I have also heard many awful recordings from basement studios.
I also heard many awful recordings from professional studios. Fail to see how that is a point. Besides, if you dont like how it sounds, well... don't buy it?
what do you do when you decide you want some background sounds from a symphony orchestra?
Yea, we know that indie symphony orchestras are all the rage these days. My neighbor kids don't let me sleep at night with all those expensive violins, flutes, and whatnot... I'd figure if they can pay for all those instruments they may be able to at least afford a proper place to record but noooooo....ponder how they fit all those people in that garage too.../end sarcasm
Use a synth? the record labels would pay out for the real thing if you wanted it.
Wake up little sleeping beauty! Dream time is over! No they would not, best they would do is record an actual orchestra in the same facilities they already perform at, using their own instruments, not publisher provided ones.
It works, but I bet it is a whole lot easier if you have a guy that you give your album to and it immediately pops up in itunes, amazon, and whatever other online source you want. Oh yeah...and how about CDs showing up in every store across the country and tracks showing up in radio station libraries (even if they don't chose to play them regularly...they will have a copy).
You realize that's the biggest scam in the book? You get charged full premium price for each copy the broadcasters get. In other words: they send all broadcasters a copy or two of your CD, and charge you 15 bucks for each copy, then they call that "promotional costs" and is deducted from your royalties, if any. In the end, you may end owing money to the publisher because they never gave you the "premium treatment" where they also get million of fake fans to request your songs and brainwash audiences. At this point you become a failure but still they hold all your publishing rights for years to come, now even if you wanted you cant go out there and publish on your own because they locked you down to make sure you can't compete. THAT is the beauty of the RIAA and THAT is how they make sure you "get sorted through the garbage", by eliminating potential good quality distractions from what they truly want to sell.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that within popular music, most big hits are made, not born.
I.E. there isn't that much difference between J. Random Indy Band and the Next Big Thing, it's just the latter had the tremendous marketing arm of the studio pushing them into the glories of one-hit-wonderdom.
The same can't really be said for books, surprisingly. Mainly because you aren't exposed to the contents of a book unless you specifically try to be, while [generic crappy pop] music gets blasted at your ears anywhere you go, and even when its presence is under your control, its content may not be (like with the radio).
I still find it funny how the RIAA gets away with charging radio stations to advertise their music all day long. "You pay me for the privilege of playing advertisement for my CDs, so I can sell more!" Whoever came up with that business model was a capitalistic double dipping genius! Thriple dipping when you consider they also take money from the artists they represent!
Because they
1) Provide money and pay the big costs while artists are producing their album
2) Provide marketing
3) Find the promising artists and writers
4) Have the distribution channels
The only valid point you make is marketing. These days almost anyone can rent a studio for a day to do their recording themselves, can be very professionally done, if you work with people with talent (and there are a lot of people with talent in the editing field, they tend to be stuck in club-DJ jobs because of lack of opportunities, not saying all DJs can, though.)
Marketing, though, is a big one. You need big money to sell big, but given how the artist is ripped off they may actually make more money by selling to a smaller audience without any middle man. Even these days, the best form of marketing for many famous artists is to go on tour, and thats how they actually make money, via ticket sales, not album sales. If an artist gives up fame for profit, they can actually have a higher chance self-publishing. They just need to find some friends that are into music editing to tag along.
BTW, just to explain why the other two points don't mean anything:
1) Recording and producing can be very low cost. You can rent a recording studio or even outfit a room in your home to serve as one (bit more expensive at first but worth it as in worst case you can rent for others.)
3) You dont care if they find other promising artists, because you are the artist.
4) In this age, you can deal directly with the biggest e-distribution channels, end with a bigger cut, and retain all rights to your work.
Even if you dislike apple, just browse their indies section. Listen to the demos, there is some junk there, but you may find even some of these junk is rather well edited. You may even discover some artist you like while at it.
Books are worse. The only thing they used to do was the distribution channel. They did little for marketing (compared to the music industry.) The best they did used to be editing. And if you are an avid reader you may notice the horrible amount of books that get published without even running a spellchecker on them. These days "editing" simply means spending a lot of money on a pretty cover, billing it out of your royalties, stamp the rest of the book in some template and printing it. You may as well just self publish.
You can say anything you want about the internet as a marketing channel and cheap personal computers being capable of producing albums, but they really aren't. You need a good studio. I'm not going to listen to something that sound like demo tracks. They're horrible if you've ever listened to any other than your favorite band's. They also filter out the crap.
