he created a Hollywood-esk stile plot to trap Anon and WikiLeaks using fake twitter accounts, web servers, and E-Mails. And managed to do it all without tipping off the hackers or letting it slip via one of his employes or a real server/e-mail somewhere.
interesting theory. so you think this might be some sort of honeypot?
Can you please explain that to Mike Masnick then please? His grand claims of "success" of the new model is that concert sales are up, so artists are "making more".
i think you might have missed like 99.99% of the posts here:
if that's the case, then hate away. i'm sure it hurts him deeply.
when every act, every performer, and every artist is whoring out their "special time", it creates the massive flood of the market place that ruins it's value [...] A flood of scarcity is still a flood...
do you actually do anything with music or art? cuz it sounds like you have a weird concept of value.
would you buy the t-shirt for a band you weren't that fond of just because it was cheaper than a shirt from your favorite band?
i certainly wouldn't. that seems like a waste of money to me.
competition is always good. it drives up quality and drives down price. only lazy, greedy, or dishonest people fear competition.
i find it hard to believe that if you are making a worthwhile product, like music that resonates with someone, that you have to worry about competition. it's that whole "connect with fans" thing again. that connection is what differentiates your product.
now, i get worrying about competition with a mediocre product, people only have so much to spend and so they want to spend it on things they truly value.
maybe you should take a look at your product. are you just grunting out lame half-assed covers or something?
Re: Re: Re: Re: "If Sony can't kill off interest in the PS3 by playing whac-a-mole with jailbreak code"
Can someone show me proof that PC gaming is dying? I've been hearing this for a decade now.
it's not dying at all. if you look at the hours logged by people playing solitaire and mafia wars, the PC beats all other gaming devices by a hundredfold.
Re: "If Sony can't kill off interest in the PS3 by playing whac-a-mole with jailbreak code"
What percentage of people buying a PS3, exactly, do you think were planning on jailbreaking it? Like 0.1%? That's frankly generous. You can get mad at Sony about the principle and all but there's no way it would affect their bottom line.
my mother, my sister, my wife and my kids all complain that i won't "allow" them to have things like iphones.
it's not like i have any authority to stop them from buying the things they want to buy, but as their only source of free tech support, they always dread me saying "i told you this would happen."
extrapolating that, for every nerd that is capable of jail breaking something that sony pissed off, there is something like 5 consumers who trust that nerd's recommendations.
Mike keeps pointing to the upswing in concert sales as the great solution to recorded music not selling.
i get that. and you keep saying that prices are going up and sales are going down.
and i'm saying "duh. that's how the market works."
you keep saying "the revenue to replace record sales isn't coming back"
again, i am saying "duh, that shit's gone forever and it's not coming back."
that's the fundamental disconnect. you are stuck on the idea of the old revenue figures coming back. they won't. not ever. the bubble has burst.
it's time move on. it's time to go back to the business of selling stuff.
the way forward is to do more with less. lower prices, more sales, more diversity in the things you sell.
if you can't make it work then get out of the business.
See, what is happening in concerts is what happens to all of the "buy scarce" stuff:[...] it also means that there is a market glut of concerts and concert tickets as a result.
concert tickets are one avenue. if ticket sales are shrinking sell other shit that people are actually willing to buy.
if you don't know what your fans are willing to buy, ASK THEM. that's what the whole CWF thing is about.
piracy is free and it's completely unstoppable. you compete with free by offering something genuine. get people to like you so they want to be associated with you. if they like you and your work enough, they will buy stuff to support you.
People only buy so many t-shirts [...] They can't buy more. [...] there is an incredible oversupply in the market place [...] even real collectors can't afford to buy all of it.
so sell something else.
in japan you can literally buy any conceivable object with "hello kitty" on it. in the U.S. you can buy any conceivable object with a sports team on it. music, movies, television, and books should be the same way.
if you can't sell more, then figure out how to survive on what you are able to sell.
reduce your costs and use your resources more efficiently. a good place to cut back is on middlemen. another good place to save is on promotion and distribution. get your fans to help you out with logistics for your tours, the true believers will be happy to do it.
if after all of that, you still can't make it work, then quit and do something else.
