Works fine on the front end for a few with either good products or the right breaks in publicity, but as number of products grows, even the best gets lost in a sea of choices.
the problem is never excessive choice. it's always a lack of differentiation. there is no such thing as "too much choice", unless you are lazy or uncreative. the problem is producers who cannot differentiate themselves.
one way to do that, as is stated here on techdirt all the time, is to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy. another way is to simply make stuff that people really believe in. the phenomena is described here sometimes as a "true fan".
That's actually EXACTLY the "model" major studios use, of promoting a few -- regardless of merit -- and using the rest as a pool from which they pluck ideas and talent.
that was great when selling millions of copies of "a few" things paid the bills, but it doesn't anymore. anything with mass appeal will just get copied en mass, partly because that's the most efficient way to get it, but also because the product is disposable, forgettable, and not really worth the price of admission.
major studios sell promotion and distribution at a markup to subsidize production. copying slashes the price of promotion and distribution, leaving little to subsidize production.
that leaves the studios with a small number of products with high production costs and shrinking avenues of subsidy. that's a broken product. trying to sell a broken product is a broken business model.
SO, while it's working now for a few -- who are actually using the publicity angle -- is it going to work *in general*? Example: the Iphone arena with its 100000 choices? I think not -- IN GENERAL, mind. For a FEW, yes.
in general, the business of selling something that people can get for free, with nothing that differentiates your product from the free stuff, will not work. in general, selling something that adds value to something free, like professional support or convenience, does work.
there'd have to be a solution in the overall society, of perhaps subsiding these "producers" through an easy and painless vote system, and out of general revenues. -- But of course that's "socialism" so reactionaries will dismiss it out of hand, while moneyed interests will oppose it with literal force.
who can say no to red blooded american ingenuity? who would scoff at old fashioned capitalistic competition? who thinks that plain old small town community isn't a good idea? who has something bad to say about creativity or customer satisfaction?
why not make something that a small group of people believe in and will pay to support? why not build a dedicated community around your product and leverage it for support, the way that churches do? why not cowboy up and do some real work instead of hiding behind lawyers, licenses, and lawsuits like a sissy?
Things will never change with them and they will continue to make bad decision after bad decision until they are no more.
It can't happen fast enough for me. Good riddance.
for me copying used to be about getting free shit, but that had been eclipsed by a sense of civil disobedience, of political statement (see the swedish pirate party hosting the pirate bay), and about hastening the demise of large media conglomerates.
i read the whole post. you miss the point. it isnt just a laptop getting confiscated, its you spending time in a federal holding cell while they take the time to decrypt stuff if you hid anything on there.
and you still miss mine. i said this:
this is different than just keeping stuff in an encrypted volume... a big encrypted block on a drive might keep your data safe, but it would give border types a reason to detain your or otherwise harass you into decrypting your data for inspection.
then i said this:
that said, it would be better all around to just keep your stuff somewhere online and not on disk so you can pull it down once you are over the border.
as in, you could encrypt stuff, but packing binaries so your circumvention tools evade detection in the open, or just leaving your stuff online and pulling it down after you cross the border would be better.
you also miss the larger point: it's so easy for serious circumvent-ers to evade searches at the border, so why are border patrols bothering with them at all? all these searches will do is harass innocent people. copyright circumvention will continue unimpeded and the only people who suffer will be the ones who get hassled at airports.
this is the same argument against DRM: DRM doesn't keep media products off of file sharing sites so why bother with it? all it does is inconvenience your paying customers and if you screw it up badly enough, it will actually drive them to piracy.
it's one thing for media companies to waste their money on something as futile as trying to stop file sharing. it's their money, they can throw it away if they want to. it's another for governments to waste tax payer dollars harassing people at the border. it's not their money, it's yours.
So you've have no problem with Mike calling up your ISP and saying you did something bad and have them turn over all your information without any evidence whatsoever?
A digital lock prevents both legal and illegal copying. A device for circumventing it is not therefore a copyright circumvention device. It is the lock which is the copyright circumvention device.
it doesn't matter. the DMCA makes all circumvention illegal. how do you win a game that cannot be won? by changing the rules.
When homeland security loads software onto your computer/device to look for lock picking software, what else does it look for? What software do they leave on the device?
