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Your failed business model is not my problem
Wall Street Journal Opinion JournalLed to this response ...
WONDER LAND
Can Justice Scalia Solve the Riddles Of the Internet?
Without profit even the digital world will break down.
BY DANIEL HENNINGERFriday, April 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
As the berobed Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court sat pestering the suits who came before them days ago to contest Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer v. Grokster, a case nominally about the arcana of "peer-to-peer file sharing," it would have been entirely appropriate had a subversive in the gallery pulled out his wondrous iPod, shoved a teensy PodWave external speaker into the thing and filled the grand chamber with Bob Dylan's ancient, famously prophetic lyrics: "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?"
...No matter what the Supreme Court decides about Grokster's 15 minutes of fame, this is a philosophical issue for the long run. The Web isn't just a technology; it's become an ideology. The Web's birth as a "free" medium and the downloading ethic have engendered the belief that culture--songs, movies, fiction, journalism, photography--should be clickable into the public domain,for "everyone."
What a weird ethic. Some who will spend hundreds of dollars for iPods and home theater systems won't pay one thin dime for a song or movie. So Steve Jobs and the Silicon Valley geeks get richer while the new-music artists sweating through three sets in dim clubs get to live on Red Bull. Where's the justice in that?
Which was taken up on t-shirts ... and so on ...Rehashing the same stale file sharing argument
April 05, 2005 in Political
Over on Dangerousmeta I saw a link to this Op-Ed by Daniel Henninger from the Wall Street Journal, Can Justice Scalia Solve the Riddles Of the Internet? Without profit even the digital world will break down. Having recently read the excellent profile of Justice Scalia in The New Yorker (which frustratingly doesn't appear to be online), I was curious to read the article. I was disappointed to discover it rehashed the same old fallacious arguments about people "stealing" music online, and worse, that it got mired in questions of morals.
...How hard is it to adapt and evolve one's business model to the changing time? I think that's what irks me the most about all this -- taking it to the courts to ensure that because something once was, it should (be legislated to) always be. All this "copyright" is just code for "profit."
P.S. What about a bumper sticker that says, "Your failed business model is not my problem"?
P.P.S. In retrospect, this is such a stupid article, I can't believe I wasted any time responding to it, when I could be enjoying the glories of Paris!
Except insofar as certain organisations insist on trying to claw they eyes out of the inevitable.
no subject
Here's where it breaks down. First, they charge almost (and often exactly) the same as you'd pay for a hard copy, even though they don't have to pay for printing and shipping costs - only server space. Then they add DRM (digital rights management) which ruins the few advantages ebooks have. You can't loan it to your friends (like you would the actual, real book), you can't change the format (for example, you get stuck using something like Adobe's Palm Acrobat Reader which sucks so utterly I lack the words to describe it...), and you often have to register online at various stages providing even more information that you don't want to give out. Whenever I do this, I swear never to do it again (unfortunately every couple years I forget in a moment of weakness).
Then they wonder why ebooks don't sell.
I want to buy ebooks. But I want to buy them at a reduced cost and with no shonky security crap. Talk about failed business model. It seems the media types are just not willing to recognise that they aren't giving value for money, and people are voting with their wallets.
It's like the movie/TV show downloading thing. If it comes out in the US or UK a year before we get it here (if we get it at all) is it any wonder people download it in droves?
Why do current media moguls see their customers as the enemy? If they stopped suing us and started trying to entice us things might go more smoothly!
no subject
This is exactly what thousands of us have been saying for years. The stupid proles in accounting and marketing are too damn scared to be creative and try something new - like an idea.
Something that has been pissing me off for, oh, a decade or so ...
Download (using BitTorrent, of course) the live presentation of "Piracy Is Good?", delivered by Mark Pesce on May 6th, 2005 at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. (200MB)
Indeed. But until they let go of their obsession with "how things are done around here" we'll just keep finding new ways around their obsessions with not giving us what we want.
I'm trying not to focus on this as my PhD topic ...