"Wonder what will be the likely reaction by the multitude of foreign pharmaceutical companies that have heavily invested in the establishment of JVs with Chinese companies for the construction and staffing of R&D and production facilities in China?"
I imagine they will complain and lobby, and at the end of the day settle for making more drugs and selling them to countries who are willing to pay their excessive fees (and the countries with easy means of protecting their patents)
"Wonder what will be the likely reaction when students from China apply for visas to study at foreign universities engaging in the type of research that is necessary to feed a pipeline of qualified students into the Chinese industry?"
Not sure what you think is going to happen here. You think the world is going to start boycotting China? We need them more than they need us.
The truth is B&N can't compete on price because they are greedy. The marginal cost of an ebook is almost nothing.
The whole idea that they could run out the "competition" is idiotic too. If they ran everyone out of business (lol, really) and then started jacking prices, it seems like piracy would increase and you'd see more players enter the market to provide what consumers want.
As a embedded systems engineer, I can tell you that it would be very hard for sprint to tell the difference between using your 3/4g Mobile service to browse and using a rooted phone with a tethering app. The data is data argument is completely true.
I'm guessing that users that use their phones as tethering devices tend to use more data, and this is some executives bad idea at monetizing those users (who will probably end up leaving, myself potentially included).
My advice to Mike and others, root your phone and download a tethering app (maybe a proxy service). The inconvenience definitely has a price though.
A lot of people (including myself) will download digital copies of books they already own physical copies of. It's just a nice way to consolidate a large part of your library in to one place. E-book prices are ridiculous in many cases. There is no way I'm going to pay more for an e-book then a physical copy of a book, even a used one.
Plus the digital versions you download tend to have no DRM, meaning I can read it on any platform I want, easily.
I think she's more upset with the specific person who leaked it, who probably worked at the recording studio she did the album at. Plus the fact that it was an unfinished product and might not sound as good as the final thing.
I've thought similarly for a while. Broadband internet bandwidth is essentially a featureless service, and fits in with a bunch of utilities we already regulate.
I think a compromise could be something like what they have in the UK, where BT is forced to sell bandwidth wholesale (regulated price) to smaller (regional) companies that can then turn and attract subscribers however they can. iirc BT fought this hard at first but it has actually worked out for them pretty well (less overhead, more efficient now that they can focus more on just the infrastructure).
Projects like Google Fiber help too, but I don't think their scale is large enough.
"Copyright may have some gray areas but he wasn't in any of them-- unless you're some anarchist who believes that it's wrong to give the creator any control over their hard work."
I think the extremely gray area was the part where he owes multiple times his entire net worth in damages for a crime that didn't hurt anyone. If you would even try to claim that him sharing those songs cost the industry a mere 100$ you would have to be completely out of touch with reality. As soon as a song is released, and more commonly before, the cat is out of the bag.
You bought seven seasons of a show you never watched for 75$? For most people that is quite a plunge, and I daresay they would rather spend the 5m it takes to bittorrent a few episodes to see if they like it first.
It's not about sticking it to the man. Most people want to support shows they like, if its at all possible and within their budget. It's not their fault that all these companies have half-century old business models.
Piracy is a force that every company making digital goods has to deal with at some point. Understanding why people are pirating your software/media can help you make better business decisions.
Re: 'Competition' doesn't quite have the same meaning in the mobile market.
"Even if you were to do away with 'locked' phones, it doesn't matter -- most phones physically can't work on any of the other networks. Even networks that support the same standards use different parts of the spectrum and the phones can be incompatible. Given that you need to sign a two-year contract to not pay an insane amount for a decent device, it means you can't 'just switch', and thus 'competition' doesn't work in the normal way."
Misleading. This is only true if the phones are designed to specifically only work on one network. RF transceivers are not that sensitive. It is true in that the providers ask for these phones to be hardware locked, but in that case you aren't really "doing away" with 'locked' phones.
