I think there is a fourth viable business model. I click on a page with content, and a dialog box comes up: "The charge for this page is $.10. Choose an option: Pay via PayPal. Pay via Amazon. Add a new payment service. Do not view this page."
Unfortunately, at this time micropayments via PayPal are not viable.
PayPal charges a business or PayPal Pro payee either 2.2% or 2.9% + 30 cents for each payment that is received. So, if you sent a business such as Gamespot a 10 cent payment via PayPal, you'd cause them to have to pay 33 cents to PayPal if they wanted to accept it, leaving them 23 cents in the hole!
(I don't know about Amazon or any of the other e-pay services, but I wouldn't be surprised if their fees were similar.)
It will take the formation of micropayment services that are able to accept fractional/flat rate fees on transactions (such as a flat 10%, at least on transactions of under a dollar) for micropayments to become viable. And it will take a lot of people being willing to use micropayments for that to become economical. So, micropayments present one of those "chicken or the egg" problems so common to new advances. Not insurmountable, perhaps, but tricky to get started without a boost from someone.
Actually, Gamespot does sell stuff on their site. You can order printed copies of any of their hint/strategy guides; I'm sure they make at least a small profit (at least compared to what it costs to print the hint guides) out of that.
Note that the articles this thread is supposedly discussing are about willing sharing, by a fellow who not only created content but is actually sharing a whole lot of it himself. And even he does not condone theft--he suggests that its effects may be a lot less negative and more exaggerated than others make out, but he firmly supports authors' rights to make that decision for themselves.
You have a point. Of course, given the amount of money we're talking about here (as mentioned in Eric's prior rant)--perhaps a few dollars a year at most, it's not like he'll even notice.
I've been "boycotting" Ellison's work for quite some time, myself--but only because the stories of his that I read did not appeal to me.
I would venture to suggest that the main reason dedicated e-book devices haven't taken off is that there isn't all that much you can do with them other than read an e-book...and in some cases, you can't even read any e-book you want, only the ones you buy from the manufacturer. Thanks, but no thanks.
Now PDAs, on the other hand, have a zillion uses...including e-reading. And those have shot right through the roof sale-wise, and there are apparently enough people who enjoy e-reading on them to keep at least a half-dozen major and who knows how many minor PDA-compatible or PDA-only e-book vending sites in clover.
For instance, I've been in correspondence with Lee Fyock of PDA-only e-book site Palm Digital Literature (nee Peanut Press), and while he can't reveal figures, he can tell me that business has been very good. Note that Peanut has been around for several years now, is adding new titles and authors constantly, and has been viewed as such a desirable property that it's been bought out not once but twice, the second time by Palm itself! That doesn't sound like strictly a publisher's dream to me.
I don't see Peanut, or Alexlit, or Fictionwise , or Baen Webscription, or any of the others as being in any danger of shutting down soon. So, clearly, there's more to this e-book thing than some people seem to think.
(Oh, and as for e-books being strictly a vehicle to impose content control, that's not necessarily entirely true either. See the Baen Free Library, Prime Palaver #6.)
Books are cheap: dropping a book into the bathtub is annoying, but its not going to put you out a few hundred dollars.
I don't know why on earth everybody thinks that the ability to read in the tub is some kind of "paper book killer app." In my experience, quite the opposite is true.
Dropping a PDA or e-book reader in the bathtub is annoying but won't put you out a few hundred dollars either--assuming you had it in a sealed, trustworthy ziplock bag (I suggest the kind with the "gripper zipper" that closes verifiably) the way any sensible person would use such a device around water. Go ahead, try it--it's even easier than reading a paperback in the tub, as you can easily work the page-turning controls through the bag and you don't have to worry about getting water spots on the pages.
I've never read on a dedicated e-book reader. Maybe if I had, I would love it so much I wouldn't want to go back...but for now, my Clie 415 with 64 meg Memory Stick is a wonderful friend and companion. I can stuff literally dozens of books in my pocket, so I'm never without something to read.
Not only that, but in most cases where two parties are involved in impending legal action, nobody from either one will comment for fear of accidentally providing the other side with additional ammunition to use in their courtroom battle. It would certainly be irresponsible of a Vivendi rep to comment, especially one higher placed in the chain of command than the level at which the lawsuit was being conducted.
There is a Linux fasttrack-type client, giFT. However, it can't access the KaZaa FastTrack network, due to their encryption. ("No control over the network," my foot!) It can only trade with other people running giFT.
