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Physical goods have a couple accidental inefficiencies which are beneficial to content creators: a) Physical degradation: The book that's been read 500 times wi

Physical goods have a couple accidental inefficiencies which are beneficial to content creators: a) Physical degradation: The book that's been read 500 times will generally be in pretty bad shape. b) Transaction costs coming from locality: I can't transmit a book from SF to NY for free. It costs time /and/ money. So in the absence of an immediately available copy of the book, I'm likely to pay a bit more for access to a new copy. Without these constraints, the secondhand goods market is potentially much larger, meaning that the creator gets paid less per license. I can read a book, submit it back into the secondhand marketplace, where it immediately gets rebought by someone in NY, and so on, ad infinitum. So, purchases-per-consumer presumably decreases, and authors still need to eat. (As do publishers, editors, and the whole weirds quasi-vampiric ecosystem surrounding them.) This increases first-sale price... which encourages piracy... etc. 'It'll be ok!' isn't a sufficient response, because look at how journalism has been gutted over the last twenty years. It's a genuinely tougher world for content creators that aren't disney...

Fnoord 7y ago
TL;DR: The keyword reply to your post is the word "library". > a) Physical degradation: The book that's been read 500 times will generally be in pretty bad shape. 500 times is a lot, but either way, it still works perfectly fine. Which is why libraries tended to work well. > Transaction costs coming from locality: I can't transmit a book from SF to NY for free. It costs time /and/ money Not much time if they pick it up or if you combine it with grocery shopping. Money: you can sell it. Then the buyer pays the transport costs. Yes, it does add up, but in my country selling a book on a platform only costs about 5 EUR extra. There is a difference between adding such 5 EUR to the total cost of resell, and making it downright impossible to resell (the current situation). It used to be a lot cheaper to sell books before globalism. You'd do it on a flea market, or give it away to the library. Then people get to use it as well. That book you own, you can probably sell it to someone in SF instead of NY (which has less carbon footprint as well). Basically, there is something inherent in humans that yes they like to collect, but they also like to get rid of things and have others reuse it. Which is why books do reach second hand markets. Why can we not do the same for games? Because of artificial barriers, that is why. Artificial barriers like these can be solved by law.
- sdenton4 7y ago
  Again, libraries have a finite supply of media: If a book isn't available, many library users trade money for time and buy a new copy. Indeed, new and popular books may have a wait time of months to get a copy. The library model is very different from the unbounded-online-secondhand-store (UOSS). The library will typically scale the number of copies of a popular book, but with some limit and longterm lookahead. The UOSS will get new used copies of a book until saturated, and then have effectively infinite copies going forward, like a used bookstore that never has to worry about floorspace for inventory. Now, it actually hurts my soul a bit to argue this side of things. I completely get, sympathize, and 99% of the time am on the side of making content available by any means necessary... It might be a good compromise would be something like limiting resale of a given copy to one per year. The concern is making sure content creators can get paid during periods of 'hotness' while still making things easily available during the cool (or deep-freeze) periods. In any case, actual modeling is needed... 'It'll be ok, libraries exist' doesn't cut it.
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    > Again, libraries have a finite supply of media: If a book isn't available, many library users trade money for time and buy a new copy. Well, as a kid, I had this subscription to a library. I could not afford new books, so I went to the library instead (which I already paid for). If my library didn't have it, I went to a different one. Else, I had to request it for Christmas or my birthday. Popular books were common in the library, and some even multiple copies. As a library, you can register when people request a book a lot, and obtain a copy of it. > The UOSS will get new used copies of a book until saturated, and then have effectively infinite copies going forward, like a used bookstore that never has to worry about floorspace for inventory. My experience with this is: scarce books are very expensive, and common books get volume. If you want to limit resale to only occur once, I feel like that is a good artificial compromise. It could also be a temporary measure to have the industry adapt to it. But I find that a bit of emotional blackmail. Commercial world is tough, adapt to changes... that's the way when you go commercial.
oneeyedpigeon 7y ago
That appears to be an argument of scale rather than one of principle. Currently, I can't even sell a digital game once, to my neighbour. Games — much more than books, maybe even more than movies — have more value closer to their release date, especially since the medium (again, way more than others) is still evolving technically. Many are likely to have a much greater longevity than a book. A typical game is also, let's remember, much more expensive than a typical book. Of course, some games have vast resources behind them, so more compensation is required. There's a whole host of factors that play off against each other to determine how the business models work, so they end up with many differences. The question that nobody ever really seems to answer is why, from the consumer point of view, should a game (or other digital media purchase) be unlike any other remotely comparable product and be non-transferable.
fnord123 7y ago
>'It'll be ok!' isn't a sufficient response, because look at how journalism has been gutted over the last twenty years. It's a genuinely tougher world for content creators that aren't disney... Can we separate fiction from non-fiction? We need non-fiction to function as a society. We like fiction a lot. Laws should protect industries that we need. Laws should not interfere with the unfettered propagation of culture even if it's churned out from a hobby that's been industrialized.
- sbarre 7y ago
  I think in this context, it's about compensation for content creation, so fiction/non-fiction is somewhat irrelevant. You (the consumer) are paying (or not paying) for content that someone else spent time creating. > Laws should not interfere with the unfettered propagation of culture Who bears the costs of this culture creation if there's no reasonable compensation model (which most likely involves a legal framework) to incentivize creators? Are we willing to reduce cultural creative output to "whoever can afford to do it unpaid" because we don't want to pay for that work?
  - fnord123 7y ago
    >Are we willing to reduce cultural creative output to "whoever can afford to do it unpaid" because we don't want to pay for that work? Yes. You will lose the multiillion dollar productions which many people like. But you will also get rid of the tournament theory[0] meat grinder that is 'the industry'. You will reduce the impact that groomers like Harvey Weinstein can have. I mean, do you think if the FA had a salary cap of 20k gbp/annum that people would stop playing Sunday league football? Obviously not. People participate because they want to. I guess a counterargument might be that we need industrialized culture to build and exert soft power around the world. Western music, films, sports, game, etc. But even then the money is so big that now US films can't risk angering China because there's too much money there. So now the tools of soft power have been hijacked against us. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory
    - 7y ago

