LeBleu’s Techdirt Profile

lebleu

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  • Oct 13th, 2010 @ 9:55am

    Not decided by book publishers

    Per Charles Stross's insider take on ebooks,
    The second handicap hobbling the Big Six publishing multinationals is that they're owned by multimedia conglomerates, and group level policies are set at a level above the publishers — who get very little say in said policy compared to the movie, TV, and music corporations that are also part of the conglomerates. Consequently, dumb, idiotic, stupid policies get imposed by decree ... for example, that Digital Rights Management is mandatory.

    So it may be the same people who are making the foolish decisions in the music and movie business who still haven't learned, not new people who might have learned from previous examples.
  • Aug 12th, 2009 @ 10:36am

    Re: Re: Re: Can't help but work

    The blog is not a business, unless he puts up a pay-wall. The free blog came first, so how can you have a business model and no business?

    Apparently you haven't gotten the memo, but is possible to build a business around things that are free. For example, broadcast over the air television. So unless you want to claim that CBS and their local affiliates don't have business models, I don't see how you can claim that a free blog can't be a business. If you look closely, you might notice that Techdirt is not truly a free blog, it is an advertising supported blog that makes money both by drawing clicks to the ads listed down the right side of your screen, and advertising Floor 64's other businesses.

    Specifically, I believe the businesses that Floor64 (the producers of Techdirt) are in currently are analysis and marketing (more precisely creating a market to hire experts to write articles around topics you wish to draw attention to called the "Insight Community"). If you dig around enough, you would also see that Floor64 "analysts provide corporate blogs of customized business and trend analysis for individual companies such as Volkswagen, Sprint, SAP and Nuance. ", which I assume they charge the companies suitable fees for. Techdirt seems like an excellent way to advertise the abilities of the analysts they want you to hire.

    Now, presumably Techdirt and Floor64 are currently profitable, given the long time they have been around. However, like any business, they want to increase their bottom line. So, they decided to put their expert market analysis into place on their own product, looking for new ways to monetize. So, they picked a list of scarce goods that they thought would have increased demand due to being complementary to the free, unlimited distribution of Techdirt content. One of these goods is custom T-shirts, but there are a lot better deals on the list than just expensive T-shirts, such as the consulting or publishing services at the $5,000+ level. These better deals are priced appropriately for companies, not individuals.

  • Feb 2nd, 2009 @ 11:32am

    Re: Re: Re: You never came across...

    "2)When people figure out they're being "had" by a blatant plagiarist, they will never return (to the "fake" site)."

    This illustrates why music and film copyright violations and your (partially but obviously conditionally waived)rights to your published articles aren't comparable.

    You describe a moral standard for your line of rights, that does not apply to music and film. When downloaders figure out that they're "being had" by someone offering music or film they do not have rights to, they don'rt give a shit, and rather tell all their friends about this cool, free service.

    No, you are comparing apples to oranges. Offering free copies of music is not the same as plagiarism. Offering free copies of music still increases the attention going to the band that made it, and increases their ticket sales.

    The comparison to plagiarism would be if you were offering free copies of the songs, but changing all the information to say you made the song and played it yourself. Sort of like a cover band that lied about being a cover band... I think you would still have somewhat of the same effect in that case.


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