WMG's latest crime against humanity
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Yeah, brick and mortar presence is the holy grail, to be sure. I got some B&N love with Career Programmer, but not so much with Tribes. Of course, becoming famous is more an aspect of PR than of writing. More time writing is what you get to do after you're famous. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Well, I'm writing a trilogy (Shh!)... So I figure once I'm ready to publish the second book, I'll start the marketing machine (Which, in essence, is just me)... Maybe I'll have better luck when I have a proven track record.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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Well, I'm writing a trilogy (Shh!)... So I figure once I'm ready to publish the second book, I'll start the marketing machine (Which, in essence, is just me)... Maybe I'll have better luck when I have a proven track record.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
You live in the center of the universe, so I'm thinking PR opportunities abound for you. While I'm not sure how much of my experience in the non fiction world will translate effectively to fiction, if you want to shoot me an email from the CP email link, we can kick some things back & forth offline. Always happy to help another creative creature if I'm able.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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You live in the center of the universe, so I'm thinking PR opportunities abound for you. While I'm not sure how much of my experience in the non fiction world will translate effectively to fiction, if you want to shoot me an email from the CP email link, we can kick some things back & forth offline. Always happy to help another creative creature if I'm able.
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
I've got some ideas from a ton of web research... The main hurdle is overcoming my introverted personality and actually getting out there and talking to people.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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I've got some ideas from a ton of web research... The main hurdle is overcoming my introverted personality and actually getting out there and talking to people.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Two words: Booth Babes. :-D
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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You've lost nothing, but the car companies have lost a potential sale. Remember, they put a lot of money into developing the cars... If they can't sell as many, because people are replicating, they can't afford to spend as much on R&D. Either that, or the price of cars will have to go up. It may not harm YOU, if your car is copied, but if this happens on a massive scale, it impacts the industry itself.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
And since these replicators are on a massive scale, it stands to reason that the car companies are also using them. Which means that their production costs drop by something comparable to the cost of having people replicate their cars themselves. Which means the car companies have to make fewer sales to get the same net profit. Of course, they'll always want MORE profit than they are getting, it's human nature as well as the nature of business - but unless the do-it-yourself replicators are significantly larger in number than the original sales run, the car companies will still have the same cost analysis for doing R&D as they did before. As long as they can expect to pull in more money from the sales run than it cost them to develop and replicate their cars, they'll continue to pour in the money. And there will always be that group of people that will want the latinum-embedded sticker as proof that they got their car from the actual manufacturer.
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If we could replicate the car for free. Someone would make it for free. You really think no one would jump at the chance to make the only car everybody drives? "Where's the motivation if you can't make a profit?" Um, fame? Maybe the fact that everybody is driving the "RagnrocknRoll" Model A. Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it? Or any of the dozens of related service industries I can build around my free car. But you folks are right, there aren't any working models of people just handing out their product for free and still making money. Not like Red Hat makes a ton off of training people to use and maintain their OS, or anything like that. Heck, it's not like Radio Head made any money off of their "pay whatever you want" album. And Reznor was a complete fool to do the same. I'm not saying steal everything. I am saying being in the outmoded way of thinking that it must come with an up front cost and there is no way to make a profit if you don't charge is not seeing how things are changing.
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That's just stupid. The fact is that the analogy is flawed because you CAN steal a book or a CD without taking the original, but the person stealing it, gets it full benefit without paying for it. That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
No, I think it was an excellent point that illustrated the difference between digital media and something tangible and shows why Christopher’s original analogy was flawed.
Christian Graus wrote:
That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
If whether or not you are stealing something is not obvious, then I think some thinking has to be done.
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Personally, I think you're a guy trying to instigate. :-D Dang! And here I was hoping I could score some backstage passes... By the way, if you ever do get this business model stuff worked out, I know what your next bestselling book is!
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
Trust me, if the business model works I will never have to write a book again. ;)
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No, I think it was an excellent point that illustrated the difference between digital media and something tangible and shows why Christopher’s original analogy was flawed.
Christian Graus wrote:
That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
If whether or not you are stealing something is not obvious, then I think some thinking has to be done.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
shows why Christopher’s original analogy was flawed
Exactly.