Remember, the present US law is the customs can seize any digital device coming into the US for investigation without probable cause.
as always, the relentless march of technological progress is the solution.
falling prices on mobile phones have made them disposable. in time the same will be true of media players and laptops, indeed, for a no-frills music player it is already true. when laptops or netbooks reach a similar price point, the people who are serious about privacy will pick one up for a trip into/out of the US and dispose of it upon return.
it's possible to pack binaries to evade signature based detection. compression and encryption, when combined, produce working binaries that are tough to fingerprint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_obfuscation
you can pack the same binary multiple ways so you get progames that are functionally identical, but have vastly different bits.
this is different than just keeping stuff in an encrypted volume. for one, it's easier since the binaries just work with no work on the users' part. pretty much all commercial software is obfuscated in order to impair reverse engineering, so chances are you are running packed binaries on your computer right now. also, a big encrypted block on a drive might keep your data safe, but it would give border types a reason to detain your or otherwise harass you into decrypting your data for inspection.
it's a volume that decrypts one of two ways depending on the key entered, so you have a "safe" version and an "unsafe" version, depending on your audience.
that said, it would be better all around to just keep your stuff somewhere online and not on disk so you can pull it down once you are over the border.
it's also probably a good idea to travel with an older laptop/cheap netbook so it's not a financial hardship if it gets confiscated/destroyed at the border.
This is basic economics, it makes it clear that they are charging way to much for the product they are selling.
it sounds like you are viewing the entrenched players position as a market problem: they are charging a price that the market is unable to bear.
i think it should be viewed as a product problem: the product they are selling costs too much to make in its current form to be distributed in a manner that the market will accept.
the market has shifted to digital distribution and word of mouth promotion. promotion and distribution are offered by labels at a significant markup in order to subsidize the cost of production.
on the internet, distribution and promotion are cheap and (worst of all) transparent. everyone knows it's dirt cheap, so you can't mark it up very much before you get called out for being a glutton.
since distribution and promotion are no longer able to subsidize production, production has to become more efficient, and this is why everyone in the entrenched industry is pissed off about digital distribution.
big media conglomerates simply cannot exist in their current forms with revenues from advertising and merchandising because their products (the content) costs too much to produce in its current form. sure, technology can help a little, but there are old obligations that predate the internet that have to be accounted for and these obligations are killing big media companies.
when you combine high sunk costs, legacy problems like contracts and licensing agreements that were negotiated before digital distribution, and other legacy issues like debts, the result is a product that is massively over priced before a single word is written, a single note is recorded, or a single frame is shot.
the only way out of this conundrum is for these established players to go under so the industry can start fresh and unencumbered.
over the years i have gotten gigs of cool stuff from rapidshare. the right forum post or IRC thread can become a regular treasure trove of content, and it's really tough to track who's downloading from it.
If newspapers called politicians on every lie they speak, the forests of American would be depleted in no more than a couple of years -- five at the most. Greenpeace and all of us who enjoy sitting in the shade of a beautiful tree would be inconsolable.
if only there was a way to take printed news paper and print to it again, like a way to RE-peat the CYCLE of printing using less new paper than the time before.
Unfortunately, IP is about the only left that the US produces so the belief is that if we can stop other countries from copying our IP, we might have a viable economy in the future.
except that other countries, specifically brazil, india, russia, and china, have no problems copying our IP, with or without their government's blessing. instead of signing treaties over intellectual property, we should be signing them over environmental protections and workers' rights, that way manufacturing in the west can compete with the third world on a level playing field.
But since we don't have a government that looks at the facts but rather the checkbooks of private interests, we have little hope for change.
the problem is one of shortsightedness. with or without ACTA, the market for IP as an export may only last a couple of decades at the very most, and maybe only a few years. when that happens, the US in particular will fall on very hard times since the rest of the world, china in particular, isn't really interested in anything that the US makes.
The person e-mailing missed an opportunity to communicate to the producer exactly why he was downloading an not purchasing it. Was it because he didn't want to be stuck to his Blu-Ray player and wanted to enjoy it on any of his devices, or some other convenience factor? Or just wanted it earlier and would buy later?
dude said he will not "view, rent or buy any films produced wholly or in part by your company." as in he won't watch it regardless of how it was obtained.
and the letter writer didn't say he was going to download it. chartier and others just assumed that he did. that's the point. guys like chartier treat everyone like thieves.
On the post: Time To Live In Reality: People Are Going To Copy; So Build A Better Business Model
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Time To Live In Reality: People Are Going To Copy; So Build A Better Business Model
Re: This trend will end like Shareware.
the problem is never excessive choice. it's always a lack of differentiation. there is no such thing as "too much choice", unless you are lazy or uncreative. the problem is producers who cannot differentiate themselves.
one way to do that, as is stated here on techdirt all the time, is to connect with fans and give them a reason to buy. another way is to simply make stuff that people really believe in. the phenomena is described here sometimes as a "true fan".
