That was my thought too. There have been so many posts here about how companies shouldn't have sued other parties and should have instead embraced the attention. Now, we see a company doing that (kinda, at least they didn't attack the user or try to sue them) and you complain about that too?!
I'm no fan of Mc D's, but seriously, it's like lose-lose around here. I expected better from Techdirt... maybe it's just that Mike didn't pen this one?
Also, in the cop's defense, the motorcycle was rolling backwards away from the cop as he got out, making it look at a glance like the cyclist might try to run for it.
Let's see, a civilian car cuts you off and the civilian driver jumps out of the vehicle with a gun, yelling at you. Yeah, I'd try to get the hell out of there too!
The officer pulled his gun, unprovoked, and he didn't even bother to mention that he was an officer until well after the fact. I'm no law enforcement officer, but it's hard to believe that is standard procedure.
I think you greatly underestimate the average consumer.
I don't expect to see a mass defect to BB to rent new releases or anything, but I can see people being incorrectly upset with NetFlix or RedBox as a result because they assume THEY are the ones delaying releases.
Totally forgot about that, but you're right, I did see that when I was at my parents' a few weeks ago. If I paid for TV service at home, I probably would have see it there too...
If my local market is any indication, not well. All the ones in my area have closed up shop. 1 was evicted and the building remains vacant, the other seems to at least be rented to a pet store now.
Wow, I had white-listed them after reading that article, but now I've seen some of their responses to their users. Breaking the site and then trying to scold and guilt their users? Screw them!
I'll just do what they want me to do and never come back. It was rare that I ever found read-worthy articles on Ars anyway...
Yeah, EA left a bad taste in my mouth with Spore. I won't buy their games anymore. I think the only difference between EA and Ubisoft now is that EA has games I actually would like to play...
If everyone has an internet connection, and piracy is 100% legal (no risk of getting caught), why would anyone pay?
Ask all the people buying stuff from iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster and all the other media delivery services. Those companies have a lot of paying customers, and those customers are all buying things that can easily be found online for free illegally.
You may argue that those companies are all US-serving, to which I would argue that there's basically no risk in downloading anything illegally in the US already (which is somehow 100% legal by your definition too).
So, of those paying customers, "everyone has an internet connection" with "no risk of getting caught" and they're still paying. Your concerns seem somewhat unfounded.
You are trying to read too much into my point. _All_ I am saying is that there is no reason why a different delivery mechanism should _have_ to mean a different price. Furthermore it isn't clear that the price should have to fall either.
You're kind of right, in principle, but I think most people feel that if you're paying additional money for the ability to consume a different medium, that medium's price should reflect a savings to recoup that initial investment. Especially when the new medium is less valuable (in the case of ebooke: can't share it, can't write on it, can't use it without power, etc.).
And even if you are trying to maximize profits, you need to be able to drop that price to keep up with competition or they'll price you out of business. In the case of this story, I doubt NYT is prepared to keep prices in check...
I suspect the ~40% of people represented as "will never buy online" are probably the people who expect their demands will never be met. The ~50% of the "might buy online" crowd are at least hopeful they'll one day get what they are looking for.
That's what I thought too. The orange bar means nothing, it's a fantasy figure. The blue bar speaks the truth, and the truth is that few people are buying content online. If they lowered the prices to meet the supply, they'd see a lot more people buying and probably even make a lot more money. At the very least, they'd still be making the same amount of money but selling a lot more (ie. the blue bar would go up, but the profits would be the same).
I'm curious what they were asked exactly too. I mean, I'd buy content online too, so I guess I'd be in the orange bar. But I won't buy it at the current prices and definitely not through the most popular channels. For example, I'll never use iTunes since I think it's a terrible piece of software and I lack both an Apple device and a compatible operating system; it's not JUST the price keeping me from using their service, but the price DOES keep me from even considering it.
As for the paying to remove ads thing, I still see that from time to time. It's pretty dumb to base you ENTIRE model on that, given the ease of competing (as you pointed out), but also given niceties like AdBlock/AdThward, which makes removing ads trivial and free for the user. It's a bad reason to buy.
Making it clear that he's NOT a representative for the company is a bad thing? It's not like they are trying to sue him, they are just making sure that people know he's not working for Heinz.
Is it a missed marketing opportunity? Perhaps, but I think it was very smart of them to make it be known that this guy doesn't work for Heinz and doesn't actually represent the company. I mean, if he was building a following and then one day turned on the company, that would have looked pretty bad for them, wouldn't you agree?
I think it's pretty interesting that Twitter didn't remove the account though. They could have easily done so (and I'm sure they HAVE done so on a regular basis), but instead just renamed it.
Not that it matters much, but I've heard the album, and it's pretty solid. I wonder if this will escalate the album to the status of the Grey Album. It was, in my opinion, far better than the original Black Album, just as this is far better than the original 36 Chanbers.
The difference between 0.99 and 1.29 isn't enough to turn people away.
That's almost a 30% increase in the cost of music. I'm not willing to pay $0.99 personally, so there's no way in hell I would pay 30% *more* than that. This may not apply to people who are used to the iTunes experience but it does matter for people that are just buying music.
People will only pay for music as long as it's cheap enough to not be worth pirating. I would argue that for a good number of people, a roughly 30% increase would be enough to tip them in favor of piracy.
If you want 3G speeds, your only choice is AT&T anyway. The radio doesn't support T-Mobile's network. If the demand is there, I'm sure TMo would be quite happy to offer pre-paid Micro SIM cards though. Plus, I think you can take any SIM card you want to any GSM provider and they'll activate it. AT&T might not let you get the data plan without their SIM card, but T-Mobile is unlikely to care much.
