Amazon Patents 'Maintaining Scarcity' of Goods 240
theodp writes "Back in Biblical times, creating abundance was considered innovative. That was then. Last Tuesday, GeekWire reports, the USPTO awarded Amazon.com a broad patent on reselling and lending 'used' digital goods for an invention that Amazon boasts can be used to 'maintain scarcity' of digital objects, including audio files, eBooks, movies, apps, and pretty much anything else."
And of course ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Artificial scarcity is designed to keep prices up and screw consumers.
Tell me again how this lovely free market reaches optimal solutions and we all pay less? Someone has just patented a way to make us pay more for no other reason that corporate profit seeking.
Re: (Score:2, Redundant)
Re: (Score:2)
Jeff Bezos registered himself as a charity? When did that happen?
Re: (Score:3)
Jeff Bezos registered himself as a charity? When did that happen?
Around the same time Fox News had themselves declared the Church of the Latter Day GOP
Re:And of course ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wut? When does copyright, by definition a government issued monopoly, have anything to do with the free market?
Re:And of course ... (Score:4, Insightful)
But think of the Economy!
All hail the Economy. Listen to your lobbyists. Listen to your advertisement. Buy, but don't complain. There is no other Economy than the one and only Economy. There is no alternative. All hail the Economy.
LOL, people wonder why the crisis does not end. The answer is right there. Because more and more people are leeching off the few people who actually produce something tangible.
Re: (Score:2)
The number one enemy of progress is questions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMQHVzSPTec for those that don't recognise the line.
Patents are by definition not the free market (Score:5, Insightful)
Many patents are filed defensively since someone else could use the force of government to prevent Amazon from conducting free market business in the future by getting this patent.
The patent, copyright and entire IP systems is not a construct of the free market and we could be so much further advanced without these government interventions.
Re:Patents are by definition not the free market (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true that they are anti-free market. But no sociological construct can be pure. The patent system could work if the government or businesses had any interest in it working properly. But they don't. What we have no allows them to manipulate the market, drive out upstart companies, and drive up prices. Amazon takes more of the profit from digital books than real ones. Figure that one out for me.
Re:Patents are by definition not the free market (Score:4, Interesting)
False.
The 'free market' is not a real entity, its a social construct, and it can only exist where property rights are defined and defended - by government force. ALL property, patents or land, is created in this way. Its called enclosure (or inclosure, as it was spelt when this first happened to land in England.
What is going on here is entirely consisted with the 'free' market (quotes because I refuse to pass on the propagandistic notion that markets have anything to do with freedom) - it is in fact what has been going on since the very dawn of capitalism. You secure exclusive access to something by force (generally via a government, which markets cannot exist without) and then you sell it back to the people you have denied it to.
Re: (Score:2)
I can easily lock my car to keep valuables inside it safe without the government's involvement. And the government is completely powerless to stop someone from smashing the window to get in and take my valuables.
For the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For example, I sell handmade crafts; knitted, crocheted, and sewn stuff, and things made from polymer clay. Despite the fact that those can be (and are) mass produced by the big guys, there is still a niche market for handmade stuff. I don't make as much money as the big guys - because I can't make as much product as them - but
Re: (Score:2)
But a small company won't be able to enforce it's patents anyway. They'd have to spend years in courts suing the big companies that 'steal' their patents and at the same time fight against all the counter-suits for the thousands held by the bigger company they'd be accused of violating.
Patents are virtually useless to a small company that wants to actually make a product - any product can likely be found to infringe hundreds of patents. They are only useful for big companies that can use them as deterrent,
Slavery (Score:2)
No, actually, we handed the government a monopoly on slavery and indentured servitude. The 13th amendment:
Considering the overwhelming nature of the web of law as it stands today... it's pretty easy to find you
Re:And of course ... (Score:4, Informative)
You have a choice: do your business somewhere else. That's part of the "free market" you talk about. The freedom to do business with whoever you choose. Nobody is forcing you to buy with Amazon. Just "vote with your wallet". You are part of the free market too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
If the "Free Market" screws you, go for the Free and screw the Market.
This is exactly what bittorrents and other "generics" source of intelectual goods provides to you. Your wallet is not the only way you can use to vote.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:And of course ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And of course ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Just "vote with your wallet".