They are entirely predicated on people being stupid enough to pay for the transient value that is immediately lost and unrecoverable
maybe your lack of success in music is based on your inability to understand what people want.
a good experience is a scarce, salable commodity, as long as the value derived from it is greater than the price paid to have it.
maybe if you treated fans like they were people who want you to succeed, and not stupid marks with their wallets open, the new music landscape won't look so desolate and lonely.
Unless you can show how IP isn't as valuable as it was say, 20 or 50 years ago, your theory of a bubble is massively stupid.
well, if you look at the increase in litigation surrounding patents which has been ruled bogus, or the ineffectual efforts of the music and movie industries to control unauthorized file sharing, or the fact that some countries have simply ignored pharmaceutical patents for certain medications it would appear that intellectual property may no longer be as valuable as it was when copying was so much harder to do. it would appear that the efforts invested in protecting IP are outstripped by the actual protection those efforts provide.
if intellectual property, or rather the unauthorized distribution of it, is not worth the dollar figures in damages that the various industries claim, how does that affect the perceived worth of the legitimate product?
the logic works like this:
if an item is copied without authorization and the claim is made that the copy cost a company a large sum, and it turns out that the loss was at best not as large as claimed (see studies that debunk said claims), and at worst, not in fact a loss at all, what does that say about the valuation of the "legitimate" copies?
but honestly, even if it hasn't lost value (indeed if it ever had value to begin with) it most likely hasn't increased in value at the rate that it is being hyped at (see: failed patent lawsuits, illegal file sharing, etc.)
The doubling and tripling of concert ticket prices is the "selling the scarce" thing taught heavily here on Techdirt.
no, price is determined by the market. if the market is unwilling to pay your prices, then lower them. if you cannot lower the price, change your product so that you can offer it at a competitive price. if you are unwilling to change your product, then you will go out of business.
Think of of it as the few paying for all the free music that was pirates / distributed / traded.
that's subsidy. you're still thinking about music in terms of 1990's revenue: as in, "we need something to keep the revenue at the level it was in 1995 when everyone was buying CD's."
you need to think about music like an ecology: a global drought has occurred you need to find a way to survive in the new, drier environment. the crops you used to grow can't grow anymore. people don't want to buy the food that you are selling.
the revenue from the 90's is gone and it's not coming back. you need to make your business work in the current environment of less money in the industry and having to work harder to earn it. the old guard is making legal threats and moral pleas in the face of what might as well be an ice age.
Once consumers stop overpaying for the scarce (real or imagined), the wheels fall off the whole "cwf+rtb" wagon. When they run out of people willing to pay stupid inflated prices for certain things, things will change.
if your business model is predicated on people being stupid, you need a new business model.
only time will tell, but personally, i think the recording industry has had well over a decade to pull out of it's current nosedive. if it hasn't managed to do so by now it's not going to.
but hey, don't let me stop you. by all means, keep on whipping that dead horse.
and keep crying about how a bunch of mean old pirates killed it, cuz that's gonna make a difference.
like tech companies in 1999-2001 and like real estate in 2005-2007, intellectual property is over valued.
so long as the market has faith in intellectual property, as it kept faith in tech companies and real estate, IP will increase in value, the instant that faith is lost (like in 2002 and 2008 respectively) there will be a crash.
The US government is becoming more and more aware of the huge economic impact of piracy, and the impacts of the loss of IP to countries with weak protections (or none at all). The US is not a producer nation of hardgoods for the most part anymore, the US is a producer of IP, of the most desired music and movie content in the world, and generally a leader in all things that would fall under copyright.
this is exactly right.
this is exactly why the US needs to stop IP enforcement and focus on labor and environmental standards for other countries.
all the IP enforcement in the world isn't going to make a lick of difference for the US economy.
this situation will be said to be completely different because the internet is involved
not only the internets but also mp3's. uploading mp3's to the internets destroyed all music. imagine what recording mp3s directly from the internets will do.
