6 ms·

The creation of the content of those bits costs money, though. How do you pay for that content? Or are you suggesting digital content should be paid for as a se

by grzm 10y ago

The creation of the content of those bits costs money, though. How do you pay for that content? Or are you suggesting digital content should be paid for as a service, rather than on a piece-by-piece basis? Arguably, software developers just rearrange bits into some arbitrary state. So they wouldn't be paid, either?

krapp 10y ago
The creation of those bits cost money initially, when real world and not easily replicable work was necessary. After that, the end result is more or less worthless, because the work of replicating those bits is practically nil. There's the rub - all of that effort and money creating products with no real monetary value. I'm not suggesting any particular model here, I like money as much as the next person, but I also believe the trend to see the price of digital media converge toward zero is valid. I don't know what the answer to that is, other than somehow convince people to pay for something they rationally shouldn't.
- grzm 10y ago
  People find value in the experiences and services that provide no lasting tangible effects all the time. Considering these to be of no real monetary value seems seriously mistaken.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    If you take the market view (value being what people are willing to pay for), then the market clearly tells you that people value digitally delivered experiences at $not-much, rapidly falling to NIL. After all, bits are near-free to copy from the market's POV too - for everyone, it's trivial to either copy a piece of digital content themselves, or ask someone who'll copy it for them for free. Copyrights and branding piracy as theft are ways of trying to artificially control the free market here. But they're so obviously "unnatural" in the digital space, that it makes sense to think about ways of making it so that the original creator gets paid, while copying remains free.
    - grzm 10y ago
      Reading this comment and your other one above, I think we are in general agreement. I think there are two pieces here: one is a change in perception to some extent: you're right that many people value digital delivery differently and lower. To some extent I think that can change. I know it's changed for myself personally over the years. The other is along the lines of what you wrote here, which I think sums it nicely: we need to rethink the path that currently leads from "X created it, and deserves compensation" to "Y receives a copy and should pay for it". What I'd like to hear is more about potential solutions as opposed to descriptions.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        > (...) many people value digital delivery differently and lower. To some extent I think that can change. I know it's changed for myself personally over the years. I know it changed for me too, and I think it's mostly because of having more disposable income nowadays than in the past. As a teenager, there was no way I could afford movies or video games. Now, my natural first instinct for media is buying / subscribing on Amazon, Netflix and Steam. > What I'd like to hear is more about potential solutions as opposed to descriptions. I've been thinking about one, and it turns out to be exactly what 'endominus described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13523515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13523515.
- diminoten 10y ago
  Ah yes, the all too familiar, "What is art and why does it cost money?" conversation. At least we're in well-tread territory, right?
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    Because of the documentation of its provenance, the difficulty in reproducing it, and because people will pay for it.
    - diminoten 10y ago
      There are volumes upon volumes of the ontology of art, I just wanted to point out that's where we are now, and that such questions have been asked and answered for literally thousands of years.
- carussell 10y ago
  You're using some really dubious tricks to massage the numbers so they can be discounted. Temporality is a nonsense argument. Your sandwich shop worker served you and 80 other customers last Tuesday. I'm the boss, and it's time for me to cut the checks. Wait—what am I paying for here? Today's Friday, and all those sandwiches are already out the door.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > Your sandwich shop worker served you and 80 other customers last Tuesday. I'm the boss, and it's time for me to cut the checks. Wait—what am I paying for here? The contractual debt you incurred when the work happened. Or, in terms of expected value received from paying, you are paying to avoid the legal consequences of not paying that debt.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - krapp 10y ago
    >Your sandwich shop worker served you and 80 other customers last Tuesday. I'm the boss, and it's time for me to cut the checks. Wait—what am I paying for here? Today's Friday, and all those sandwiches are already out the door. In that case, you're paying for the time your employees could have spent elsewhere - and you're likely not paying more if your employees make more sandwiches faster. Also, every sandwich is unique, and takes physical effort and resources to make - if sandwiches could be copied as easily as software, chances are you would fire all but one employee and pay that one as little as you legally could, and still charge the same price, but would that really be fair? The problem with the economy around digital media is justifying what, exactly, the consumer is meant to be paying for.
    - carussell 10y ago
      [EDIT: I regret entering this conversation. I don't expect anything productive to come from it.]
TeMPOraL 10y ago
The point is, we need to rethink the path that currently leads from "X created it, and deserves compensation" to "Y receives a copy and should pay for it". With physical goods, it's a case that for Y to have their copy, X must make some additional marginal expense, and the obvious way to recoup this expense is to bill Y. In the digital space, it's becoming more and more obvious that Y getting a copy is utterly disconnected from X's work - X only has to make one piece of something, and copying is essentially free. Just like paying for a physical thing feels natural, paying for a copy of a digital thing feels unnatural - it does not fit the way the medium works. Hence the need to rethink the whole chain, so that X gets paid, while Y doesn't have to pay per copy.
- 13of40 10y ago
  When you purchase a bound copy of my book, a small part of that money pays for the physical object. The publisher also takes a part, and that's what they use to keep the lights on in their office. The last bit goes to me so I can feed my cat and work on my next book. How does the medium or your ability to copy it change the fact that my cat needs to eat, and in lieu of getting paid for my writing so I can feed him, I'll need to do something other than write?
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > How does the medium or your ability to copy it change the fact that my cat needs to eat, and in lieu of getting paid for my writing so I can feed him, I'll need to do something other than write? It doesn't. But "you need to get paid" != "I need to pay you for the copy of your work". It's only a possible implication. One that we accept in physical world, but that doesn't work well for digital one - hence my point about finding some other way in which you get your money for writing, without me having to explicitly pay for a copy of your e-book.
    - robryan 10y ago
      Sure there are other ways that you could pay. I don't get though why directly paying for the content giving you entertainment is so bad? Being a digital good some people will choose to avoid paying, but I suspect that would be true of any other model used as well.