Sounds like rich people get more of a vote than poor people.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You cannot compare a poor person from a first-world country with someone from a non-first-world country because their living expenses are not the same. You would not be able to live with $3,608 a year in the USA but in India it's the per capita purchasing power parity (PPP), in US dollars.
Re: (Score:2)
Interestingly, there was the case of the homeless guy in NY, I think, where a police officer bought him boots because he was living on the street with no shoes. Turned out he had an apartment and hid the shoes rather than wear them. So yeah, some people prefer to live in a freezing park. Granted, that may often be because they're mentally ill.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
As someone who sells software online from home as a part-time business, I use artificial scarcity (a product registration keying system) to motivate consumers to pay. The best way for them to get screwed would be for me to remove all incentives for them to pay, which would remove all incentives for me to be in business at all. Then, they'd get nothing - for free.
Imagine a world in which you had to pay for new cars but you couldn't resell the car after you used it. At that point, you'd really feel screwed
The corporations are our enemy (Score:5, Insightful)
Terminator was far too optimistic in portraying our future as the War Against the Machines, a nice and clean them-versus-us scenario in which the machines would be non-human. The enemy would be easy to identify.
The reality is likely to be rather more ugly and messy. It'll be a War Against the Corporations, and unfortunately they are us. It will be man against man, those who care about their fellow humans versus those who perceive their only duty is to be a cog in their corporate machine, and society be damned.
It's all a bit bleak, and every day seems to carry us closer to that nightmare instead of towards a post-scarcity civilized future.
Thank you Amazon. Not.
Re:The corporations are our enemy (Score:5, Funny)
Terminator was far too optimistic in portraying our future as the War Against the Machines, a nice and clean them-versus-us scenario in which the machines would be non-human. The enemy would be easy to identify.
Uh, yeah. Did you actually see Terminator?
Re: (Score:2)
I take it noone ever explained to you that "patents" and "free markets" are NOT that same thing?
HINT: who issues patents? (answer: government)
For all the hypothetical benefit of patents, they are a government interference in free markets.
While it is arguable that some government interference in free markets is nec
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
On the contrary ... I've read Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, and all the usual stuff and drank the Kool Aid for most of a decade ... and I've come to decide it's a bad fiction. I know a lot about what makes a free market, I just don't think it works or is something we'd want.
Re: (Score:2)
Your first mistake was believing we lived in a free market.
Beer? Free? (Score:2)
Ok. WTF. I've been seeing that phrase for years now, and I *still* can't quite figure it out.
Where can I get this free beer? Because apparently, for some reason, my area doesn't have a source. I've looked and looked, and beer, even really lousy beer, just isn't available for free. Not even if you make it at home... you still have to come up with the ingredients. And bottles.
Would someone take a moment to explain this strange turn of phrase to an old dude?
Re:And of course ... (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with digital media is too cheap to produce. So the idea of supply in essence goes to infinity (or at least such a high number that it doesn't matter anymore) So using good old Supply and Demand the price of all digital media goes down to 0, no matter what the demand is, or the elasticity of supply and demand.
Free stuff that is good right? Well perhaps in the short term, but in the long term it creates the problem that it isn't free to create the information. It takes time and talent for writer to write a story good enough to be well liked and published. Software takes man hours of people with skill sets. Music takes talented people who need to dedicate good portions of their life for to their art...
My career is in writing software, I get paid to offer my services to an organization. The organization is willing to pay for my services as long as it deans my cost to be equal or less then the value I provide them. If I am producing stuff of little or no value due to a saturated market where anything I write already has a free version of it, and what ever I write must be offered for free too, means my value is 0, thus my bargaining costs will be 0 too (AKA I will not get paid for my work, or have no work).
If out of work, I will need to change my profession to a skill that has a lower supply and a higher demand. That means giving up skills that I am good at and go to something else. Now enough people do this we loose quality digital media and we get "Fan Fiction" quality stuff where if we are lucky we may get a good product every once in a while, but most of it will be complete garbage, or just rehashing what already exists with little innovation or new ideas.
