[alex_d]

Stingo-"Devices such as ours are not expected to sell on the volume of an ipod. The market is simply not seen as big. Moreover once you buy your unit, you will not need another for years."

The early hard disk mp3 players were not expected to sell well either. Indeed they did not. Selling content is certainly not what kept early players such as Archos and Creative in business, and selling mp3s doesn't keep anyone in business even today. (In fact, Sony makes more money off of iTunes than Apple.)

Your argument that I won't need another reader for years is likewise misguided, and this is illustrated by the same analogy. An mp3 player isn't just something that plays music. Having one isn't the same as having them all. There are is still HUGE room for eInk readers to improve (in terms of features, quality, screen size, and plain old aesthetics) that there'll be plenty of upgraders with every generation, and fresh users who are shown the light.

Stingo- "They are manufactured in the expectation of making money on the media."

Here I'll agree. But we must shake that expectation from the manufacturers. The mp3 player market bloomed beautifully precisely because manufacturers did not have any such expectations. If they had such expectations, they would have followed Sony's example of minidisk and other audio products which hardly even allowed people to play mp3s. If manufacturers have such expectations regarding ebooks, they will follow Sony's example of the Librie which hardly even allowed people to read their own books.

I am not arguing anything unreasonable. The greed of the content cartel has to be fought, or it will corrupt the hardware. It will make the hardware unpleasant, and it will certainly slow adoption like molasses. (Just look at minidisk and librie!)

Stingo- "Although it would be nice to change the way the world of copyright works, for the immediate future, if you want best sellers, and you want to pay for them to encourage more media, you are stuck with the publishing system as it exists....The current system sucks. But don't expect that governments to change how copyrights operate. The publishers have the lobbyists."

But if I want the publishing system and the world of copyright to change, then not paying for bestsellers is exactly how to encourage more media. Stuck in the system as it exists, it is unfortunate that it cannot be changed without disobedience. I again agree about the failure of the legislature. In fact, I doubt the laws will ever be changed. But if they are, it is because the publishers are pushed into a corner where they do not make any money and seek change. That scenario is extreme. More likely, piracy will simply increase competitive pressure on publishers, increasing the quality of content and decreasing price.

The usual argument that taking away money from publishers will decrease quality and increase price is only true in a system of perfect competition, and is invalid in the real world. In the monopolistic system we have, moderate piracy will paradoxically increase quality and decrease price.

Stingo- "Finally, in most communist governments, as they exist in real life, the government employer owns the work and the artist cannot market, publish it or sell it without government approval. I hardly consider that an effective reform."

Neither do I. Of course outright preventing people from publishing without approval is NOT communism, it is totalitarianism. However, putting the government in charge of figuring out how much to pay and whom is not something that can be effectively carried out yet (although rough methods of paying in proportion to popularity might do the job well enough). I am just as much in favor of taking the Adam Smith route of promoting greater competition. This will still take government action to break up conglomerates and prevent publisher mergers, but like I said piracy is an effective competitor too (as long as it does not grow too rampant, and it certainly is nowhere close to that point yet).


RWood- "Let me see if I understand you correctly. More popular authors are the ones that sell the most and therefore it is Communistic to pay them more? When I last studied that system of government it seemed that writers were paid a certain amount. If they wrote correctly and sold they were allowed to keep writing, if not, other positions were found for them.

To reward one's efforts by the market reaction is a capitalistic method."

Not true at all. Communism simply means that the government makes the decisions, while capitalism means that decisions are made on their own with the help of competition and the invisible hand. If the market ends up compensating based on popularity on its own, it is capitalism. If a government decides to compensate people based on popularity, it is communism. The advantage of well-run (competitive) capitalism is that it automatically factors in costs into the price while under communism that has to be thought-out manually. The advantage of well-run communism, however, is that, for example, the costs of writing a book are one time and it is NOT efficient to charge each person for access (the government pays for its creation, and everyone gets a copy for free). Capitalism has a very hard time dealing with products whose costs are ONLY one-time and whose marginal costs are zero. It can succeed at this task, but only under conditions of UPMOST competition which are very difficult to achieve in the real world.

The issue of capitalism vs communism is very complex and nowhere near as simple as high school made it seem. Both work perfectly in the ideal case, but the world is obviously far from ideal. Indeed, the topic has many of the characteristics of a good, deep engineering problem.

What is clear, however, is that the current capitalist intellectual property system is just as broken as the communist toilet paper one.


jaed- "Apart from their role in discovering artists and authors and presenting them to the public...? I'm still happy to pay them for doing this... One quick look at the Internet shows that talent is still rare, and expecting everyone to trawl through the dross isn't very workable..."

Good point, but are you the type of person who thinks the best movies and books are the ones that have the most ad dollars behind them? It works somewhat, I agree, but it's still broken. On a related note, being better able to discover which books and movies are good value (ie quality/price) will go a LONG way toward promoting better competition and making the current capitalist system run much better (higher quality at lower prices). It will, in fact, probably do more good than simply breaking up companies and I should have mentioned this before. However, such clarity isn't in media conglomerates' interests and you don't see the Connect store collating reviews.


harryT- "A good editor can make the difference between a masterpiece and a disaster, not to mention all the work that publishers do promoting and marketing books."

Agreed about editors, but they don't cost a fortune. As for promoting and marketing... paying money to convince people to want your book is a facet of a broken system which we'd be better off without. (See above paragraph.)