| |
| META TOPICPARENT | name="FirstPaper" |
|---|
|
|
<
< | Ready for second review. |
>
> | Commented. No idea what to do next. |
| |
Making Money When Its All Free |
| | databases, and office suites? Even about Photoshop you are talking
through your hat. Evidently you have never encountered the GIMP.
|
|
>
> | Photoshop, Starcraft and Harry Potter are all digital goods with high fixed costs. I do not think they are different in kind. Sure, you're right--each has a free software equivalent. For Photoshop or Illustrator, there is the GIMP or Inkscape (I've been designing websites since 2000 and have made a choice based on basic usability to stick with Adobe). Free to play games in 2012, like Path of Exile, ape games made by commercial studios with a large budget in the 1990s. Lots of Harry Potter fanfic and fan-made Fallout movies are out there for those that want it. Perhaps there is something here about innovation (corporate structure needed?) versus polish or idea extension.
Do you draw any lines between using a pirated version of Photoshop vs. using the free software equivalent which copies the interface and functionality (Photoshop first launched in 1990, the Gimp first launched in 1996). If not, then why develop free software alternatives at all? Is there a difference between MegaVideo? and user generated video? The idea that anarchist networks can better generate software doesn't, for me, explain why content not generated by anarchist networks is also free (aside from redistribution motives that are provided as tautology). I have definitely benefited from the economy of sharing of commercial content (from Napster to Kazaa to BitTorrent? ), but I don't know how the Gimp provides any ethical justifications for sharing content made otherwise. Thus my interest in an alternative that makes sense for my set of values.
|
| | This also includes the cost of financing which is a function of the risk of the venture. Higher-risk ventures require a higher rate of return as part of the fixed cost—start-ups and movies are expensive to finance. |
| | economic sophistication is, to put it mildly, actually beside the
point, as it is when the pharmaceutical industry talks about the cost
of drugs. |
|
>
> | My cost of living is the cost of living in New York city, and I don't have a choice of whether the money I use is expensive or not (aside from moving out of here, which I am not inclined to do, given that I moved here in the first place!). If we want to consume expensive things, like Harry Potter, and not the much less expensive but next best thing, then they remains expensive. Cost is only irrelevant if you don't consume it. Which brings me back to--if the extremely cheap or free version is totally out there, then why are we so compelled to BitTorrent? the expensive one? What does that preference signal? That we prefer "actors"? That we like celebrities? That seems to make them pretty relevant (and explains their compensation). |
| | A Survey of Business Models |
| | said they would. You're welcome to disagree about how all this plays out, but you're not welcome
to distort the argument by assuming falsehoods.
|
|
>
> | This was imprecise. There is nothing ethically difficult for me about Free Software, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Kickstarter, Anonymous, etc. They are all awesome. I have no reason whatsoever to invent business models for things that are free by design. What I feel squishy about is the idea of sharing media and software that are designed as "expensive" without paying for them. I, for one, think there is value in the higher price of good design (I know you disagree, but let's call it aesthetics). Yes, it's all bits and the square of 767354 looks like copyrighted MSFT code. But, just because a chair is made of molecules and I'm made of molecules doesn't mean that we are the same. So I do think that there is a distinction between things made in the free economy and things not made in the free economy. And I think taking not-free to free requires some justification other than "we could do it just as well" and "people really like free things." Is there a solution where both sides are happy? |
| | For institutions structured to produce costly digital goods, this interferes with generating market compensation and leads to antagonism with a powerful and otherwise beneficial distribution channel. More people see the content but less profit is made. |
| | true, who gives a shit? Economic rent is tolerable because
necessary. Since when has it become an end in itself?
|
|
>
> | I agree on Wikipedia, and other examples of culture that come from the coil-internet as you spin the planet. I have no idea whether most of our production will be as such. I'd love it if Free was the dominant economy. My language referred to file sharing, not goods produced in the way you describe. As for your rhetorical question of when has profit become an end to itself--I would say that question defines how a market economy works (a descriptive statement, I hope). Good or bad, that seems to me to be beyond the scope of what you taught in class. |
| | Freemium. Services can be tiered: one group of people uses a free product, while another pays for additional functionality. Examples include Flickr, and Dropbox. Usually the free product is targeted for personal use and the premium product is for professional use. This model is ethically attractive: all groups understand how revenue is being generated and opt-in to the system. The difficulty is reaching appropriate scale and getting enough free users to convert to premium such that the entire venture is funded. |
| | they shouldn't have to pay. Your analysis is only attractive if
you're prepared to ignore everything that someone who disagrees with
you might say about it. |
|
>
> | If Flickr and Dropbox are so useless and terrible, then why are they happily used by millions of people? Dropbox is extremely convenient, and it is free up to 2GB of data. The limitation that turns that service into a pay service (more space) is identical to my limit on email from Columbia (more space). Does Columbia University distort the technology because they don't want to host my attachments over 1GB? And I already pay them! Dropbox doesn't owe me anything--how is their service restriction an affront? As for free alternatives, I am all ears to suggestions that don't require me to run a server or my friends to FTP into it.
As an aside, a "suggestions" page would be a welcome addition to this Twiki--a table with alternatives for stupidity-reinforced privacy-destroying websites that all of us duped Millennials have come to love. Something like this but for apps rather than desktop programs. |
| | Advertising and Data. Instead of making money from a product directly, businesses can generate large user-bases and sell their audience. For example, 96% of Google’s revenues are from advertising. Attention is scarce and valuable to companies that sell products for which people pay directly. An alternate spin on this is to sell the underlying behavioral data of the user-base. The data provides insight on what happens next and how to best market to this population. While ingenious, these two approaches can erode the user experience, as well as their secrecy, anonymity and autonomy. |
| | necessarily, for reasons we can now avoid, thus allowing billions of
existing human beings to escape ignorance—is not even
acknowledged, let alone answered. |
|
>
> | I am not sure where to go with this based on your feedback. To me there are two parts of your course: the descriptive and the normative. As a technophile, I find the descriptive stuff fascinating. The normative stuff--that which you justify with "from each according to ability, to each according to her needs," and proclaim what is the Greater Good of the Many is harder to swallow. That's not a technological argument, but a philosophical one. I don't even disagree--I certainly want knowledge to be infinitely available. I like Free Software solutions, how they expand the pie for humanity, and am humbled by the movement's accomplishments. But when your argument comes into contact with non-anarchist production, I would like a stronger philosophical footing. My attempts to find one based on personal alignment got shot down. So I tried in this draft to take out any strong normative statements, and be descriptive of what I've seen in the for-profit startup ecosystem.
As a for-profit startup founder, I am more interested in building an innovative company than in participating in emergent culture generation. From my perspective: I can work 70 hours a week at a job and contribute to projects I love on my time off, or I can work 70 hours a week on something I care about. It's not a hypothetical. And I have to work because money is expensive. So it is not particularly practical to me that today "profit economics" is on the outs and I should instead be giving away my product for free.
If there's a useful direction I could take this, glad to hear it.
|
| |
|