For the record though, AT&T USED to offer an unlimited data plan for smartphones (iPhones expressly prohibited) for $30/mo (or maybe $35/mo). Looking at their website now, this is no longer the case. Seems they've dropped the plan and offered it up to Apple as some kind of fancy new plan...
I was thinking the same thing actually. For a service to be so notorious to not have any real competition is pretty appalling. I realize that it would be near (or completely) impossible to break in to the eBay payment business, but there's money to be made just handling credit transactions on the cheap...
I'm more curious if his servers will be returned now that he's been found not guilty and they had no infringing information on them. From what I understand, they confiscated a lot of equipment.
I wasn't a member (never heard about it until it got raided, kind of a Napster story I guess), but the site's full return would be cool too.
Are companies really writing software that will ONLY run on Win7 now? As far as I know, even DX10 still wasn't taking off. Your explanation makes sense though from the OEMs view. Now I'm curious what the hardware limits on XP were for netbooks, but I'm too lazy to look. I think they were probably the same though, so I guess putting XP on instead of Win7 Starter wouldn't help them get around that hardware limitation. They simply need to fork out the cash for the higher priced Home Premium license, bump up the RAM and charge more. Sad, considering netbooks are already so overpriced.
'Anyone care to explain how Microsoft is "limiting" these?'
From the article, it looks like Starter is limited to machines with 1GB memory and a 10.2 inch or smaller screen.
I believe Starter costs less than Home Premium so that means more money in the manufacturer's pockets by selling it with Starter instead of Home Premium.
Re:
I'm no fan of Mc D's, but seriously, it's like lose-lose around here. I expected better from Techdirt... maybe it's just that Mike didn't pen this one?
Re:
Let's see, a civilian car cuts you off and the civilian driver jumps out of the vehicle with a gun, yelling at you. Yeah, I'd try to get the hell out of there too!
The officer pulled his gun, unprovoked, and he didn't even bother to mention that he was an officer until well after the fact. I'm no law enforcement officer, but it's hard to believe that is standard procedure.
Re:
I don't expect to see a mass defect to BB to rent new releases or anything, but I can see people being incorrectly upset with NetFlix or RedBox as a result because they assume THEY are the ones delaying releases.
Re:
Re: Re:
(untitled comment)
I'll just do what they want me to do and never come back. It was rare that I ever found read-worthy articles on Ars anyway...
Re:
Re: Re: Re:
Ask all the people buying stuff from iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster and all the other media delivery services. Those companies have a lot of paying customers, and those customers are all buying things that can easily be found online for free illegally.
You may argue that those companies are all US-serving, to which I would argue that there's basically no risk in downloading anything illegally in the US already (which is somehow 100% legal by your definition too).
So, of those paying customers, "everyone has an internet connection" with "no risk of getting caught" and they're still paying. Your concerns seem somewhat unfounded.
Re: Re: Re: Why should digital paper costs _have_ to fall?
You're kind of right, in principle, but I think most people feel that if you're paying additional money for the ability to consume a different medium, that medium's price should reflect a savings to recoup that initial investment. Especially when the new medium is less valuable (in the case of ebooke: can't share it, can't write on it, can't use it without power, etc.).
And even if you are trying to maximize profits, you need to be able to drop that price to keep up with competition or they'll price you out of business. In the case of this story, I doubt NYT is prepared to keep prices in check...
Re: What will it take?
I suspect the ~40% of people represented as "will never buy online" are probably the people who expect their demands will never be met. The ~50% of the "might buy online" crowd are at least hopeful they'll one day get what they are looking for.
Re: But how much would they pay?
Well said.
Re: Even without the revised graph....
I'm curious what they were asked exactly too. I mean, I'd buy content online too, so I guess I'd be in the orange bar. But I won't buy it at the current prices and definitely not through the most popular channels. For example, I'll never use iTunes since I think it's a terrible piece of software and I lack both an Apple device and a compatible operating system; it's not JUST the price keeping me from using their service, but the price DOES keep me from even considering it.
As for the paying to remove ads thing, I still see that from time to time. It's pretty dumb to base you ENTIRE model on that, given the ease of competing (as you pointed out), but also given niceties like AdBlock/AdThward, which makes removing ads trivial and free for the user. It's a bad reason to buy.
Re: Why did Heinz even do something?
Is it a missed marketing opportunity? Perhaps, but I think it was very smart of them to make it be known that this guy doesn't work for Heinz and doesn't actually represent the company. I mean, if he was building a following and then one day turned on the company, that would have looked pretty bad for them, wouldn't you agree?
I think it's pretty interesting that Twitter didn't remove the account though. They could have easily done so (and I'm sure they HAVE done so on a regular basis), but instead just renamed it.
(untitled comment)
I won't be sad to see EMI go though.
Re:
That's almost a 30% increase in the cost of music. I'm not willing to pay $0.99 personally, so there's no way in hell I would pay 30% *more* than that. This may not apply to people who are used to the iTunes experience but it does matter for people that are just buying music.
People will only pay for music as long as it's cheap enough to not be worth pirating. I would argue that for a good number of people, a roughly 30% increase would be enough to tip them in favor of piracy.
Re: Re: Re:
For the record though, AT&T USED to offer an unlimited data plan for smartphones (iPhones expressly prohibited) for $30/mo (or maybe $35/mo). Looking at their website now, this is no longer the case. Seems they've dropped the plan and offered it up to Apple as some kind of fancy new plan...
Re:
Re:
I wasn't a member (never heard about it until it got raided, kind of a Napster story I guess), but the site's full return would be cool too.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Re: Re:
From the article, it looks like Starter is limited to machines with 1GB memory and a 10.2 inch or smaller screen.
I believe Starter costs less than Home Premium so that means more money in the manufacturer's pockets by selling it with Starter instead of Home Premium.
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