No code, no game, No graphics, no game. No console or computer, no game. No controller, no game. Let's see, that is five major components of which the code and console were probably far more expensive to produce. The music was already produced (labor paid for). Although in many cases the music has to be edited and remixed (by the game company) for the game to allow for game play use.
So remind me how much value the music is by itself?
That said...
Truth is "value" is what next idiot on the street is willing to pay. I like listening to the Beetles, but not $60+ much. I'd consider the game for $10. The console, controllers and original RB games cost enough. The additional investment in the Beetles' version game just does not seem to be to myself worth the payoff. Bad ROI.
In response to Michial Thompson, but generically applicable to the topic at hand...
So, you succeeded in crowd sourcing the software but failed in crowd sourcing the support? That how I read your rant.
I too got my start with Linux solving a problem, and I too went to the Internet for help. Today I make my living building and developing Linux solutions.
Just because you crowdsource does not mean you will succeed. Like anything else, a effective group needs a good leader. You got lucky because the first crowd (software development group) had a good leader, or the software you think is good would not be present. The second crowd (support) did not have an effective leader.
You can either find a leader or be the leader of the crowd. You chose to be the leader of the second crowd and did not work effectively as that leader. You could have failed to do the proper work of a leader such as finding the proper crowd or properly defining the problem or the desired goal. Maybe you failed to provide the correct crowd the proper data to define the problem.
Any group or crowd is only as effective as its leader(s) allow(s) or facilitate(s) it to be.
As an aside (rant of my own) I find it mildly entertaining how that if I provide a free product, you think I should provide my service free and on your terms. Maybe I do not want you as a customer of my free product.
I have refused to provide (monetary cost) services to some potential customers because my cost (headache, time) will out weigh the costs they pay me, even at my commercial rate of $120/hr. Other customers I have helped at no monetary cost, what you think of as free. The cost to me (time), was worth the benefit. I profited in knowing I helped a good person or cause.
When I write software I put in a certain amount of time (fixed cost). The more times that product is sold or provided to another person, the more that fixed cost per person approaches zero. There is no significant marginal costs in giving you a copy of what I already wrote.
Support has little fixed cost. Support is almost entirely marginal. The marginal costs may drop as I improve FAQs, add knowledge bases, educate more people, improve the product, but at the end of the day support costs time over and over and over again. You want my support, the next guy who uses the software wants my support and so on and so forth.
While in seeking (positive) exposure for my software I am willing to provide some regular support, I have expectations (costs to you, even if not in terms of money). You expect the software to work, and if it does not I expect you to be useful in helping us (you and I) solve the problem. If you complain but do not provide me what I need to solve your issue, than I do most of the work and you get most of the benefit.
I am more willing to give you (free of monetary cost) support if you give me value (data to help make the product better for everyone) in return. However there are customers not worth having and not worth trying to make happy. I learned long ago that it is Ok to fire a customer (whether charging money or not). I do not need every customer that exists, only enough to provide adequate profit and benefits I desire (money, recognition, reputation, good feelings, thanks, etc...).
My time has great value even if I do not charge you money for such.
/rant
All of that said, you can also crowdsource the Internet and get help with my or any other product. But then the pressure is on you to be an effective leader, or find one, to make an effective group/crowd to provide your support.
Secondary rant, for most Linux related (and/or open source) developers, it is not their goal for world+dog to use Linux or their product. It is more about being part of a community (crowd!) to solve a problem and/or fulfill a need in such a way that *everyone* in the community/crowd benefits.
If you want the full benefit of the community's work, then become *part* of the community do not leech off of it.
I know that in my jewelry store, we purchase jewelry from people, and it if turns up stolen, the police and the victims certainly don't hold us responsible! The person who stole the items is responsible. If that is true for real goods, how could it be less true for intellectual property?
Simply because if your jewelery is stolen, you no longer have it to use yourself. If I have a copy of your floor plan, you *still* have it yourself and can still use it even though I have a copy of it. Now if I used (what I have reasonable reason to believe is) a legitimate floor plan supplier, how am I supposed to know (s)he did not obtain your plans legitimately. How do I know my supplier did not create the plans themselves?
