Hijexx wrote:
] flynn23 wrote:
]
] ] did you see last week's column? look in Old Hat
]
] Yeah, how much of that article was just a verbatim quote of
] what you wrote? It's hard to tell.

is it that noticeable?

] One thing wrong with the Snapster business model: What's the
] incentive for the artist? People seem to forget the
] commodity. Sure, buy the whole catalog of recorded works that
] you can for a little over a million dollars. When the next
] hot album comes out, the system collapses if the record
] company isn't moving cellophane like it used to. Where would
] the money for marketing come from? I think consumer demand is
] extremely fickle. For this to work as envisioned, a lot of
] the supposely "prehistoric" systems would still need to remain
] in place, such as mass media hype.

People forget that the artist could still make money in an all digital distribution model, even without DRM. The point being that the artist would probably sell less total units (a hypothetical at best. It's conceivable that that the artist would actually sell more due to better pricing and a larger total market) but would actually keep more 'profit' for themselves. They could easily hire a major label for whatever functions they desire (marketing, production, etc) instead of being enslaved by the patron model and having to recoup 'expenses' back to the label. To be sure, the economics would definitely fluctuate while the transition was happening, but it could ignite the afterburners on sales. Smart artists will always prevail.

] How would rights revocation work? Suppose an out of print
] recording is lost from the vault. Would all users in the
] co-op still have rights to their backups? I don't think
] they'd be able to continue trading backups. It is an
] interesting idea though.

I doubt this would be an issue. For this system to be credible, you'd have to have a tremendous amount of storage (logical and physical) and definitely a management system in place for cataloging your content. It's not likely that you'd need to keep each and every physical source. In the case of ceedees, you could just keep the image of the disc and regenerate it if necessary. Proof of ownership could simply be a manifest or receipt of purchase.

RE: I, Cringely | The Pulpit