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Well said, Chris. I'm going much the same route with mine. I chose a publisher that doesn't wrap any DRM into the digital copies of my book... Just a plain old PDF. It might be a little easier for authors than it is for musicians, as readers tend to be of a different demographic than the consumers of popular music... At least for the most part. Oddly, though, I've had a number of people buy my printed book, but only two digital sales... No love for the Kindle/E-Reader/whatever, apparently.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
Just a plain old PDF
The PDF of ISO 8601:2004 I bought from the ISO has a watermark -- I could send it around or post it online, but they'd know where it came from. And possibly send the Swiss Army after me. :~
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Trust me, if the business model works I will never have to write a book again. ;)
Just don't forget us little people when you're rich and famous. Or at least rich. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Just don't forget us little people when you're rich and famous. Or at least rich. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
I will need a major help (audio + video + voice overs) from you on the way. I hope you will consider this little guy. ;)
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I will need a major help (audio + video + voice overs) from you on the way. I hope you will consider this little guy. ;)
I'm easy to find. :-D And I know you've been cooking something up lately. I'm just dying to hear the war stories, but I do understand that some artists don't like to unveil the work until the paint's dry. :)
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Well said, Chris. I'm going much the same route with mine. I chose a publisher that doesn't wrap any DRM into the digital copies of my book... Just a plain old PDF. It might be a little easier for authors than it is for musicians, as readers tend to be of a different demographic than the consumers of popular music... At least for the most part. Oddly, though, I've had a number of people buy my printed book, but only two digital sales... No love for the Kindle/E-Reader/whatever, apparently.
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
You should try Webscriptions, I don't know if they accept self published but they have a DRM free sales model that seems to work, I have purchased a couple of hundred books from them.
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
Just a plain old PDF
The PDF of ISO 8601:2004 I bought from the ISO has a watermark -- I could send it around or post it online, but they'd know where it came from. And possibly send the Swiss Army after me. :~
Ha! So the folks over there still haven't learned yet. Last time I was dealing with them, we paid for some standards which were set to 'expire' (become unreadable) after a certain date. The only problem was that in their infinite wisdom the mechanism chosen to render the document unreadable involved using javascript to check the current date, and if it was after a predetermined one, draw a box over the content, effectively hiding it. OOOOPS! What about pdf readers that don't support javascript? :doh: Why the hell wouldn't you use the JavaScript to _remove_ the box if the date was valid. Amateurs!!!:laugh: All you have to do to remove the watermark is play with the items included in the PageContents objects. If the watermark doesn't reside there, it may be a part of the document, that all the pages inherit from. In any case, 20 minutes with your text editor of choice should be well in excess of that which is required to remove said watermark. As an example:
4 0 obj
<< /Type /Page
/Parent 3 0 R
/MediaBox [ 0 0 792 612]
/Contents [ 5 0 R 9 0 R 10 0 R 11 0 R 12 0 R 13 0 R]
/Resources << /Procset 6 0 R /Font << /F1 7 0 R >> >>endobj
This particular page contains 6 objects, being nos 5, 9, 10, 11, 12 & 13. To prevent the display of an item an item on the page, one would simply delete '5 0 R ' or '9 0 R' etc, etc. After isolating the watermark object, you can simply delete it. This will mess with the xref table a bit, so you remove a line from it, change the non-zero number in the line above to one-less than it's current value, and decrement the number following /Size in the trailer.
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That's just stupid. The fact is that the analogy is flawed because you CAN steal a book or a CD without taking the original, but the person stealing it, gets it full benefit without paying for it. That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Christian Graus wrote:
That's why some people are retarded enough to not see that they are stealing.
There's a story i remember from childhood, the gist of which is: a restaurant owner catches a young man hanging around his establishment and asks him what he's up to. The man admits that he can't afford the fancy food, but enjoys the scent. He's dragged before a judge, and charged with theft; the restaurateur argues that he is owed the full cost of the meal, with the man protesting that this would leave him destitute. The punchline comes when the owner is awarded the sound of the coins as payment for the smell of the food... I blame a lot of my problems on the stupid sh*t i read as a kid. :-\
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
"information wants to be free" - whether you like it or not that's the bitter truth.
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
The truth is that anything which is in digital format is going to be pirated and will eventually become free because the cost to reproduce it is zero
That much is true, if you approximate storage/bandwidth costs to zero... The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money, and the "free" model doesn't work universally. People need income to survive, and though there are amateurs like me, who write in their spare time and have a day job, there are a lot of others who focus full-time on creation. If all of the profit was stripped out of these things, those people would not be able to survive, financially. In my case (I'm a self-published sci-fi/fantasy author), I've actually considered doing just as you mentioned, releasing the electronic version for free... But as I said, I have a day job, so I'm not depending on my writing for income. In actuality, I'll probably never recoup the money I laid out to print it. Maybe we'll just go back to ye olden days of patronage, where writers, musicians, and artists would just be hired by rich people with too much money to throw around...
