From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Mar 30 2002 - 23:31:06 MST
Hal Finney wrote:
>
> Software is unique in a couple of ways: a substantial part is sold to
> businesses rather than end users. At least in Western countries, it may
> be practical to detect and deter much software piracy among businesses,
> with whistle-blower rewards and such. The Business Software Alliance
> sends out threats every day. Also, software is unique in that it is
> "active" data. It is the only one which actually could be protected
> in principle, via encryption and tamper-proof hardware. However, the
> technology to do this is a long way off.
I don't believe that software works well at all as intellectual
property. It is really a form of applied mathematics more than
it is a product in the conventional sense. The direct
productization of software seriously harms software development
and is imho directly responsible for software innovation lagging
far behind hardware. It directly causes the asinine practice of
software patents and results in much duplication of effort and
mutation of algorithms just to uniquify a product or escape
having to license - if you can even get a license. Software
piracy will dissapear when we stop considering software to be
simple property. It should no more be considered property than
a mathematical algorithm is property. Software is not data. The
BSA is a bunch of goons, a gestapo of the software world.
>
> Software is way ahead of the other areas in that copy protection
> has been around for a couple of decades now. The consensus is that
> it did not work.
Yes. And it should never have been applied.
> However there is a widespread belief that it is
> becoming impossible to make significant money solely via software sales.
Something like 90% of software never was productized but written
and maintained for use of various businesses and organizations.
There are strong arguments for most software becoming Open
Source.
> Most software companies seem to be trying to position themselves to make
> money from service and support rather than sales. This is true both in
> the open source and proprietary software models.
>
Service, support, custom apps, training, consulting. Also, it
should be pointed out that while software can be infinitely
copied, shared and re-used and really should be - software
design and implementation talent is still relatively rare and
limited. So there is still a scarcity market for those skills.
Before the software can be free as in freedom it must first be
produced. The number of really good producers of software is
much smaller than the demand. This needs to change through more
automation and better tools as software is crucial.
> Books, and text in general, are probably the cheapest to produce of all
> of these. Also, in my experience, the ability to produce coherent writing
> is more widespread than the talent needed to make good music or movies.
> So this area may suffer less than some of the others if we have to go
> to a system where people create for love and not for money.
>
Who said that creating for love alone was the only alternative
if books are digital? It should not be too difficult to get
the creators paid without publishers and publishing houses in
the way.
> Movies and TV are the most expensive to produce, especially considering
> the limited marketing lifetime of the products. (Maybe some big software
Due to advances in technology I belive we might see a huge
increase in choice in TV and movies rather than any real decrease.
> programs have similar costs over time, but the investment will last
> longer.) Also they involve huge numbers of people, each with talent
> in their specialty. I don't see how you could get actors, directors,
Through technology this is shifting. How about a system for
movies and music of micro-payments any agreed amount with copies
of the work adhering to those who have paid for those copies to
pass on to other people (as in libraries or loaning to a friend)
at will. This could work using public key encryption based
systems. But this is only viable if real fair use was agreed to
and enforced and the coding of permissions was not allowed to
impose additional draconian demands. Oh, the charges should
only be for a fixed period of time after which the work is in
the public domain.
> set builders, sound technicians, cinematographers, and all the other
> people necessary to make a good quality movie to donate their time.
>
> However, movies have the advantage of being experienced best in a
> darkened, full-size movie theater. That experience can't be pirated,
> and movies make a substantial fraction of their revenues from the initial
> theatrical release. It's possible that even if they lose all their video
> revenues to piracy, theatrical income will still fund the kind of movies
> we have come to expect.
>
> Finally, music is probably closer to text than to movies in terms of
> costs and complexity. You need a few musicians and a producer, the
> rental of a music studio, the purchase of instruments. If the right
> people can come together and donate their time, the other expenses
> will be a few thousand dollars. It will be a lot of work to create,
> record and mix high-quality music, but probably no more so than writing
> good software.
>
> Musicians and DJs can make money from live performances, with their
> donated recordings being purely promotional. But today, they can't
> make much money that way; most live stage shows are meant to promote
> record sales. Maybe a few bands can charge a lot more for their live
> performances, but most will see a significant drop in revenue.
I disagree. Today, most of the revenue of recording sales goes
to the middlemen. Very few professional musicians see that much
of it. In a digital age the middlemen are no longer needed. A
system of micropayments upt the nominal cost of the songs or
collections of songs per listener would suffice. It would be
much cheaper for the listening public, open the field to much
more variety and give more money to the artists.
>
> Summing up, software is farther down the road to the transition. For a
> couple of years now I've been hearing "nobody can make money on software
> anymore." Thus Microsoft's switch to .NET and Internet services, with
> the industry following suit. Clearly music is the next place being hit,
> with text following as well. I believe within 10-15 years we will see
> almost all music and writing being done purely on a voluntary basis, with
> fewer successful bands and writers who can make money by live appearances.
>
Dream on. Microsoft was trailing the industry on Internet and
Application Servers and still doesn't have a good enough
platform for such services to avoid running some of its own
largests sites on various flavors of Unix. .NET is still
pie-in-the-sky while Java and J2EE is real and in production
(for what its worth). I don't know what gave you the idea
Microsoft is the innovator here.
Again, free as in beer is not the only or even the best
alternative in all areas to fully taking advantage of the
digital difference.
Hopefully, within 15 - 25 years we will have gone to an
abundance economy where no one has to be paid for what they love
doing in order to "make a living". The entire concept of making
a living will hopefully become passe.
But, in the meantime, new sorts of markething and pricing
structures controlled through some form of PKE could thrive in
the digital arena for areas requiring such direct renumeration.
> Movies are fighting a pre-emptive action to try to retain video revenues,
> but I think this is probably a losing battle, and in the long run they
> should work on creating an unsurpassed theatrical experience. Movie
> theaters have gotten hugely better in the last 10 years around here,
> with elevated seating and better sound. Hopefully they will continue
> this trend. A blockbuster can still make hundreds of millions of dollars
> from people who will pay to go out and enjoy it in a movie theater even
> if they can watch it for free at home.
Home theater technology has also improved a lot and is dropping
in price. I can now get better sound and picture with much more
comfortable seating and be able to take a bio-break without
missing anything in the comfort of my own home.
- samantha
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