Re: Intellectual Property (was Re: the future of art)

jp may (jpm@TWEB.COM)
Mon, 15 Jul 1996 20:10:08 -0700

>>
>> Dude, you sound like me -- got any other conspiracy theories?
><:
>
>Heh. Actually this was fairly well publicized around the time
>Sony bought their way into...oh, whatever the fuck the company
>they bought was, I forget. (RCA? Warner?) The people in the
>industry went into an uproar because they thought Sony was buying
>up a major label so they could start releasing all the albums on
>DAT thus creating a market for a product (DAT decks) that the
>record labels had been trying to avoid. Didn't happen, though.
>Maybe Sony wised up and figured out they'd lose more money to
>pirated digital copies than they'd make off the decks.
>

I heard a different version .. but, comme ci comme ca. Or commes des
garcons, or whatever.

incidentalyl doesn anyone know the PROPER pronounciation of

cause celbre

is it

caue celeb - ruh

or is it

cause cele - bray

thanks.

>
>I'm not talking about how much it costs the service provider, JP,
>I'm talking about how much it costs the *user*.

oh - ok.

>> impeccable logic.
>
>Uh....did JP just agree with me? That's so unlikely that I fear
>my sarcasm meter is miscalibrated...
>

I generally agree with you - in those cases I just shut up. because yo're
generally right, I like to point out when you're wrong !

>> You are assuming people will RATHER read something on a
>digitial medium and
>> would RATHER NOT pay the preium for a physical copy.
>
>See my post re: Digital Books for my explanation of that issue.
>
>> That is an assumption. It may be correct, it may be totally
>wrong.
>> There is absolutely no way to predict the future.
>
>No shit, sherlock. But if you really believe it's pointless to
>discuss the *possibilities* why are you wasting your time on this
>list?
>

No no, but your 'whole idea' is 'based on that assumption' - I was pointing
out that you had a 'hidden assumption', that bane of logic.

>
>> >> the cost of minting CDs is "trivial in relation to the
>product
>> >cost, but
>> >> non-zero".
>> >
>> >And the cost of sending information over the wires is trivial
>in
>> >relation to the cost of minting CDs.
>>
>> Are you SURE about that?
>
>Pretty sure. You want to test it by carrying on this conversation
>with an audience of three hundred people worldwide by the *US
>Postal System*?
>

Here you are simply doing bad accounting. Someone is paying for FC.

Lets say whoever it is at the moment decided to no longer carry FC for
free. Lets say tweb decided to carry it for free, run the listserv. TwEb
costs, like, over $5,000 a month to run the guts of it.

Who runs the fc listserv currently ? What is their annual technical cost.

>
>Now, if you want to be royally stupid enough to try to
>verticalize this process to include all the infrastructure
>required to distribute the work (i.e. "the entire fiber optic and
>satellite industry" (!)), then allow me to tack onto the 'costs'
>of non-digital distribution: the entire worldwide postal system,
>the entire worldwide air freight system, the entire worldwide
>trucking system, and, oh, since we're talking about air freight
>and trucking let's stick in the entire revenues of Boeing and GM,
>not to mention what we have to pay all the air traffic
>controllers...oh, and let's not forget the wear and tear on
>*highways* for pete's sake--that alone should be worth at least a
>few dozen entire satellite systems! Etc. etc. etc.
>

Greg, you are trying to be sarcastic but you've actually made the point!

You have gone a little overboard but lets look at the realities, stopping
at a reasonable shared resources public highways level.

Lets forget the abstract crap. Lets say ....

Prince has completely produced his CD on master tape and the musos have all
gone home.

Prince getting his CD to market requires:

1. a CD pressing plant

2. a music company, specificlaly Warner Bros. and the
various accounting etc departmentsd therin

3. Warner Bros. distribution company, which is actually
called Warner Distributing, which has some (I believe)
7,000 employees worlwide.

4. Warner Distributings various suppliers, ie, specifically,
various trucking companies

5. All the various music retailers from Virgin Records
(Retail Division) to the Korner Shoppe.

then, any comsumer can walk into a shop and buy Chaos &
Disorder (track 6 rocks) for $12.

thats it.

In the digital realm ...

6. a sun server

7. tech support staff, and accomodation for the
sun server

8. the company Sprint, the company MCI and to a lesser
extent the company UU-Net.

9. All the various ISPs in the world, from sisna to the
local guys on the corner.

then, any comsumer can connect to their local ISP and download
Chaos & Disorder (track 6 rocks) for pennies.

>
>
>> I just am not sure if you are correct there Greg.
>
>
>Way more correct than you, bucko! :)
>

Lets add up 1, 2, 3, 4,5 above, and compare that to the sum of 6, 7, 8, 9.

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jp may tweb limited
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