Nothing silly here at all. The 'source' of the plans the builder used should be on the hook for whatever the plans would have cost plus punitive damages as appropriate. Now if you can prove the builder did not obtain the plans *in good faith* legitimately, then (s)he is on the hook for same (addressing the shell company proposal in another comment).
No, a specific law against texting while driving is no more easier to prosecute than distracted driving. The cops believes you were texting and can subpoena your phone records to prove timing for the distracted law, how does the an extra law covering texting distracted driving help here? Most (all?) states have distracted driving laws already in place and use those laws. Additionally distracted driving laws (usually part of the state's reckless driving statute) do not require an accident to take place in order to be enforced.
Based on reading the blog announcement, I would pose the idea that they are not about to adapt any other company/organization's distribution. Given the stated goals/means of:
Just works
Simple
Secure (impervious to malware, viruses and trojans)
Run atop a Linux kernel
New stripped down windowing system
I would venture to say that they are going to build their own ground up operating system. Most distributions are built for very specific business or hardware purposes or are generic in design for a multitude of uses. None of which that I have yet to see in over ten years of running openly available Linux distributions is "browser only", locked down, extremely tight setup.
Given their goals, I would start from scratch. It is not all that hard to do if you understand the basic inner workings of an operating system. Most distributions are too generic for their needs and have way too many extra features not required. Basic security principles imply that extra features provide more vectors for attack.
Addressing others' comments in this discussion...
The discussion here focuses way too much on the Chrome browser and way too little on the concept being presented (by Google). This whole effort by them is moving back to the old style centralized computing model. Make the clients simple (and easy to maintain). Do the hard work on large central systems (mainframes in the old days, today, server farms).
Google's idea would work whether you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or (insert favorite browser here that any company wants to write/port to run on x86 and ARM). There is a large contingent of users out there who need simple computing. Look up stuff on the web, check email and maybe basic 'office' applications; all of which is available in your favorite browser right now.
Even as a developer (I build and maintain embedded operating systems among other things), I use simple appliances when I can. The browser on my phone is the most used application; even more than phone calls. Leaving out time at work, I use a browser for about 80 to 90 percent of what I do on a computer and use my phone more then I pull out the laptop. It boils down to simplicity and speed, to get the task done. I want it easy and I want it now. Take away the workplace and gamers and I bet the previous sentence describes the FAR majority of remaining computer users.
Yes there is also a large group of users who want and/or need more, and there will still be many companies (Microsoft, RedHat, Novel, [insert favorite OS vendor here]) to fulfill those wants and needs. Even Google itself will continue to develop and promote their own somewhat generic (serve multiple purposes) operating system (Android) which is built atop a Linux kernel and many other open source projects.
But for the rest of us, Google already supplies most of the applications we need, now they are going to try and supply the simplest (easy to use and maintain) platform to run those applications upon.
Many localities/states have a law (or exception in the red light law) specifically for being stuck at a red-light that does not change and no cross traffic is present. Check you local and/or state laws.
So it sounds to me that your system fails to check for and handle hardware failure. Keep in mind that even using RAID6 is no guarantee. I have personally had multiple drives fail in the same RAID array (Dell PowerEgde equipment for what it is worth). My saving grace was that the data on the RAID was backed up nightly to (at that time) tape. The short time of data lost (that since the night backup), was considered acceptable given the costs of dual hot systems at that time.
Working for a company that produces packaged equipment, I have seen a few RAID card (not drives) failures. In some of those cases, the card scribbled all over the drive data in its final death throws, making the data unrecoverable with another card of the same type and configuration
Given the recent Seagate firmware situation that bricked drives (any one remember the IBM deathstar drives from about 5 or 6 years ago?) and potential for issues in the RAID card firmware, all beside the possibility that the hardware itself could fail, I would think that Carbonite would have contingency plans in place that include internal duplicity of core systems and storage and spare (even if cold standby) complete system replacements on the ready.
