"You can't argue free in one area and then charge high prices in another with a straight face."
Yes you can, I get NBC broadcasts free over the air. But yet if I wanted to buy ad time on NBC, I would have to pay a market rate.
And lack an understanding as to why music is essentially free. It's free because in the digital age it has very little costs of distribution. However, a live performance is very limited by space and time. To put it another way, I can put up a song on bittorrent and everyone on the planet can download it. But it's impossible for the entire world to attend one of my concerts. Concerts are meat space, they have real and physical costs.
"deflect criticism that this is just another way for musicians to fleece their fans?"
The myth that setting a market price somehow fleeces the customer has to come to an end.
The sole reason scalpers exist is because ticket prices are set well below their market value. If ticket prices reflected reality, i.e., their market value, scalpers would instantly go out of business.
What exactly is wrong with someone selling a product or a service at the market price? Where is the "fleecing" because someone is willing to pay a grand to see Bruce Springsteen. No one puts a gun to that fan's head. He's willing to do it. Selling a product or service at a price someone is willing to pay is completely rational, reasonable, legal, and moral.
What a great idea. Let's get rid of governmental granted monopolies such as copyright, and all the corresponding laws and treaties, and let a truly free market sort this out without any governmental interference!
I'd guess we'd have some real innovation taking place and people would have greater and cheaper access to music, books, movies, etc. What a brave suggestion coming from an industry which has long survived on what is essentially corporate welfare.
Value. This is one of those things that Mike has a hard time grasping
No, Mike understand value perfectly. It's Jon Miller who erroneously equates value with price.
Under Jon Miller's erroneous definition of "value," Google, broadcast radio or TV, and Skype have no value to us solely because we do not pay for them. That's completely asinine.
Think of it this way... does my crap have any value to you? Nope. Would it suddenly and magically have value merely because I put a price on it, let's say one dollar? Nope. It would still have no value, even with the price.
And that's where Jon Miller is wrong. He thinks putting a price on news magically adds value to it. However, "value" does not come from the price tacked onto it, "value" comes from the benefit it gives the user, which is completely irrelevant to the price.
To put it simply, merely putting a price on news will not add any benefit to the user, so there is no possible way it could add value to the user.
"he expected to see the rise of Internet micro-payments"
Waiting for micro-payments (or the perfect DRM that will actually eliminate piracy) is sort of like waiting for the ocean to run out of water while your ship is sinking.
"Unfortunately Lifelock didn't choose a very good business model."
God, you miss the entire point of this blog. When people here say that a company needs a new business model, it's because the company is demanding protection of its old business model. The company wants the government, courts, ISPs, and consumers to ignore reality and enforce its business model by making any reasonable alternatives illegal.
Here, Lifelock is not demanding such protection. In fact, the only company that did demand protection was Experian. Instead of following the law and providing the locks every three months, as the law requires, it ran to court to protect itself.
So not only was your sarcasm incorrect, it was completely wrong.
I was going to say the same thing. Why limit it to three months?! It makes no sense. Well, other than it helps the credit industry by making it easier to push credit on to people. But to me, if someone is going to set up this block, they're probably not going to sign up for a credit card at ever chance they get.
As the article stated, live albums did help rock artists break through. It was mostly because the studio albums were tamed to make them more accessible to fans outside of the rock genrea, but rock fans rejected them because they were so lame, so ironically no one bought them. Finally the band would release their live album to show the world they could actually rock. And rock fans would go crazy.
Frampton, Cheap Trick, Kiss (Their huge break through was Kiss Alive) etc.
According to the complaint, the attorneys failed to file the initial patent application within the one year "on sale bar." Which means under patent law, if an invention has been on sale for more than a year, it is no longer patentable.
The attorneys failed to disclose two prior patents in the initial and subsequent filings. That means that the companies being sued by Air Measurement Technologies, Inc. (the company that wanted the patent and sued the attorneys for malpractice) assert an "inequitable conduct" affirmative defense against AMT. Which means, that AMT were basically already guilty of inequitable conduct due to the conduct of the attorneys.
The main patent could have been filed back in 1990, but was not actually filed until 1997. That shortened the 17 years of protection AMT had over the patent.
And one hilarious act of malpractice was settling the one case for "only" 9 million dollars. AMT argued that by settling for such a low figure, it made it next to impossible to get higher settlements out of the other companies that were infringing the patent.
DVD sales were high because the economy was great and it was cool to "own" a high quality version of your favorite movie.
Now the economy is in the dumps and people have released that you do not need to own movies, it's much cheaper to rent them. Let's face it, exactly how many people are going to watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop more than once? Who needs to "own" Hotel for Dogs?
And there's one other reason for the decline in DVD sales, blu-ray. Now I'm certainly not arguing that the small sales of blu-rays are killing DVD sales. No, what I'm arguing is that most people realize that DVDs are "last year" and that high definition is today and the future. Knowing that, who wants to buy a SD DVD, knowing that the technology is already dated?
And please don't bring up DVD up-sampling. If you seriously believe that an up-sampled DVD looks as good as a blu-ray, you are not qualified to offer an opinion on the matter.
Beijing China - Associated Press - May 28, 2009: Members of China's Beijing Court were arrested today for treason and anti-governmental activities, including ruling in favor of a known anti government activist. Trials were conducted this morning where each judge was found guilty. Executions are set for this afternoon.