This might be a little bit different with books, but you still need those distribution channels and marketing. Books don't just magically show up in book stores, libraries or have articles in magazines, nor do people just accidentally hear about it. And eBooks aren't going to replace paperback books yet.
"For the web comic artists, being able to present their archives or create a 24-page comic in near full-sized and color is absolutely amazing."
So Apple gets to sell you a home computer AND a netbook (with a phone you say you don't need) all so you can do what you can do on the home computer...well, anywhere?
Looking at the specs on the iPad (and knowing what kind of hardware you need to do any REAL graphics processing...20 layers of Photoshop is going to lock up solid on an iPad), I'm guessing you're going to be doing most of it on the home machine anyways.
So, you essentially bought Apple's sales pitch hook, line and sinker.
No, Apple sold him a color eBook reader with backlit and a few extra features.
Or are you going to also say the Kindle is a ripoff because people can read digital PDF books in the netbooks too?
Then buy a NetBook Tablet, like the Asus Eee PC T91. Apple's device is not for you, it's not like there have not been tablet devices out there that didn't do what you want.
How dare Apple even consider obeying local laws!? What next? Underage sex censorship just because most countries dislike it? What about freedom?!!
Sarcasm aside, what do you expect? Apple has to obey the country laws. Free speech is not a right in China, no matter how much we think everyone should have it, it just isn't. It's like Britain and Canada insulting the US for not offering it's people the right of socialized medicine.
Did anyone else make it past this? Because nothing (not even a goatse link) makes me stop reading faster than a bad pun.
Anyway in regards to:
Apple is bending over for the big labels that want to charge you more for this content you don't own (and also have a sketchy license to) when you purchase it.
I would say it's the other way around. Labels want it so Apple told them to bend over and spit out 10k per boundle and they would do it, and the Labels in their greed did bend over and spit over the 10k.
Bottom line is that Apple is making the customer suffer and bating them with paying more for content they're not owning in any sense nor having a clear lifetime license to. Can I print out this artwork and put it on my bedroom wall? I'm guessing not. Personally I'm buying the box set instead.
Apple has not made me do anything. I just what the music, i can't care less about pretty extras. I already learned from countless DVD purchases that i NEVER will look at the extras enough to make it worth the premium. I'll just buy the tracks I want and keep going with my day.
Oh and seeing how there is no DRM, you can pretty much do whatever you want other than redistributing these things. Not sure if the resolution of these will be high enough to print anything worth sticking on a wall, though.
Like DRM iTunes songs, it'll fall apart. Anyways, as the summary points out, it's futile. A clever 24 year old in Uruguay just made one. And I love that. I'm betting the open source community will make some extractors if you want the images, videos, lyrics and extras.
It's only "futile" if you missed the entire point, and that's obvious. Besides, you need an "extractor" only if you have no clue how to navigate folders. It's all just a bunch of files in a directory.
So an article from 2008 states that the guy in 2009's breaking news won the case?... First time i hear of Computerworld UK but is their moto "One year ago in the news"?
Soon we will have to pay to watch advertisements on TV that have running music, after all, thats music performance and we should pay to hear the lovely music on that annoying ad that just interrupted the frigging TV show I wanted to watch...:)
This guy is basically saying he will work around the cease and desist but all he is doing is complying and trying to tell the world how big of a rule breaker he is "getting away with it by just doing X" with X being what he was asked to do to begin with...
This makes owning and supporting a computer more difficult for users. I don't have time to answer questions from my friends every time a software publisher pushes out a new update. I've taken to telling them, "If it's a Microsoft auto update, install it. If it's an Apple auto update, install it.
So you give stupid advice to your friends and expect them to be fine and have no issues?
You may fare better off if you read my full post. I noted clearly I would buy used games, just not through the established Gamestop and EBGames outlets that are the ones the game developers actually complain about (most of the time.)
As to how these chains specifically hurt the developer: well, intentionally refusing to stock up on new games and actually forcing the consumer to go for the used alternative is indeed hurting them. EB/Gamestop are well known to do this, and lately I hate going to their stores only to be stuffed green boxes with no books or cases as a "viable option" to their lack of product.
