3 ms·

> Do I wish we had better money option back in the day? Yes. I didn't. Digital content is the closest thing to a post-scarce resource that we have ever achieve

by z3c0 4y ago

> Do I wish we had better money option back in the day? Yes. I didn't. Digital content is the closest thing to a post-scarce resource that we have ever achieved. Ushering in a business model based on the limited resources of physical mediums was a tremendous mistake, and was only done so because media companies couldn't stop salivating at the notion of charging $10 for something they could copy infinitely at almost no cost.

kelnos 4y ago
Charging for digital content is (or at least should be) about recouping the cost it took to make it, not the (near-zero) cost to distribute it.
- thfuran 4y ago
  And at scale, the cost ceases to be remotely near zero. Netflix would implode rapidly without income even if they stopped producing content.
  - z3c0 4y ago
    Netflix never would have existed to begin with in a world without DRM-loaded media. (The streaming platform, that is, not the original movies-in-your-mailbox service)
  - layer8 4y ago
    > remotely near zero That sounds like an oxymoron ;), had to take a double-take when reading.
- z3c0 4y ago
  There are other methods to recoup the cost that actually hand something of tangible value to the customer (the physical mediums I mentioned, for example.) Handing over a digital asset for the same price, and then lambasting those who choose to distribute it freely, is 100% the shittiest way to do it.
- account42 4y ago
  It's pretty obvious that media companies are not ok with simply recouping cost plus a reasonable margin but instead all try for a recurring income stream with little recurrent effort to earn it. No amount of profit is enough if more can be had and with the current copyright regime they can legally get away with it too. Plenty of old games are still sold at prices way above zero even when the companies that originally made them have long since stopped existing. So no, digital content is not priced around recouping costs but around maximising profit. And going back to the original topic, a lot of advertising infested sites on the web still have their content created for free by users and those profiting from the advertisement are merely the middlemen that handle the distribution.

by z3c0 4y ago

kelnos 4y ago

Charging for digital content is (or at least should be) about recouping the cost it took to make it, not the (near-zero) cost to distribute it.

thfuran 4y ago
And at scale, the cost ceases to be remotely near zero. Netflix would implode rapidly without income even if they stopped producing content.
- z3c0 4y ago
  Netflix never would have existed to begin with in a world without DRM-loaded media. (The streaming platform, that is, not the original movies-in-your-mailbox service)
- layer8 4y ago
  > remotely near zero That sounds like an oxymoron ;), had to take a double-take when reading.
z3c0 4y ago
There are other methods to recoup the cost that actually hand something of tangible value to the customer (the physical mediums I mentioned, for example.) Handing over a digital asset for the same price, and then lambasting those who choose to distribute it freely, is 100% the shittiest way to do it.
account42 4y ago
It's pretty obvious that media companies are not ok with simply recouping cost plus a reasonable margin but instead all try for a recurring income stream with little recurrent effort to earn it. No amount of profit is enough if more can be had and with the current copyright regime they can legally get away with it too. Plenty of old games are still sold at prices way above zero even when the companies that originally made them have long since stopped existing. So no, digital content is not priced around recouping costs but around maximising profit. And going back to the original topic, a lot of advertising infested sites on the web still have their content created for free by users and those profiting from the advertisement are merely the middlemen that handle the distribution.