@ Anna. My comment was mostly related to Steves’ particular suggestion that more authors and producers should now be able to support themselves. It is very controversal
Anyway the phenomenon of price Zero, or at least what seems to be price zero, is of course not what can support small and independent authors, software and media creators. Giants can sustain it, loosing fortunes, but eventually making profit by gaining the novel markets. The known example is Google, that creates a plenty of free tools. Its YouTube is a joy for us a whole loss of money for Google, but Google will return the profit somehow else, with its huge traffic and advertising machine.
Anna, I am sorry to miss your first responce to mine. I agree with some of your points but generally I disagree. I may be write more later. But Steve wrote a lot about it.
Just to make it clear: I am not an intersant and I don’t earn from any “cheep” distribution. I know of a few independent and creative people whose excellent products and movies were just crashed, and they stopped working further lacking money. Anderson writes no copyrightexists in China, the major market. There is no film not to be pirated in Russia. The nature of the many industries is changing, ingluding professional writting.
I think we are living in interesting times with the cost of distribution of many intellectual products coming way down. We, at LingQ, are still trying to figure things out. We started offering content for sale, or resale on behalf of the creator. As long as there was free content available, that was not successful. On the other hand I tried several free dictionaries for my iPod Touch/ iPad, and ended paying for good ones. I have bought e-books for between $0, $2.95 and $4.95. It is so easy to buy that I think people will buy more and more, and the competition will force prices down. We will see.
Ilya,
I agree with you about the issue of self-supporting. But a lot of good artists through human history have been forced to stop making their art because they lacked enough money to survive, this is not a new phenomenon, nor it’s caused by technology.
About prices, maybe the reasonable price is indeed zero or something very, very low, simply because of the self-replicating nature of digital content. You can like it or not, but it is just how digital things are, and DRMs are just silly and short-sighed attempts to distort this reality.
But I think there is some light in the end of the tunnel: what is NOT self-replicable are “services” and “live experiences”, for example. Famous musicians nowadays make most of their money out of shows, CDs and DVDs being more marketing tools than anything else. A lot of people make a living providing support and personalizations to free, open-software tools. Here in Brazil people pay a small fortune to have live access to soccer games, although these games are shown a few hours latter in open channels. Cinemas are pretty alive, in spite of how easy is to find brand-new movies in peer-to-peer networks. People don’t go and pay for a movie, but for an experience which is not reproducible at home. I pay small and reasonable fees (from my point of view, of course) for sites which offer me services that I consider valuable, like LingQ and some others. You see, there are some things people are still willing to pay for, it is just a matter of intelligence to find out what these things are. What is not very smart from a business point of view is to spend fortunes to prevent the inevitable, at a cost of burdening the lives of your own customers.
Yes, Steve, that’s it. If I have the option to safely and quickly download content for a few dollars, I’m going to do it more and more and become used to it. But if to study from a book I need to pay a fortune and still crack it in order to use my own book as I want, I’d better study in the library, legally and for free.
@ Ana. Now I generally agree with you and am mostly joking.
“Cinemas are pretty alive, in spite of how…” – the dates and kisses in the movie theaters are should never die, should they?
“DRMs are just silly and short-sighed attempts to distort this reality.” - I beleive the reality is just looking for new forms of the Rights Management.
“What is not very smart from a business point of view…” - the Russian reply that I am accustomed to hear is - “If you are so clever, why are you so poor?” (Smile)
I believe in natural selection, not only in the gene pool, but in the market too. In all our intelligence (see the "I’m terrified thread about free will here on the forum) we love to set up blocks in the form of strict copyright laws for enjoyment of art… (which I read a great paper about, calling it a “Human Only Phenomenon”).
Like most laws (compulsory education, immigration laws, minimum wage, health care) they were made with good intentions despite creating a handful of new problems least of which is debt and less freedom, and have tattooed themselves onto our culture, but thankfully concerning copyright, natural selection in the form of technological advances has made it so that intellectual property is much much easier to consume.
We are currently in a limbo where our unnatural but well intentioned laws and beneficial advances of our society and crashing together.
I don’t know if more authors and creators will be able to support themselves, they may have to do more things in front of audiences or make their particular art live, or any number of things I can’t predict because I’m one person and simply cannot predict the invisible hand/natural selection of the market.
What I do know is that, when TV appeared books didn’t disappear. When the printing press was invented, we didn’t destroy ourselves with knowledge like most religious leaders predicted (however we did become more free thinkers and less religious, just like they predicted). My point is that Art: The Human Phenomenon will not stop playing in human minds and on the human stage. However enforcing current copyright laws endangers our much beloved privacy and personal freedoms.
Ilya,
"the dates and kisses in the movie theaters are should never die, should they? " → oh, not at all!!
“If you are so clever, why are you so poor?” (Smile Back) =>Have you seen American Beauty? when the guy tries a job as a McDonald’s attendant, and says to the astonished boy who was supposed to interview him: “this is the perfect job for me, I want the least responsibility possible”. That’s more or less why I’m not rich…
Yes, blindside, art is a deep human need and is not likely to die. At a minimum, we still need excuses for dates and kisses… lol
The trend in digital media is to move to a subscription based model (kind of like LingQ, and Netflix). I wouldn’t be surprised if the next generation of ebook readers offers an “all the ebooks you can read for a monthly subscription of 19.95” or something to that affect. From a media provider’s standpoint this makes a lot of sense. it is why Netflix is flourishing while Blockbuster is failing.
I can only half agree with you. Whether or not the trend of subscription based sales persists, it doesn’t make up for the fact that intellectual property is still free and the current laws still endanger personal privacy and freedom.
I’m not sure where you are half agreeing with me. My post was completely on what I expected the digital media providers to do: from their standpoint, and had nothing to do with my personal opinions of intellectual property.
I’m sorry I didn’t realize it was a general comment and not a response. I shall rephrase my response.
I don’t think that the trend of a subscription based platform is viable at best it’s only a little bit better than selling cds and dvds. Lingq, at least to me isn’t related because it’s a service, the digital media here is free even you’re not a paying member. I don’t think the subscription trend can last too long, because in all reality IP is free. I think you were right in using the word: trend.