Fnoord 7y ago

TL;DR: The keyword reply to your post is the word "library". > a) Physical degradation: The book that's been read 500 times will generally be in pretty bad shape. 500 times is a lot, but either way, it still works perfectly fine. Which is why libraries tended to work well. > Transaction costs coming from locality: I can't transmit a book from SF to NY for free. It costs time /and/ money Not much time if they pick it up or if you combine it with grocery shopping. Money: you can sell it. Then the buyer pays the transport costs. Yes, it does add up, but in my country selling a book on a platform only costs about 5 EUR extra. There is a difference between adding such 5 EUR to the total cost of resell, and making it downright impossible to resell (the current situation). It used to be a lot cheaper to sell books before globalism. You'd do it on a flea market, or give it away to the library. Then people get to use it as well. That book you own, you can probably sell it to someone in SF instead of NY (which has less carbon footprint as well). Basically, there is something inherent in humans that yes they like to collect, but they also like to get rid of things and have others reuse it. Which is why books do reach second hand markets. Why can we not do the same for games? Because of artificial barriers, that is why. Artificial barriers like these can be solved by law.

sdenton4 7y ago
Again, libraries have a finite supply of media: If a book isn't available, many library users trade money for time and buy a new copy. Indeed, new and popular books may have a wait time of months to get a copy. The library model is very different from the unbounded-online-secondhand-store (UOSS). The library will typically scale the number of copies of a popular book, but with some limit and longterm lookahead. The UOSS will get new used copies of a book until saturated, and then have effectively infinite copies going forward, like a used bookstore that never has to worry about floorspace for inventory. Now, it actually hurts my soul a bit to argue this side of things. I completely get, sympathize, and 99% of the time am on the side of making content available by any means necessary... It might be a good compromise would be something like limiting resale of a given copy to one per year. The concern is making sure content creators can get paid during periods of 'hotness' while still making things easily available during the cool (or deep-freeze) periods. In any case, actual modeling is needed... 'It'll be ok, libraries exist' doesn't cut it.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > Again, libraries have a finite supply of media: If a book isn't available, many library users trade money for time and buy a new copy. Well, as a kid, I had this subscription to a library. I could not afford new books, so I went to the library instead (which I already paid for). If my library didn't have it, I went to a different one. Else, I had to request it for Christmas or my birthday. Popular books were common in the library, and some even multiple copies. As a library, you can register when people request a book a lot, and obtain a copy of it. > The UOSS will get new used copies of a book until saturated, and then have effectively infinite copies going forward, like a used bookstore that never has to worry about floorspace for inventory. My experience with this is: scarce books are very expensive, and common books get volume. If you want to limit resale to only occur once, I feel like that is a good artificial compromise. It could also be a temporary measure to have the industry adapt to it. But I find that a bit of emotional blackmail. Commercial world is tough, adapt to changes... that's the way when you go commercial.

oneeyedpigeon 7y ago

That appears to be an argument of scale rather than one of principle. Currently, I can't even sell a digital game once, to my neighbour. Games — much more than books, maybe even more than movies — have more value closer to their release date, especially since the medium (again, way more than others) is still evolving technically. Many are likely to have a much greater longevity than a book. A typical game is also, let's remember, much more expensive than a typical book. Of course, some games have vast resources behind them, so more compensation is required. There's a whole host of factors that play off against each other to determine how the business models work, so they end up with many differences. The question that nobody ever really seems to answer is why, from the consumer point of view, should a game (or other digital media purchase) be unlike any other remotely comparable product and be non-transferable.

fnord123 7y ago

>'It'll be ok!' isn't a sufficient response, because look at how journalism has been gutted over the last twenty years. It's a genuinely tougher world for content creators that aren't disney... Can we separate fiction from non-fiction? We need non-fiction to function as a society. We like fiction a lot. Laws should protect industries that we need. Laws should not interfere with the unfettered propagation of culture even if it's churned out from a hobby that's been industrialized.

sbarre 7y ago
I think in this context, it's about compensation for content creation, so fiction/non-fiction is somewhat irrelevant. You (the consumer) are paying (or not paying) for content that someone else spent time creating. > Laws should not interfere with the unfettered propagation of culture Who bears the costs of this culture creation if there's no reasonable compensation model (which most likely involves a legal framework) to incentivize creators? Are we willing to reduce cultural creative output to "whoever can afford to do it unpaid" because we don't want to pay for that work?
- fnord123 7y ago
  >Are we willing to reduce cultural creative output to "whoever can afford to do it unpaid" because we don't want to pay for that work? Yes. You will lose the multiillion dollar productions which many people like. But you will also get rid of the tournament theory[0] meat grinder that is 'the industry'. You will reduce the impact that groomers like Harvey Weinstein can have. I mean, do you think if the FA had a salary cap of 20k gbp/annum that people would stop playing Sunday league football? Obviously not. People participate because they want to. I guess a counterargument might be that we need industrialized culture to build and exert soft power around the world. Western music, films, sports, game, etc. But even then the money is so big that now US films can't risk angering China because there's too much money there. So now the tools of soft power have been hijacked against us. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory
  - 7y ago