3 ms·

The postal service feels the same way about email as the media companies feel about digital files. But everyone laughs at their complaints or proposals to tax e

The postal service feels the same way about email as the media companies feel about digital files. But everyone laughs at their complaints or proposals to tax email. As a society we no longer have to waste huge amounts of resources to make physical copies of information and deliver them around the world. This is an enormous benefit to society. It's staggering. All that wasted resources and time are now available to be used more productively. It shows you who welcomes progress and who only pays it lip service. I really really hope we find a killer alternative energy source and infrastructure before I die. I will get to laugh my ass off at the insane fact distortion that arises. The loud arguments against these awful crimes against the noble oilmen and brave tanker captains who are struggling. How, oh how, will the pious House of Saud control their rebellious slave worker population with their income being stolen from them by this entitled Culture of Free!

rayiner 12y ago
We never spent all that much resources making physical copies of information and sending it around--or at least, that cost has always paled in comparison to the cost of generating that information in the first place. Which is precisely why your energy analogy is inapposite. The Saudis didn't invent oil--they just trade in its scarcity. But digital technology doesn't address the scarcity of information and original content. Someone still has to create the first copy, and as ever, that's the hard part.
- chongli 12y ago
  The cost of generating the information has also gone down by orders of magnitude. You no longer need a multi-million dollar TV studio to produce content for an audience of millions; all you need is a webcam and a youtube account.
  - rayiner 12y ago
    Production budgets for AAA content are higher than ever, and the "webcam and a youtube account" segment has been supplementing rather than competing with those AAA products.
    - chongli 12y ago
      Do you have any data to back up this assertion?
    - freshhawk 12y ago
      Production budgets for AAA content are higher precisely because small players can now compete on quality with the old acceptable quality levels for AAA, so the spectacle has to grow along a non-linear curve (twice as amazing costs more than twice as much). There's a good case to be made that rising amateur quality drives larger and larger mega-blockbusters.
- freshhawk 12y ago
  For music distribution costs swamped the costs of generating the information for even small runs of CDs. Maybe for a smaller artist, if you included an amortized A&R costs and marketing you'd be right. But including market speculator costs in this calculation makes no sense to me. In terms of costs to the consumer, a tiny fraction of a penny went to the person generating the information anyway, if they sued to get it. Once a song was recorded they traded in it's scarcity, just like oil. And now that scarcity is completely artificial. It makes no sense to pay 99% of the cost of purchased music to a facilitator who prints CDs, vets musicians, and markets them. The internet makes the last one easier and the first two obsolete. First of all, getting people to create music and want to show it off is not hard, stopping them from doing so is hard. It has never been hard. What was hard was trying to get massively rich off of popular music. Do you really think that this massively stupid and inefficient system, hated by consumers and artists must be protected just to avoid figuring out a new way to pay artists? Artists are still making a good living these days, just more from endorsements, live shows and merch than sales of music. So that's not in danger. It's easier for beginner or smaller acts to get ahead and make a living now. Sure, some artists who would be rich under the old system won't be under another system, and vice versa. But in aggregate there is only one loser - the record company middlemen. This seems so obvious to me. Especially now, when it's already happening and plenty of people are "creating the first copy" undeterred, right now it looks like maybe there will be more successful artists but fewer mega-rich artists due to less of hit based business but that might change as the new way of doing things grows, websites are now an extreme hit based business and didn't start out that way.

rayiner 12y ago

We never spent all that much resources making physical copies of information and sending it around--or at least, that cost has always paled in comparison to the cost of generating that information in the first place. Which is precisely why your energy analogy is inapposite. The Saudis didn't invent oil--they just trade in its scarcity. But digital technology doesn't address the scarcity of information and original content. Someone still has to create the first copy, and as ever, that's the hard part.

chongli 12y ago
The cost of generating the information has also gone down by orders of magnitude. You no longer need a multi-million dollar TV studio to produce content for an audience of millions; all you need is a webcam and a youtube account.
- rayiner 12y ago
  Production budgets for AAA content are higher than ever, and the "webcam and a youtube account" segment has been supplementing rather than competing with those AAA products.
  - chongli 12y ago
    Do you have any data to back up this assertion?
  - freshhawk 12y ago
    Production budgets for AAA content are higher precisely because small players can now compete on quality with the old acceptable quality levels for AAA, so the spectacle has to grow along a non-linear curve (twice as amazing costs more than twice as much). There's a good case to be made that rising amateur quality drives larger and larger mega-blockbusters.
freshhawk 12y ago
For music distribution costs swamped the costs of generating the information for even small runs of CDs. Maybe for a smaller artist, if you included an amortized A&R costs and marketing you'd be right. But including market speculator costs in this calculation makes no sense to me. In terms of costs to the consumer, a tiny fraction of a penny went to the person generating the information anyway, if they sued to get it. Once a song was recorded they traded in it's scarcity, just like oil. And now that scarcity is completely artificial. It makes no sense to pay 99% of the cost of purchased music to a facilitator who prints CDs, vets musicians, and markets them. The internet makes the last one easier and the first two obsolete. First of all, getting people to create music and want to show it off is not hard, stopping them from doing so is hard. It has never been hard. What was hard was trying to get massively rich off of popular music. Do you really think that this massively stupid and inefficient system, hated by consumers and artists must be protected just to avoid figuring out a new way to pay artists? Artists are still making a good living these days, just more from endorsements, live shows and merch than sales of music. So that's not in danger. It's easier for beginner or smaller acts to get ahead and make a living now. Sure, some artists who would be rich under the old system won't be under another system, and vice versa. But in aggregate there is only one loser - the record company middlemen. This seems so obvious to me. Especially now, when it's already happening and plenty of people are "creating the first copy" undeterred, right now it looks like maybe there will be more successful artists but fewer mega-rich artists due to less of hit based business but that might change as the new way of doing things grows, websites are now an extreme hit based business and didn't start out that way.