I guess as an experienced IT manager, an engineer and a business person, I cannot for the life of me figure out how you lost more than a few hours of data (worst case). Given the nature of your business, I am not sure why you would even lose any data short of a full on nature disaster taking out an entire facility (off-site backups to minimize the total loss anyone?).
Granted for the cost of your service, a user should clearly understand what they are paying for and be willing to understand that more reliable backups will cost more. Anyone who cares about their backup, WILL understand the full backup chain; they would know exactly where their data is and how it is managed at all times. But I still have a difficult time reconciling the nature of your business with the type of failure that occurred. You lost data in the exact situation for which your propose to protect your customers.
What, in a shed in the back yard? I doubt somebody buying a 500GB external drive to do their own personal backups even has an offsite location where they can set it up.
There is nothing to set up. Use two 500GB USB drives in rotation, one is always in a bank safety deposit box. Off site location issue solved. Fairly inexpensive; cost of two drives plus rental of the box.
Quoting Harold: Their results are basically on popularity, which is another way of saying "whoever shouts the loudest is right".
Not quite right. It is more a matter of whoever gets the most *other* people shouting the loudest wins. Link backs count for most of your popularity and link backs from other people/sites with more link backs to themselves count even higher. It is a highly simplistic overview, but let's at least give something of a correct structure when using that explanation as an example.
And please give examples of your search terms exactly as you gave them to google so we can determine if your assessment of torrent site rankings is accurate. I can write searches that will forces those sites to the top of my results, but I doubt (based on my own experience) that they would occur there often on more simplistic searches.
Now hold on a cotton-flippin second there ... Are you saying an inventor's labor has no value in a market place?
How do you put value on the labor of "invention"?
One person may spend years inventing an item, while another trips upon something completely unique by accident. One person may take five years to invent something another person invented in several months (think the race to TV). And yet another person may invent something but be so far ahead of his/her time that the patent has long slipped away before a useful purpose is applied and marketed.
Why should the person who gets lucky be entitled to more than the person who toiled for years or was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
In your line of thinking the labor of a person who dug a 100 foot long, 4 foot wide and 5 ft deep ditch with a shovel is worth more than another person who used a backhoe. Why? Because he worked harder? We know this to not be true because the value of the resulting ditches are identical.
And since ultimately invention is a process of discovery and application of discovery, applied trial and error, why should the labor of making that discovery be more valuable than the implementation and production? In short why should the person who put a year into discovery (invention) be awarded more than a year's pay?
Did not Microsoft use the whole "get sued as a customer" against Linux users? Their claim was than Linux companies would not and could not afford to indemnify their customers. So where is Microsoft? Should they not be bearing the weight of these lawsuits against their customers as part of their indemnity clause?
There already is a 'legitimate' market for betting on a company's health. It is call the credit default swap market. And it basically allows anyone with the cash to take out an 'insurance' on someone else's specific debt.
If Flyglobespan has a line of credit or a loan from anyone (bank, finance company, company commercial paper), not only can the holder of that debt take out insurance, so can anyone else. So long as some finance/insurance company is willing to take the bet, err, I mean insure the loan. In the US the CDS market is, by law, not regulated so it need not follow the normal insurance rules (minimum liquidity, capital reserve, etc...).
If Flyglobespan pays back the debt on time, you are out your 'premium' (aka: wager). However, should they default, you get the value of the insurance policy (likely the value of the original debt).
On a tangent, the CDS market along with sub primes (less of a real factor), have a lot to do with why the market is in the condition it is now. A wonderful explanation...
I do not buy the argument. As a contract software writer, I write code to which the purchaser has agreed to a monetary value. At the end of the day the "real value" of the program can only be determined by it's usage. But that time is long past the contract negotiation. I worked with the purchaser of the code, determined what it is they think they wanted, provided an estimate, agreed to a project price and wrote the software. I even provide some editing post delivery as part of the deal to handle issues not realized during the initial writing. (You may alter the original lyrics in places the band thinks could be improved.)