I also object to the implication that one is somehow justified in stealing merely because you can't get the product you want
object away. it's not going to change anything.
the fact of the matter is that piracy makes paying for a digital product optional. companies need to offer a reason for people to choose the pay option.
it's just easier and cheaper for individuals to take action against something they disagree with than it is for a company to keep control of its products.
you see this with game consoles: the ps3 eye camera has no official PC support, but it's not hard to get it working in both windows and linux, same with the xbox kinnect camera. and don't get me started on the alternate OS support for the PS3.
incidents like these should be a warning to companies: make your products open and easily accessible or they will be made open and accessible in a manner that you do not agree with.
a physical object is easy to keep in existence, as long as it's made from a non-perishable material, since objects don't really decay. also, from a historical standpoint, the information about a tool's application will also probably always be around, even if the information exists only in historical records.
but what about the techniques or methods for applying a tool?
for example: because they are generally made of steel, forceps will probably always exist, but will their use in childbirth become a lost art?
thanks to cheap video recording and storage, this may not be the case in the future, since historical "documents" may include historical footage, but techniques of the recent past may die off with their practitioners.
On the post: MPEG-LA Follows Through On Its Promise To Go After Google For Daring To Offer Patent-Free Video
Re: Market
they keep using that word. i do not think it means what they think it means.
On the post: Leaked HBGary Documents Show Plan To Spread Wikileaks Propaganda For BofA... And 'Attack' Glenn Greenwald
Re: Security Firm?
targeting security professionals is a long tradition in hacking circles and a source of much hacker drama.
see: LOD vs. MOD, shimomura vs. mitnick, etc.
On the post: Leaked HBGary Documents Show Plan To Spread Wikileaks Propaganda For BofA... And 'Attack' Glenn Greenwald
Re: Intentional Misdirection
interesting theory. so you think this might be some sort of honeypot?
i suppose it's possible. honeypots are great for a number of things, including epic lolz:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJagxe-Gvpw
On the post: Smashing The Scales: Not Everything Needs 'Balance'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: True story
i think you might have missed like 99.99% of the posts here:
amanda plamer makes 15k in 3 minutes (no concert necessary):
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100722/12084810324.shtml
modest success is still success (selling recordings even!)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100411/2208368956.shtml
or just one of thousands of others.
or do you just hate mike?
if that's the case, then hate away. i'm sure it hurts him deeply.
when every act, every performer, and every artist is whoring out their "special time", it creates the massive flood of the market place that ruins it's value [...] A flood of scarcity is still a flood...
do you actually do anything with music or art? cuz it sounds like you have a weird concept of value.
would you buy the t-shirt for a band you weren't that fond of just because it was cheaper than a shirt from your favorite band?
i certainly wouldn't. that seems like a waste of money to me.
competition is always good. it drives up quality and drives down price. only lazy, greedy, or dishonest people fear competition.
i find it hard to believe that if you are making a worthwhile product, like music that resonates with someone, that you have to worry about competition. it's that whole "connect with fans" thing again. that connection is what differentiates your product.
now, i get worrying about competition with a mediocre product, people only have so much to spend and so they want to spend it on things they truly value.
maybe you should take a look at your product. are you just grunting out lame half-assed covers or something?
On the post: LG Asks US Gov't To Block Import Of All PS3s Over Patent Infringement
Re: Re: Re: Re: "If Sony can't kill off interest in the PS3 by playing whac-a-mole with jailbreak code"
it's not dying at all. if you look at the hours logged by people playing solitaire and mafia wars, the PC beats all other gaming devices by a hundredfold.
On the post: LG Asks US Gov't To Block Import Of All PS3s Over Patent Infringement
Re: "If Sony can't kill off interest in the PS3 by playing whac-a-mole with jailbreak code"
my mother, my sister, my wife and my kids all complain that i won't "allow" them to have things like iphones.
it's not like i have any authority to stop them from buying the things they want to buy, but as their only source of free tech support, they always dread me saying "i told you this would happen."
extrapolating that, for every nerd that is capable of jail breaking something that sony pissed off, there is something like 5 consumers who trust that nerd's recommendations.
