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  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:43am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    This is what Hachette was trying to work around. They tripled the price and gave the libraries the chance for unlimited loans. Yet even that's not enough for the greedy people who never want to pay.

    And giving a small sample away is different from letting people read the entire book for free at the library. In the past, the physical nature of the book limited consumption and produced a decent compromise that everyone could live with.

    Now the greedy cheapass jerks around here want all of the advantages of the digital revolution to benefit themselves.

    The fact is that asking all N people to pay a small amount is a very fair way to spread out the costs. It makes more sense than asking some central bureaucracy to pay N times as much while hoping that N people will read it.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:37am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    "The tax collector "also grabs the money from you" and applies it to things like police and firemen and mass transit whether you use them or not. If you have a problem with that, you're un-American."

    Uh, this blog constantly complains when the police lift a finger to prosecute anyone for copyright infringement. I guess that makes them unAmerican.

    I don't make up the principles, I just repeat them.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:35am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    This blog constantly complains about taxpayer money being used to police copyright infringement. They insist that it should be private. My point is that if the blog wanted to be consistent, it would lambaste the libraries for using taxpayer money to help out the small fraction of society that reads.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:33am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    You can browse books from Project Gutenberg anonymously on the Kindle. You can also side load them. You only need to give your name if you purchase something directly from Amazon.

    And I only point out the anonymity because this blog is constantly claiming that anonymous access to the Internet is essential. While I agree that it's quite useful for many political reasons, I'm sure that the loons around here love it because it's cover for their torrent streams.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:27am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    You clearly don't read very interesting things, do you? Let's do some math with these numbers:

    http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet04

    $11b was spent in FY09 of which only 12% was spent on content. That's only $1.3b. At an average price of $20 per unit, that's 65m items. As there are about 2700 libraries in the survey, that's an average of 24,000 books per library. There's little room for them to stock every book.

    Chicago, one of the biggest public libraries, has 5.8m volumes. Sounds like a lot? There are estimated to be 15m ISBN numbers issued in 2012 alone.

    http://ptbertram.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/how-many-books-are-going-to-be-published-in-2012-prepare-for-a-shock/

    There's no way the libraries even come close.

    2) Being locally funded or being democratic doesn't make it any less of a gatekeeper. So they're slightly more responsive? They're still in charge of who reads what.

    3) So they're greener than printing many copies. We're in the digital age now. That doesn't matter. The ereaders are greener still.

    4) It's not false. If the other person loses it, you're on the hook. If you don't check with the gatekeeper, you're responsible.

    5) I said nothing about whether the neighborhood was good or bad. If I don't have a house in a neighborhood, if I can't prove residency, I can't take out books. No card, no books.

    6) So what if they're on the Internet. You can only take out ebooks and they're resisting paying their fair share of development costs.

    And you better look up communism before you make any claims about the libraries. The Soviet Union had a representative democracy that voted for taxes. They're even more centralized bastions of power.

    Of course I like libraries better than raw pirates. I'm just pointing out that libraries have all of the features that this blog usually decries. But they have a blind spot here and I felt like pointing it out.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:09am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    Oh come on, you're biased.

    Let's just handle his first one. It's cute to call libraries gate openers, but they definitely keep a firm handle on what gets purchased. They certainly survey their customers and take requests, but so do radio stations, record stores, classic publishers and all of the old media. Everyone around here loves to use the word "gatekeeper" for the old media. Does this mean I can start calling some publisher a gate opener if they just publish some book that came over the transom?

    The libraries are sooo rusty and un-Internet, I'm surprised that the EFF isn't fighting their drain on public resources and complaining about the librarians that are censoring the publishers by not purchasing everything.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:05am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    Preserve culture? Then why are they selling so many old books on that rack outside my library? Have you heard of "culling"? It's very controversial, but most libraries gave up on preserving anything a long time ago. Oh sure, there are a few holdouts, but most just cull as soon as they can get something off the shelf. They need the space. Given a choice between stocking a few best sellers, funding their pensions, and preserving culture, you can guess which lost out.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:03am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    Uh adapt? No. They're trying to keep a grip on their jobs because there's no need for them. Between the search engines, Project Gutenberg, the Google Book Project and Amazon, there's no reason to have libraries. You can do everything you want with a Kindle and for less money.

    Do you know how much libraries spend? $30 per capita in the US and most of that is on energy bills, salaries and other overhead.

    http://www.ala.org/tools/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet04

    We could give everyone in America a Kindle every three years and have $10 left over for them to spend on content. (At current prices. We could probably get a volume discount.)

    We wouldn't have to drive to the place. We wouldn't have to wait for the librarian gatekeepers to approve their reading list. Libraries are the places that are obsolete.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 09:58am

    Re: Re: Why this sympathy for libraries?

    1) So they take surveys. So did all of the old publishers and music companies yet everyone around here was happy to call them gatekeepers. Face it. No one reads anything at a library unless the librarian approves. If you're lucky, the librarian will approve your request, but you're not going to be reading it at the library without that approval.