That's actually EXACTLY the "model" major studios use, of promoting a few -- regardless of merit -- and using the rest as a pool from which they pluck ideas and talent.
that was great when selling millions of copies of "a few" things paid the bills, but it doesn't anymore. anything with mass appeal will just get copied en mass, partly because that's the most efficient way to get it, but also because the product is disposable, forgettable, and not really worth the price of admission.
major studios sell promotion and distribution at a markup to subsidize production. copying slashes the price of promotion and distribution, leaving little to subsidize production.
that leaves the studios with a small number of products with high production costs and shrinking avenues of subsidy. that's a broken product. trying to sell a broken product is a broken business model.
SO, while it's working now for a few -- who are actually using the publicity angle -- is it going to work *in general*? Example: the Iphone arena with its 100000 choices? I think not -- IN GENERAL, mind. For a FEW, yes.
in general, the business of selling something that people can get for free, with nothing that differentiates your product from the free stuff, will not work. in general, selling something that adds value to something free, like professional support or convenience, does work.
there'd have to be a solution in the overall society, of perhaps subsiding these "producers" through an easy and painless vote system, and out of general revenues. -- But of course that's "socialism" so reactionaries will dismiss it out of hand, while moneyed interests will oppose it with literal force.
who can say no to red blooded american ingenuity? who would scoff at old fashioned capitalistic competition? who thinks that plain old small town community isn't a good idea? who has something bad to say about creativity or customer satisfaction?
why not make something that a small group of people believe in and will pay to support? why not build a dedicated community around your product and leverage it for support, the way that churches do? why not cowboy up and do some real work instead of hiding behind lawyers, licenses, and lawsuits like a sissy?
On the post: Time To Live In Reality: People Are Going To Copy; So Build A Better Business Model
Re: Examples?
how about any site with user generated content like image boards?
On the post: Time To Live In Reality: People Are Going To Copy; So Build A Better Business Model
Re: Change
It can't happen fast enough for me. Good riddance.
for me copying used to be about getting free shit, but that had been eclipsed by a sense of civil disobedience, of political statement (see the swedish pirate party hosting the pirate bay), and about hastening the demise of large media conglomerates.
On the post: Why Should Customs Officers Be Determining What Counts As A Copyright Circumvention Device?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
and you still miss mine. i said this:
this is different than just keeping stuff in an encrypted volume... a big encrypted block on a drive might keep your data safe, but it would give border types a reason to detain your or otherwise harass you into decrypting your data for inspection.
then i said this:
that said, it would be better all around to just keep your stuff somewhere online and not on disk so you can pull it down once you are over the border.
as in, you could encrypt stuff, but packing binaries so your circumvention tools evade detection in the open, or just leaving your stuff online and pulling it down after you cross the border would be better.
you also miss the larger point: it's so easy for serious circumvent-ers to evade searches at the border, so why are border patrols bothering with them at all? all these searches will do is harass innocent people. copyright circumvention will continue unimpeded and the only people who suffer will be the ones who get hassled at airports.
this is the same argument against DRM: DRM doesn't keep media products off of file sharing sites so why bother with it? all it does is inconvenience your paying customers and if you screw it up badly enough, it will actually drive them to piracy.
it's one thing for media companies to waste their money on something as futile as trying to stop file sharing. it's their money, they can throw it away if they want to. it's another for governments to waste tax payer dollars harassing people at the border. it's not their money, it's yours.
On the post: US Copyright Group Says ISPs Who Don't Cough Up User Names May Be Guilty Of Inducing Copyright Infringement
Re:
when the content companies get authorization to use deadly force.
On the post: US Copyright Group Says ISPs Who Don't Cough Up User Names May Be Guilty Of Inducing Copyright Infringement
Re: Re:
if you have nothing to hide... /sarcasm
On the post: NetCoalition/CCIA Reinforces Recent Comments To IP Czar Over Bogus Industry Studies On Copyright
Re: Re: no, piracy supports terrorism.
On the post: Supreme Court Justices Discuss Twitter
Re: Re: Re: Re:
my theory is that old people drive the way they do because they just don't care about living anymore.
On the post: Why Should Customs Officers Be Determining What Counts As A Copyright Circumvention Device?
Re: Re: Re:
way to only read half the post, no wonder you AC's are so uninformed.
On the post: NetCoalition/CCIA Reinforces Recent Comments To IP Czar Over Bogus Industry Studies On Copyright
Re: busting basement-dwellers for downloading Transformers.
no, piracy supports terrorism.
On the post: Why Should Customs Officers Be Determining What Counts As A Copyright Circumvention Device?
Re: A souvinir to take home?
it doesn't matter. the DMCA makes all circumvention illegal. how do you win a game that cannot be won? by changing the rules.
When homeland security loads software onto your computer/device to look for lock picking software, what else does it look for? What software do they leave on the device?