It's unfortunate that chains like Walmart will dedicate such a small floor space to games because in the end I'm forced to buy online. Oh, and not online from Gamestop either since they don't stock up on the new games even on their website, instead they try to, once more, stuff a game they wont even let me know if actually has a case or not.
Used games, as a concept, are not bad for developers, but the current business model is a predatory practice that may actually end up hurting the developer. They are forcing companies to go the route of XBox Live, PSPGo and WiWare if they don't want these outlets to do this.
Again, I'm not against trading games, I'm against the Gamestop practices that will apparently be mimicked by others soon and result in developers really hindering tradability.
Used games actually screw up both, the developer AND the consumer.
Gears of Wars 2 is not 60 bucks, it's 39.99. Gamestop does not sell it for 30 bucks, they sell it for 34.95, and they buy it from you for about 10 bucks. The used game you buy may be missing manuals and other inserts, the disk is the only thing that may be on that green, coverless case, and this disk may be scratched, although functional.
So you are paying 5 bucks less for, in my opinion, much more less, while at the same time the guy that sold it to them likely got pennies (due to the condition, they pay less if it's in worse condition but they sure don't sell it for less.)
The only time buying used games is a good deal for the player is when they do the rare buy 2 get a third free deals, even then the player that traded in his used game got ripped off.
I'm not against buying used games, but I'm all against the ripoff that is Gamestop and EBGames. If I'm going to hunt down used games, I'll go to ebay where at least I know the original buyer is not getting shafted and I may even get a better deal than Gamestop will be willing to offer.
Apple has no monopoly. Ironically, I'm the geek between all my friends and the only one that buys from iTunes. All my non-geek friends buy their music from Walmart's online store or Amazon.
I know Apple is the big boy, but that is far from being a monopoly.
Thing is, though, if Apple looks to the side eventually the music industry will let them know (if they didn't already.) At that point, Apple is informed. If Apple now does not make sure to provide Palm with timely updates for DRM hacks, and make sure Palm uses them, then Apple is the one held liable of a breach of contract for allowing this to happen.
.
So apple has two options: go through the legal headache of setting up a sharing strategy with a competitor, and expect them to not get them in trouble by not applying updates regularly, or simply locking them out. They did what was easier. Besides, if they want to risk getting in trouble with anyone, there are bigger fish out there that would give them some serious money to band together. Still not worth their headache, if you ask me, though.
It's because they know even if they charge 50 bucks everyone is just going to pirate it anyways so they figure they may as well screw the few paying costumers.
This.
As some one that went to art school I must say that any "artist" (in any branch) that must resort to explicit content to "evolve" or make "controversial" pieces that "impact" the viewer deserves to be censored out of the field.
How much does it cost them to pay everyone involved in the process of producing one?
You can say how much each part costs but all these other factors can't be determined by anyone that is not involved in the process. The production costs of any given product is NOT equal to the summed value of the parts. There are a lot of other involved costs a simple dissection wont reveal.
A software program running on a computer automatically replaces itself with a newer version in a completely automated fashion, without interruption of its primary function, and in a manner that is completely transparent to the user of the computer.
As long as the user is notified or must explicitly grant permission, the update process is not transparent to the user.
Apple claims a patent on a stealth method.
Reading that: if there is an interruption, even if for one second, where the widget has to be rebooted, the entire thing does not apply.
As far as I can tell even Apple's own iTunes requires a restart to finalize the update as must almost every single self updating software out there.
The issue is that most american companies inflate the price of everything.
Let's say a store sells an inch of cable for $5 (made up numbers.) It does not matter that the company itself may make their own cable with raw materials and pay just 5 cents for each inch, they will still say it cost them $5 in cabling because thats the market value of the cable used.
Same goes for all other equipment used. Same goes for man hours. They claim a contractor may had charged them $80 an hour and say thats what they "spent" even if they hired their own goons and paid them minimum wage.
At the end of the day, the company spends $20 bucks and says it cost them $800. That also helps them pay less taxes in the end as they made less gross profit.
To hide all this the company tends to use sub companies that still belong to the parent company (or to a big investor) and these bill big daddy the inflated amount with the big profit ending in the owner's pockets.
Slashdot Mirror
I have also heard many awful recordings from basement studios.
I also heard many awful recordings from professional studios. Fail to see how that is a point. Besides, if you dont like how it sounds, well... don't buy it?
what do you do when you decide you want some background sounds from a symphony orchestra?
