Please pass along and post wherever appropriate. Another moron is trying to create a worse solution to the bad music industry issues.
http://www.theregister.com/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/
Great article and an interesting concept. I see where Professor Fisher has drawn his approach from the works of other famous academicians preceding him Primarily Karl Marx. Unfortunately, Marx's similar business model's primary result was impoverishing half the world. It's secondary result was creating police states from democracies and semi benevolent monarchies.
The RIAA, the artists, and the public will for once unite and reject Professor Fishers BAD idea.
No system can flourish which is based on the concept of holding a gun to some ones head and telling them what to buy, who to vote for or how to pray. As long as mandatory music purchase programs are proposed they will fail. Equally monopolistic programs (RIAA & Company) created to inflate music prices will fail. Whatever enforcement (DMR) technology can create can be defeated resulting in spiraling prices where DMR becomes the new price driver, not artist revenue.
Everyone laughed when Professor Milton Freedman predicted the down fall of OPEC and the Soviet Union in the 1970's. He was right, it just took a little longer than he estimated. The RIAA will also collapse because they offer higher prices with no benefits and are using the point of a gun to enforce their demands. Eventually the artists will realise they do not need an 800 pound Gorilla to grudgingly grant them 30% or less of the revenue from their products. Sign on with Walmart as your music distributor of choice. They know how to run a business with minimum overhead and maximum profit.
Want a similar analogy? Micro$oft and Linux. Federal legislation and prosecution failed to stop M$ illegal business practices. A few billion in fines is nothing to a company with M$ cash flow. But the market place shifting focus to the lower cost Linux model scared the hell out of M$. The M$ response? Call in the courts with their guns to stifle the competition. Does anyone really think that whatever Lindows is named will affect their business model? Once an alternative OS is allowed to flourish (i.e. not overwhelmed by a monopoly with unlimited resources) it will succeed.
PS Keep away from my broadband bill. At $50 a month plus the requirement to keep a land line phone at $40 a month as a prerequisite I'm already stuck paying way too much for connectivity. If it goes any higher I will start changing providers every year to take advantage of the "introductory offers" the competition has. That by the way is why all the telecom companies are on the verge of ruin. A price war started because the government stopped holding a gun to peoples heads forcing them to pay 33 cents for 3 cents worth of long distance connectivity.
The real solution? A 3 month boycott of all movies, music and video game purchases. It's time we all stood up and said "We're tired of over pricing and we're not going to take anymore."
http://www.theregister.com/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/
Great article and an interesting concept. I see where Professor Fisher has drawn his approach from the works of other famous academicians preceding him Primarily Karl Marx. Unfortunately, Marx's similar business model's primary result was impoverishing half the world. It's secondary result was creating police states from democracies and semi benevolent monarchies.
The RIAA, the artists, and the public will for once unite and reject Professor Fishers BAD idea.
No system can flourish which is based on the concept of holding a gun to some ones head and telling them what to buy, who to vote for or how to pray. As long as mandatory music purchase programs are proposed they will fail. Equally monopolistic programs (RIAA & Company) created to inflate music prices will fail. Whatever enforcement (DMR) technology can create can be defeated resulting in spiraling prices where DMR becomes the new price driver, not artist revenue.
Everyone laughed when Professor Milton Freedman predicted the down fall of OPEC and the Soviet Union in the 1970's. He was right, it just took a little longer than he estimated. The RIAA will also collapse because they offer higher prices with no benefits and are using the point of a gun to enforce their demands. Eventually the artists will realise they do not need an 800 pound Gorilla to grudgingly grant them 30% or less of the revenue from their products. Sign on with Walmart as your music distributor of choice. They know how to run a business with minimum overhead and maximum profit.
Want a similar analogy? Micro$oft and Linux. Federal legislation and prosecution failed to stop M$ illegal business practices. A few billion in fines is nothing to a company with M$ cash flow. But the market place shifting focus to the lower cost Linux model scared the hell out of M$. The M$ response? Call in the courts with their guns to stifle the competition. Does anyone really think that whatever Lindows is named will affect their business model? Once an alternative OS is allowed to flourish (i.e. not overwhelmed by a monopoly with unlimited resources) it will succeed.
PS Keep away from my broadband bill. At $50 a month plus the requirement to keep a land line phone at $40 a month as a prerequisite I'm already stuck paying way too much for connectivity. If it goes any higher I will start changing providers every year to take advantage of the "introductory offers" the competition has. That by the way is why all the telecom companies are on the verge of ruin. A price war started because the government stopped holding a gun to peoples heads forcing them to pay 33 cents for 3 cents worth of long distance connectivity.
The real solution? A 3 month boycott of all movies, music and video game purchases. It's time we all stood up and said "We're tired of over pricing and we're not going to take anymore."