All of this makes a great case for turning data bandwidth and network management in to something like a public utility (look at British Telecomm). This has led to a huge amount of competition between "service providers", who now buy bandwidth wholesale from BT (at a regulated rate) and then sell plans to consumers.
My point is that data bandwidth is a completely featureless product, like water or electricity. Since these companies (comcast/telcos/whoever) OWN the featureless product, they try to bundle things in to it and make it a non-featureless product, even though that isn't the service that most of us want. If companies had to buy the bandwidth wholesale, they would HAVE to offer what the consumer wants in order to compete.
I believe you could re-introduce competition to these markets if our anti-trust laws actually worked, and if internet bandwidth was made in to a public utility.
Exactly, the first few people to try counter suits against these huge corporations would have to fight through appeals court after appeals court. The major labels wouldn't even care too much if they lost, as they could clearly show it is not economically feasible to try to take them to court.
I'd say a system that requires a judge/jury to determine whether some piece of art is infringing or fair use is definitely a design level issue. Judges shouldn't have to be art/music critics.
"No matter the what the cost of the books, I spend about the same amount per month."
This is largely true for all forms of entertainment. People have a set amount they can spend on entertainment, be it movies/books/bars/shows/etc. One of the things that can significantly affect this number is a) marketing and b) making it easy for a consumer to buy.
It is incredibly easy to justify on a whim buying a 1.00$ ebook, a 1-2$ tv show episode, or a 2-5$ movie/game. Most studies show that buying at these prices can easily become habitual and consistent. Just look at ringtones in the 90's and smartphone/tablet apps today. Angry birds priced at .99$ pretty much feels free.
Habitual / consistent buying patterns function very similarly to subscription based revenue streams, which is the bread & butter of so many businesses. I guess the point is you can attract many new buyers with low priced digital goods, who will then often buy more digital goods and in the meantime be exposed to the other products your website offers.
Amazon does a pretty good job of this, as they know these offerings increase the value of their service. These days, whenever I need to buy something, I usually just assume Amazon will have it. And so they get my money.
On the post: The DOJ's Truly Disgusting Argument For Denying A Megaupload User Access To His Legal Content
Re: Re: Re:
Besides, move out of the country and go where? Our theoretical decline would be part of a world wide decline.
On the post: After India And Brazil, Now China Takes Steps To Allow Cheap Versions Of Patented Drugs
Re: Re:
On the post: After India And Brazil, Now China Takes Steps To Allow Cheap Versions Of Patented Drugs
Re:
I imagine they will complain and lobby, and at the end of the day settle for making more drugs and selling them to countries who are willing to pay their excessive fees (and the countries with easy means of protecting their patents)
"Wonder what will be the likely reaction when students from China apply for visas to study at foreign universities engaging in the type of research that is necessary to feed a pipeline of qualified students into the Chinese industry?"
Not sure what you think is going to happen here. You think the world is going to start boycotting China? We need them more than they need us.
On the post: Barnes & Noble: Ebooks Should Be Expensive So Amazon Won't Kill Us And Make Ebooks Expensive
Re:
The whole idea that they could run out the "competition" is idiotic too. If they ran everyone out of business (lol, really) and then started jacking prices, it seems like piracy would increase and you'd see more players enter the market to provide what consumers want.
On the post: Fiona Apple To Label: Back Off, I'm Connecting With My Fans
Re:
On the post: Fiona Apple To Label: Back Off, I'm Connecting With My Fans
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Sprint Changes 'Unlimited' Broadband To 5 Gigs... While Still Advertising Unlimited Broadband
Re:
I'm guessing that users that use their phones as tethering devices tend to use more data, and this is some executives bad idea at monetizing those users (who will probably end up leaving, myself potentially included).
My advice to Mike and others, root your phone and download a tethering app (maybe a proxy service). The inconvenience definitely has a price though.
On the post: Not Only Can You 'Compete With Free' You Have To If You Don't Want Your Business Overrun By Piracy
Re:
Plus the digital versions you download tend to have no DRM, meaning I can read it on any platform I want, easily.
