Interesting Links for 11-03-2012
Mar. 11th, 2012 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- Women who have just finished ovulating are the best at spotting snakes
- Toshiba has a glasses-free 3D TV on sale. I wonder how well it works with multiple viewers.
- Scots offer to send water to aid drought-hit England - in exchange for train tracks
- A breakthrough in understanding how the brain stores memories
- Dozens of Iraqi teenagers stoned to death for ‘emo’ haircuts
- Street Harassment #101 - a long page of reasons I'm glad I'm not a woman.
- When a cat realises that who is controlling the toy it's playing with.
- Don't Make Me Steal: The Digital Media Consumption Manifesto
- The NHS Bill does not allow for patients to be charged
- Private Practice is the first show on television to have a male military survivor of rape.
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no subject
Date: 2012-03-12 02:21 pm (UTC)a) piracy is more convenient and unstopable so unless you match the convenience I’m just going to pirate your stuff for free.
b) some of your content is shoddy so I’m not going to pay for it until I’ve seen if it’s any good.
c) for reasons I won’t explain I think your products are too expensive, make them cheaper or I’ll apply a five finger discount.
I guess point a) works until content providers find a way to stop piracy. Other folk will know better than me the liklihood that a technical prevention to piracy will be developed. My guess is pretty slim. Which leaves us with a huge surveilance state and the FBI kicking in doors and shooting people in the head.
I’d be okay with the FBI doing this if, in exchange, they stopped targeting the legtimate businessmen commonly known as drug dealers.
Point a) & c) in combination leads to a bit of the tradegy of the commons type event. If piracy leads to content providers leaving the market then we’re all a little worse off. I’m going to have to think about which content providers stay in the market in the light of Kay’s work on strategy.
b) implies a rather more wholesale change in the relationship between content providers and content consumers.
How do you provide a good or service that is non-excludable and non-rivalous? State provision works. Are there any other models?
I’m a bit concerned about the guy’s understanding of the cost base of the content makers and providers and the lack of consideration of the price elasticity of demand.
I found the entitled tone of his article a little off putting.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-12 05:37 pm (UTC)That depends. Would abolishing copyright lead to there being less content, or more content that was less well edited (because the financial incentive vanished)?
What I'm mostly paying for, with my monthly Virgin Tax, is simplicity. The TV is there instantly, and I don't have to faff around with filesharing technology. I'm happy to keep doing that - and I'd pay for all sorts of downloaded video, if the format was DRM-free.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-13 09:41 am (UTC)I think you’re right about the first bit of the supply chain to drop out being the technical stuff.
Only one way to find out.
More broadly, I’m not so sure I want to return to a world where you can only manufacture high quality, well produced product if you don’t need to make a living at it e.g. are already quite well off.