Re: Cory Doctorow: W3C green-lights adding DRM to the Web's standards, says it's OK for your browser to say "I can't let you do that, Dave" [via Restricted Media Community Group]

On 2013-10-08 11:10 David Singer wrote:
> On Oct 8, 2013, at 5:48 , cobaco <cobaco@freemen.be> wrote:
> > Thanks to that basic reality there is no noticable scarcity for digital
> > goods once the first copy is created, and the creating itself is a sunk
> > cost.

> It's not a question of wanting scarcity:  trust me, people who make content
> for sale would be delighted if everyone bought it. It's a question of
> wanting remuneration for their creation.

The right time to arrange remuneration is before you do the work, not after. 

Just like a street performer if you do the work before getting payed, you'll 
be depending on people beying generous (that can still work, but it's gonna be 
harder)

As to being delighted if everyone bought it: 
- half the time when I want to buy something I flatout can't (due to available 
in US only, which they usually only tell you after showing several adds, or 
currently out of print)
- DRM is not a selling point, it's a hassle

> There *is* a business model that leverages easy copying.  Create something,
> and then sell the first copy under terms that allow the recipient to sell
> on at any price they choose.  So, the first sale tends to be expensive;
> you're going to be 'competing' with your first customer. The price drops,
> and continues to drop until it hits the point that people feel they are
> paying a price that's fair for their own enjoyment and they don't need to
> sell on.  Pretty much around there the price hits zero -- someone buys a
> copy and gives it away.

that's one business model that would work...
- crowdfunding a la kickstarter is a second
- distributed patronage by existing fans a third
- loss leading live performances/related merchandise with digital goods a 
forth
- competing on accessibility, convenience and service a fifth (note: you're 
directly competing with piracy in this model, DRM is not gonna improve your 
chances)
- then there's the alternative provided by creative commons type free culture

Those are just of the top of my head, and before you say they don't work, all 
of those are being done succesfully today by an increasing number of producers 
of digital goods.
True, they tend to not become superstars, but if you're good and productive 
enough you can make a decent living from it today.

> Whether we want to be in a world where you don't get to enjoy an online
> movie until its price drops from a few million to a few dollars, I don't
> know.

lol, at the few million dollars, that's a dieing and outdated model:

the nigerian movie industrie is creating professional movies at 17k-23k a 
piece today (at a rate of two to three thousand a year, and collective profit 
of about half a billion dollars a year currently)

(and don't tell me the difference is all wages, there's tens of thousands of 
actors making ends meet waiting tables or cleaning houses in LA that would 
jump at the chance to star in a movie even for minimum wage)

consumer/prosumer cameras today are better then the professional cameras a lot 
of classics where filmed with

CGI that would've cost tens of millions a decade or so ago (or was flatout 
impossbile back then) can be done one a home computer today

The internet gives you a distribution network that reaches billions, and with 
the advent of cloud servers one that scales with demand

Social media and the amplification of word-of-mouth it implies (i.e. going 
viral) makes becoming main-stream accessible to non-traditional sources, and 
without a big marketing budget
We're already seeing that happen with books and music today, movies are about 
a decade behind, but it will come there to.

> Another business model is that they don't make digital copies available at
> all, because of people who think that anything digital is ipso facto free. 
> I'm not sure we want that either.

If the industrie doesn't digitise their products someone else will. 

The industry is spending billions fighting piracy, and inventing increasingly 
complex DRM-schemes. Yet there's more piracy then ever before, and more of 
their supposedly protected content is available each day.

This is just not a realistic possibility
-- 
Cheers

Received on Tuesday, 8 October 2013 21:16:26 UTC