Now here comes the Alternative Open Source business models and touting the profit of such companies such as Red Hat and IBM.... Sure Consulting services, and special distribution and configuration and training services are still in effect for some software. But that really works when you have something of a decent complexity. Now a lot of innovative stuff is too easy to use to be Consulting on. RMS who made money selling Tapes of Emacs. Well those tapes cost money to buy, and he had limited resources to create such tapes and mail them out, allowing supply and demand, as they didn't have the internet widely available at a fast enough speed, making media distribution obsolete.
There is greed, and there is being valuable and compensated for your value. If amazon flooded the market, there will be less authors willing to make digital media and will go back to printed, just because they can make more money off of printed books, even if they sell less. As with all things in life there is a balance, Greed is the case where the balance is broken. But most people who are not greedy do want more out of their lives.
Re: (Score:2)
Now enough people do this we loose quality digital media and we get "Fan Fiction" quality stuff where if we are lucky we may get a good product every once in a while, but most of it will be complete garbage, or just rehashing what already exists with little innovation or new ideas.
While this might have been true in the past, in the last few years the amount of high quality fan fiction has increased exponentially. Fan fiction authors aren't accountable to market research or thematically restricted to whatever will attract the most paying customers, and thus can do the craziest stuff in their work. It's come to a point where I find "normal" fiction predictable, repetitive and mostly boring, while fan fiction is consistently creative.
But I have to concede a point to your argument in tha
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Take a drive to your local walmart and see how prices are lower.
But if you'd like a lesson.... here we go.
The free market doesn't guarantee that every single business will sell for the lowest price.
What it does is allow for competition so when prices get too high or a new innovation comes along, someone is FREE to setup a new company.
You know... like how Google was FREE to compete with Microsoft even though Microsoft was in a virtual monopoly position on the desktop.
But it is rather interesting to note how
Re: (Score:2)
The entire system isn't broken, it's crooked, running as designed by the gangsters that built it.
Re:And of course ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Any form of private property is a government enforced monopoly
The owner of the property has exclusive rights to it backup up by government
Private property is the core of "free enterprise"
The birth of industrial capitalism was formed by the "privatization" of traditional agricultural commons, impoverishing the peasant class and creating a cheap workforce for the factories of free enterprise.
The privatization of innovation eliminates the intellectual commons in a similar way
Re:And of course ... (Score:5, Informative)
I could give you a whole lecture on feudalism and how the ages of exploration and enlightenment laid the political theoretical foundations for the sea change in civic life enabled by the industrial revolution. You really need to study history in depth and realize how oppressed humanity was before the development of capitalism created a middle class society to counterbalance previous aristocratic/oligarchic power structures. Power structures that recreate themselves whenever an anti-capitalist ideology seizes control of society, since redistribution of wealth by force crucifies the middle class and puts the bulk of society under the boot of a politically empowered few.
All this being said, any kind of intellectual property law is a farce against the nature of any truly free market because it violates real property rights. It essentially posits that I cannot use my materials to make things I want to make because somebody else "owns" the "idea" of using materials that way. No government should be able to tell somebody that they cannot make things with their own property, or configure their property in some way that another lays claim to. Either you own something (physically!) and have control over its disposition or you don't. The whole concept of "intellectual property" should be excised from society.
Commons (Score:4, Informative)
With a few tiny marginal exceptions, there has never been an 'agricultural commons'. ...
I could give you a whole lecture on feudalism and how the ages of exploration and enlightenment laid the political theoretical foundations for the sea change in civic life enabled by the industrial revolution.
You better not, because you're not qualified to do so.
"Originally in medieval England the common was an integral part of the manor, and was thus legally part of the estate in land owned by the lord of the manor, but over which certain classes of manorial tenants and others held certain rights. By extension, the term "commons" has come to be applied to other resources which a community has rights or access to. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons#English_commons [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
and was thus legally part of the estate in land owned by the lord of the manor,
So, you prove his claim, while arguing that he is unqualified and that your quote somehow disproves his claim?
Re: (Score:2)
Commons were indeed set up by the titleholders of fiefs as part of the *logistics* of managing inter-serf relations within said fief. To start waxing romantic about their public nature or "rights" (which were primarily vs. other serfs) is to be obtuse to their origin and intent and indeed to buy the metaphorical bill of goods that the the fief lords were selling.