If the program turns out really well (popular), I get shorted. If at the end of the day it does not really help the purchaser, he gets shorted. If he gets shorted, then my reputation suffers and my ability to get the next contract or negotiate a good price drops. If I write an effective program, my reputation (resume) increases in value and my next job gets better pay and so forth.
Any writing can be done this way. You put a price up front for the time and effort you put into writing the song. If it takes 8 hours to write the song and you charge $200/hr, you get $1600 and the band assumes the risk beyond that. Considering that the scarcity of music is nil and the ability to copy digital content in infinite (effective $0 cost), the band makes their money touring (that is real work). They quit touring they quit making money.
Like the rest of the world, you work you get paid, you sit and you do not get paid. Fairly simple equation.
An alternative analogy is that your song is an investment (a stock maybe). You set a price, they pay it, you write the song and depending on how well the wrting is and how well they perform it, the audience my like it and show up to concerts (ticket sales, return on investment) or not like it and stay home. It's no different than a stock. Once a company sells stock, they no longer (directly) benefit from the rise in price, only the investor does. But if the stock rises in value the company gets a good reputation and the price of their next stock offering increases. Eg, they get more money for the next set of shares released.
Now granted with so many people clinging on to the old model, it will be hard to get the paradigm shifted. But as someone who has had to spedn a time hustling contracts and working out deals all in order to buy groceries, I do not buy your argument, nor do I feel any sympathy.
Actually they use the original master recording (one instrument or voice per track/tape) (in Guitar Hero anyway) so that when you make a mistake they can cancel the guitar sound with out affecting the vocal or other instrument tracks.
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Twitter
Re: How do you overvalue music? (as Gatewood Green)
No code, no game, No graphics, no game. No console or computer, no game. No controller, no game. Let's see, that is five major components of which the code and console were probably far more expensive to produce. The music was already produced (labor paid for). Although in many cases the music has to be edited and remixed (by the game company) for the game to allow for game play use.
So remind me how much value the music is by itself?
That said...
Truth is "value" is what next idiot on the street is willing to pay. I like listening to the Beetles, but not $60+ much. I'd consider the game for $10. The console, controllers and original RB games cost enough. The additional investment in the Beetles' version game just does not seem to be to myself worth the payoff. Bad ROI.
Re: Crowd Sourcing (as Gatewood Green)
In response to Michial Thompson, but generically applicable to the topic at hand...
So, you succeeded in crowd sourcing the software but failed in crowd sourcing the support? That how I read your rant.
I too got my start with Linux solving a problem, and I too went to the Internet for help. Today I make my living building and developing Linux solutions.
Just because you crowdsource does not mean you will succeed. Like anything else, a effective group needs a good leader. You got lucky because the first crowd (software development group) had a good leader, or the software you think is good would not be present. The second crowd (support) did not have an effective leader.
You can either find a leader or be the leader of the crowd. You chose to be the leader of the second crowd and did not work effectively as that leader. You could have failed to do the proper work of a leader such as finding the proper crowd or properly defining the problem or the desired goal. Maybe you failed to provide the correct crowd the proper data to define the problem.
Any group or crowd is only as effective as its leader(s) allow(s) or facilitate(s) it to be.
As an aside (rant of my own) I find it mildly entertaining how that if I provide a free product, you think I should provide my service free and on your terms. Maybe I do not want you as a customer of my free product.
I have refused to provide (monetary cost) services to some potential customers because my cost (headache, time) will out weigh the costs they pay me, even at my commercial rate of $120/hr. Other customers I have helped at no monetary cost, what you think of as free. The cost to me (time), was worth the benefit. I profited in knowing I helped a good person or cause.
When I write software I put in a certain amount of time (fixed cost). The more times that product is sold or provided to another person, the more that fixed cost per person approaches zero. There is no significant marginal costs in giving you a copy of what I already wrote.
