Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeB1972
...OK, name me some products that are free to copy and distribute that make their producers money?
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I am sorry but your question is unclear as I don't know if you are saying free to copy/free distribution, or free to copy/ priced distribution, or whether by distribution you mean by a seller or by a non commercial individual, or whether by copy you mean by the producer or by a non commercial individual.
I am assuming that in your question there is no inference that the example you ask for was to include the making of illicit multiple copies by a purchaser and they then distributing those for free into the wild. I am also assuming that you are not referring to producers selling their goods for free (although as another has pointed out, that can be part of a successful model). Those assumptions because nowhere have I claimed those things and your question is framed as a challenge.
I will therefore assume that you mean that the product is easy to copy at no cost by a non commercial individual who has bought a copy from a commercial producer under a market model different to the current eBook one. In that case I have given the example already, and that is music where one can buy tracks for a small fee with no DRM, or pay a small fee for the ability to copy the track to portable media (e.g. a CD).
The producers of the recordings and the artists of any ability that make them seem to me to be doing very well. Of course, there are still illicit copies being made and distributed (and the music industry very actively pursues the most active individuals seeding or otherwise electronically distributing them). As I think Ratinox has alluded to, the Music industry likely has some way to go to further their model.
So, how is this working out for Music with respect to illicit copying for illicit distribution? I suspect two things; the number of new entrants to illicitly downloading music is declining rapidly, and the number of long standing downloaders is declining.
Without long time accurate monitoring of statistics on popular torrent (for example) sites as to the number of new music torrents uploaded each day, which is something I have not done, it is not easy to give hard objective evidence for what I suspect. But by way of example, and what really brought the matter to my attention is, as some will know, what was probably the most popular torrent site was recently closed down by authorities. In the meantime, until they get up and running again, a community forum has been set up by its management team (excluding the one in jail
) on which, among other things, threads exist into which people can give links to torrent files they have made available.
The numbers are interesting, since that forum was set up there have been (as of now) a total of only 18 posts in the Applications thread, 49 posts in the Movies thread,
56 posts in the Music thread, 107 posts in the Games thread,
but a total of 1,628 posts in the Books thread.
It needs to be kept in mind that not all posts include a link to a torrent file and a very few have several links, and that the download item that a torrent is given for is not necessarily under any rights protection. There are in fact less than 56 torrents available in the Music thread. It is not possible to establish how many downloads have occurred (and even if that was available many downloads are opportunistic because they are free) but it is blindingly obvious that
most of the activity there is for eBooks and that the activity there in music is very small.
I suspect that the low (and decreasing) number of Movie downloads is due to the streaming model that is now used where past movies can be viewed for virtually no cost at all (a months subscription to unlimited viewings being not much more than the cost of one eBook). That could be another example in response to your question. Of course industry has made it difficult to make good copies of the stream (e.g. DVD recorders not having digital input interfaces), but as a movie is able to be streamed multiple times the restriction is mostly irrelevant. Again, I suspect they have some room to go in further developing their model (e.g. for new releases).