One of the major elements that separates people w
Re: (Score:2)
In his defense, there are plenty of instances across the world where while land was practically owned - i .e., it was obviously used by someone, and their use made anyone else's use of it difficult if not impossible - there was no legal documentation of ownership. Mexico explicitly ran into this issue in the mid 19th century, Germany had plenty of this in the middle ages, and Russia was the poster child of "you only own what you can defend". In short, the middle ages had plenty of declarations of ownership,
Re: (Score:2)
Cattlemen in the US graze on public lands. Those are commons. Commons is an ancient principle. Private ownership of tiny plots of land is rather rare in history.
Re: (Score:2)
Technically, they're owned by the federal government, with certain public use requirements attached to it. But yes, they are an example of practical commons.
Re: (Score:3)
Private landholding is basically as old as civilization itself, there is written evidence from the period that it was common in Mesopotamia and all the cultures that sprang from it. In Mycenaean society virtually all land is held by the nobility and the serfs are so disenfranchised as to be explicitly called
The Grazy Train (Score:2)
Huh. I thought the livestock were the ones doing the grazing. Of course, if the cattlemen's heads are down there cropping grass, I probably wouldn't have noticed them, so there you go. Slashdot: Where you can learn something new!
Public Lands (Score:2)
All over Montana, for one, particularly out on the eastern high plains.
Re:And of course ... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're making the mistake that a lot of modern Capitalist political/economic rubbish relies on: assuming that the words used to describe economic organization (in this case, "owned by"), have a universal and absolute meaning identical with their present usage.
Yes, land just about everywhere has historically been "owned" by someone. But "ownership" is a particular bundle of de jure and de facto practices that changes with time and place --- for large segments of history, land being "owned" by some lord/king was not at all exclusive with use as "commons." Only later was the definition and practical exercise of "ownership" shifted towards our contemporary notion of "private property." But I suppose paying historical attention to the actual conditions of production "on the ground," instead of tossing around terms like "ownership" as though they were handed down immutable from God, would be too "Marxist" for you.
Re: (Score:3)
All this being said, any kind of intellectual property law is a farce against the nature of any truly free market because it violates real property rights. It essentially posits that I cannot use my materials to make things I want to make because somebody else "owns" the "idea" of using materials that way. No government should be able to tell somebody that they cannot make things with their own property, or configure their property in some way that another lays claim to. Either you own something (physically
Re:And of course ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Any form of private property is a government enforced monopoly
Owning a physical object is not a monopoly. That's a natural property of the physical world around us.
Re: (Score:2)
"owning" is a word which requires reference. you "own" something because some law (artificial and man made) states that
Your claim would suggest that there was no ownership before governments, yet I don't think that paleolithic hunters thought of themselves as communists.
I think you mean "keeping others from an object creates the natural property that they cannot have access to it - and thus I am monopolizing it".
People monopolize *activities*, not goods.
Re: (Score:2)
In the physics of weapons, mostly. Without force, or the threat of force, the concept of ownership is meaningless.
Just like every other "right" you can name.
At some point, weapons and the threat of their use come into it.
That's what makes sure the things you left behind in the morning are most likely the same things you'll come back to in the evening.
Re: (Score:2)
The first phrase is the definition of fascism. I do not mean of course the Hitler and Mussolini regimes, I mean the concept of citizen reduced to components of the State.
Private property exists before governments do, so it is not a monopoly granted by the government.
Government themselves, with the systems of laws came after some people acquired power and need to legitimize it. That's why even in democratic countries it it so difficult for the will of the majority to end up in structural changes.
Re: (Score:3)
In order to maintain a consistent position, you've switch from libertarianism/minarchism (a little nutty) to anarcho-capitalism (abso-fucking-lutely insane).
If government does not back up property claims with the threat of force, individuals must do so themselves. Congratulations, you've just handed all land over to whoever has the physical power to conquer it. Exclusive rights are only possible in this world by having a massive superiority of arms over all your neighbors - which of course means that they d
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting discussion. The issue of land and natural resources is one of my few gripes with anarcho-capitalism. If there was a perpetual "frontier" with water and arable land, I think it would work. With land being scarce however, you free yourself from the tyranny of the state, but could end up as a multi-generational slave of the local land baron.