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Ian Shlasko wrote:
The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money
The question is: how much should be paid for that time and money. My day job has fluctuated between writer and dev for the last 30-odd years (except for a sojourn as a carpenter), and I've been very well paid for every stroke of work I've done. The thing is that I don't insist on being paid again and again for the same work, once my initial investment of time and effort has been paid for fairly. Others who do the same kind of creative work as me (although, in the case of the US movie and TV industries, they rarely do it nearly as well) don't feel the same way, and have completely unrealistic desires to keep getting paid, over and over again, for the same eight-hours-a-day. The thing that sparked this discussion (the muppets doing a song that was written by someone else and is in the public domain, so they didn't even write the tune, making it effectively plagiarism) is a classic example of this. How much was that work worth? They stuck their arms in some puppets, messed around for an hour, and then they got paid, and paid well. That's enough. The clip is, in fact, worthless, because no-one will ever be willing to pay for it. The demand for it is for a quick giggle amongst pals, not as a permanent keepsake that will be treasured and watched over and over again, so that is how it should be supplied. On the other hand, people who see it on the net may well be inspired to pay for a muppets compilation DVD, just on the strength of nostalgia from having seen it again, but greedy idiots can't see that; they would rather alienate their customers by treating them as criminals. This only happens in the "arts". Very clever people designed and built your car and your computer, and they got paid for doing so. They don't expect to get paid again, every time you drive your car or boot up -- if they want more money, they create something new; they don't clamp your car or treat you like a criminal for driving it, lending it out, selling it, or giving it away. The ease of replication of digital information adds a new element to the mix, because a duplicate can be no different whatsoever from the original, so different marketing paradigms have to be used to encourage people to buy the original -- e.g. higher quality levels are needed, to make people watch a show when its aired (and therefore see the advertisements), rather than wait a
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Ian Shlasko wrote:
The problem is that there IS a cost to CREATING these things, both in time and money
The question is: how much should be paid for that time and money. My day job has fluctuated between writer and dev for the last 30-odd years (except for a sojourn as a carpenter), and I've been very well paid for every stroke of work I've done. The thing is that I don't insist on being paid again and again for the same work, once my initial investment of time and effort has been paid for fairly. Others who do the same kind of creative work as me (although, in the case of the US movie and TV industries, they rarely do it nearly as well) don't feel the same way, and have completely unrealistic desires to keep getting paid, over and over again, for the same eight-hours-a-day. The thing that sparked this discussion (the muppets doing a song that was written by someone else and is in the public domain, so they didn't even write the tune, making it effectively plagiarism) is a classic example of this. How much was that work worth? They stuck their arms in some puppets, messed around for an hour, and then they got paid, and paid well. That's enough. The clip is, in fact, worthless, because no-one will ever be willing to pay for it. The demand for it is for a quick giggle amongst pals, not as a permanent keepsake that will be treasured and watched over and over again, so that is how it should be supplied. On the other hand, people who see it on the net may well be inspired to pay for a muppets compilation DVD, just on the strength of nostalgia from having seen it again, but greedy idiots can't see that; they would rather alienate their customers by treating them as criminals. This only happens in the "arts". Very clever people designed and built your car and your computer, and they got paid for doing so. They don't expect to get paid again, every time you drive your car or boot up -- if they want more money, they create something new; they don't clamp your car or treat you like a criminal for driving it, lending it out, selling it, or giving it away. The ease of replication of digital information adds a new element to the mix, because a duplicate can be no different whatsoever from the original, so different marketing paradigms have to be used to encourage people to buy the original -- e.g. higher quality levels are needed, to make people watch a show when its aired (and therefore see the advertisements), rather than wait a
Ya know, everyone is trying to refute my points by pointing out how corrupt and obsolete the publishing industries are... But see, I'm not disputing that. I agree completely. The problem is that people are using that as an excuse to steal, and that's not the way to change things. All it does is give them someone to blame for their failing business model. Instead of admitting that their model no longer works, they can just keep saying "Oh, we're losing billions every year to evil pirates YARR!"
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
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ragnaroknrol wrote:
Or maybe the fact that I made the car and I have the best possible knowledge of how it works and so when it breaks down, I can charge more than other folks to fix it?
You haven't thought this through! :-D Who is going to pay you to fix something if they can copy a new one for free. If everybody steals everything they want, there is nothing to steal because nobody can afford to make anything!!
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.”
Henry Minute wrote:
Who is going to pay you to fix something if they can copy a new one for free.
Good point! Of course, I am assuming copying takes at least a little time and prep. You can't copy a broken item and get a fixed one either. People are always in a rush. So fixing a car is still a viable method. :P
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Ya know, everyone is trying to refute my points by pointing out how corrupt and obsolete the publishing industries are... But see, I'm not disputing that. I agree completely. The problem is that people are using that as an excuse to steal, and that's not the way to change things. All it does is give them someone to blame for their failing business model. Instead of admitting that their model no longer works, they can just keep saying "Oh, we're losing billions every year to evil pirates YARR!"
Proud to have finally moved to the A-Ark. Which one are you in? Developer, Author (Guardians of Xen)
Theft is theft, and there's no excuse for it (none of my machines have any such downloaded material on them for more than a "trial period" hour or so -- then I delete and either buy or don't), but if this is what finally kills the monstrosity that the entertainments industry has become, then I see it rather as a revolution against cretins who have far too much power, and have been lording it over so much of our lives. It's true that governments should never control the entertainments sector, but the greedy b*stards it's being governed by are worse (and less accountable) than any government.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