by grzm 10y ago

krapp 10y ago

The creation of those bits cost money initially, when real world and not easily replicable work was necessary. After that, the end result is more or less worthless, because the work of replicating those bits is practically nil. There's the rub - all of that effort and money creating products with no real monetary value. I'm not suggesting any particular model here, I like money as much as the next person, but I also believe the trend to see the price of digital media converge toward zero is valid. I don't know what the answer to that is, other than somehow convince people to pay for something they rationally shouldn't.

grzm 10y ago
People find value in the experiences and services that provide no lasting tangible effects all the time. Considering these to be of no real monetary value seems seriously mistaken.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  If you take the market view (value being what people are willing to pay for), then the market clearly tells you that people value digitally delivered experiences at $not-much, rapidly falling to NIL. After all, bits are near-free to copy from the market's POV too - for everyone, it's trivial to either copy a piece of digital content themselves, or ask someone who'll copy it for them for free. Copyrights and branding piracy as theft are ways of trying to artificially control the free market here. But they're so obviously "unnatural" in the digital space, that it makes sense to think about ways of making it so that the original creator gets paid, while copying remains free.
  - grzm 10y ago
    Reading this comment and your other one above, I think we are in general agreement. I think there are two pieces here: one is a change in perception to some extent: you're right that many people value digital delivery differently and lower. To some extent I think that can change. I know it's changed for myself personally over the years. The other is along the lines of what you wrote here, which I think sums it nicely: we need to rethink the path that currently leads from "X created it, and deserves compensation" to "Y receives a copy and should pay for it". What I'd like to hear is more about potential solutions as opposed to descriptions.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      > (...) many people value digital delivery differently and lower. To some extent I think that can change. I know it's changed for myself personally over the years. I know it changed for me too, and I think it's mostly because of having more disposable income nowadays than in the past. As a teenager, there was no way I could afford movies or video games. Now, my natural first instinct for media is buying / subscribing on Amazon, Netflix and Steam. > What I'd like to hear is more about potential solutions as opposed to descriptions. I've been thinking about one, and it turns out to be exactly what 'endominus described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13523515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13523515.
diminoten 10y ago
Ah yes, the all too familiar, "What is art and why does it cost money?" conversation. At least we're in well-tread territory, right?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Because of the documentation of its provenance, the difficulty in reproducing it, and because people will pay for it.
  - diminoten 10y ago
    There are volumes upon volumes of the ontology of art, I just wanted to point out that's where we are now, and that such questions have been asked and answered for literally thousands of years.
carussell 10y ago
You're using some really dubious tricks to massage the numbers so they can be discounted. Temporality is a nonsense argument. Your sandwich shop worker served you and 80 other customers last Tuesday. I'm the boss, and it's time for me to cut the checks. Wait—what am I paying for here? Today's Friday, and all those sandwiches are already out the door.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Your sandwich shop worker served you and 80 other customers last Tuesday. I'm the boss, and it's time for me to cut the checks. Wait—what am I paying for here? The contractual debt you incurred when the work happened. Or, in terms of expected value received from paying, you are paying to avoid the legal consequences of not paying that debt.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- krapp 10y ago
  >Your sandwich shop worker served you and 80 other customers last Tuesday. I'm the boss, and it's time for me to cut the checks. Wait—what am I paying for here? Today's Friday, and all those sandwiches are already out the door. In that case, you're paying for the time your employees could have spent elsewhere - and you're likely not paying more if your employees make more sandwiches faster. Also, every sandwich is unique, and takes physical effort and resources to make - if sandwiches could be copied as easily as software, chances are you would fire all but one employee and pay that one as little as you legally could, and still charge the same price, but would that really be fair? The problem with the economy around digital media is justifying what, exactly, the consumer is meant to be paying for.
  - carussell 10y ago
    [EDIT: I regret entering this conversation. I don't expect anything productive to come from it.]

TeMPOraL 10y ago

The point is, we need to rethink the path that currently leads from "X created it, and deserves compensation" to "Y receives a copy and should pay for it". With physical goods, it's a case that for Y to have their copy, X must make some additional marginal expense, and the obvious way to recoup this expense is to bill Y. In the digital space, it's becoming more and more obvious that Y getting a copy is utterly disconnected from X's work - X only has to make one piece of something, and copying is essentially free. Just like paying for a physical thing feels natural, paying for a copy of a digital thing feels unnatural - it does not fit the way the medium works. Hence the need to rethink the whole chain, so that X gets paid, while Y doesn't have to pay per copy.

13of40 10y ago
When you purchase a bound copy of my book, a small part of that money pays for the physical object. The publisher also takes a part, and that's what they use to keep the lights on in their office. The last bit goes to me so I can feed my cat and work on my next book. How does the medium or your ability to copy it change the fact that my cat needs to eat, and in lieu of getting paid for my writing so I can feed him, I'll need to do something other than write?
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > How does the medium or your ability to copy it change the fact that my cat needs to eat, and in lieu of getting paid for my writing so I can feed him, I'll need to do something other than write? It doesn't. But "you need to get paid" != "I need to pay you for the copy of your work". It's only a possible implication. One that we accept in physical world, but that doesn't work well for digital one - hence my point about finding some other way in which you get your money for writing, without me having to explicitly pay for a copy of your e-book.
  - robryan 10y ago
    Sure there are other ways that you could pay. I don't get though why directly paying for the content giving you entertainment is so bad? Being a digital good some people will choose to avoid paying, but I suspect that would be true of any other model used as well.