It's now in the hands of the record labels if they'll accept this or if they want to have a new trial concerning damages.
There is a third option rarely considered: Pushing the issue on the hundreds of other songs she was actively sharing.
The amount is almost meaningless at this point, as anything over a few hundred dollars a song would be more than enough punishment to make most people think twice, which is the real intention of any punishment system.
Let's say they lose the Best Buy suit and win their original suit. heck, let's say the opposite happens, where they beat Best Buy and the original judgement is upheld or confirmed in the other case. Both results would give some pretty solid case law going forward.
Even better, with contradictory rulings, they would have a basis for appeal, as the courts don't agree. See you in a higher court!
More than anything, they appear to be attempting to turn lemons into lemonade. If the first judgement is upheld, they should be allowed to infringe on Best Buy all they want without issue. Effectively, it would allow them to turn their loss into a sort of bottom line victory, allowing them to expand their business in other ways.
They have bet both black and red, and have driven a screw into the 0 and 00 to make sure the roulette table doesn't come up against them.
Like it or not, the parents should be responsible for the acts of their children. It's a pretty simple concept that seems to be lacking in much of the world these days.
The simple act of saying "you can't file share" is meaningless without actual supervision and enforcement, no different from "eat your peas" or "no video games in a school night". Either you enforce it, or it is meaningless.
Too may parents make the mistake of allowing internet access from the child's room or other area where they are not supervising the online activity, which allows the children to get into all sorts of trouble.
In the end, the parents need to accept their responsiblity.
No, that is reserved for spectators attempting to dictate the terms of a boxing match, telling the combatants that they have to lose the gloves and replace them with knives.
A few days off checking out the latest in Asia reminds me how far Americans are behind the curve.
Actually wandering around Asia and relaxing. The internet is sort of blocked off in some countries (currently in Thailand... they aren't exactly open).
Actually, being away from Techdirt for a couple of days makes coming back to this sort of thing rather humorous. Reading Mike getting all worked up about something that he is not really involved in is like reading a travel report from someone who never leaves home. It's easy to get all up in arms about someone else's money, I guess.
At the end of the day, there may have been no law to find him guilty by. However, that is something that won't hang out there for very long.
It is clear that he made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of charging for access to content he didn't have the rights for. It is hard to make a modern crime match up to pre-digital laws. It is also very clear that this sort of thing cannot continue without in the long term causing a major disruption in the music world, and not the type of disruption that benefits anyone. The users are paying, the artists are making nothing, and some guy in the middle is walking away with the cash.
If you cannot see what is wrong with that, then your moral compass is probably stuck and needs fixing.
Hi there. first up, remember there is a "reply to this commnet" link at the bottom of each post, it is easier to follow the threads.
The 35% number is pretty much the food service industry standard for a normal establishment. Some pizza places do it for much lower levels, mostly because they use crap ingredients. You can do it very cheaply is you have no interest in the end product.
Even the fast food industry mostly controls their food costs via huge discounts on nationwide bulk buying and supply agreements. It is one of the many reasons that major chains can outprice local burger stands.
Tipping is always an interesting science. I saw one test a few years back (TV show) that showed, example, that women servers made more tips than men, in general, and when serving male customers, a little more subtle flirting or a little more exposed skin could shift the tip signficantly.
Actually, everything i am seeing on subscription models shows that it is a functional business. It may not have the millions of hits per day that a free news site might offer, but it is potentially much more bottom line oriented.
I read Mike post completely, but I think that he puts this out there as if the Pizza people had just discovered the marketing holy grail or something.
What Mike is trying to suggest is that you can give something away for free and drive customers to premium products, a "see, it works!" attitude.
There are always circumstances where almost any marketing strategy works. Giving away free food to a client once (sample) isn't the same as giving away your entire product (here is all the music in the world for free). People get hungry again in a few hours and need to eat. It isn't giving them something they can enjoy over and over again, it's giving them a tease once.
it is must more of a marketing strategy like playing music on the radio or similar. It isn't giving lifelong enjoyment, just a sample.
