Comments on: RSS, Vlogcasting and Distribution Opportunities [Edited]

By: Brett Carboni

Brett Carboni — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:42:09 +0000

I think 75� is very cheap. When I think of it I used to pay $5 to rent the latest star trek videos when they came out and actually didn’t even consider the cost. I only bemoaned the fact that after I had seen it there would not be much SF left to see.

As for ‘overly creative distribution’ I think Mr Jobs (and Frank) is on the right track. If it’s cheap enough it’s a bother to pirate.

By: Frank Capria

Frank Capria — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:40:36 +0000

There comes a point where the cost of ownership is so low that legitmately owning the product is more efficient — why bother posting it to another site or burning a disk when someone can just spend 75 cents on it.

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:11:42 +0000

I guess I should add – if anyone’s seriously interested in exploring the business side further, contact me philip at intelligentassistance.com

Philip

By: Philip

Philip — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:05:43 +0000

Maybe it needs to be a “BitTorrent-like” scheme, or maybe the file is protected at the receipt end so it only plays in the software. Let the P2P’ers spread it around, if it doesn’t have the part that’s in the player directly (small key) it won’t play.

I have some ideas but, you know, I have some business aspirations too

Philip

By: Mark Suszko

Mark Suszko — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 21:21:44 +0000

As far as the Star Trek thing goes, I’m following the strategey all the way up to… how to make it work for that 75 cents or whatever subscription rate when as soon as the first few paying customers download it, they will turn around and torrent it out again for free to everyone else. Even if you assume an operation like my church, where the Sunday contributions are consistently made by only about 20 percent of the total parishoners, and the serious money only comes from 5 percent. What I think is lacking is an innovation in payment schemes to match the PTP distribution. Some system where the compliance is voluntary but self-generating , self-reinforcing. Maybe some form of virtual token exchange, I don’t know. In massive multipalyer computer games, players have to “work” or fight to generate or recover “money” to “buy” things inthe game they want and need. Indeed, those gmaes are so popular, people use real money to buy and sell the worthless “virtual” money and property for the game on Ebay and the like, and I’ve read where such has totalled up to more than the GNP of several small Balkan States in the real world. If we can somehow fuse that funding scheme to the PTP disdtibution network you wrote about, the whole thing may finally take flight.