[mrkai]

Well. You have a couple of camps here...I call the the socio-religious camps and the pragma camps.

Jon gave many examples of where no actual harm or revenue is lost...the only rebuttal to this is that its "just wrong".

I have given a more...market reality based approach to the situation...but at the end of the day it really comes down to this:

No one *needs* "e-anything" do they?

If we are going to wring our hands about not getting sales from things no one needs (but granted wants) and use false-accounting to claim loss that never existed (because, in reality, it did not) then there is no solution.

e-Things are not physical. they cannot by nature be constrained. Ask yourself this: how does premium cable make money? It is a pure creative engine. The service in and of itself is the product.

All attempts at legislating restriction of what is by essence of its nature unrestrictable has, as we have seen been 1. fraught with implication and 2. doomed to failure.

Any notion to the contrary is false. As i stated before, there is a percentage of people that will pay for practically nothing. Always have been, always will be. It is also quite obvious that this group hasn't overtaken the world, and likely, will not.

The iTMS was not created to drive iPod sales. The Kindle fantasy of being the "iPod of books" is quite misguided. Most people I know and have know since the iPod existed buy CDs. They put them in their computers and the computers put them on their iPods. There isn't a point and click method that i am aware of that allows me to pull a book off the shelf here and take it with me in my reader. I think people totally miss this part of the iTunes ecosystem equation. "MP3 players" *add value* to what you already have. The Kindle and other readers do NOT do this.

A small fraction of those might sell a cd when they need to eat, but for them, the value is in the content. For most, having a "massive CD collection" is where the value is.

Neither market is inherently worse than the other from a pure business sense...they simply value different things, and are waiting really for a market to develop to suit those needs.

Personally, Steve's books are worth more to me than any bestseller that Amazon sells for the kindle, because if I no longer have a Kindle, I can enjoy Steve's work. Its really funny to me that purveyors of digital goods seem to be more worried about those that are NOT CUSTOMERS and their wants and needs than those of their customers!

Yeah, someass might buy your stuff and dump it on the internet...but most people that actually pay for something do so because it has a value to them. Those that do not don't see the value and if or not it was "out there" would not change them.

Bezos believes that he can make enough off eBooks (but not enough to price the reader better...look at its construction, materials and lower quality display vs the retail..."Whispernet" notwithstanding) via volume tho some are sold at a loss...apparently to the chagrin of some publishers.

What i think content providers in the digital space just *cannot* and *will not* come to grips with is that Digital ISN'T SUPERIOR in the minds of consumers. It is to them the difference between radio and an LP or CD. Its a "good enough lower quality" alternative to a physical thing, as much as taping off a radio is to having the record.

To YOU it isn't. Its Just as Good. Its not to them...they haven't bought it yet, and then, are proven RIGHT when they figure out their "iPod Store" songs don't work on anything else when their iPod breaks.

Ethics? Is it "ethical" to sell someone something that makes them forever beholden...because some other person once did something wrong? Hrm.

Most people can sense when someone is trying to "pull a fast one" and respond, in kind.