It's one of the reasons why the "all music is free" business model isn't really a business model.
As for Mr Tibet, well, we all know that the US makes nothing but absolutely perfect products without defect, right?
In the end, there is no reason to give anything away for free at this level. Perhaps a sample or something similar. Consumers are too aware of the market price of side dishes, and are unlikely to pay more.
Food costs are suppose to be about 35% of a restaurant's take. You can screw with that a bit, and maybe make it 50 or 60%, but in the end, the profit and the other parts of the business suffer.
Further, and just as important, free pizza does little to drive more business, except perhaps business for more free pizza. When the likely results (people expecting Pizza to always be free) don't support the business model, why do it?
In the end, samples, tastings, discounts are all good, providing it is clear what they are, and providing they don't undermine your entire business model. Giving pizza away for free not only cuts income, it also cuts the percieved value of the product, doubly so if your upsell is to a better "high quality pizza".
As for thinking outside of the box, well, let's just say that some people don't hit the sides of the box because their business models don't support the costs of a box. It's easy to think without limits when you don't let things like the bottom line get in the way.
This is an interesting column because it points out the obvious: There is potential for a trend back to subscription models. Basically, the Ipad or whatever offers a great way to get product in people's hands, but it also offers the ability for premium content providers to move to potentially very successful pay-to-read model. Basically, instead of $12.95 a year for a magazine subscription, move to a $12.95 a year online subscription, that includes potentially pushing the content to the reader.
Want to see this months magazine only? Buy it now, just like the news stand price.
While information wants to be free, the reality is that content cannot be created endlessly for free. There is little or no business model there (especailly when you consider that users will likely filter out ads in the content).
The tools are nice, it's nice to focus on this or that, but the success and failure of the product will be the ability for valid and functional (aka profitable) business models to evolve. Without businesses producing the content, the devices have little actual value.
Re: It's just a matter of time before Amazon fights back.
If consumers are using a rating system for protest purposes rather than the purpose it was intended for, then Amazon will likely have to do something about it.
The rating system is about the content of the book, not about the delivery or the windowing of product release. The real protest mechanism is to not buy, to send your kindle back to Amazon and request a refund because of windowing, etc. Screwing with a rating system (those rating will be there pretty much for as long as the book is on Amazon) just leads to misinformation, long after the issue of windowing is long gone from this book.
A tool abused is a tool that will end up getting changed to remove this sort of protest action.
If you want to protest, don't buy the book.
As for the questions raised about margins, let's just say that the only ones making out like bandits on ebooks is Amazon, from what I have seen so far.
What i find odd Mike is that you ran a story not a few days ago about Japanese companies suing Korea companies. In the 60s and 70s, japan was one of the highest IP abusers, basing their products on stolen ideas from western companies, building them "better" mostly by being cheaper.
Today, China, India, and similar countries are doing the same thing, wholesale borrowing of ideas from other countries, turning out products that are "better" mostly by being cheaper.
As China is quickly moving from 3rd world status to first world super power, that is likely to change. They will be the ones getting stolen from, and they will cry and moan when it happens to them as well. The next developing country will claim that they are being put down by the big developed countries, and so it goes.
It's like anything: laws against certain things look terrible when you are profiting from ignoring them, and they look like your savior when you are the one being stolen from. What comes around goes around. Japan is just starting to see what it is like to have your ideas stolen wholesale.
I read this story and I have to laugh. What the pizza business (and most other "goods" companies for that matter) are doing has nothing to do with "FREE!", and has everything to do with sample marketing which has been around since christ was a choir boy.
If they were doing free, they would give the pizza away for free and charge $9 for a 2 litre of pepsi. They aren't doing that. All the are doing is offering a sample, a tasting, a one timer to get people in the door.
It would be on the level of a band giving away the first 30 seconds of a song, and then selling people the whole album. In fact, the music industry did the sample thing for years, via this amazing thing called radio. You get to hear the whole song in a somewhat compressed format, and you can always buy the full value version if you so desire from your local music store, or now online.
