tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7770370347473031286.post1477502031499009684..comments2020-01-30T02:05:08.301-05:00Comments on This Week in Hax: free vs FreeDan Hackneyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10358325177901149625noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7770370347473031286.post-46751719762210772172009-07-02T11:54:00.586-04:002009-07-02T11:54:00.586-04:00"Aside from the issue of competitors knowing,..."Aside from the issue of competitors knowing, if I want to know stuff about the oil industry, why would I care if other people knew that stuff as well?"<br /><br />But the competition is a critical issue here (remember, this is capitalism). If One Big Oil company has new ideas about where to drill, or how to ship or refine, this could be worth billions to them. The value drops fast if their competitors have the same information. So they will treat this "intellectual property", developed by their geologists, engineers, and those who arrange shipping contracts, as valuable trade secrets. <br /><br />If you are an investor, and you learn that one particular company has found a way to save 1% on refining costs, but it does it using a combination of secret and patented methods, then you know the company has a competitive advantage. If you are one of the few people who knows this, then the stock price does not reflect this knowledge. You can buy the stock and expect that its price will increase as more people recognize the advantage. It is in your interests to keep your intellectual proprietary knowledge secret at least until you have finished accumulating your stock position. You may never want to reveal exactly what you know, just wait for the higher profits to raise the stock price.<br /><br />I like your analogy of the bridge. The knowledge of how to design and construct one is "free" in the sense that anyone can check out the books, study for years, and understand the principles. The reality requires extensive on the job experience (no one will give the task of designing and supervising construction of a huge bridge to someone right out of college, no matter how well they did on their student projects). You can even find generic plans for bridges. But people who can actually handle the job of creating the bridge are few and far between, and they can command a substantial premium for their services. Once you buy their design, it is yours to keep, but it is, as you say about X-ray interpretation, useless to anyone else.<br /><br />So perhaps "information" is free, but "expertise" is expensive. <br /><br />The problem for musicians is that, for a while, recording permitted them to extend their reach hugely. they could do one performance and sell that to many more people than could ever come to any single event. Now the ready ability of people to steal their output, and the existence of a large cadre of criminals willing to do the theft, means that it is nearly impossible to make money from recorded music.<br /><br />I think this is a tragedy. First, I would much rather listen to recorded music than go to a live performance. It is faster, easier, more convenient, happens on my schedule.... <br /><br />Second, the volume and richness of music recorded depends on a large industry of highly skilled professional musicians. If you remove a major source of their income, then there will be fewer of them, and less music available.<br /><br />Third, and devastating to someone with my musical tastes, the logical response of musicians would be to reduce the volume of recording. It takes time and it is in part a substitute for live performance. So do not release CD's than I can buy and listen to at my leisure. Instead release the occassional single and tell people that they have to come to the concert to hear more. Or release only fragments of the individual piece. Make the live performance more about showmanship that comes through poorly on recordings, and less about the music itself. Make it difficult for people to record the music at the live performances.<br /><br />When great performers retire or die, their musical output would largely go away with them. <br /><br />In other words, more rock concerts for live participation and fewer string quartets to listen to at work.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05149170588853667879noreply@blogger.com