Yea, we know that indie symphony orchestras are all the rage these days. My neighbor kids don't let me sleep at night with all those expensive violins, flutes, and whatnot... I'd figure if they can pay for all those instruments they may be able to at least afford a proper place to record but noooooo. ...ponder how they fit all those people in that garage too... /end sarcasm
Use a synth? the record labels would pay out for the real thing if you wanted it.
Wake up little sleeping beauty! Dream time is over! No they would not, best they would do is record an actual orchestra in the same facilities they already perform at, using their own instruments, not publisher provided ones.
It works, but I bet it is a whole lot easier if you have a guy that you give your album to and it immediately pops up in itunes, amazon, and whatever other online source you want. Oh yeah...and how about CDs showing up in every store across the country and tracks showing up in radio station libraries (even if they don't chose to play them regularly...they will have a copy).
You realize that's the biggest scam in the book? You get charged full premium price for each copy the broadcasters get. In other words: they send all broadcasters a copy or two of your CD, and charge you 15 bucks for each copy, then they call that "promotional costs" and is deducted from your royalties, if any. In the end, you may end owing money to the publisher because they never gave you the "premium treatment" where they also get million of fake fans to request your songs and brainwash audiences. At this point you become a failure but still they hold all your publishing rights for years to come, now even if you wanted you cant go out there and publish on your own because they locked you down to make sure you can't compete. THAT is the beauty of the RIAA and THAT is how they make sure you "get sorted through the garbage", by eliminating potential good quality distractions from what they truly want to sell.
There's a reasonable argument to be made that within popular music, most big hits are made, not born.
I.E. there isn't that much difference between J. Random Indy Band and the Next Big Thing, it's just the latter had the tremendous marketing arm of the studio pushing them into the glories of one-hit-wonderdom.
The same can't really be said for books, surprisingly. Mainly because you aren't exposed to the contents of a book unless you specifically try to be, while [generic crappy pop] music gets blasted at your ears anywhere you go, and even when its presence is under your control, its content may not be (like with the radio).
I still find it funny how the RIAA gets away with charging radio stations to advertise their music all day long. "You pay me for the privilege of playing advertisement for my CDs, so I can sell more!" Whoever came up with that business model was a capitalistic double dipping genius! Thriple dipping when you consider they also take money from the artists they represent!
Because they 1) Provide money and pay the big costs while artists are producing their album 2) Provide marketing 3) Find the promising artists and writers 4) Have the distribution channels
The only valid point you make is marketing. These days almost anyone can rent a studio for a day to do their recording themselves, can be very professionally done, if you work with people with talent (and there are a lot of people with talent in the editing field, they tend to be stuck in club-DJ jobs because of lack of opportunities, not saying all DJs can, though.)
Marketing, though, is a big one. You need big money to sell big, but given how the artist is ripped off they may actually make more money by selling to a smaller audience without any middle man. Even these days, the best form of marketing for many famous artists is to go on tour, and thats how they actually make money, via ticket sales, not album sales. If an artist gives up fame for profit, they can actually have a higher chance self-publishing. They just need to find some friends that are into music editing to tag along.
BTW, just to explain why the other two points don't mean anything:
1) Recording and producing can be very low cost. You can rent a recording studio or even outfit a room in your home to serve as one (bit more expensive at first but worth it as in worst case you can rent for others.)
3) You dont care if they find other promising artists, because you are the artist.
4) In this age, you can deal directly with the biggest e-distribution channels, end with a bigger cut, and retain all rights to your work.
Even if you dislike apple, just browse their indies section. Listen to the demos, there is some junk there, but you may find even some of these junk is rather well edited. You may even discover some artist you like while at it.
Books are worse. The only thing they used to do was the distribution channel. They did little for marketing (compared to the music industry.) The best they did used to be editing. And if you are an avid reader you may notice the horrible amount of books that get published without even running a spellchecker on them. These days "editing" simply means spending a lot of money on a pretty cover, billing it out of your royalties, stamp the rest of the book in some template and printing it. You may as well just self publish. You can say anything you want about the internet as a marketing channel and cheap personal computers being capable of producing albums, but they really aren't. You need a good studio. I'm not going to listen to something that sound like demo tracks. They're horrible if you've ever listened to any other than your favorite band's. They also filter out the crap.
This might be a little bit different with books, but you still need those distribution channels and marketing. Books don't just magically show up in book stores, libraries or have articles in magazines, nor do people just accidentally hear about it. And eBooks aren't going to replace paperback books yet.