    4) Uh, no. Have you tried to lend a book to a friend? I was just at the library last week and you can't do it. It has nothing to do with the publishers. They have to track their physical inventory.

    5) So what if things can be done online? My point was about anonymity. They want your name and they won't budge on that.

  • On the post: Hachette Hits Libraries With 220% Price Increase On Its Ebooks

    bob ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 08:06am

    Why this sympathy for libraries?

    The only reason this blog likes libraries is because they offer a story line that helps the legal status of Big Search.

    If this blog were to apply its usual principles, it would choose the library as the failing, rusty industry being disrupted by a better business model.

    FAIL#1: Libraries are the classic gatekeeper. No one reads anything unless the librarian buys it.

    FAIL #2: Libraries take by force. No one chooses whether they participate in a library or not. The tax collector grabs the money from you whether you go or not. It doesn't matter whether you can't read or don't want to read, the library takes your money.

    FAIL #3: Libraries are anti-green. You've got to go to get the book.

    FAIL #4: Librarians love their form of DRM. You want to lend a library book to a friend? You can't do it. You've got to bring it back and let them relend it.

    FAIL #5: Librarians don't believe in anonymous lending. You've got to register to take out a book and you better live in the right neighborhood.

    FAIL #6: Librarians sleep. The Internet is a 24 hour invention.

    There's no way around the simple economics. If you're going to share a book with N people, you've got to charge N times more to maintain the same revenue. If we're going to pay authors at the same level as before, we've got to raise library prices.

    So we've got a choice: cheaper books with something like a Kindle or some odd forced communism where we spend a tax dollars for books we might not like. I"ll take the Kindle and its simple way of rewarding the authors who people like.

  • On the post: This Goes Beyond Tablets: Apple, Amazon & Google Are Betting On Economic Philosophies

    bob ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2012 @ 01:49pm

    Abundant? Scarce? You're so confused.

    You would like to believe that digital content is abundant but that's only true if you ignore the development costs which is the luxury of pirates everywhere.

    You would like to believe hardware is scarce, but that's pretty much disproven by the endless container ships filled with stuff. Heck, most of the stuff made by Apple is just digital content. They ship digital files to China and back comes hardware. The manufacturing costs are a small fraction of the price because the robots and fab lines just stamp out the devices.

    So go on believe that Apple will be buoyed by all of the so-called abundance on the Internet. They're not betting on the cat videos on YouTube selling more devices. That's why they embrace DRM and locked down platforms whenever they can. They know that they have to have the best books, movies and songs on their platform because content sells boxes. The only way to have the best content is to make sure the artists get a fair share.

    The real challenge is controlling piracy. What you really should be noticing is that neither platform is embracing the anarchy that built the Internet. They're locking down their platforms and ensuring that people pay their fair share of the development costs. That's how Amazon can drive down the price of books, music and movies.

  • On the post: The Math Says HBO Shouldn't Go Direct, But They Left Innovation Out Of The Equation

    bob ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2012 @ 10:57am

    Re: Re: Bah. Innovation as defined around here is pretty meh

    I understand why people want to unbundle HBO. It only makes sense. The trouble is that everyone wants to unbundle because everyone only watches a few channels. The trouble is that if everyone unbundles, the total revenue for the entire industry will shrivel.

    The problem is that everyone is freeloading off of everyone else. The fees for sports are subsidized by the fees from the folks who watch the macrame channel. The fees for the macrame channel are subsidized by those who watch sports.

    The industry desperately needs to collect $100+ from each house on average or it will go into a big collapse. So that's why they want to insist that you buy cable. They don't want to charge you $100 for the HBO alone.

  • On the post: The Math Says HBO Shouldn't Go Direct, But They Left Innovation Out Of The Equation

    bob ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2012 @ 10:53am

    Re: Re: Bah. Innovation as defined around here is pretty meh

    It doesn't have to be 100% effective. Apple iTunes built itself with DRM and they succeeded at pushing people to making the legit decision to actually pay. They've since claimed that they're not adding DRM to everything, but I think it's because the complexity of the file system is good enough to deter most people from copying.

    DRM doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be enough of an impediment to help encourage people be honest. Door locks aren't perfect but they help keep honest people honest.

    So let's hear some praise for the systems like the one that NBC deployed to make sure that people pay into the cable TV system. It worked well enough.

    As for your crack about YouTube, I continue to stumble upon plenty of pirated music mashed up with pirated still images. It's nice that they're licensing some legit content but that only makes my point again. It's only a matter of time until they start charging for subscriptions. Advertising doesn't pay very well and so the stars on YouTube are things like Annoying Orange. The production budget on that is something like five or six dollars for new fruit.

  • On the post: The Math Says HBO Shouldn't Go Direct, But They Left Innovation Out Of The Equation

    bob ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2012 @ 10:47am

    Re: Re: Bah. Innovation as defined around here is pretty meh

    Wrong. If I'm a customer, I don't want to be only sucker actually paying for something while I everyone else is getting a free ride by downloading it and sharing it. I want all of the users to pay their fair share. That's sharing in my book. DRM helps with that.