Oh, Mike, I got a sample of dishwashing machine soap in the mail the other day. Are you going to claim that they suddenly discovered "FREE!" as well?
Being anti-fan is no way to build a business these days.
This has to be one of the arrogant statements I have ever read. Someone has taken his work and given it to the world without permission, totally disrespected him, and he is suppose to suddenly bend over and be "fan friendly" about it?
Holy crap Mike, that is the most idiotic stand possible. Were you even thinking when you wrote this piece?
Lost sales aren't "losses" in a way that can be applied to the balance sheet of a company. It isn't any different from a snow storm that closes a restaurant for the day. There are lost sales, but you cannot claim that missing income as "losses" for tax purposes.
It's fun to watch people trying to come up with the silliest ways to justify continued piracy.
Yup, and the error that is made is that the guys (and girls) in bands 3 and 4 think they are getting somewhere because they are suddenly making money in the music business.
Sadly, they didn't take that money out of the pockets of the record companies or the other hated middle men that everyone goes on about here, they are just taking it out of every other bands pocket, a little bit at a time.
It is easy to mistake this for progress, especially if the only people you are asking are the 3rd and 4th band members.
I didn't like the song because it is crap. Maybe he does other stuff that is good, but this one is all the bad things that people complain about so hard here, crappy over produced beats, fomula delivery, overdone auto-tune... if it wasn't a "samplers delight" type video, most of the people here wouldn't listen to it for love or money.
There is a difference between not getting the music and realizing that something is crap. There is plenty of decent "new" music out there, this song just happens to be the worst combination of production over content.
I am way more likely to say "Turn that f-ing AC/DC off, I have heard that one too many times in my life", as I reach over to turn up the White Stripes, or Metric, or the new Rise Against, or heck, even older sneaker pimps.
On the post: Court Reduces Award In Jammie Thomas-Rasset Case From $80,000 Per Song To $2,250
There is a third option rarely considered: Pushing the issue on the hundreds of other songs she was actively sharing.
The amount is almost meaningless at this point, as anything over a few hundred dollars a song would be more than enough punishment to make most people think twice, which is the real intention of any punishment system.
On the post: Rescuecom Wants It Both Ways Over Keyword Ads; Involved In Two Lawsuits... But On Opposite Sides
It's all about strategy
Let's say they lose the Best Buy suit and win their original suit. heck, let's say the opposite happens, where they beat Best Buy and the original judgement is upheld or confirmed in the other case. Both results would give some pretty solid case law going forward.
Even better, with contradictory rulings, they would have a basis for appeal, as the courts don't agree. See you in a higher court!
More than anything, they appear to be attempting to turn lemons into lemonade. If the first judgement is upheld, they should be allowed to infringe on Best Buy all they want without issue. Effectively, it would allow them to turn their loss into a sort of bottom line victory, allowing them to expand their business in other ways.
They have bet both black and red, and have driven a screw into the 0 and 00 to make sure the roulette table doesn't come up against them.
On the post: German Court Finds Mother Liable For Kid's File Sharing, Despite Her Ban On The Practice
Parents should be responsible
The simple act of saying "you can't file share" is meaningless without actual supervision and enforcement, no different from "eat your peas" or "no video games in a school night". Either you enforce it, or it is meaningless.
Too may parents make the mistake of allowing internet access from the child's room or other area where they are not supervising the online activity, which allows the children to get into all sorts of trouble.
In the end, the parents need to accept their responsiblity.
On the post: IFPI: Piracy Bad!!! Government Must Fix Because We Don't Want To Adapt!
Re: Re: Re:
No, that is reserved for spectators attempting to dictate the terms of a boxing match, telling the combatants that they have to lose the gloves and replace them with knives.
A few days off checking out the latest in Asia reminds me how far Americans are behind the curve.
On the post: IFPI: Piracy Bad!!! Government Must Fix Because We Don't Want To Adapt!
Re:
Actually, being away from Techdirt for a couple of days makes coming back to this sort of thing rather humorous. Reading Mike getting all worked up about something that he is not really involved in is like reading a travel report from someone who never leaves home. It's easy to get all up in arms about someone else's money, I guess.