I think some sort of merger between the philosophy of Henry George (see "Progress and Poverty") and the philosophy of anarcho-capitalism would be ideal. Geo
That's How It Is Anyway (Score:2)
Congratulations, you've just handed all land over to whoever has the physical power to conquer it.
How is not that way now? Why do nations keep standing armies? Because if you don't have the physical power to keep it, then someone with the physical power to conquer it, will. Civilization depends on someone with the biggest stick enforcing the rules.
Re: (Score:3)
Real Estate (Score:2)
In the US, in most cases, your land can be taken by the courts for any number of reasons. It can be taken if the government wants to build a road, or, in many states, if a corporation has a plan for your land that will earn more taxes than you are presently coughing up for the same parcel, or parcel plus its neighbors. So while you might think of the government as "backing" your property ownership, there are a
Re: (Score:2)
If those are your 2 extremes then any possible situation is "in-between". Either the government is the actual government or it's whoever has the biggest gun. Anything else is in-between.
Re:And of course ... (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought that the government was, by definition, the group who has the biggest gun, for as long as that state lasts. So there is no in between.
Life in the state of nature is ugly, nasty, brutish and short, and we all live in a state of nature at all times. All aspects of the social contract are our attempt to collectively minimize our risks and maximize our advantages and benefits, generally by ganging up on would-be bullies or out-group folks. Historically, this has been a lot easier to accomplish with memetic support structures like the illusion of human rights, religious duties and obligations, the fear of a supernatural deity with the biggest gun that one could ever conceive of (but one that is only used after you are dead), and government bureaucracy. Traditions, too.
In the end, patent rights and copy rights are what "we" say they are, collectively, and can enforce by the direct threat of and delivery of violence on members of the herd that disagree. "We" generally establish these illusory rights according to some mushy but reasonable principles such as rewarding the inventor and/or author (so that they will continue to produce inventions and stories and so on -- it is in our own self-interest to keep them motivated). However, a much smaller set of "we" also benefit tremendously from the delivery systems for the inventions, books, music, art and so on created by the talented few but enjoyed by the greedy many. Those delivery systems have long since been co-opted as the true basis for patent and copyright law, more the latter than the former. Patents at least have a reasonable lifetime, but a copyright now is damn near forever, long past the actual lifetime of an author.
The corporate interests of the world would, I'm certain, like to turn patents and copyrights into property forever, with no time out. That way they become pure commodities that can be bought and sold indefinitely. Imagine a world where the rights to Shakespeare's plays were still for sale, traded like pork bellies or mattresses. Imagine a world where you have to pay somebody every time you read, see, or hear one of Shakespeare's plays, where even media copies are sold per use, not as things you can own. That's the ideal of the publishing industry, with the ideal of the manufacturing sector and drug industry regarding patents close behind.
This leaves the problem of enforcement, the big guns. Any law that is ignored as universally as the copyright laws are currently ignored is no law. They are unenforceable, and everybody hates them. The illusion that they are somehow necessary in order to reward the actual creators of IP, carefully fostered by the media industry, is finally breaking down as well. At some point in the evolution of the digital Universe we will probably find some way of directly rewarding the authors of books, creators of music, inventors of fabulous machines only but in a way that strips away the guarantee of huge profits for the (largely unnecessary) middlemen. But to get there, we have to pry congress away from the clutches of the large, wealthy, and loud lobbying groups that advocate for the protection of their "rights" to charge the moral equivalent of a toll for going down a public road.
rgb
For real? (Score:4, Funny)
Ultimatly, it will fail (Score:3)
I have an Amazon account and a Nexus with Kindle reader. They go together good. I buy the odd book here or there, between a few books of varying prices. A fair exchange for a fair price. This kind of stuff really annoys me though. It is as if they wanted to annoy people to go the root of firing up a browser and typing "latest best seller torrent" and side loading it.
I admit I have sideloaded a lot of stuff, but mainly stuff that is useful, but in PDF (i.e. tech docs).
Ultimately, a few people will put up with it, but when you are part of a group of "digitally intelligent" people, they will just rip and share their stuff, either through online or large removable media.
Re: (Score:3)
I have an Amazon account and a Nexus with Kindle reader.