"For the web comic artists, being able to present their archives or create a 24-page comic in near full-sized and color is absolutely amazing."
So Apple gets to sell you a home computer AND a netbook (with a phone you say you don't need) all so you can do what you can do on the home computer...well, anywhere?
Looking at the specs on the iPad (and knowing what kind of hardware you need to do any REAL graphics processing...20 layers of Photoshop is going to lock up solid on an iPad), I'm guessing you're going to be doing most of it on the home machine anyways.
So, you essentially bought Apple's sales pitch hook, line and sinker.
No, Apple sold him a color eBook reader with backlit and a few extra features.
Or are you going to also say the Kindle is a ripoff because people can read digital PDF books in the netbooks too?
Then buy a NetBook Tablet, like the Asus Eee PC T91. Apple's device is not for you, it's not like there have not been tablet devices out there that didn't do what you want.
How dare Apple even consider obeying local laws!? What next? Underage sex censorship just because most countries dislike it? What about freedom?!!
Sarcasm aside, what do you expect? Apple has to obey the country laws. Free speech is not a right in China, no matter how much we think everyone should have it, it just isn't. It's like Britain and Canada insulting the US for not offering it's people the right of socialized medicine.
I'm on the record (ha ha, "record," get it?)
Did anyone else make it past this? Because nothing (not even a goatse link) makes me stop reading faster than a bad pun. Anyway in regards to:
Apple is bending over for the big labels that want to charge you more for this content you don't own (and also have a sketchy license to) when you purchase it.
I would say it's the other way around. Labels want it so Apple told them to bend over and spit out 10k per boundle and they would do it, and the Labels in their greed did bend over and spit over the 10k.
Bottom line is that Apple is making the customer suffer and bating them with paying more for content they're not owning in any sense nor having a clear lifetime license to. Can I print out this artwork and put it on my bedroom wall? I'm guessing not. Personally I'm buying the box set instead.
Apple has not made me do anything. I just what the music, i can't care less about pretty extras. I already learned from countless DVD purchases that i NEVER will look at the extras enough to make it worth the premium. I'll just buy the tracks I want and keep going with my day. Oh and seeing how there is no DRM, you can pretty much do whatever you want other than redistributing these things. Not sure if the resolution of these will be high enough to print anything worth sticking on a wall, though.
Like DRM iTunes songs, it'll fall apart. Anyways, as the summary points out, it's futile. A clever 24 year old in Uruguay just made one. And I love that. I'm betting the open source community will make some extractors if you want the images, videos, lyrics and extras.
It's only "futile" if you missed the entire point, and that's obvious. Besides, you need an "extractor" only if you have no clue how to navigate folders. It's all just a bunch of files in a directory.
So an article from 2008 states that the guy in 2009's breaking news won the case? ... First time i hear of Computerworld UK but is their moto "One year ago in the news"?
Soon we will have to pay to watch advertisements on TV that have running music, after all, thats music performance and we should pay to hear the lovely music on that annoying ad that just interrupted the frigging TV show I wanted to watch... :)
This guy is basically saying he will work around the cease and desist but all he is doing is complying and trying to tell the world how big of a rule breaker he is "getting away with it by just doing X" with X being what he was asked to do to begin with...
The user that is "stupid" enough to allow this to sneak on up them has many more secuirty issues to worry than this thing.
This makes owning and supporting a computer more difficult for users. I don't have time to answer questions from my friends every time a software publisher pushes out a new update. I've taken to telling them, "If it's a Microsoft auto update, install it. If it's an Apple auto update, install it.
So you give stupid advice to your friends and expect them to be fine and have no issues?
Dispute the facts all you want, but driving and talking to anyone, be it a passenger or on the cellphone, depletes attentional resources considerably.
You may fare better off if you read my full post. I noted clearly I would buy used games, just not through the established Gamestop and EBGames outlets that are the ones the game developers actually complain about (most of the time.)
As to how these chains specifically hurt the developer: well, intentionally refusing to stock up on new games and actually forcing the consumer to go for the used alternative is indeed hurting them. EB/Gamestop are well known to do this, and lately I hate going to their stores only to be stuffed green boxes with no books or cases as a "viable option" to their lack of product.
