Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
In a free-market economy, though, anyone has the right to offer their product for sale at any price that they wish. You certainly don't have any right, either legal or moral, to say "they're charging too much for it, so I'm going to steal it". That's no different whether the product is being sold by a millionaire or a pauper.
At the end of the day it's the market which will determine what a fair price is. If the price is too high, sales will be poor, and the seller will have to reduce their prices to remain competitive.
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This analysis is too simplistic for the digital world. Standard economics theory can't explain digital mediums very well. Cost of production? May make sense when considering farm products or televisions or other material goods. But what about software and e-books? Cost of production remains the same whether 100 or 100 million copies are sold. Even cost of distribution remains almost unchanged if web distribution is employed.
Given these facts, I think market forces, and even theft and piracy, will act to drive the prices of digital goods way down. I think we'll see all but some specialized software become extremely cheap or free, and digital entertainment media prices will plummet. The companies that DRM stuff are acting against market forces, and will fail. Watch Amazon- watch the Kindle crash and burn. It's been done before- the mass of consumers didn't care then and didn't buy into the scheme, and they won't now either.
I like e-books, and have several readers, but- say I want to read a book, and either the library doesn't have it or I want to own a copy. Well, hardcover price is $24. Would I buy the e-edition, DRM-locked to a particular device, for $19.99? No way, probably not for 9.99. But remove that DRM and make it available for most formats, and I probably would.....