3 ms·

Paying some exorbitant ticket price to sit for over 2 hours in an isolated, monitored environment for a single play-through of a rap album? I can't imagine a l

by sebular 13y ago

Paying some exorbitant ticket price to sit for over 2 hours in an isolated, monitored environment for a single play-through of a rap album? I can't imagine a less enjoyable listening experience. Artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value is an interesting experiment, but this doesn't seem like the way to do it. At some point on this tour, some handler is going to have 5 minutes alone with the album, at which point they'll immediately make a copy and leak it. Nevertheless, the original will sell for a small fortune. Genuine scarcity will always be a good reason to pay lots of money.

dllthomas 13y ago
"Artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value is an interesting experiment" This is an interesting experiment in another (more extreme) way of doing that, but "artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value" is the basis of much intellectual property.
- sebular 13y ago
  I'm not so sure I agree with that statement. Intellectual property (as it applies to digital goods) is rarely about inducing scarcity. The purpose of IP-protection tools (DRM) isn't typically to limit the availability of a product-- it's to limit possession of a product such that the quantity possessed is equal to the quantity purchased (the attempt to minimize piracy). There have been cases where companies have tried to artificially induce scarcity--I recall that during the release of a certain Battlefield game, EA's storefront had temporarily "sold out" of digital copies--and in that case, the same DRM-based distribution tech that was designed for IP protection was being used to induce scarcity. In other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP enforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist. Inducing artificial scarcity means you want fewer than ten copies to exist. It's hard to find examples of artificial scarcity in the digital world, which is what makes this somewhat interesting to me. However, in the brick and mortar world, the diamond industry is a good example. edit: it's worth noting that the handcrafted case is a legitimately unique item, so in that sense, the scarcity of the complete package is real, not artificial.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    "In other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP enforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist." Monopolistic rent is extracted through underproduction.

by sebular 13y ago

dllthomas 13y ago

"Artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value is an interesting experiment" This is an interesting experiment in another (more extreme) way of doing that, but "artificially inducing scarcity in order to increase value" is the basis of much intellectual property.

sebular 13y ago
I'm not so sure I agree with that statement. Intellectual property (as it applies to digital goods) is rarely about inducing scarcity. The purpose of IP-protection tools (DRM) isn't typically to limit the availability of a product-- it's to limit possession of a product such that the quantity possessed is equal to the quantity purchased (the attempt to minimize piracy). There have been cases where companies have tried to artificially induce scarcity--I recall that during the release of a certain Battlefield game, EA's storefront had temporarily "sold out" of digital copies--and in that case, the same DRM-based distribution tech that was designed for IP protection was being used to induce scarcity. In other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP enforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist. Inducing artificial scarcity means you want fewer than ten copies to exist. It's hard to find examples of artificial scarcity in the digital world, which is what makes this somewhat interesting to me. However, in the brick and mortar world, the diamond industry is a good example. edit: it's worth noting that the handcrafted case is a legitimately unique item, so in that sense, the scarcity of the complete package is real, not artificial.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  "In other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP enforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist." Monopolistic rent is extracted through underproduction.