But when you have finished reading your book(s), can you freely give them to a friend ? I can do that with the paper books that I have, but electronic ones ?
Re:Ultimatly, it will fail (Score:4, Informative)
I use an old Sony eReader. It supports ePub format, with or without DRM.
And I also have Calibre, which can remove DRM for legally acquired eBooks.
So, yes, I can give my ebooks freely to friends.
Re: (Score:2)
To answer your question, thought, yes you mostly can. You can lend your purchased books to o
Re: (Score:2)
I have a Kindle and a Nook. The Kindle often has typos and formatting errors. Combine that with some of this evil Amazon stuff and it's obvious why my Nook is used daily and my Kindle gathers dust.
Value beyond money (Score:3, Insightful)
The phrase “maintain scarcity” has the same feel as "monatize" to me - it indicates a world view where commerce is the be all and end all of existance.
"Maintaining scarcity" is in essence the exact reason our copyright laws on this planet are so messed up - the notion that something that is no longer commercially viable might still be of historical or cultural interest is heresy. In fact, availability of "assets" without requiring payment from users of those assets is an active attack on capitalism and our way of life, according to some people.
I know what kind of world I want to live in, and it isn't one where the goal is to "monatize" art, culture, history and literature to line our pockets. Maybe, just maybe, those things have a value that transends price tags - maybe intellectual stimulation, artistic enjoyment, and knowledge have their own intrinsic worth that doesn't rest soly on whether people have paid to acquire them.
Although I think this is a sleezy smelling move on Amazon's part, it's more properly seen as a reflection of our broader culture. What kind of world do we want to live in?
Re: (Score:2)
What kind of world do we want to live in?
The one we have, obviously... I mean, if we didn't, we would change it.
Oh, someone is changing it. And it isn't for the better.
To promote the progress of (Score:5, Interesting)
science and useful arts.
USPTO, please read the Goddamn Constitution.
Re: (Score:2)
science and useful arts.
USPTO, please read the Goddamn Constitution.
... by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. Sounds like they're doing exactly what the Goddamn Constitution says.
Re: (Score:2)
What, by creating artificial scarcity to jack up consumer prices? The Constitution was designed to support price-gouging?
I have no problem with protecting the work of people, and if you invent something new you should be able to benefit from it without someone just ripping it off.
But a patent to manipulate the eco
Re: (Score:2)
What, by creating artificial scarcity to jack up consumer prices? The Constitution was designed to support price-gouging?
Uh, yeah? It says it right there. What do you think "exclusive rights" are used for except excluding others and/or selling licenses?
I have no problem with protecting the work of people, and if you invent something new you should be able to benefit from it without someone just ripping it off.
But a patent to manipulate the economy to make sure that prices stay high solely to protect corporate profits? How does society benefit from that.
Ah, so you want the USPTO to qualitatively classify each patent as being "good for society"? So, for example, if a teetotaler is in charge of the office, no patents on new distillery technology. Or if a luddite is in charge, no patents on anything related to computers. Or if it's one of those anti-gun, anti-video game folks, then no patents on anything related to firearms or ga
Yeah sure go ahead (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
For tech books, I have been buying a lot from O'Reilly [oreilly.com] recently; they have fully DRM-free ebooks and half off sales about every month or so. It takes a little more time to get them to my Kindle (you have to email them to a special Kindle address or sideload them directly) but it's worth it.
Sure, give us ANOTHER reason to prefer piracy... (Score:5, Insightful)
You will sell countless millions of your products at under a buck each. At >$10 each, a significant number of people will pirate it. And if you don't even offer it for sale (or play tricks to have a limited number of copies available), you guarantee everyone who wants it will just pirate it.
Don't like it? Starve in the gutter. We don't care. Give us what we want or vanish, simple as that.
Re: (Score:2)
If the authors made more as a percent, a lot more people (including myself) would feel willing to pay more for their work. When the lion's share goes to an obsolete publishing and distribution industry that has zero relevance to digital works? No thanks, but can you direct me to the author's online tip jar?
Crazy, it seems Amazon, Google, Apple are having no trouble finding customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Ever seen people buy from a used bookstore, where they can get physical books for a buck or two? They walk out of those places with crates full of books.