  • On the post: The Math Says HBO Shouldn't Go Direct, But They Left Innovation Out Of The Equation

    bob ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2012 @ 09:42am

    Bah. Innovation as defined around here is pretty meh

    Innovation may be great, but this website has a very narrow definition of innovation: anything that makes life easier for Big Search to make money. Doing a good job with DRM takes lots of college degrees and knowledge of impossibly brilliant topics like encryption, but you wouldn't catch anyone around here praising that kind of innovation.

    Face it. Watching TV is pretty much a passive game. The only innovation that goes on is in delivering the product. As you point out, the cable companies do quite well with their inane subscription fees and crazy requirements to upgrade to watch the fancy content.

    If they're doing so well, why would they want to choose the "innovation" on YouTube? That just seems to be a collection of mildly amusing cat videos shot with someone's cell phone. Only in your book is poor video quality and zero editing considered "innovation".

    The fact is that it takes cash to do real video innovation like 3D movies, multichannel sound, etc. That's not going to come from some low-rent streaming site or the wide-open Internet.

    I like the cat videos. I watch them occasionally. I even chuckle. But I don't see that as innovation. If I want innovation, I pay big bucks to HBO for "Game of Thrones" because I know that all of those innovative sets and things require cash.

  • On the post: Court: Fining Jammie Thomas $9,250 Per Song Infringed Motivates Creative Activity

    bob ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2012 @ 04:03pm

    Re: Re: It motivates me...

    Nonsense. You're twisting what I said to pieces.

    I sing all of the time in the shower and I'm certainly whistling now. That has nothing to do with whether anyone is paying me.

    But it takes work to put on a good show and it takes money. Top artists often rehearse for months before getting to the stage. New artists often practice even longer. The rich can always self-fund these as follies, but the average joe can't work on big art full-time without revenue.

    When I hear that copyright is being enforced, I know that the decision will help spread out the costs more equitably and probably also bring more revenue. That means more artists can devote more time to creating. It's not just a hobby but it's a job.

    That's why I'm singing.

  • On the post: Don't Downplay The Importance Of Tweakers In Innovation; Excerpt From 'The Knockoff Economy'

    bob ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2012 @ 03:27pm

    Tweaking is fine-- but it kills cross subsidies...

    I think tweaking your legally acquired software and hardware is cool, but we need to remember that it ruins some business models including some of the business models that are favorites around here. Tweaking undermines the kind of cross-subsidies by punishing businesses by giving away something easily tweakable.

    Imagine a company gave away a widget in the hope of making their money selling some additional gadget. If the widget is easily tweakable to not require any add-on gadgets, well, the act of tweaking can hurt and even kill the company.

    This site constantly celebrates give-it-away business models. Alas, the only business models that seem to work well with heavy tweaking are the ones that price goods at their cost of production. Anyone who cross-subsidizes things gets squeezed and maybe even killed.

  • On the post: Court: Fining Jammie Thomas $9,250 Per Song Infringed Motivates Creative Activity

    bob ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2012 @ 03:22pm

    It motivates me...

    Nothing makes me more depressed than seeing gleeful torrent users thumbing their nose at copyright. It's even worse when they use the elaborate sophistries drafted by the tenured jerks and repeated ad nauseum around here.

    Knowing that the courts will occasionally defend the rights of the hard working creators is more than enough to spur me on to start writing again. Maybe even singing.

  • On the post: Three Artists On Piracy: Sharing, Disruption And Turning Filesharers Into Your Street Team

    bob ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2012 @ 07:23am

    Okay--- let's take advantage of the kids

    In other words, you want to treat the kids like the old school music industry treats their unpaid interns. They get them to work hard by telling them that it's cool.

    Somehow paying the marketing department a living wage with benefits sounds nicer. You can just tack on a bit to each song to cover it. That sounds simpler than trying to tell all these people that they should work really hard for free to make this other person famous.

  • On the post: Has The German Pirate Party Lost Its Way?

    bob ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2012 @ 02:08pm

    Where's my free stuff?

    Demagogues have promised free stuff in order to "buy" votes for some time. Some have succeeded in getting elected, but they always fail soon afterwards for all of the same reasons that pie-in-the-sky plans fail soon afterwards.

    How is the pirate party going to support itself? I wouldn't donate any money to them because they brag about how they're going to take away all of my hard work and give it away for free. Nor will most other hard working people donate because they're also afraid that after the Pirate party comes for the digital goods, they're going to insist that everything else should be free too. Why should landlords charge rent? Why should grocery stores charge for food that just grows freely from the ground?

    So they only people left to support them are the lazy, media-addled couch potatoes who spend all day torrenting things because they just have to have it. And if those people won't spend 99 cents for a song, why should they give anything to the Pirate Party?

    Eventually they're going to run out of money and get tired of living poor. Then they'll get real jobs and we'll be rid of them.

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