Support has little fixed cost. Support is almost entirely marginal. The marginal costs may drop as I improve FAQs, add knowledge bases, educate more people, improve the product, but at the end of the day support costs time over and over and over again. You want my support, the next guy who uses the software wants my support and so on and so forth.
While in seeking (positive) exposure for my software I am willing to provide some regular support, I have expectations (costs to you, even if not in terms of money). You expect the software to work, and if it does not I expect you to be useful in helping us (you and I) solve the problem. If you complain but do not provide me what I need to solve your issue, than I do most of the work and you get most of the benefit.
I am more willing to give you (free of monetary cost) support if you give me value (data to help make the product better for everyone) in return. However there are customers not worth having and not worth trying to make happy. I learned long ago that it is Ok to fire a customer (whether charging money or not). I do not need every customer that exists, only enough to provide adequate profit and benefits I desire (money, recognition, reputation, good feelings, thanks, etc...).
My time has great value even if I do not charge you money for such.
/rant
All of that said, you can also crowdsource the Internet and get help with my or any other product. But then the pressure is on you to be an effective leader, or find one, to make an effective group/crowd to provide your support.
Secondary rant, for most Linux related (and/or open source) developers, it is not their goal for world+dog to use Linux or their product. It is more about being part of a community (crowd!) to solve a problem and/or fulfill a need in such a way that *everyone* in the community/crowd benefits.
If you want the full benefit of the community's work, then become *part* of the community do not leech off of it.
/second rant
Enjoy,
Woody
Re: Rose's question (as Gatewood Green)
Simply because if your jewelery is stolen, you no longer have it to use yourself. If I have a copy of your floor plan, you *still* have it yourself and can still use it even though I have a copy of it. Now if I used (what I have reasonable reason to believe is) a legitimate floor plan supplier, how am I supposed to know (s)he did not obtain your plans legitimately. How do I know my supplier did not create the plans themselves?
Nothing silly here at all. The 'source' of the plans the builder used should be on the hook for whatever the plans would have cost plus punitive damages as appropriate. Now if you can prove the builder did not obtain the plans *in good faith* legitimately, then (s)he is on the hook for same (addressing the shell company proposal in another comment).
Re: Clear Laws make prosecutions easier (as Gatewood Green)
To answer Pete Austin...
No, a specific law against texting while driving is no more easier to prosecute than distracted driving. The cops believes you were texting and can subpoena your phone records to prove timing for the distracted law, how does the an extra law covering texting distracted driving help here? Most (all?) states have distracted driving laws already in place and use those laws. Additionally distracted driving laws (usually part of the state's reckless driving statute) do not require an accident to take place in order to be enforced.
Re: Isn't Chrome OS based on linux? (as Gatewood Green)
Marshall,
Based on reading the blog announcement, I would pose the idea that they are not about to adapt any other company/organization's distribution. Given the stated goals/means of:
I would venture to say that they are going to build their own ground up operating system. Most distributions are built for very specific business or hardware purposes or are generic in design for a multitude of uses. None of which that I have yet to see in over ten years of running openly available Linux distributions is "browser only", locked down, extremely tight setup.
Given their goals, I would start from scratch. It is not all that hard to do if you understand the basic inner workings of an operating system. Most distributions are too generic for their needs and have way too many extra features not required. Basic security principles imply that extra features provide more vectors for attack.
Addressing others' comments in this discussion...
The discussion here focuses way too much on the Chrome browser and way too little on the concept being presented (by Google). This whole effort by them is moving back to the old style centralized computing model. Make the clients simple (and easy to maintain). Do the hard work on large central systems (mainframes in the old days, today, server farms).
Google's idea would work whether you use Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or (insert favorite browser here that any company wants to write/port to run on x86 and ARM). There is a large contingent of users out there who need simple computing. Look up stuff on the web, check email and maybe basic 'office' applications; all of which is available in your favorite browser right now.
