Posts by Keir Leslie
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Well, between us there's a functioning link.
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That's the point - you don't compete with free; you use free to connect with fans and and then sell them something. As Kelly says:
1. Give stuff away.
2. ?????????
3. Profit.It all gets very underpants gnome very quickly; it all gets very Pets.com very quickly. (Which isn't a bad thing strictly, this is after all a bunch of dot coms and tech start ups; non-existent business models are traditional.) But you can see that there's a whole bunch of failure modes that are screamingly scary to a writer or musician, who, let's be blunt, doesn't want to be in the dot-com game?
And sure, fun darwinistic free market crap, but I don't believe that bullshit about miners or steel workers, and I'll extend the same courtesy to musicians. We certainly owe retraining, wouldn't you say?
also that nice mr. mcleod has forever ruined `information wants to be free' for me; i now hear `information wants to be paid'...
(Mr. Harris's post is here by the way, not there.)
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And I'd believe it, except that, as I said, I looked at dozens of derated items and they weren't tagged 'Adult'. Can they be flagged in the DB and not have it show round the front?
Probably; I can't think of a technical reason why not.
Database stuff up seems most plausible to me, because this is just so inept and random that I can't imagine Amazon trying to do it. (Imagine if they delivered books as effectively as they censored them.) I certainly can't imagine this is some plot against queer works, except in the sense there's a societal plot agaisnt queer work.
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Apparently, it was all a database error, at least according to this out of Seattle.
Rant: this is basically why national biometric and such databases are such a shocking idea.
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10) anonymous - EPMU (union representing telecomunications workers) *
Factual point, EPMU also represents journalists and such (i.e. people who make money off the sale of copyrights.)
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<i>On the other hand, market economies frown on monopolies. They create huge distortions. Dishing them out should be exceptional and managing their existence is something usually mandatory.</i>
Eh, I'm awfully suspicious of claims that copyright is monopolistic in any meaningful way. There's nothing stopping you writing your own novel or whatever, or employing someone else to.
(It's awfully like claims that Apple's a monopolist, because if you want a MacBook, you've only one choice!)
And, Mark, I had wondered if Giovanni wanted to make a broader point about capitalism in general meself.
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Sorry, that last post was brought to you by People Who Think 39 Pages Is A Bit Much To Work Back Through(tm)
QFT,
I can't actually remember my original point there, to be honest. It was probably along the lines of `this idea isn't one that can be implemented in a modern capitalism; if you want to try it, you've got bigger problems than the record companies'.
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So, why would Adam Smith be weeping, Keir?
Because his theory is up the proverbial small watercourse without a paddle?
More to the point, you are carefully eliding the distinction between getting paid to do x, and getting paid to do x well. (Nobody is owed a living for digging holes -- one does it in one's garden all the time after all; however, the guy at the bottom of the coal mine does deserve to be paid for what he does.) Likewise, nobody is owed a living for writing; what they are owed is a living for writing in a way which benefits society.
(The american newspaper industry is bit of a special case; these are people who employ Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, George Will etc. They have lots of problems.)
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Weelll, in that case it's one of your classic positive externalities; there's sfa you can really do to help in that specific instance in a strict economic sense.
But, in point of fact, the context was pointing out that `no one deserves a living for writing' is a bit offensive -- unless it is meaningless.
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It is not through the benevolence of the butcher or the baker...
The way you measure and reward social impact for most things is through the sensible creation of property rights. Modern capitalism: it works! (For a given value of `works'.)
Quite why the creation of (or, rather, alteration and continuance of currently existing) sensible property rights here wouldn't work is somewhat unclear to me. (If the objection is that they don't seem to be, why are music companies posting record profits? Etc, etc.)
If that fails, then there's the generic government subsidy solution, which may be inelegant, but you could run it pretty efficiently. If that fails, then we're all dead by now anyway.