Things are changing, watch this space. :)
On the post: OiNK Admin: Not Guilty
It is clear that he made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of charging for access to content he didn't have the rights for. It is hard to make a modern crime match up to pre-digital laws. It is also very clear that this sort of thing cannot continue without in the long term causing a major disruption in the music world, and not the type of disruption that benefits anyone. The users are paying, the artists are making nothing, and some guy in the middle is walking away with the cash.
If you cannot see what is wrong with that, then your moral compass is probably stuck and needs fixing.
On the post: The Value Of Free As Analyzed By The Pizza Industry
Re: Ingredients, Tips.
The 35% number is pretty much the food service industry standard for a normal establishment. Some pizza places do it for much lower levels, mostly because they use crap ingredients. You can do it very cheaply is you have no interest in the end product.
Even the fast food industry mostly controls their food costs via huge discounts on nationwide bulk buying and supply agreements. It is one of the many reasons that major chains can outprice local burger stands.
Tipping is always an interesting science. I saw one test a few years back (TV show) that showed, example, that women servers made more tips than men, in general, and when serving male customers, a little more subtle flirting or a little more exposed skin could shift the tip signficantly.
On the post: The Killer Feature I Would Design Into An Apple Tablet
Re:
On the post: The Value Of Free As Analyzed By The Pizza Industry
Re: Re: when free ain't "FREE!"
What Mike is trying to suggest is that you can give something away for free and drive customers to premium products, a "see, it works!" attitude.
There are always circumstances where almost any marketing strategy works. Giving away free food to a client once (sample) isn't the same as giving away your entire product (here is all the music in the world for free). People get hungry again in a few hours and need to eat. It isn't giving them something they can enjoy over and over again, it's giving them a tease once.
it is must more of a marketing strategy like playing music on the radio or similar. It isn't giving lifelong enjoyment, just a sample.
It's one of the reasons why the "all music is free" business model isn't really a business model.
As for Mr Tibet, well, we all know that the US makes nothing but absolutely perfect products without defect, right?
On the post: The Value Of Free As Analyzed By The Pizza Industry
Re: Re:
Food costs are suppose to be about 35% of a restaurant's take. You can screw with that a bit, and maybe make it 50 or 60%, but in the end, the profit and the other parts of the business suffer.
Further, and just as important, free pizza does little to drive more business, except perhaps business for more free pizza. When the likely results (people expecting Pizza to always be free) don't support the business model, why do it?
In the end, samples, tastings, discounts are all good, providing it is clear what they are, and providing they don't undermine your entire business model. Giving pizza away for free not only cuts income, it also cuts the percieved value of the product, doubly so if your upsell is to a better "high quality pizza".
As for thinking outside of the box, well, let's just say that some people don't hit the sides of the box because their business models don't support the costs of a box. It's easy to think without limits when you don't let things like the bottom line get in the way.
On the post: The Killer Feature I Would Design Into An Apple Tablet
Shifting models?
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2009/tc20091229_795528.htm
This is an interesting column because it points out the obvious: There is potential for a trend back to subscription models. Basically, the Ipad or whatever offers a great way to get product in people's hands, but it also offers the ability for premium content providers to move to potentially very successful pay-to-read model. Basically, instead of $12.95 a year for a magazine subscription, move to a $12.95 a year online subscription, that includes potentially pushing the content to the reader.
Want to see this months magazine only? Buy it now, just like the news stand price.
While information wants to be free, the reality is that content cannot be created endlessly for free. There is little or no business model there (especailly when you consider that users will likely filter out ads in the content).
The tools are nice, it's nice to focus on this or that, but the success and failure of the product will be the ability for valid and functional (aka profitable) business models to evolve. Without businesses producing the content, the devices have little actual value.
On the post: Kindle Fans Punish Publisher For Delaying Ebook Releases By Giving Books One-Star Reviews
Re: It's just a matter of time before Amazon fights back.