On the post: Smashing The Scales: Not Everything Needs 'Balance'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: True story
i get that. and you keep saying that prices are going up and sales are going down.
and i'm saying "duh. that's how the market works."
you keep saying "the revenue to replace record sales isn't coming back"
again, i am saying "duh, that shit's gone forever and it's not coming back."
that's the fundamental disconnect. you are stuck on the idea of the old revenue figures coming back. they won't. not ever. the bubble has burst.
it's time move on. it's time to go back to the business of selling stuff.
the way forward is to do more with less. lower prices, more sales, more diversity in the things you sell.
if you can't make it work then get out of the business.
See, what is happening in concerts is what happens to all of the "buy scarce" stuff:[...] it also means that there is a market glut of concerts and concert tickets as a result.
concert tickets are one avenue. if ticket sales are shrinking sell other shit that people are actually willing to buy.
if you don't know what your fans are willing to buy, ASK THEM. that's what the whole CWF thing is about.
piracy is free and it's completely unstoppable. you compete with free by offering something genuine. get people to like you so they want to be associated with you. if they like you and your work enough, they will buy stuff to support you.
People only buy so many t-shirts [...] They can't buy more. [...] there is an incredible oversupply in the market place [...] even real collectors can't afford to buy all of it.
so sell something else.
in japan you can literally buy any conceivable object with "hello kitty" on it. in the U.S. you can buy any conceivable object with a sports team on it. music, movies, television, and books should be the same way.
if you can't sell more, then figure out how to survive on what you are able to sell.
reduce your costs and use your resources more efficiently. a good place to cut back is on middlemen. another good place to save is on promotion and distribution. get your fans to help you out with logistics for your tours, the true believers will be happy to do it.
if after all of that, you still can't make it work, then quit and do something else.
They are entirely predicated on people being stupid enough to pay for the transient value that is immediately lost and unrecoverable
maybe your lack of success in music is based on your inability to understand what people want.
a good experience is a scarce, salable commodity, as long as the value derived from it is greater than the price paid to have it.
maybe if you treated fans like they were people who want you to succeed, and not stupid marks with their wallets open, the new music landscape won't look so desolate and lonely.
On the post: IP Czar Report Hits On All The Lobbyist Talking Points; Warns Of More Draconian Copyright Laws To Come
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
well, if you look at the increase in litigation surrounding patents which has been ruled bogus, or the ineffectual efforts of the music and movie industries to control unauthorized file sharing, or the fact that some countries have simply ignored pharmaceutical patents for certain medications it would appear that intellectual property may no longer be as valuable as it was when copying was so much harder to do. it would appear that the efforts invested in protecting IP are outstripped by the actual protection those efforts provide.
if intellectual property, or rather the unauthorized distribution of it, is not worth the dollar figures in damages that the various industries claim, how does that affect the perceived worth of the legitimate product?
the logic works like this:
if an item is copied without authorization and the claim is made that the copy cost a company a large sum, and it turns out that the loss was at best not as large as claimed (see studies that debunk said claims), and at worst, not in fact a loss at all, what does that say about the valuation of the "legitimate" copies?
but honestly, even if it hasn't lost value (indeed if it ever had value to begin with) it most likely hasn't increased in value at the rate that it is being hyped at (see: failed patent lawsuits, illegal file sharing, etc.)
On the post: Smashing The Scales: Not Everything Needs 'Balance'
Re: Re: Re: Re: True story
no, price is determined by the market. if the market is unwilling to pay your prices, then lower them. if you cannot lower the price, change your product so that you can offer it at a competitive price. if you are unwilling to change your product, then you will go out of business.