Yes, at a buck a book, writers will need to sell more. But they will sell more, as people load their Kindles with cheaply purchased books rather than a dump of Project Gutenberg and one or two best sellers.
Of course, the real issue here in
Re: (Score:2)
Would they, I mean I can buy 30 books I might read at 1$ a book, but I won't buy one book I might read at 30$ hardcover.
Harccover->Paperback->Ebooks->BargainBin.
Sorry, but... (Score:2, Troll)
I'm surprised they didn't already have this patented.
Physical objects wear out, digital objects don't (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
It has to do with enclosure and rent seeking.
1. Take something that is abundant and/or common, and fence it off so people can't get to it.
2. Sell access back to it to the people you closed off from it.
3. Profit
This is the very method by which capitalism was founded - and it continues to this day.
Re: (Score:2)
People still need time to read a book (or listen to music), which limits the number of people that will read the book even if the ownership can be transferred indefinitely. However, we have effectively perpetual copyright at the moment and it just wouldn't be fair to the starving writers' grand-grand-grandchildren if the market for the book would eventually dry up because there are a sufficient number of copies sold such that every person who wants to read it can get a second hand copy.
Re: (Score:3)
Artificial scarcity (Score:2)
Did Amazon just save us... (Score:2)
...by getting exclusive rights to create artificial scarcity. Like if iTunes or Google Play tries to implement it Amazon will sue the shit out of them?
Sounds great to me!
Online games? (Score:2)
of digital objects, including audio files, eBooks, movies, apps, and pretty much anything else.
How bout MMORPG gold / credits / ISK / character skins / avatar bling / WTF?
Don't online games already have this all patented 89 billion ways already? And if not isn't this entire industry sector a pretty obvious prior art?
keyword (Score:2)
Obvious, Novel, and Prior Art aren't just digital (Score:4, Insightful)
The patent office needs to adopt a simple fact: doing something digitally that has been done physically before (like lending purchased objects just like a used book and music store, or having a digital "shopping cart" like, you know, a shopping cart) is "obvious". Someone will eventually get around to implementing it, so it is not novel and should not be patentable. At best maybe the site should get design patent coverage, or some very specific encryption algorithms should be protected in some way if in fact they are proprietary, but the idea of patenting an entire store concept should be ridiculous.
Reminds me of DIVX (not DivX) (Score:2)
Yes, it was
Can anybody say prior art? (Score:2)
Since DVDs and CDs are digital goods and you have been able to lend, rent and purchased used ones for years, how can this now be patented? The only difference is that this covers digital goods that aren't on physical media, but then software, another digital good, has been distributed electronically for decades if you include mainframes. There was even a big case with Revelon, where a developer "removed" software from their mainframe because they failed to pay -- all done digitally. So, can somebody expla
Prior Art (Score:2)
Disney's "vault" for movies (particularly VHS) in the 80's/90's. Two years, then off the market for 10.
Re: (Score:2)
I even remember a specific commercial for lion king on another video that mentioned "Hurry, before it goes back in the vault".
Digital Efficiency (Score:2)
How is this not just meaning no redundancy for the "same" digital object. Rather than host 1000 copies of the same file, Amazon minimizes redundancy and every cloud user who hosts the same file has access to the same block(s) of data.
Once again (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's DAMN more than that. Every form of DRM is a way to make a digital "object" have a false form of scarcity.
Corporate suits can't get it through their fat heads: the digital world has different rules. Build your business based on those rules. You can't have the same type of scarcity as a physical item. Every attempt fails and will continue to fail.
Re: (Score:2)
Talk to the iranians. I think they have a solution for your scarcity. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
How to end piracy:
Create great content
Make that content super easy to buy
Release the content worldwide on the same day
Give it a fair price
Make sure it works on any device
Absolutely... here's a list of what I buy vs what I pirate and why:
Music: Pirate: Not easy enough to get the music I want; often at a price point I don't wish to pay; often comes with other music I don't want bundled. This is slowly changing though, so I'm keeping an eye on online music purchasing options and will happily start buying if the situation improves.
Television: Pirate: I'm a native English speaker and live in a country where English television isn't generally broadcast. Some shows are sold as