...but only for more service. I was more than happy to dropped the discs and go streaming only when the price increase came. It was the thing that fianlly convinced my wife.
What I am waiting for is the landrush to streaming that will occur as dvd sales continue to fall off a cliff. We are like the early stage of itunes when everyone was complaining about copy protection and there were tons of hold outs. Eventually everyone will jump in. I just wish the content holders weren't so stupid to think that it will somehow not turn out like the music business.
I am not sure what model is perfect because subscriptions seem to be more palatable that individual purchases for Video Content.
I would happily pay $1-$9 per channel(depending on which channel :)) for through netflix. I already have the service in my tivo and wii and blu-ray player. They could do a la carte cable and completely cut out the likes of comcast.
None of them are going so say video specifically, it is all about the bittorrent boogey monster. With the new court ruling it will be just one after the other with ISPs . It is much like the airlines charging for checked bags.
Comcast is the biggest player and Verizon has the most bandwidth and if they are doing it why would anyone else not do it in an uncompetitive market?
The thing that makes me most want to throw up on this guys shoes is the boasting about how much more per person usage we have and our super advanced tech.
Guess what smart guy, there are about 50 million Americans with these smart phones, blu-ray players, and Ipads who will want to be watching video at the same time in the next year.
While I agree with some of the sentiment, there are some serious holes. There can be room for both big and small movies but not all of either. You couldn't replace one $200,000,000 movie with 500 cheap films and expect them all to do well. Nor could you eliminate all the small films and release ten $1 billion movies a year. There is a limit to the size of the total marketplace. This also varies seasonally. You may attract a few more tickes one year for good movies, or lose a few to other entertainment.
Another thing to take note is how few of the big budget films are in the same genre as Paranormal. Budgets north of $30 million are rare for horror films these days.
Also someone mentioned that Hollywood tried and failed the small movie thing. I disagree. The small movie arms of the big companies were done for PR. They were all gambling on prestige films to win big with critics and academy awards. Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity, Clerks, and Pulp Fiction appealed to viewers before they were told to like them by critics.
That's me with goatee in the blue and white photo.
What I was getting at with the "leverage" comment was that while things are under patent we recieve a royalty payment for use, as well as charge a cost for the goods. As an enabling technology we think this is appropriate, and our customers agree. Our competition in this case is not other innovative tech makers but copycat chemical makers in india/china, because when the patent expires royalty goes away and we compete on price alone.
So you think all Research should be funded by new investors just trying to play the lottery? or do we count on the NIH for everything? My work goes into new medical diagnostic testing. Our share of the patient cost is around 0.05%. A 3rd world knockoff would drop that down to 0.03%. Forgive me if I fail to see the massive price differential.
And yes we enjoy a monopoly over our tech but we have to compete with dozens of other technologies.
Without the patent protection we could probably still make money, but 5 or 10 years down the road, when doctors are clamoring for better tests ........
Hey maybe we shouldn't be given an advantage, but in my field it is very easy, and very cheap to have someone in India or China copy my work. We invest millions discovering a new compound, and a new application. It then takes years to get a company to decide to use it. A company then builds a machine around our tech, which has to get approved by the FDA etc. So it is around 10 years after we file that it starts making money. In that time we can get almost as efficient as the overseas companies. The problem is we would also like to fund the next generation of compounds.
I am not arguing for a less stringent patent system. I just know all the garbage applciations that everyone here complains about has slowed the process.
I guess I was a little harsh on TD, but as much as I would love everything to be fixed by being more efficient, that doesn't always work. Especially if two of the biggest issues I see are higher volume, and needed increased scrutiny I think some growth is inevitable.
Now as an aside the Supreme Court taking up more patent cases and helping to create more narrow structured guidence would be a big help. But I am in fantasy land if I expect that to happen.
I guess it is hard for me to see past my surroundings but I think they are a fair example.
I work for an innovative chemical company with around 100 granted patents. More than half of our employees work in R&D creating the next generation of tech. We can do this, and do it in America because of the protection the patents have given us. The combination of new scrutiny, explosion of patent applications, and change in time given a patent have caused a much smaller window for us to leverage the patent.
If it were up to me I think that the USPTO should be much bigger and faster. Not to grant me more junk patents but to get the job done in a timely, consistant way. I think it could have a very stimulitiver effect on the success of innovative companies in the US.
