Jasper Teal’s Comments

• Oct 14th, 2009 @ 4:31am

  Wrong wrong wrong

  on And Here Come Another Round Of Yawn-Inducing Music Subscription Services
  In your knee-jerk opposition to anyone trying to sell something these days, you ignore the benefit of music subscription services. True, they do have limits, in that you can't freely copy the music files wherever you want. So what's the advantage? Virtually unlimited catalog.
  
  Once I tried Rhapsody many years ago, I was sold. I could listen to anything I wanted, from (almost) any popular music ever made, without having to decide whether to buy it. $10 or $15 a month for unlimited? Vastly cheaper than $1/track, or even $0.25/track, if music vendors would ever lower their prices. Many of these subscription services have mobile copying or connection capabilities, which mostly solves the portability problem as well.
  
  I haven't looked at the new services you mentioned, perhaps they do suck. What's needed is a service that combines unlimited subscription with an addictive community, discovery, and metadata service, such as Last.fm. If Last.fm ever release their long-promised subscription service, I'd gladly pay $20/month for it.
  
  Subscription still does work for many things, such as online gaming.
• Sep 9th, 2009 @ 9:58am

  You still don't get it (as Fuchsteufel)

  on Bad Ideas: Trying To Make Content More Like Physical Property
  I'm no fan of IP abuse, but you keep making blatantly incorrect analogies between physical and intellectual goods, and are increasingly out of touch with basic logic.

  First of all, you're right about food: if it were freely replicable, it would be a huge win for 90% of humanity.

  So does freely replicating media solves the world's media "hunger" problem forever? One second's thought shows the answer is no. Because freely replicating existing entertainment doesn't remove the need for new entertainment. People still use it up, i.e. play it until it's no longer entertaining. And then they need new media, and guess what: there's not currently a process for freely creating new worthy entertainment. You still need artists to expend effort and do that.

  And the fact that once they do, they almost can't sell it any more, as it's freely copiable, is currently a big problem. Yes, the economy adapts, and artists can find other ways to make money, but there's no law of economics that replacement monetisation methods will be as lucrative as the ones that were destroyed. Which is another fallacy you seem to believe in...

  I don't know how media creation and enjoyment will evolve in the future, but it seems misplaced to think we'll necessarily have as rich a media culture as we had in the good old 20th century, when entertainment could be physicalised and sold.