On the post: Some Musicians Using Ticket Scalping To Raise Funds For Charity
Re:
Yes you can, I get NBC broadcasts free over the air. But yet if I wanted to buy ad time on NBC, I would have to pay a market rate.
And lack an understanding as to why music is essentially free. It's free because in the digital age it has very little costs of distribution. However, a live performance is very limited by space and time. To put it another way, I can put up a song on bittorrent and everyone on the planet can download it. But it's impossible for the entire world to attend one of my concerts. Concerts are meat space, they have real and physical costs.
On the post: Some Musicians Using Ticket Scalping To Raise Funds For Charity
The myth that setting a market price somehow fleeces the customer has to come to an end.
The sole reason scalpers exist is because ticket prices are set well below their market value. If ticket prices reflected reality, i.e., their market value, scalpers would instantly go out of business.
What exactly is wrong with someone selling a product or a service at the market price? Where is the "fleecing" because someone is willing to pay a grand to see Bruce Springsteen. No one puts a gun to that fan's head. He's willing to do it. Selling a product or service at a price someone is willing to pay is completely rational, reasonable, legal, and moral.
On the post: Disappointing: Obama Administration Won't Support Treaty For Helping Blind Get Digital Books
What a great idea. Let's get rid of governmental granted monopolies such as copyright, and all the corresponding laws and treaties, and let a truly free market sort this out without any governmental interference!
I'd guess we'd have some real innovation taking place and people would have greater and cheaper access to music, books, movies, etc. What a brave suggestion coming from an industry which has long survived on what is essentially corporate welfare.
On the post: News Corp. Digital Boss Says Free Doesn't Work, Doesn't Bother To Explain How Pay Will Work
Re:
No, Mike understand value perfectly. It's Jon Miller who erroneously equates value with price.
Under Jon Miller's erroneous definition of "value," Google, broadcast radio or TV, and Skype have no value to us solely because we do not pay for them. That's completely asinine.
Think of it this way... does my crap have any value to you? Nope. Would it suddenly and magically have value merely because I put a price on it, let's say one dollar? Nope. It would still have no value, even with the price.
And that's where Jon Miller is wrong. He thinks putting a price on news magically adds value to it. However, "value" does not come from the price tacked onto it, "value" comes from the benefit it gives the user, which is completely irrelevant to the price.
To put it simply, merely putting a price on news will not add any benefit to the user, so there is no possible way it could add value to the user.
On the post: News Corp. Digital Boss Says Free Doesn't Work, Doesn't Bother To Explain How Pay Will Work
Waiting for micro-payments (or the perfect DRM that will actually eliminate piracy) is sort of like waiting for the ocean to run out of water while your ship is sinking.
"Any day now...."
On the post: Lifelock Found To Be Illegally Placing Fraud Alerts On Credit Profiles
Re:
God, you miss the entire point of this blog. When people here say that a company needs a new business model, it's because the company is demanding protection of its old business model. The company wants the government, courts, ISPs, and consumers to ignore reality and enforce its business model by making any reasonable alternatives illegal.
Here, Lifelock is not demanding such protection. In fact, the only company that did demand protection was Experian. Instead of following the law and providing the locks every three months, as the law requires, it ran to court to protect itself.
So not only was your sarcasm incorrect, it was completely wrong.
On the post: Lifelock Found To Be Illegally Placing Fraud Alerts On Credit Profiles
Re: Why only 3 Months
On the post: YouTube Supposedly Killing The Live Album... But Is That A Bad Thing?
Re:
Frampton, Cheap Trick, Kiss (Their huge break through was Kiss Alive) etc.
On the post: Lawyers Fined $72.6 Million For Screwing Up Patent Application, Not Letting Company Sue For Enough Cash
Re: What did the law firm do wrong?
The attorneys failed to disclose two prior patents in the initial and subsequent filings. That means that the companies being sued by Air Measurement Technologies, Inc. (the company that wanted the patent and sued the attorneys for malpractice) assert an "inequitable conduct" affirmative defense against AMT. Which means, that AMT were basically already guilty of inequitable conduct due to the conduct of the attorneys.
The main patent could have been filed back in 1990, but was not actually filed until 1997. That shortened the 17 years of protection AMT had over the patent.
And one hilarious act of malpractice was settling the one case for "only" 9 million dollars. AMT argued that by settling for such a low figure, it made it next to impossible to get higher settlements out of the other companies that were infringing the patent.
On the post: BSA's Canadian Piracy Numbers Based On Hunches, Not Actual Surveys
On the post: Film Studios Can 'Cannibalize' Their DVD Sales, Or Lose Them Completely
Now the economy is in the dumps and people have released that you do not need to own movies, it's much cheaper to rent them. Let's face it, exactly how many people are going to watch Paul Blart: Mall Cop more than once? Who needs to "own" Hotel for Dogs?
And there's one other reason for the decline in DVD sales, blu-ray. Now I'm certainly not arguing that the small sales of blu-rays are killing DVD sales. No, what I'm arguing is that most people realize that DVDs are "last year" and that high definition is today and the future. Knowing that, who wants to buy a SD DVD, knowing that the technology is already dated?
And please don't bring up DVD up-sampling. If you seriously believe that an up-sampled DVD looks as good as a blu-ray, you are not qualified to offer an opinion on the matter.
On the post: Surprise: Beijing Court Sides With Victim Of Internet Censorship
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