As for KaZaa's own Linux client, I don't know, though I find myself a bit in doubt. After all, you can't pop up ads in a text mode client, nor can it run trojans...
Flint isn't addressing music piracy here...
on
Sharing Doesn't Hurt
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· Score: 2
...he's addressing the encryption of books vs. giving them away, in regard to e-book piracy. I think all the people who try to draw conclusions from this in regard to the music industry are missing the point just a bit. They're very different industries, in very complicated ways.
The thing that's worth cheering for is the boost it gives to 1) giving away stuff free, and 2) avoiding encryption. The encryption of e-books is one of the major hot-button issues on Slashdot today, after all.
And another note: the folks at Alexandria Digital Literature have always offered their e-books/e-stories in plain and unencrypted format, and so far they've never had any problems with people pirating those texts.
The first 1/4 of the next Honor Harrington book, War of Honor, is being posted in preview snippets to the David Weber Baen Bar newsgroup, and being collected here.
Note also that the Niven book, Fallen Angels, features references to Richard Stallman.
"Oh, RMS has been wanted forever," Sherrine said. "Since before the Greens took over! He used to come to Worldcons, but---well, he doesn't stand out in a crowd. Doesn't want to."
"So how do you contact this RMS?" Bruce asked.
Sherrine shrugged. "A million ways. It's just a question of getting the word out on the net. The Legion of Doom will see it and---"
"I used to think I understood you people," Alex said. "Legion of Doom---"
"Super hackers. They---well, they're pretty good, and not always responsible. Some are fans, some aren't. But they listen to RMS, and he's a fan- --they'll let him know we want him. The question is, will he believe us? Everyone's after RMS. Pick his brains, jail him, reeducate him, study him in psych labs, he's an odd fish and---"
Stephen King's ebook experiment ended prematurely--I won't say that it failed per se, since he did make over $400,000 from it--because he failed to grasp the crucial difference between the print and electronic media when he set it up. He seemed to feel that his assets were diminished, that he was actually robbed, by someone downloading a chapter without paying for it.
He wanted payment for each copy downloaded, unlike Baen or many other e-book vendors, regardless of the fact that one could simply convert the file over oneself and not pay him anything. He even used, as a metaphor, asking that a bookstore give you a paperback because you bought the hardcover!
For that matter, King's setup put the power to shut the project down right into the hands of the malicious. If someone had a bone to pick with King, or King's readers, all that he would need to do would be to set up a script to download the chapters repeatedly, and boom--the percentages drop. They do it for online polls all the time.
If King was so concerned about being paid for each copy, he should have cut a deal with an ebook vendor to take the payment before the copy could be downloaded. He probably wouldn't have earned much less on it.
Actually, it's more likely that it's reviewers selling their review copies; you can often find used marketplace links for a book on the very day of its publication.
This interview in Salon Magazine lets Auerbach go into more detail about why he's suing, and the roadblocks that ICANN has thrown up when he's tried to get the records. He makes comparisons to Enron, and talks about director M. Stuart Lynn's proposed plan for reorganization.
My favorite bit:
Is there anything in the plan that's useful?
I think it would make great kindling for a fire. There's nothing in it that's useful.
(I already have 50 karma, so don't be afraid to mod me up for Informative.:)
It's common film-industry practice when making trailers to take music from some other source to score the trailer. This is because at the point when most trailers are made, the scoring of the actual film has not yet been completed (or in some cases even begun), so they don't yet have anything to work with.
In most cases, the music is entirely unrelated, except in mood. For instance, Carmina Burana's "O Fortuna" is a favorite for trailers involving a lot of action (such as the one for Cutthroat Island); so well-known is it that Williams borrowed heavily from it for "Duel of the Fates" in Episode One.
But in movies that are part of a series, then naturally they'll use music from earlier in the series. Better to have the music be familiar and evocative than for it just to be evocative.
Yes, so? The fellow who got sued for $450,000 was also posting on an online service. If they can't sue Slashdot directly, they'll just go after the individual editor. (I suspect that Michael would be a likely candidate for this type of suit, given the nature of the shoddy fact-checking and editorial slant found in many of the article comments he posts.)
And even if a hypothetical case against/. as a whole does end up being thrown out, fighting it is still an undesirable expense for V.A. Whateverthey'recalledthisweek. If/.'s enough of a drain on their finances that they're instituting subscriptions, what about the financial burden of a lawsuit?