Even as a developer (I build and maintain embedded operating systems among other things), I use simple appliances when I can. The browser on my phone is the most used application; even more than phone calls. Leaving out time at work, I use a browser for about 80 to 90 percent of what I do on a computer and use my phone more then I pull out the laptop. It boils down to simplicity and speed, to get the task done. I want it easy and I want it now. Take away the workplace and gamers and I bet the previous sentence describes the FAR majority of remaining computer users.
Yes there is also a large group of users who want and/or need more, and there will still be many companies (Microsoft, RedHat, Novel, [insert favorite OS vendor here]) to fulfill those wants and needs. Even Google itself will continue to develop and promote their own somewhat generic (serve multiple purposes) operating system (Android) which is built atop a Linux kernel and many other open source projects.
But for the rest of us, Google already supplies most of the applications we need, now they are going to try and supply the simplest (easy to use and maintain) platform to run those applications upon.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Sweet! (as Gatewood Green)
Many localities/states have a law (or exception in the red light law) specifically for being stuck at a red-light that does not change and no cross traffic is present. Check you local and/or state laws.
Re: Setting the story straight (as Gatewood Green)
So it sounds to me that your system fails to check for and handle hardware failure. Keep in mind that even using RAID6 is no guarantee. I have personally had multiple drives fail in the same RAID array (Dell PowerEgde equipment for what it is worth). My saving grace was that the data on the RAID was backed up nightly to (at that time) tape. The short time of data lost (that since the night backup), was considered acceptable given the costs of dual hot systems at that time.
Working for a company that produces packaged equipment, I have seen a few RAID card (not drives) failures. In some of those cases, the card scribbled all over the drive data in its final death throws, making the data unrecoverable with another card of the same type and configuration
Given the recent Seagate firmware situation that bricked drives (any one remember the IBM deathstar drives from about 5 or 6 years ago?) and potential for issues in the RAID card firmware, all beside the possibility that the hardware itself could fail, I would think that Carbonite would have contingency plans in place that include internal duplicity of core systems and storage and spare (even if cold standby) complete system replacements on the ready.
I guess as an experienced IT manager, an engineer and a business person, I cannot for the life of me figure out how you lost more than a few hours of data (worst case). Given the nature of your business, I am not sure why you would even lose any data short of a full on nature disaster taking out an entire facility (off-site backups to minimize the total loss anyone?).
Granted for the cost of your service, a user should clearly understand what they are paying for and be willing to understand that more reliable backups will cost more. Anyone who cares about their backup, WILL understand the full backup chain; they would know exactly where their data is and how it is managed at all times. But I still have a difficult time reconciling the nature of your business with the type of failure that occurred. You lost data in the exact situation for which your propose to protect your customers.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: It's simple (as Gatewood Green)
Quote:
What, in a shed in the back yard? I doubt somebody buying a 500GB external drive to do their own personal backups even has an offsite location where they can set it up.
There is nothing to set up. Use two 500GB USB drives in rotation, one is always in a bank safety deposit box. Off site location issue solved. Fairly inexpensive; cost of two drives plus rental of the box.
Re: (as Gatewood Green)
Quoting Harold: Their results are basically on popularity, which is another way of saying "whoever shouts the loudest is right".
Not quite right. It is more a matter of whoever gets the most *other* people shouting the loudest wins. Link backs count for most of your popularity and link backs from other people/sites with more link backs to themselves count even higher. It is a highly simplistic overview, but let's at least give something of a correct structure when using that explanation as an example.
And please give examples of your search terms exactly as you gave them to google so we can determine if your assessment of torrent site rankings is accurate. I can write searches that will forces those sites to the top of my results, but I doubt (based on my own experience) that they would occur there often on more simplistic searches.
Re: patents are not a proper market mechanism (WTF?) (as Gatewood Green)
Now hold on a cotton-flippin second there ... Are you saying an inventor's labor has no value in a market place?
How do you put value on the labor of "invention"?
One person may spend years inventing an item, while another trips upon something completely unique by accident. One person may take five years to invent something another person invented in several months (think the race to TV). And yet another person may invent something but be so far ahead of his/her time that the patent has long slipped away before a useful purpose is applied and marketed.
