Though I think the music industry is acting in an exploitative and short-sighted way, I'm not terribly worried. The general consensus from the tech crowd seems to be that $3 a song is gouging. Supposing Apple caves and lets labels price their songs higher, consumers will reject price gouging and go back to piracy. After all, the labels aren't just competing with each other, they're competing with illegal P2P. Consumers have shown that they'll pay $1 for a song legally, but my guess is that if $3 is too much, the labels'll know it pretty quickly through lost revenue and prices will drop again. To play devil's advocate, though, consumers may actually be willing to pay more $ for certain songs. All songs, after all, aren't created equal, and I'd rather pay $5 for one good song than $1 for 20 bad ones. In any case, I'm guessing prices will be exactly where they should be in several years.
It billed itself as an impartial and realistic hell-invades-military-outpost simulator, but I'm beginning to notice a distinct anti-demonic-zombie bias. Also, the game is blatantly pro-shotgun.
Interestingly, the article made no distinction between legal and illegal downloads of copywritten material. Is this just poor journalism, or has Sweden actually outlawed sites like the Swedish iTunes Music Store that allow users to legally download music? It would be interesting to see how such sales are doing in a country with such rampant piracy.
This means that, in theory, some nogoodnik could obfuscate legitimate (a.k.a. legal) file sharing. For example, I have a Creative Commons licensed CD that can (and should) legally circulate on P2P networks. Someone (a.k.a. ex-girlfriend) could create junk "versions" of my music and prevent it from circulating properly. That would Suck.
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Though I think the music industry is acting in an exploitative and short-sighted way, I'm not terribly worried. The general consensus from the tech crowd seems to be that $3 a song is gouging. Supposing Apple caves and lets labels price their songs higher, consumers will reject price gouging and go back to piracy. After all, the labels aren't just competing with each other, they're competing with illegal P2P. Consumers have shown that they'll pay $1 for a song legally, but my guess is that if $3 is too much, the labels'll know it pretty quickly through lost revenue and prices will drop again. To play devil's advocate, though, consumers may actually be willing to pay more $ for certain songs. All songs, after all, aren't created equal, and I'd rather pay $5 for one good song than $1 for 20 bad ones. In any case, I'm guessing prices will be exactly where they should be in several years.
It billed itself as an impartial and realistic hell-invades-military-outpost simulator, but I'm beginning to notice a distinct anti-demonic-zombie bias. Also, the game is blatantly pro-shotgun.
Interestingly, the article made no distinction between legal and illegal downloads of copywritten material. Is this just poor journalism, or has Sweden actually outlawed sites like the Swedish iTunes Music Store that allow users to legally download music? It would be interesting to see how such sales are doing in a country with such rampant piracy.
This means that, in theory, some nogoodnik could obfuscate legitimate (a.k.a. legal) file sharing. For example, I have a Creative Commons licensed CD that can (and should) legally circulate on P2P networks. Someone (a.k.a. ex-girlfriend) could create junk "versions" of my music and prevent it from circulating properly. That would Suck.
But how will Tony Blair know what to do next?