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by Foy
5057 days ago
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I guarantee you that I have a book I have loaned out more than once.. a couple times, in fact. Amazon only lets you lend it once, for up to a maximum of, what, 2 weeks? In meatspace I can sell my book to a friend... or give it away. Why is it that with ebooks some authors feel enititled to a sale for each and every person who wants to read their book? That is never how books worked in the past. I thought all this information technology would liberate information, not restrict it to such an extent. You say that a site allowing lenders to be matched to borrows would... what? You can only loan each book once. |
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Content producers thought the digital world would remove distribution costs while maintaing the same per-unit price and increasing number of sales, hence multiplying profits. They didn't understand how distribution costs would disappear for consumers as well, making "original copies" indistinguishable from "second hand".
Now they're starting to understand, and they think (or have been told by "old media" companies) that this will put pressure on price-per-unit, people will "steal" it and sales will collapse, and they'll all go broke. Hence the constant outrage.
Old internet geeks, by now, know chapter and verse about the need for new business models, the reality of p2p actually growing the market as a whole etc etc; but these people don't, they're like Metallica circa 1998. Most of them don't even make much money; talking to them about new business models is like trying to convince your average "bodega" shopkeeper that he should think about advertising in the NYTimes or on TV.