Why should the person who gets lucky be entitled to more than the person who toiled for years or was in the wrong place at the wrong time?
In your line of thinking the labor of a person who dug a 100 foot long, 4 foot wide and 5 ft deep ditch with a shovel is worth more than another person who used a backhoe. Why? Because he worked harder? We know this to not be true because the value of the resulting ditches are identical.
And since ultimately invention is a process of discovery and application of discovery, applied trial and error, why should the labor of making that discovery be more valuable than the implementation and production? In short why should the person who put a year into discovery (invention) be awarded more than a year's pay?
Something to ponder.
Where is Microsoft's indemnity clause? (as Woody)
Did not Microsoft use the whole "get sued as a customer" against Linux users? Their claim was than Linux companies would not and could not afford to indemnify their customers. So where is Microsoft? Should they not be bearing the weight of these lawsuits against their customers as part of their indemnity clause?
There already is a 'legitimate' market for betting on a company's health (as Gatewood Green)
There already is a 'legitimate' market for betting on a company's health. It is call the credit default swap market. And it basically allows anyone with the cash to take out an 'insurance' on someone else's specific debt.
If Flyglobespan has a line of credit or a loan from anyone (bank, finance company, company commercial paper), not only can the holder of that debt take out insurance, so can anyone else. So long as some finance/insurance company is willing to take the bet, err, I mean insure the loan. In the US the CDS market is, by law, not regulated so it need not follow the normal insurance rules (minimum liquidity, capital reserve, etc...).
If Flyglobespan pays back the debt on time, you are out your 'premium' (aka: wager). However, should they default, you get the value of the insurance policy (likely the value of the original debt).
On a tangent, the CDS market along with sub primes (less of a real factor), have a lot to do with why the market is in the condition it is now. A wonderful explanation...
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=365
Re: Copyright is valid, distribution system is lam (as Woody)
I do not buy the argument. As a contract software writer, I write code to which the purchaser has agreed to a monetary value. At the end of the day the "real value" of the program can only be determined by it's usage. But that time is long past the contract negotiation. I worked with the purchaser of the code, determined what it is they think they wanted, provided an estimate, agreed to a project price and wrote the software. I even provide some editing post delivery as part of the deal to handle issues not realized during the initial writing. (You may alter the original lyrics in places the band thinks could be improved.)
If the program turns out really well (popular), I get shorted. If at the end of the day it does not really help the purchaser, he gets shorted. If he gets shorted, then my reputation suffers and my ability to get the next contract or negotiate a good price drops. If I write an effective program, my reputation (resume) increases in value and my next job gets better pay and so forth.
Any writing can be done this way. You put a price up front for the time and effort you put into writing the song. If it takes 8 hours to write the song and you charge $200/hr, you get $1600 and the band assumes the risk beyond that. Considering that the scarcity of music is nil and the ability to copy digital content in infinite (effective $0 cost), the band makes their money touring (that is real work). They quit touring they quit making money.
Like the rest of the world, you work you get paid, you sit and you do not get paid. Fairly simple equation.
An alternative analogy is that your song is an investment (a stock maybe). You set a price, they pay it, you write the song and depending on how well the wrting is and how well they perform it, the audience my like it and show up to concerts (ticket sales, return on investment) or not like it and stay home. It's no different than a stock. Once a company sells stock, they no longer (directly) benefit from the rise in price, only the investor does. But if the stock rises in value the company gets a good reputation and the price of their next stock offering increases. Eg, they get more money for the next set of shares released.
Now granted with so many people clinging on to the old model, it will be hard to get the paradigm shifted. But as someone who has had to spedn a time hustling contracts and working out deals all in order to buy groceries, I do not buy your argument, nor do I feel any sympathy.
Re: Re: Re: Just want to say (as Woody)
Actually they use the original master recording (one instrument or voice per track/tape) (in Guitar Hero anyway) so that when you make a mistake they can cancel the guitar sound with out affecting the vocal or other instrument tracks.