Standard Disclaimer: IANAL (though I am a bit anal...)
Well, bear in mind that giFT is only available for Linux so far, not for Win32. It will be out sooner or later for non-Linux, but in order for that to happen there have to be people willing to write it first.
giFT started out as a FastTrack client, but changed to OpenFT once FastTrack locked them out. And they've been that way ever since--and now over a terabyte of files are being traded therein at this very moment. Small potatoes compared to KaZaa, but it's a start.
Slashdot Mirror
PayPal charges a business or PayPal Pro payee either 2.2% or 2.9% + 30 cents for each payment that is received. So, if you sent a business such as Gamespot a 10 cent payment via PayPal, you'd cause them to have to pay 33 cents to PayPal if they wanted to accept it, leaving them 23 cents in the hole!
(I don't know about Amazon or any of the other e-pay services, but I wouldn't be surprised if their fees were similar.)
It will take the formation of micropayment services that are able to accept fractional/flat rate fees on transactions (such as a flat 10%, at least on transactions of under a dollar) for micropayments to become viable. And it will take a lot of people being willing to use micropayments for that to become economical. So, micropayments present one of those "chicken or the egg" problems so common to new advances. Not insurmountable, perhaps, but tricky to get started without a boost from someone.
Actually, Gamespot does sell stuff on their site. You can order printed copies of any of their hint/strategy guides; I'm sure they make at least a small profit (at least compared to what it costs to print the hint guides) out of that.
Note that the articles this thread is supposedly discussing are about willing sharing, by a fellow who not only created content but is actually sharing a whole lot of it himself. And even he does not condone theft--he suggests that its effects may be a lot less negative and more exaggerated than others make out, but he firmly supports authors' rights to make that decision for themselves.
You have a point. Of course, given the amount of money we're talking about here (as mentioned in Eric's prior rant)--perhaps a few dollars a year at most, it's not like he'll even notice.
I've been "boycotting" Ellison's work for quite some time, myself--but only because the stories of his that I read did not appeal to me.
I would venture to suggest that the main reason dedicated e-book devices haven't taken off is that there isn't all that much you can do with them other than read an e-book...and in some cases, you can't even read any e-book you want, only the ones you buy from the manufacturer. Thanks, but no thanks.
Now PDAs, on the other hand, have a zillion uses...including e-reading. And those have shot right through the roof sale-wise, and there are apparently enough people who enjoy e-reading on them to keep at least a half-dozen major and who knows how many minor PDA-compatible or PDA-only e-book vending sites in clover.
For instance, I've been in correspondence with Lee Fyock of PDA-only e-book site Palm Digital Literature (nee Peanut Press), and while he can't reveal figures, he can tell me that business has been very good. Note that Peanut has been around for several years now, is adding new titles and authors constantly, and has been viewed as such a desirable property that it's been bought out not once but twice, the second time by Palm itself! That doesn't sound like strictly a publisher's dream to me.
I don't see Peanut, or Alexlit, or Fictionwise , or Baen Webscription, or any of the others as being in any danger of shutting down soon. So, clearly, there's more to this e-book thing than some people seem to think.
(Oh, and as for e-books being strictly a vehicle to impose content control, that's not necessarily entirely true either. See the Baen Free Library, Prime Palaver #6.)
Dropping a PDA or e-book reader in the bathtub is annoying but won't put you out a few hundred dollars either--assuming you had it in a sealed, trustworthy ziplock bag (I suggest the kind with the "gripper zipper" that closes verifiably) the way any sensible person would use such a device around water. Go ahead, try it--it's even easier than reading a paperback in the tub, as you can easily work the page-turning controls through the bag and you don't have to worry about getting water spots on the pages.
I've never read on a dedicated e-book reader. Maybe if I had, I would love it so much I wouldn't want to go back...but for now, my Clie 415 with 64 meg Memory Stick is a wonderful friend and companion. I can stuff literally dozens of books in my pocket, so I'm never without something to read.
Not only that, but in most cases where two parties are involved in impending legal action, nobody from either one will comment for fear of accidentally providing the other side with additional ammunition to use in their courtroom battle. It would certainly be irresponsible of a Vivendi rep to comment, especially one higher placed in the chain of command than the level at which the lawsuit was being conducted.
