in going about your business.
I seem to remember SCO released all its technical employees several years ago. Towards the end, they consisted of a handful of people who just handled the books and the lawyers.
Really, there has been no SCO for a long time.