On the post: Regina Spektor: I'm Lucky That People Can Get All My Music For Free
Re: A change of tune for her?
On the post: Broadband In Crisis: Does The US Need Regulation To Force Meaningful Competition?
Good Ideas
I think a compromise could be something like what they have in the UK, where BT is forced to sell bandwidth wholesale (regulated price) to smaller (regional) companies that can then turn and attract subscribers however they can. iirc BT fought this hard at first but it has actually worked out for them pretty well (less overhead, more efficient now that they can focus more on just the infrastructure).
Projects like Google Fiber help too, but I don't think their scale is large enough.
On the post: Apple And Microsoft Behind Patent Troll Armed With Thousands Of Nortel Patents
Re: Poor Engineers
On the post: Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Tenenbaum Case; Allows Charade To Continue
Re: Sucks to be Tenenbaum? He asked for it.
I think the extremely gray area was the part where he owes multiple times his entire net worth in damages for a crime that didn't hurt anyone. If you would even try to claim that him sharing those songs cost the industry a mere 100$ you would have to be completely out of touch with reality. As soon as a song is released, and more commonly before, the cat is out of the bag.
These rulings are awful, end of story.
On the post: Game Of Thrones On Track To Be Most Pirated Show Of 2012; Pirates Still Asking HBO For Legitimate Options
Re: STOP JUSTIFYING pirates.
On the post: Game Of Thrones On Track To Be Most Pirated Show Of 2012; Pirates Still Asking HBO For Legitimate Options
Re:
It's not about sticking it to the man. Most people want to support shows they like, if its at all possible and within their budget. It's not their fault that all these companies have half-century old business models.
Piracy is a force that every company making digital goods has to deal with at some point. Understanding why people are pirating your software/media can help you make better business decisions.
On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices
Re: 'Competition' doesn't quite have the same meaning in the mobile market.
Misleading. This is only true if the phones are designed to specifically only work on one network. RF transceivers are not that sensitive. It is true in that the providers ask for these phones to be hardware locked, but in that case you aren't really "doing away" with 'locked' phones.
On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices
Re: Re: Re:
My point is that data bandwidth is a completely featureless product, like water or electricity. Since these companies (comcast/telcos/whoever) OWN the featureless product, they try to bundle things in to it and make it a non-featureless product, even though that isn't the service that most of us want. If companies had to buy the bandwidth wholesale, they would HAVE to offer what the consumer wants in order to compete.
I believe you could re-introduce competition to these markets if our anti-trust laws actually worked, and if internet bandwidth was made in to a public utility.
On the post: As A Tribute To MCA: Can We Stop The War On Sampling?
Re: Re: Re: Band-Aids
On the post: As A Tribute To MCA: Can We Stop The War On Sampling?
Re: Re: Band-Aids
On the post: Paulo Coehlo Convinces His Publisher To Offer (Almost) All Of His Ebooks For $0.99
Re:
This is largely true for all forms of entertainment. People have a set amount they can spend on entertainment, be it movies/books/bars/shows/etc. One of the things that can significantly affect this number is a) marketing and b) making it easy for a consumer to buy.
It is incredibly easy to justify on a whim buying a 1.00$ ebook, a 1-2$ tv show episode, or a 2-5$ movie/game. Most studies show that buying at these prices can easily become habitual and consistent. Just look at ringtones in the 90's and smartphone/tablet apps today. Angry birds priced at .99$ pretty much feels free.
Habitual / consistent buying patterns function very similarly to subscription based revenue streams, which is the bread & butter of so many businesses. I guess the point is you can attract many new buyers with low priced digital goods, who will then often buy more digital goods and in the meantime be exposed to the other products your website offers.
Amazon does a pretty good job of this, as they know these offerings increase the value of their service. These days, whenever I need to buy something, I usually just assume Amazon will have it. And so they get my money.
On the post: Law Professor: Megaupload Prosecution A 'Depressing Display Of Abuse Of Government Authority'
Department of Justice?
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