Personally, I always get confused by the phrase "Free Beer", not knowing much about "Beer Culture". I shudder when wondering who ever thought that was a good example to provide a distinction between free as in freedom and free as in gratis, and why they thought of it.
and no more. When someone buys a product, and it isn't good enough to keep, or doesn't fulfill their needs for very long, they sell it. This continues until the product ends up in the hands of someone who does actually want to keep the product. Thus the number of copies of the product in circulation is close to the actual value of the product to the market. The better the product, the fewer copies will be resold, and thus the more copies will be purchased from the original vendor. The worse the product, the more each copy will get passed around, reducing the original sales.
This is good for the market, because it encourages higher-quality products, and provides some defense against marketing. It's also good for the economy, because it reduces the cost of impulse purchases. Someone has to purchase a product, test it, and report on its quality to the community. People are more likely to purchase a product if they know they can resell it if it doesn't suit their tastes.
Companies want to force people to buy before they have any experience with a product so they can offload poor quality products on the market, increasing profits by reducing costs. They don't want you to know the product isn't worth it until you have made an irrevocable expenditure. They want to sell more product than the market will really support. However, this isn't good for most companies, especially newer ones. If potential customers don't have the freedom to "try before they buy", then they're less likely to make risky purchases. They'll stick with the names they know and trust, and won't be as adventurous.
Some people argue that if you want to support a company, you should buy directly from them, and not buy used. However, if you want to give a company an accurate estimate of what their product is worth to the market, you should buy used when possible, so they don't overestimate their product.
Companies need to be working their sales estimates based on a fully informed market, not an ignorant one. They can't depend on deceiving their customers forever. People will borrow, rent, buy used, or pirate media in order to be informed about their potential purchases. There's no way to shut down the flow of information. Even if they defeat rental or resale, they can't stop people talking about a product.
So instead of trying to depend on (and investing so much money in) marketing, the law, and technological burdens such as DRM, media companies should invest in making better products in order to be successful.
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Personally, I always get confused by the phrase "Free Beer", not knowing much about "Beer Culture". I shudder when wondering who ever thought that was a good example to provide a distinction between free as in freedom and free as in gratis, and why they thought of it.
and no more. When someone buys a product, and it isn't good enough to keep, or doesn't fulfill their needs for very long, they sell it. This continues until the product ends up in the hands of someone who does actually want to keep the product. Thus the number of copies of the product in circulation is close to the actual value of the product to the market. The better the product, the fewer copies will be resold, and thus the more copies will be purchased from the original vendor. The worse the product, the more each copy will get passed around, reducing the original sales.
This is good for the market, because it encourages higher-quality products, and provides some defense against marketing. It's also good for the economy, because it reduces the cost of impulse purchases. Someone has to purchase a product, test it, and report on its quality to the community. People are more likely to purchase a product if they know they can resell it if it doesn't suit their tastes.
Companies want to force people to buy before they have any experience with a product so they can offload poor quality products on the market, increasing profits by reducing costs. They don't want you to know the product isn't worth it until you have made an irrevocable expenditure. They want to sell more product than the market will really support. However, this isn't good for most companies, especially newer ones. If potential customers don't have the freedom to "try before they buy", then they're less likely to make risky purchases. They'll stick with the names they know and trust, and won't be as adventurous.
Some people argue that if you want to support a company, you should buy directly from them, and not buy used. However, if you want to give a company an accurate estimate of what their product is worth to the market, you should buy used when possible, so they don't overestimate their product.
Companies need to be working their sales estimates based on a fully informed market, not an ignorant one. They can't depend on deceiving their customers forever. People will borrow, rent, buy used, or pirate media in order to be informed about their potential purchases. There's no way to shut down the flow of information. Even if they defeat rental or resale, they can't stop people talking about a product.
So instead of trying to depend on (and investing so much money in) marketing, the law, and technological burdens such as DRM, media companies should invest in making better products in order to be successful.