The rating system is about the content of the book, not about the delivery or the windowing of product release. The real protest mechanism is to not buy, to send your kindle back to Amazon and request a refund because of windowing, etc. Screwing with a rating system (those rating will be there pretty much for as long as the book is on Amazon) just leads to misinformation, long after the issue of windowing is long gone from this book.
A tool abused is a tool that will end up getting changed to remove this sort of protest action.
If you want to protest, don't buy the book.
As for the questions raised about margins, let's just say that the only ones making out like bandits on ebooks is Amazon, from what I have seen so far.
On the post: As Developing Countries Gain More Power In Diplomatic Discussions, Will They Push Back On IP?
Today, China, India, and similar countries are doing the same thing, wholesale borrowing of ideas from other countries, turning out products that are "better" mostly by being cheaper.
As China is quickly moving from 3rd world status to first world super power, that is likely to change. They will be the ones getting stolen from, and they will cry and moan when it happens to them as well. The next developing country will claim that they are being put down by the big developed countries, and so it goes.
It's like anything: laws against certain things look terrible when you are profiting from ignoring them, and they look like your savior when you are the one being stolen from. What comes around goes around. Japan is just starting to see what it is like to have your ideas stolen wholesale.
On the post: The Value Of Free As Analyzed By The Pizza Industry
when free ain't "FREE!"
I read this story and I have to laugh. What the pizza business (and most other "goods" companies for that matter) are doing has nothing to do with "FREE!", and has everything to do with sample marketing which has been around since christ was a choir boy.
If they were doing free, they would give the pizza away for free and charge $9 for a 2 litre of pepsi. They aren't doing that. All the are doing is offering a sample, a tasting, a one timer to get people in the door.
It would be on the level of a band giving away the first 30 seconds of a song, and then selling people the whole album. In fact, the music industry did the sample thing for years, via this amazing thing called radio. You get to hear the whole song in a somewhat compressed format, and you can always buy the full value version if you so desire from your local music store, or now online.
Oh, Mike, I got a sample of dishwashing machine soap in the mail the other day. Are you going to claim that they suddenly discovered "FREE!" as well?
On the post: Peter Jackson Freaks Out About BitTorrent Leak Of The Lovely Bones
This has to be one of the arrogant statements I have ever read. Someone has taken his work and given it to the world without permission, totally disrespected him, and he is suppose to suddenly bend over and be "fan friendly" about it?
Holy crap Mike, that is the most idiotic stand possible. Were you even thinking when you wrote this piece?
On the post: How Many Questionable Assumptions Can You Layer On Top Of Each Other To Estimate Bogus 'Losses' From Unauthorized iPhone App Downloads?
Re: Re: Re: Class action
On the post: How Many Questionable Assumptions Can You Layer On Top Of Each Other To Estimate Bogus 'Losses' From Unauthorized iPhone App Downloads?
Re: Class action
It's fun to watch people trying to come up with the silliest ways to justify continued piracy.
On the post: Jaron Lanier Gets Old And Crotchety; Maybe He Should Kick Those Kids Off His Virtual Reality Lawn
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Common Fallacy
Sadly, they didn't take that money out of the pockets of the record companies or the other hated middle men that everyone goes on about here, they are just taking it out of every other bands pocket, a little bit at a time.
It is easy to mistake this for progress, especially if the only people you are asking are the 3rd and 4th band members.
On the post: World Fair Use Day Wrapup
Re:
I didn't like the song because it is crap. Maybe he does other stuff that is good, but this one is all the bad things that people complain about so hard here, crappy over produced beats, fomula delivery, overdone auto-tune... if it wasn't a "samplers delight" type video, most of the people here wouldn't listen to it for love or money.
There is a difference between not getting the music and realizing that something is crap. There is plenty of decent "new" music out there, this song just happens to be the worst combination of production over content.
I am way more likely to say "Turn that f-ing AC/DC off, I have heard that one too many times in my life", as I reach over to turn up the White Stripes, or Metric, or the new Rise Against, or heck, even older sneaker pimps.
On the post: Who's Behind The False Rumors That Facebook Might Start Charging?
Re: Re: charging for access to articles
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