There is a Linux fasttrack-type client, giFT. However, it can't access the KaZaa FastTrack network, due to their encryption. ("No control over the network," my foot!) It can only trade with other people running giFT.
As for KaZaa's own Linux client, I don't know, though I find myself a bit in doubt. After all, you can't pop up ads in a text mode client, nor can it run trojans...
You might want to look here, instead, then.
...he's addressing the encryption of books vs. giving them away, in regard to e-book piracy. I think all the people who try to draw conclusions from this in regard to the music industry are missing the point just a bit. They're very different industries, in very complicated ways.
The thing that's worth cheering for is the boost it gives to 1) giving away stuff free, and 2) avoiding encryption. The encryption of e-books is one of the major hot-button issues on Slashdot today, after all.
And another note: the folks at Alexandria Digital Literature have always offered their e-books/e-stories in plain and unencrypted format, and so far they've never had any problems with people pirating those texts.
Actually, the first few chapters are available for free--as is the case with any Webscription book. Hence, you could have read them without paying.
I've never read TPS, but I love all of the other Flint stuff I've read so far!
The first 1/4 of the next Honor Harrington book, War of Honor, is being posted in preview snippets to the David Weber Baen Bar newsgroup, and being collected here.
Stephen King's ebook experiment ended prematurely--I won't say that it failed per se, since he did make over $400,000 from it--because he failed to grasp the crucial difference between the print and electronic media when he set it up. He seemed to feel that his assets were diminished, that he was actually robbed, by someone downloading a chapter without paying for it.
He wanted payment for each copy downloaded, unlike Baen or many other e-book vendors, regardless of the fact that one could simply convert the file over oneself and not pay him anything. He even used, as a metaphor, asking that a bookstore give you a paperback because you bought the hardcover!
For that matter, King's setup put the power to shut the project down right into the hands of the malicious. If someone had a bone to pick with King, or King's readers, all that he would need to do would be to set up a script to download the chapters repeatedly, and boom--the percentages drop. They do it for online polls all the time.
If King was so concerned about being paid for each copy, he should have cut a deal with an ebook vendor to take the payment before the copy could be downloaded. He probably wouldn't have earned much less on it.
I'd have to put a bookshelf in my pocket to hold all the stuff I've got on my Sony Clié 415's 64 meg memory stick. :)
So when you're done with a book, why not recycle it ?
Actually, it's more likely that it's reviewers selling their review copies; you can often find used marketplace links for a book on the very day of its publication.
And let's not forget the rumors of a John Carter script treatment commissioned by/for Patrick Swayze a few years back.
My favorite bit:(I already have 50 karma, so don't be afraid to mod me up for Informative.
Maybe you need a better mouse, then. I browse with a wheeled mouse and use that middle button feature an awful lot, and I've never had that happen.
It's common film-industry practice when making trailers to take music from some other source to score the trailer. This is because at the point when most trailers are made, the scoring of the actual film has not yet been completed (or in some cases even begun), so they don't yet have anything to work with.
In most cases, the music is entirely unrelated, except in mood. For instance, Carmina Burana's "O Fortuna" is a favorite for trailers involving a lot of action (such as the one for Cutthroat Island); so well-known is it that Williams borrowed heavily from it for "Duel of the Fates" in Episode One.
But in movies that are part of a series, then naturally they'll use music from earlier in the series. Better to have the music be familiar and evocative than for it just to be evocative.
Yes, so? The fellow who got sued for $450,000 was also posting on an online service. If they can't sue Slashdot directly, they'll just go after the individual editor. (I suspect that Michael would be a likely candidate for this type of suit, given the nature of the shoddy fact-checking and editorial slant found in many of the article comments he posts.)
/. as a whole does end up being thrown out, fighting it is still an undesirable expense for V.A. Whateverthey'recalledthisweek. If /.'s enough of a drain on their finances that they're instituting subscriptions, what about the financial burden of a lawsuit?
And even if a hypothetical case against
Standard Disclaimer: IANAL (though I am a bit anal...)
Well, bear in mind that giFT is only available for Linux so far, not for Win32. It will be out sooner or later for non-Linux, but in order for that to happen there have to be people willing to write it first.
You do not recall correctly, Anonymous Coward.
giFT started out as a FastTrack client, but changed to OpenFT once FastTrack locked them out. And they've been that way ever since--and now over a terabyte of files are being traded therein at this very moment. Small potatoes compared to KaZaa, but it's a start.