Remember, the present US law is the customs can seize any digital device coming into the US for investigation without probable cause.
as always, the relentless march of technological progress is the solution.
falling prices on mobile phones have made them disposable. in time the same will be true of media players and laptops, indeed, for a no-frills music player it is already true. when laptops or netbooks reach a similar price point, the people who are serious about privacy will pick one up for a trip into/out of the US and dispose of it upon return.
On the post: Why Should Customs Officers Be Determining What Counts As A Copyright Circumvention Device?
Re:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_obfuscation
you can pack the same binary multiple ways so you get progames that are functionally identical, but have vastly different bits.
packing is how a lot of malware slips past AV scanners and Intrustion Detection Systems:
http://www.finjan.com/MCRCblog.aspx?EntryId=1695
this is different than just keeping stuff in an encrypted volume. for one, it's easier since the binaries just work with no work on the users' part. pretty much all commercial software is obfuscated in order to impair reverse engineering, so chances are you are running packed binaries on your computer right now. also, a big encrypted block on a drive might keep your data safe, but it would give border types a reason to detain your or otherwise harass you into decrypting your data for inspection.
of course there is always deniable crypto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
it's a volume that decrypts one of two ways depending on the key entered, so you have a "safe" version and an "unsafe" version, depending on your audience.
there is a deniable crypto option built into truecrypt called hidden volumes:
http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=hidden-volume
that said, it would be better all around to just keep your stuff somewhere online and not on disk so you can pull it down once you are over the border.
it's also probably a good idea to travel with an older laptop/cheap netbook so it's not a financial hardship if it gets confiscated/destroyed at the border.
On the post: Supreme Court Justices Discuss Twitter
Re: Re:
On the post: An Amusing Historical Look At Moral Panics And The Content Industry
Re: perhaps this time they are correct ...
it sounds like you are viewing the entrenched players position as a market problem: they are charging a price that the market is unable to bear.
i think it should be viewed as a product problem: the product they are selling costs too much to make in its current form to be distributed in a manner that the market will accept.
the market has shifted to digital distribution and word of mouth promotion. promotion and distribution are offered by labels at a significant markup in order to subsidize the cost of production.
on the internet, distribution and promotion are cheap and (worst of all) transparent. everyone knows it's dirt cheap, so you can't mark it up very much before you get called out for being a glutton.
since distribution and promotion are no longer able to subsidize production, production has to become more efficient, and this is why everyone in the entrenched industry is pissed off about digital distribution.
big media conglomerates simply cannot exist in their current forms with revenues from advertising and merchandising because their products (the content) costs too much to produce in its current form. sure, technology can help a little, but there are old obligations that predate the internet that have to be accounted for and these obligations are killing big media companies.
when you combine high sunk costs, legacy problems like contracts and licensing agreements that were negotiated before digital distribution, and other legacy issues like debts, the result is a product that is massively over priced before a single word is written, a single note is recorded, or a single frame is shot.
the only way out of this conundrum is for these established players to go under so the industry can start fresh and unencumbered.
On the post: US Court Refuses Injunction Against RapidShare As Perfect 10 Gets Legal Theories Rejected Yet Again
not surprising
On the post: Turns Out People Really Like It When The Press Fact Checks, Rather Than Just Reporting What Everyone Said
Re: Re: Calling politicians on lies
if only there was a way to take printed news paper and print to it again, like a way to RE-peat the CYCLE of printing using less new paper than the time before.
On the post: Obama Reiterates Support For ACTA, As More People Point Out How Far ACTA Is From The Purpose Of Copyright
Re: Probably no hope for change...
except that other countries, specifically brazil, india, russia, and china, have no problems copying our IP, with or without their government's blessing. instead of signing treaties over intellectual property, we should be signing them over environmental protections and workers' rights, that way manufacturing in the west can compete with the third world on a level playing field.
But since we don't have a government that looks at the facts but rather the checkbooks of private interests, we have little hope for change.
the problem is one of shortsightedness. with or without ACTA, the market for IP as an export may only last a couple of decades at the very most, and maybe only a few years. when that happens, the US in particular will fall on very hard times since the rest of the world, china in particular, isn't really interested in anything that the US makes.
On the post: MPAA And Its Priorities: Asks US Gov't To Stop Soldiers From Buying Bootleg DVDs
Re: Re: Re: (chris)
On the post: Hurt Locker Producer Says That Criticizing His Plan To Sue Fans Means You're A Moron And A Thief
Re: Missed Opportunity
dude said he will not "view, rent or buy any films produced wholly or in part by your company." as in he won't watch it regardless of how it was obtained.
and the letter writer didn't say he was going to download it. chartier and others just assumed that he did. that's the point. guys like chartier treat everyone like thieves.
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