3 ms·
I see so many people in this thread who are extremely disconnected from the reality of what it takes to be successful in ecommerce. They haven't had to deal wit
by TrevorJ 13y ago
I see so many people in this thread who are extremely disconnected from the reality of what it takes to be successful in ecommerce. They haven't had to deal with the fly-by-night sellers who set up, steal their product data and images from you, blow out everything at below MAP price and then shut down when they get caught only to pop up next week under a different name.
Third party sales channels represent a HUGE portion of the market, you can't afford to ignore them as a reseller. Often your only advantage in a third party channel is the quality of your data and images. Your company name is never allowed to feature prominently, and if you think good customer service will convince somebody to pay 20% more for your product than the guy who's breaking MAP policy you are kidding yourself. Good customer feedback is the minimum bar for selling successfully through third party channels, not a differentiator. In many marketplaces, sellers who have bad feedback will simply set up a new account and start over, seeding themselves with good feedback from day one.
What all this adds up to is a lose/lose for honest companies that play by the rules, make no mistake, protecting the images that you've invested capital in to create is very important.
- mikeash 13y agoWhile that all sounds perfectly fine and reasonable, the fact is that you can basically s/ecommerce/music/ and your post would be right at home in a thread about sleazy DRM tactics by RIAA members.
- TrevorJ 13y agoThat is a completely specious argument and I think you know it. A: We are not talking about a product here. We aren't selling an image to somebody, then slapping a watermark on it. We are creating material, at our own expense that we are using to advertise a product. Do you think that Coke should be allowed to use Pepsi's marketing as their own, or is not allowing that some sort of draconian DRM tactic too? B: We aren't actually talking about consumers here at all - the issue is the inability to control how other companies use the materials you've created, and hold the rights to.
- mikeash 13y agoTalk about specious arguments! Where did I ever say that other companies should be allowed to use your images? Please remember that DRM is completely unrelated to legal permission to violate someone's copyright. Confusing the two is a favorite tactic of RIAA-type people, though, so your post just makes the parallel all the stronger.
- TrevorJ 13y agoI'm not sure why you are conflating a watermark with DRM in the first place, or how you could possibly think this has anything to do with 'RIAA-type people'. I'm honestly not sure what to even say to you because you aren't making any sense.
- mikeash 13y agoWatermarks are definitely DRM in my book. A technological measure used to prevent or at least discourage copyright infringement. It's the same basic idea as e.g. the coded anti-piracy dots you see in movie theaters. My point is quite simple: the arguments being made defending watermarks are the exact same arguments people make to defend DRM on movies and music. That doesn't mean they're wrong, of course.
- TrevorJ 13y agoAh, I think I understand your position on this, thank you for explaining. Even if the arguments sound the same, they are valid (or not), for very different reasons, because the situations are very different.