This site and others have argued that the concept of patents, copyright etc are to encourage creation. They may not be used as such, but that doesn't mean the system is irrelevent.
What I would hope to hear more of is how the USPTO was/is totally unequipt/out of step. The explosion of knowledge technology has made everyone a musician/photographer/ movie producer/ journalist etc. why not a patent holder? So there may be a lot of things I want from the USPTO but to slow down is not one of them.
I fear the stance taken here is just as dangerous as the one you argue about. I find it heartening that they are interested in in speeding up the process again. The backlog is growing and growing yielding shortened viable patent time. I gaurentee this is a dissencetive to innovation.
So while I agree that the each patent needs to be investigated thouroughly, and many more should have been dissmissed due to obviousness or prior work, expecting a certain percentage of approvals either higher or lower is a mistake.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Dave.
I'd pay more..
What I am waiting for is the landrush to streaming that will occur as dvd sales continue to fall off a cliff. We are like the early stage of itunes when everyone was complaining about copy protection and there were tons of hold outs. Eventually everyone will jump in. I just wish the content holders weren't so stupid to think that it will somehow not turn out like the music business.
I am not sure what model is perfect because subscriptions seem to be more palatable that individual purchases for Video Content.
I would happily pay $1-$9 per channel(depending on which channel :)) for through netflix. I already have the service in my tivo and wii and blu-ray player. They could do a la carte cable and completely cut out the likes of comcast.
More of the same
Comcast is the biggest player and Verizon has the most bandwidth and if they are doing it why would anyone else not do it in an uncompetitive market?
The thing that makes me most want to throw up on this guys shoes is the boasting about how much more per person usage we have and our super advanced tech.
Guess what smart guy, there are about 50 million Americans with these smart phones, blu-ray players, and Ipads who will want to be watching video at the same time in the next year.
Crowded marketplace
Another thing to take note is how few of the big budget films are in the same genre as Paranormal. Budgets north of $30 million are rare for horror films these days.
Also someone mentioned that Hollywood tried and failed the small movie thing. I disagree. The small movie arms of the big companies were done for PR. They were all gambling on prestige films to win big with critics and academy awards. Blair Witch, Paranormal Activity, Clerks, and Pulp Fiction appealed to viewers before they were told to like them by critics.
Re: Re:
http://www.lumigen.com/
That's me with goatee in the blue and white photo.
What I was getting at with the "leverage" comment was that while things are under patent we recieve a royalty payment for use, as well as charge a cost for the goods. As an enabling technology we think this is appropriate, and our customers agree. Our competition in this case is not other innovative tech makers but copycat chemical makers in india/china, because when the patent expires royalty goes away and we compete on price alone.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And yes we enjoy a monopoly over our tech but we have to compete with dozens of other technologies.
Without the patent protection we could probably still make money, but 5 or 10 years down the road, when doctors are clamoring for better tests ........
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I am not arguing for a less stringent patent system. I just know all the garbage applciations that everyone here complains about has slowed the process.
Re: Re:
Re: Re: @Dave
Now as an aside the Supreme Court taking up more patent cases and helping to create more narrow structured guidence would be a big help. But I am in fantasy land if I expect that to happen.
(untitled comment)
I work for an innovative chemical company with around 100 granted patents. More than half of our employees work in R&D creating the next generation of tech. We can do this, and do it in America because of the protection the patents have given us. The combination of new scrutiny, explosion of patent applications, and change in time given a patent have caused a much smaller window for us to leverage the patent.
If it were up to me I think that the USPTO should be much bigger and faster. Not to grant me more junk patents but to get the job done in a timely, consistant way. I think it could have a very stimulitiver effect on the success of innovative companies in the US.
This site and others have argued that the concept of patents, copyright etc are to encourage creation. They may not be used as such, but that doesn't mean the system is irrelevent.
What I would hope to hear more of is how the USPTO was/is totally unequipt/out of step. The explosion of knowledge technology has made everyone a musician/photographer/ movie producer/ journalist etc. why not a patent holder? So there may be a lot of things I want from the USPTO but to slow down is not one of them.
(untitled comment)
So while I agree that the each patent needs to be investigated thouroughly, and many more should have been dissmissed due to obviousness or prior work, expecting a certain percentage of approvals either higher or lower is a mistake.
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Dave.
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