Think of of it as the few paying for all the free music that was pirates / distributed / traded.
that's subsidy. you're still thinking about music in terms of 1990's revenue: as in, "we need something to keep the revenue at the level it was in 1995 when everyone was buying CD's."
you need to think about music like an ecology: a global drought has occurred you need to find a way to survive in the new, drier environment. the crops you used to grow can't grow anymore. people don't want to buy the food that you are selling.
the revenue from the 90's is gone and it's not coming back. you need to make your business work in the current environment of less money in the industry and having to work harder to earn it. the old guard is making legal threats and moral pleas in the face of what might as well be an ice age.
Once consumers stop overpaying for the scarce (real or imagined), the wheels fall off the whole "cwf+rtb" wagon. When they run out of people willing to pay stupid inflated prices for certain things, things will change.
if your business model is predicated on people being stupid, you need a new business model.
only time will tell, but personally, i think the recording industry has had well over a decade to pull out of it's current nosedive. if it hasn't managed to do so by now it's not going to.
but hey, don't let me stop you. by all means, keep on whipping that dead horse.
and keep crying about how a bunch of mean old pirates killed it, cuz that's gonna make a difference.
On the post: Smashing The Scales: Not Everything Needs 'Balance'
Re: Re:
yes, but in order for the "OMG steeling" meme to work, you have to conveniently ignore that fact.
On the post: Smashing The Scales: Not Everything Needs 'Balance'
Re: Re: Re: The purpose of copyright law
after the life of the author +95 years. unless the "author" is a corporation which never dies, then it's never.
you got a problem with that?
On the post: IP Czar Report Hits On All The Lobbyist Talking Points; Warns Of More Draconian Copyright Laws To Come
Re: Re: Re:
like tech companies in 1999-2001 and like real estate in 2005-2007, intellectual property is over valued.
so long as the market has faith in intellectual property, as it kept faith in tech companies and real estate, IP will increase in value, the instant that faith is lost (like in 2002 and 2008 respectively) there will be a crash.
On the post: IP Czar Report Hits On All The Lobbyist Talking Points; Warns Of More Draconian Copyright Laws To Come
Re:
this is exactly right.
this is exactly why the US needs to stop IP enforcement and focus on labor and environmental standards for other countries.
all the IP enforcement in the world isn't going to make a lick of difference for the US economy.
On the post: EFF Warns That FCC Net Neutrality Rules Are A Bad, Bad Idea
Re: Re: Re: And where did the monolithic communications providers come from?
monopoly, oligopoly, six of one, half dozen of another.
On the post: If You Don't Offer Legit Versions, Is It That Big A Surprise That People Want Unauthorized Copies?
Re: Rosetta Stone Banner Ad...
On the post: Is Downloading And Converting A YouTube Video To An MP3 Infringement?
Re: How it'll be different....
not only the internets but also mp3's. uploading mp3's to the internets destroyed all music. imagine what recording mp3s directly from the internets will do.
On the post: If You Don't Offer Legit Versions, Is It That Big A Surprise That People Want Unauthorized Copies?
Re: Re: Consumer is the king
object away. it's not going to change anything.
the fact of the matter is that piracy makes paying for a digital product optional. companies need to offer a reason for people to choose the pay option.
On the post: If You Don't Offer Legit Versions, Is It That Big A Surprise That People Want Unauthorized Copies?
action is cheaper than control
you see this with game consoles: the ps3 eye camera has no official PC support, but it's not hard to get it working in both windows and linux, same with the xbox kinnect camera. and don't get me started on the alternate OS support for the PS3.
incidents like these should be a warning to companies: make your products open and easily accessible or they will be made open and accessible in a manner that you do not agree with.
On the post: Do Tools Ever Die Off?
clever distinction: tools vs. techniques
but what about the techniques or methods for applying a tool?
for example: because they are generally made of steel, forceps will probably always exist, but will their use in childbirth become a lost art?
thanks to cheap video recording and storage, this may not be the case in the future, since historical "documents" may include historical footage, but techniques of the recent past may die off with their practitioners.
On the post: Do Tools Ever Die Off?
Re: Well,
you and me both.
tho, ted "old intertubes" stevens is no longer with us.
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