Posts by Matthew Poole
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Whenever I hear this argument formulated in this particular way, I swear to God I fel like donating money to Sony.
Gio, why is the analogy so awful? Seriously, when cars came along, blacksmiths became the first mechanics. There was a change required in order to make money from the new technology, at the expense of the old. The movie and recording industries are fighting tooth-and-nail to avoid having to make that massive leap forward, instead being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. And they're fighting their customers every step of the way.
Does it really offend you that much to see people point out that fighting against those who consume your services is a flashing neon sign that you're not getting the message? -
The record labels are dying through their own activities, that's a given. They've relied for too long on being able to clip the distribution ticket that must be presented by artists and purchasers alike, and now that there's a way for fans and artists to easily interact directly the record labels are losing their stranglehold. Musicians have, by and large, never made money off album sales because the labels have such evil accounting practices. Unless you're a Metallica or a Britney, you can only make money from live performances. The internet exposes minor artists to the world, which explains why their income has trended up in line with downloading of music - more downloads, more exposure; more exposure, more fans paying to see your concerts. That's amply demonstrated by the graph Paul linked to above, and not in the least bit surprising, except to record label fat-cats who are convinced that their demise is entirely the fault of those evil, evil consumers.
Movies are somewhat different, to be sure, but there's a significant level of unwillingness on the part of the major studios to look at ways to monetise the internet. It's much easier to demonise it, and downloaders, than to try and find ways to make it work. We are talking about the same industry that blamed SMS and instant messaging for movies failing to make box office expectations, after all. It can't possibly be mediocre product, it must be the fault of the consumers. That attitude is heavily entrenched, as witnessed by the endless shit we see coming out of the MPAA that attempts to force upon consumers are particular, "acceptable" utilisation of technology. The latest attack on consumers is the MPAA asking the Federal Communications Commission for authority to disable analogue outputs on media players. They've tried this one before, and been knocked back. They're determined to control every last bit (har har) of use to which consumers put their products, still unable to get beyond the "consumers are our enemy" mindset.
The short version is that any industry that tries to survive by fighting its consumers is doing something wrong. Adapt or die, it's that simple. If you can't adapt, die and let something else take your place. Who laments the demise of the village blacksmith or the local saddler as a consequence of the arrival of the automobile? Were we to transplant current attitudes to change the early 1900s, we'd be stuck with horses and carts courtesy of legislative fiat.
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Oh Russell, you're so, so, so funny!
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Call me naive if you must, but it hardly takes a phone book sized briefing paper to see all kinds of very bad shit coming down if you oblige ISP's to cut off people's Internet connection if they are accused of copyright violation.
No, but that phone-book-sized briefing paper could come in really handy for bludgeoning into silence the lobbyists for the media cartels. Oh, and for beating some sense into their pliant elected audience.
When it comes to the copyright issue, it does become very hard to believe that there's no undue influence being exercised. Why do I say that? Because a majority of voting members of the public who submitted on the disconnection issue were agin the concept, but it still made it into law on the basis of the representations of a handful of mouthpiece bodies. That's not democracy, that's cash-ocracy. There's pretty much no circumstance under which the public would willingly accept disconnection of internet as a penalty, except when handed out by a properly-appointed judicial official, but I have very little confidence that the will of the public many will prevail over the will of the corporate few.
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For everyone else, it's a side issue.
The impression I get is that, for a lot of people, everything is "a side issue." They don't really care about anything, except maybe tax cuts. Unless they can see an immediate way in which it will affect them, personally, they just don't give a shit. The blackout actually penetrated the public's consciousness, having made it onto the collective radar of the MSM, and that got people to understand that this was something that could affect them, personally. Downloading copyrighted materials isn't just something that "other people" do, and that means that being disconnected wouldn't just be something happening to "other people."
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Scott, when I said PR, I was meaning marketing in general not just that specific sub-set of "getting the message to the people."
They cry about how much they spend on R&D, and how the nasty FDA regulations cost them $squillions, and then voluntarily spend, according to the second article I linked, twice as much on their marketing. Excuse me if I find it very hard to trust anything they claim about their R&D expenditure beyond the bottom line figures. -
And while I'm not a copyright/internet law geek, even a rank amateur like me had to despair at the low quality of informed debate among the people who have to craft, debate and pass legislation. That's the whole Parliament NOT just the Government.
Experts? Evidence? What the hell kind of traitorous commie are you? :P
Copyright's particularly obvious, because it's so far outside the understanding of most of the electorate, but it's hardly the only field where our elected overlords eschew the knowledgeable for the vocal - or the "interested", as we see with the breaks that are going to agriculture and industry with the emissions legislation. -
Not so. R&D spending last year in the US alone was US$65.2 billion.
From that article: PhRMA-member companies alone spent an estimated $50.3 billion on pharmaceutical R&D last year
For a group with 29 members, that's actually not very much on R&D when you consider that they're meant to be the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world.
Also, the large advertising expenditure and out-of-kilter R&D-to-marketing ratios are thoroughly documented. That last link gives an average across the six top-spending pharma marketers (all of whom are PhRMA members) of $1.525b, against an average R&D spend of $1.73b. Those numbers are very, very close together for an industry that claims that R&D is clearly its largest cost. -
Craig, did you miss the point where I said "If they were going to show leadership on this, they could've ordered our negotiators to withdraw"?
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On a completely different subject, the push for an NZ US Free Trade Agreement continues apace.
The only good thing for NZ that might come from any such deal, based on past US negotiation SOP, possibly, would be "encouragement" to clean up our act on environmental issues. We will gain nothing, if history is any indicator. We're in a weaker position than Australia, and as it stands our FTA with China was fairer, and completes sooner, than the FTA between the US and Australia - an FTA that is widely considered to be the benchmark for all future bilateral FTAs to which the US is a party.