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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
if the majority of people were 100% willing to pay for their goods, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all.
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We are having this conversation because with the advent of the digital we went from a market based on scarcity and tight control of media by select groups to the digital world where duplicating data costs nothing and can be done by anyone, and people like content owners (again, as often distinct from content creators) are panicking over this orgy of information.
You do not know whether the majority of people is willing to pay for their goods or not. There are no reliable statistics on this sort of thing, or if you do have them, I would be extremely interested. Given the figures I see on piracy and what I see on the major p2p nets, I doubt the majority of people who access the internet in one way or the other have a lot to do with it. Such restraint, when all the content is out there on the p2p nets. That said, I do believe people are motivated by selfish reasons. Part of the reason why the iTunes store is such a smashing success - it is just so easy and relatively cheap to get a song, why bother hunting it down on the p2p nets?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
And yes, no one particularly likes ads. But aren't ads that you can choose to ignore a small price to pay for getting the content you want... for free?
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Hey, I don't mind ads. But I think you'll find a large portion of people will either ignore them or strip them from the content, and within days ad-supported ebook content becoming a 'standard' you will see ad stripping tools pop up all over the place. Like ad-blocking tools on browsers, commercial-removing scripts in PVRs, and so on. Then again, the presence of blockers doesn't stop internet advertertising or TV commercials, so who knows, it might be viable.