6 ms·

I’m not from the US, could you explain this perspective to me? You give me internet on device X. How is it up to you how I use it?

gear54rus 6y ago
Same way it is up to me how you use books you bought (kindle) or songs you bought (any streaming crap nowadays). If you're shitty enough person (good businessman) you can profit off of anything.
- jolux 6y ago
  DRM on books is about the rights holder, not the person selling it. I can assure you that Amazon doesn’t actually give a shit what you do with your books outside of having an obligation to the rights holders.
  - coddle-hark 6y ago
    Easy access to a huge library of books is one of the main selling points of the Kindle. DRM is good for Amazon.
    - jolux 6y ago
      Yeah, because they wouldn’t be able to offer it otherwise. If they could offer the same content without DRM at the same price, I’m certain they would do it. Apple did with the iTunes Store.
      - toyg 6y ago
        They wouldn’t, simply because their position as the dominant player in ePublishing gives them a massive incentive to lock-in users. Which is what their DRM does: you cannot move books to non-Amazon devices, so you’re stuck on Kindle forever. That this also satisfies publishers is something of a side-effect. They did the opposite with music (they actually sold simple standard mp3s, unlike what you get from iTunes) because they were challengers, not incumbents, so the priority was to attract users.
        jolux 6y ago
        iTunes has not sold music with DRM since 2009. I assure you that they care much more about you buying books from them than about "lock-in" from you using their apps and buying their devices. Proof: their apps absolutely suck and their devices are not much better. The devices exist to get you to buy more books from them. It is absolutely not a side-effect that their DRM satisfies publishers.
kevin_nisbet 6y ago
In my experience in Canada from several years ago, the business teams in wireless telcos don't see it as providing you internet on device x. The ip connection on a device is a gateway towards a service, and the telecoms want to be providers of services, and the differentiator from competitors is having better and different services. In my opinion the biggest fear of those business development teams is to be treated as or thought of just as providing internet on a device. As being just the pipe is not considered a lucrative market, and open to lots of competition where the race is to the bottom on price. This is also where you get lots of the anti-competitive behaviors, like not investing the effort to make a competitors service optimal within a network, as the carriers would rather launch their own service instead of making someone elses service they don't generate revenue off of work great. To be fair, in the older gen access technologies, all internet access isn't equal. The access network was optimized for the usage patterns of a mobile browser, in the way it scheduled and idled the radio (I'm glossing over a large number of details). So connecting a computer via tethering that behaves differently and is far more chatty on the network, is actually a much costlier device to support. The current gen techs like LTE do operate much differently, to support chatty devices and apps. With a better optimized network and devices loaded with chatty apps, this difference is probably disappearing. So if you put yourself in the shoes of a business dev person at a wireless carrier. They'll look at this and say, well we can have a $40 plan for just internet access. Or we can have a $35 plan for just mobile browsing, since that's more efficient and allows us to be more competitive when using the phones browser, and a $15 add on for tethering for those who want it and cost the company more. There are entire teams dedicated to just figuring this stuff out. And this leads to some of the stuff I would get thrown from time to time, like the $60k bills (no longer allowed in canada, a rule was created to prevent surprise bills, but used to be a thing) when someone bought unlimited mobile browser for $7, and thought that meant unlimited usage for their tethered computer and started torrenting all day which was pay per use. An unlimited $7 plan only works in the context of the way a user can use a mobile browser, and that's why the carriers think they can dictate how you use the internet connection. They have departments to tailor make plans that only work if they're able to dictate how the internet is used. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this model, I'm just trying to explain where I believe this perspective comes from based on my experience. I've been out of the industry several years now, and my opinions are my own.

gear54rus 6y ago

Same way it is up to me how you use books you bought (kindle) or songs you bought (any streaming crap nowadays). If you're shitty enough person (good businessman) you can profit off of anything.

jolux 6y ago
DRM on books is about the rights holder, not the person selling it. I can assure you that Amazon doesn’t actually give a shit what you do with your books outside of having an obligation to the rights holders.
- coddle-hark 6y ago
  Easy access to a huge library of books is one of the main selling points of the Kindle. DRM is good for Amazon.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Yeah, because they wouldn’t be able to offer it otherwise. If they could offer the same content without DRM at the same price, I’m certain they would do it. Apple did with the iTunes Store.
    - toyg 6y ago
      They wouldn’t, simply because their position as the dominant player in ePublishing gives them a massive incentive to lock-in users. Which is what their DRM does: you cannot move books to non-Amazon devices, so you’re stuck on Kindle forever. That this also satisfies publishers is something of a side-effect. They did the opposite with music (they actually sold simple standard mp3s, unlike what you get from iTunes) because they were challengers, not incumbents, so the priority was to attract users.
      - jolux 6y ago
        iTunes has not sold music with DRM since 2009. I assure you that they care much more about you buying books from them than about "lock-in" from you using their apps and buying their devices. Proof: their apps absolutely suck and their devices are not much better. The devices exist to get you to buy more books from them. It is absolutely not a side-effect that their DRM satisfies publishers.

kevin_nisbet 6y ago

In my experience in Canada from several years ago, the business teams in wireless telcos don't see it as providing you internet on device x. The ip connection on a device is a gateway towards a service, and the telecoms want to be providers of services, and the differentiator from competitors is having better and different services. In my opinion the biggest fear of those business development teams is to be treated as or thought of just as providing internet on a device. As being just the pipe is not considered a lucrative market, and open to lots of competition where the race is to the bottom on price. This is also where you get lots of the anti-competitive behaviors, like not investing the effort to make a competitors service optimal within a network, as the carriers would rather launch their own service instead of making someone elses service they don't generate revenue off of work great. To be fair, in the older gen access technologies, all internet access isn't equal. The access network was optimized for the usage patterns of a mobile browser, in the way it scheduled and idled the radio (I'm glossing over a large number of details). So connecting a computer via tethering that behaves differently and is far more chatty on the network, is actually a much costlier device to support. The current gen techs like LTE do operate much differently, to support chatty devices and apps. With a better optimized network and devices loaded with chatty apps, this difference is probably disappearing. So if you put yourself in the shoes of a business dev person at a wireless carrier. They'll look at this and say, well we can have a $40 plan for just internet access. Or we can have a $35 plan for just mobile browsing, since that's more efficient and allows us to be more competitive when using the phones browser, and a $15 add on for tethering for those who want it and cost the company more. There are entire teams dedicated to just figuring this stuff out. And this leads to some of the stuff I would get thrown from time to time, like the $60k bills (no longer allowed in canada, a rule was created to prevent surprise bills, but used to be a thing) when someone bought unlimited mobile browser for $7, and thought that meant unlimited usage for their tethered computer and started torrenting all day which was pay per use. An unlimited $7 plan only works in the context of the way a user can use a mobile browser, and that's why the carriers think they can dictate how you use the internet connection. They have departments to tailor make plans that only work if they're able to dictate how the internet is used. I'm not saying I agree or disagree with this model, I'm just trying to explain where I believe this perspective comes from based on my experience. I've been out of the industry several years now, and my opinions are my own.