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He also missed that content (per MIT) is the most profitable business model of all. Case in point how much engineering and R&D dollars had to go into the "Harry

He also missed that content (per MIT) is the most profitable business model of all. Case in point how much engineering and R&D dollars had to go into the "Harry Potter novels" or creating a Marvel Super Hero? Even content from one's garage that users put up on eBay or the paint splatters up for auction at Sothebys New York?

wmf 9y ago
Most profitable by margin or absolute dollars? IIRC the tech industry is far bigger than any one "content" industry and maybe bigger than all of them combined.
- emodendroket 9y ago
  How do you even tease out such a thing when you have companies like Comcast or Netflix which clearly fit in both categories?
  - SCAQTony 9y ago
    A movie is like real estate... You make it and you can keep "renting" or selling it. Movies like 'Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Snow White" are still making studios mad money on different delivery systems from the original theater showing on through to VHS, DVD, Blu Ray, 4000-pixels and streaming.' These movies came out in the 1930s. They are almost 100-years old. NetFlix got that fact pretty quickly when the studios wanted to renegotiate contracts and that is where the bulk of their money is coming from. [They are] the creator and the distributor. edit to fix typo.
- SCAQTony 9y ago
  The biggest industry in the whole world is food. As an industry it covers agriculture, dairy, fishing etc. The best way to reply is to link to the M.I.T. PDF on most profitable business models - search the word creator: http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp226.pdf http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp226.pdf "...Figure 4 shows the distribution of different business models in our sample of large US firms. By far the most common basic business model in our sample is Creator, with 46% of total revenues of the firms in our sample falling within this category. Landlord type models account for 34% of total revenues, followed by Distributors with 18% of total revenues, and Brokers with 2%. In addition, an overwhelming portion (70%) of the business of large-revenue, publicly traded firms still involves physical assets. Financial and Human assets account for 12% and 13%, respectively, and Intangible assets are only 4% of the revenues of large firms. Figure 4 also shows the numbers of firms generating revenues with each model and asset type. ..." Creating food is content as well.
throwaway91111 9y ago
Potentially the most profitable. There's plenty of net negative value content out there, too.
cookiecaper 9y ago
Yes, people often overlook this, and it's evidence of just how absurd our copyright regime is. While big utility, resource, transportation, and retail companies may not have the best PR, it makes sense that they would be among the biggest operations in the world because they do things that are intricate, complicated, and irreducible. Every day they get the oil out of some hole in the arctic and into my local gas pumps, or they get a consumer good designed and built overseas onto a shelf in my local supermarket or shopping mall, etc. These processes require precision, careful cost analysis, and ultimately employ 10s of thousands of people, all in the process of providing basic living essentials like food, transport, energy, medicine, etc. What do Disney (#52 Fortune 500) or Time Warner (#95 Fortune 500) do that warrants their presence alongside the Pfizers (provides medication; #54) and 3Ms (provides all kinds of materials and plastics; #94) of the world? They throw mud at the wall until it sticks and then just rehash, rehash, rehash. It is far more profitable than any natural business, meaning a business that exist due to real market forces instead of artificially-imposed monopolies (without copyright, there is virtually unlimited supply to "content", making the market infertile at best). We have given away the farm to content owners. Copyright must be substantially weakened. Content is only so grotesquely profitable because we threaten to imprison those persons who copy things without the consent of their local MegaCorp; that is, such transactions occur within a completely artificial marketplace. We need to fix this.

wmf 9y ago

Most profitable by margin or absolute dollars? IIRC the tech industry is far bigger than any one "content" industry and maybe bigger than all of them combined.

emodendroket 9y ago
How do you even tease out such a thing when you have companies like Comcast or Netflix which clearly fit in both categories?
- SCAQTony 9y ago
  A movie is like real estate... You make it and you can keep "renting" or selling it. Movies like 'Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Snow White" are still making studios mad money on different delivery systems from the original theater showing on through to VHS, DVD, Blu Ray, 4000-pixels and streaming.' These movies came out in the 1930s. They are almost 100-years old. NetFlix got that fact pretty quickly when the studios wanted to renegotiate contracts and that is where the bulk of their money is coming from. [They are] the creator and the distributor. edit to fix typo.
SCAQTony 9y ago
The biggest industry in the whole world is food. As an industry it covers agriculture, dairy, fishing etc. The best way to reply is to link to the M.I.T. PDF on most profitable business models - search the word creator: http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp226.pdf http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/pdf/wp226.pdf "...Figure 4 shows the distribution of different business models in our sample of large US firms. By far the most common basic business model in our sample is Creator, with 46% of total revenues of the firms in our sample falling within this category. Landlord type models account for 34% of total revenues, followed by Distributors with 18% of total revenues, and Brokers with 2%. In addition, an overwhelming portion (70%) of the business of large-revenue, publicly traded firms still involves physical assets. Financial and Human assets account for 12% and 13%, respectively, and Intangible assets are only 4% of the revenues of large firms. Figure 4 also shows the numbers of firms generating revenues with each model and asset type. ..." Creating food is content as well.

throwaway91111 9y ago

Potentially the most profitable. There's plenty of net negative value content out there, too.

cookiecaper 9y ago

Yes, people often overlook this, and it's evidence of just how absurd our copyright regime is. While big utility, resource, transportation, and retail companies may not have the best PR, it makes sense that they would be among the biggest operations in the world because they do things that are intricate, complicated, and irreducible. Every day they get the oil out of some hole in the arctic and into my local gas pumps, or they get a consumer good designed and built overseas onto a shelf in my local supermarket or shopping mall, etc. These processes require precision, careful cost analysis, and ultimately employ 10s of thousands of people, all in the process of providing basic living essentials like food, transport, energy, medicine, etc. What do Disney (#52 Fortune 500) or Time Warner (#95 Fortune 500) do that warrants their presence alongside the Pfizers (provides medication; #54) and 3Ms (provides all kinds of materials and plastics; #94) of the world? They throw mud at the wall until it sticks and then just rehash, rehash, rehash. It is far more profitable than any natural business, meaning a business that exist due to real market forces instead of artificially-imposed monopolies (without copyright, there is virtually unlimited supply to "content", making the market infertile at best). We have given away the farm to content owners. Copyright must be substantially weakened. Content is only so grotesquely profitable because we threaten to imprison those persons who copy things without the consent of their local MegaCorp; that is, such transactions occur within a completely artificial marketplace. We need to fix this.