It's unfortunate that chains like Walmart will dedicate such a small floor space to games because in the end I'm forced to buy online. Oh, and not online from Gamestop either since they don't stock up on the new games even on their website, instead they try to, once more, stuff a game they wont even let me know if actually has a case or not.
Used games, as a concept, are not bad for developers, but the current business model is a predatory practice that may actually end up hurting the developer. They are forcing companies to go the route of XBox Live, PSPGo and WiWare if they don't want these outlets to do this.
Again, I'm not against trading games, I'm against the Gamestop practices that will apparently be mimicked by others soon and result in developers really hindering tradability.
Piracy screws the developer.
Used games actually screw up both, the developer AND the consumer.
Gears of Wars 2 is not 60 bucks, it's 39.99. Gamestop does not sell it for 30 bucks, they sell it for 34.95, and they buy it from you for about 10 bucks. The used game you buy may be missing manuals and other inserts, the disk is the only thing that may be on that green, coverless case, and this disk may be scratched, although functional.
So you are paying 5 bucks less for, in my opinion, much more less, while at the same time the guy that sold it to them likely got pennies (due to the condition, they pay less if it's in worse condition but they sure don't sell it for less.)
The only time buying used games is a good deal for the player is when they do the rare buy 2 get a third free deals, even then the player that traded in his used game got ripped off.
I'm not against buying used games, but I'm all against the ripoff that is Gamestop and EBGames. If I'm going to hunt down used games, I'll go to ebay where at least I know the original buyer is not getting shafted and I may even get a better deal than Gamestop will be willing to offer.
Apple has no monopoly. Ironically, I'm the geek between all my friends and the only one that buys from iTunes. All my non-geek friends buy their music from Walmart's online store or Amazon.
I know Apple is the big boy, but that is far from being a monopoly.
Thing is, though, if Apple looks to the side eventually the music industry will let them know (if they didn't already.) At that point, Apple is informed. If Apple now does not make sure to provide Palm with timely updates for DRM hacks, and make sure Palm uses them, then Apple is the one held liable of a breach of contract for allowing this to happen.
.
So apple has two options: go through the legal headache of setting up a sharing strategy with a competitor, and expect them to not get them in trouble by not applying updates regularly, or simply locking them out. They did what was easier. Besides, if they want to risk getting in trouble with anyone, there are bigger fish out there that would give them some serious money to band together. Still not worth their headache, if you ask me, though.
I dare bet that's where they got their inspiration.
It's because they know even if they charge 50 bucks everyone is just going to pirate it anyways so they figure they may as well screw the few paying costumers.
This. As some one that went to art school I must say that any "artist" (in any branch) that must resort to explicit content to "evolve" or make "controversial" pieces that "impact" the viewer deserves to be censored out of the field.
How much did they invest in R&D?
Infrastructure setup?
How much does it cost them to pay everyone involved in the process of producing one?
You can say how much each part costs but all these other factors can't be determined by anyone that is not involved in the process. The production costs of any given product is NOT equal to the summed value of the parts. There are a lot of other involved costs a simple dissection wont reveal.
Because they are willing to do business with those other 48 states?
Breaking news, people will keep jail-breaking iPhones despite improvements!
In other breaking news, extensive research has determined that water is a liquid.
FTFP:
A software program running on a computer automatically replaces itself with a newer version in a completely automated fashion, without interruption of its primary function, and in a manner that is completely transparent to the user of the computer.
As long as the user is notified or must explicitly grant permission, the update process is not transparent to the user.
Apple claims a patent on a stealth method.
Reading that: if there is an interruption, even if for one second, where the widget has to be rebooted, the entire thing does not apply.
As far as I can tell even Apple's own iTunes requires a restart to finalize the update as must almost every single self updating software out there.
Let's say a store sells an inch of cable for $5 (made up numbers.) It does not matter that the company itself may make their own cable with raw materials and pay just 5 cents for each inch, they will still say it cost them $5 in cabling because thats the market value of the cable used.
Same goes for all other equipment used. Same goes for man hours. They claim a contractor may had charged them $80 an hour and say thats what they "spent" even if they hired their own goons and paid them minimum wage.
At the end of the day, the company spends $20 bucks and says it cost them $800. That also helps them pay less taxes in the end as they made less gross profit.
To hide all this the company tends to use sub companies that still belong to the parent company (or to a big investor) and these bill big daddy the inflated amount with the big profit ending in the owner's pockets.