Digital distribution versus physical distribution

Right now, most people in the U.S. get their broadband service through DSL (piggybacking on old school copper telephone wires), and cable modems (piggybacking on cable TV wires), with a growing segment using wireless data services and a few poor schlubs stuck with satellite. All of those have fundamental technological limitations on bandwidth.

There are relatively few direct fiber connections, Verizon FIOS being one of the few with widespread commercial penetration.

edited 24th Oct '13 7:11:21 AM by Fighteer

Verizon FIOS is what I have. Pretty decent speeds (and they recently increased them), and I buy all my games digitally unless I have no choice. It's great. I realize not everyone can get it. I live in South Jersey, close to Philadelphia, so that mght be part of why this opportunity is available in my area.

Same here - small countryside places may actually have better chances at getting fibre, because reworking the urbanized regions is one hell of a task. (Though high speed mobile access is getting excellent in the cities.)

edited 24th Oct '13 7:20:35 AM by kurushio

And some Governments are assisting rural communities in getting broadband — along with some raising money to install their own broadband...

Coming into this thread because it was pointed out from a mention about a discussion of Digitial vs. Physical media...

I think 0dd1 pretty much covered most the bases on my counter-points.

If it's silly to still want physical media, then stick me spandex and call me Captain Silly, because I refuse to accept digital media as the only option.

Admittedly, I've have bought the occasional lower-budget game online, but nothing worth all that much, and it's something I feel like I regret in retrospect. And never on a whim - it's only after it gets a lot of attention as being something really good.

And only if I can buy it without having to use Steam.

Not to mention that I absolutely hate ebooks. It just doesn't feel right or natural. And in my experience, it's actually more difficult to keep track of things than when you can just flip from page to page with your fingers and stick sticky notes where you need them.

Frankly, I have a hard time imagining how others manage to find it as easy to use ebooks as they do.

Digging up a point that was made earlier, I'm going to offer a counterpoint as someone who sees himself as as creator and thus can offer that exact perspective you're talking about. Or at least someone who aims at being someone counted as a creator someday.

I'm currently writing a book I'm hoping I can get professionally published in some shape or form, at the very least.

The thing is, the main difference I see between second-sale and Digital Bootlegging (what most people call 'piracy') is the matter of the product being passed from one individual to another.

With a second sale, there is a single item - I'll use a book for this example - that is being passed from one individual to another. The book was purchased in the first place, which was money that I received for that book. For the second sale to occur, the first person has to give up possession of that book and decided that they value the money they would receive for that book over the continued ownership of that book.

It also means that if the second person wants to read the book, they either have to wait for the first person to finish reading it or go out and buy their own copy so that they can own it at the same time. The main point is that they can't both use the book at the same time. They either have to share it or buy a second copy.

Piracy is another matter - and it's a matter where I think the term "digital bootlegging" is a much more appropriate and accurate term than "piracy".

With Digital Bootlegging, on the other hand, a copy is being created out of thin air. The first person may buy their copy, but then you have a second person, a third person, and however many other people creating their own copies of the book while the first person it still able to maintain supposed ownership of their copy. So where as in example one with only one copy floating around - and that one copy was a copy that I received money for - in this example you suddenly have two, three, four, or however many copies floating around when I only received payment for the first copy, even as all those people own their copies at the same time.

And that's where I think calling it Piracy is a misnomer. With Piracy - real, genuine piracy - you have physical goods that are being stolen from one person where they loose possession of those items. With Bootlegging, on the other hand, you have people creating illegal copies of an item where they still have the original - which exactly is what so-called Digital Piracy is.

edited 18th Jul '14 10:46:44 PM by TheSpaceJawa

I can certainly say I would never, ever want video games to go completely downloadable. I suppose it's fine as a format for retro and smaller scale games, but A-list games are just too big for me to want to wait around for them to download and install, taking up valuable space on my hard drive, when a single disc would take up far less comparative space on my shelf.

I actually do own an ebook reader. I didn't think I'd want one before, but I think its biggest positive so far has been its ability to download library books, which are free, available as soon as you borrow them without having to go all the way to a physical location to pick them up, and impossible to return overdue. That said, while I don't mind reading and owning certain books on it, it won't replace physical books for me.

I got Wolfenstein New Order through a Steam Sale. 40 gigabytes. Yeah, I'm not getting many, if any, other games that size, especially since it took a day and a half to download.

I use my tablet as an e-reader and it's really handy. Especially since I read so much that I tend to take like 5 books on a week long vacation. It saves so much space. But yeah, I love having physical books.

edited 19th Jul '14 9:14:05 AM by Zendervai

Kinda diverging from the topic, but hopefully not too much.

A little while ago I got a distribution idea — one that could support the creator, the fans, and the curious...

Rather than have the creator/distributor say "You must buy a copy of our product if you want to see it," instead they'd let people view it for free (or insanely cheap, a la Netflix) and say "If you enjoyed this, buy a copy and we'll use the profit to make more things like it." A bit like Kickstarter driven by sales instead of donations.

Although I imagine that would work best for companies who don't have greedy executives who just want to line their pockets with cash.

Does this make sense?

edited 19th Jul '14 10:13:49 AM by AwSamWeston

That's already in action in many cases — lots of webcomics and blogs have tip jars only. They don't charg for their content, they just hope that people will be nice and give them money. It's also the premise behind shareware: "Try it; use it; and if you like it, send the developer some money, if you want to."

The problem is very few people actually give anything. A musician friend of mine has his songs up, in full, on his website for download, under exactly that system. Lots of people download them. 95% don't give him one red cent. They also don't buy the CDs.

Once you've already gotten what you wanted, there's very little incentive to actually pay for it.

And it's a system ripe for abuse from people who just want stuff for free.

And even people who want to pay might not have the money to do so or be too lazy to actually pay up. And then forget about it later when they are able to.

The idea of "pay if you want after you've seen it if you'd like more" severely underestimates how short-sighted and inclined to find ways to get stuff for free people are. Believe it or not, consumers can be just as greedy as those executives you're talking about.

edited 19th Jul '14 11:57:39 AM by TheSpaceJawa

Another thing that makes me nervous about downloadable games. I own quite a few games and DLC from PSN. I appreciate that I can redownload them whenever I want, especially since there's not nearly enough space on my PS 3 hard drive to store everything plus install and patch data for my disc games, but now that PS 3 is a last gen system, what happens when they inevitably decide to shut down the servers that connect PS 3 to PSN? Am I locked out of redownloading any content that isn't already on my hard drive forever? Presumably it's tied to my PSN ID which should carry over to PS 4 (if and when I can afford to upgrade), but who's to say if the content will even be available on PS 4?

Share wares great if they want to do it for the art. They want to make a living, terrible business plan.

Yeah, I can remember playing Shareware games when I was a kid, and I can't recall any of the in-game incentives every being enough to convince me that I should buy the game instead of putting up with whatever limitations or annoyances were designed to make me want to pay real money for the game.

The fact that they were legally "free" didn't do much to make me feel guilty about not paying money for it, either.

A lot of shareware was exactly what Aw Sam Weston suggested — straight up "try it, then pay me if you feel like it" — there weren't even incentives for paying for it.

The shareware I played often had limitations attached to it - like you couldn't get all the levels, or the original Escape Velocity had a ship that would show up from time to time and attack you if you hadn't registered after a certain period of time.

None of it convinced me to actually buy the game in full, however, because what they did give me for free - limitations included, was enough to satisfy me as it was. I didn't see anything that convinced me that I would rather have the full version rather than the money I would be required to pay to register for the full version.

edited 19th Jul '14 2:31:08 PM by TheSpaceJawa

The model that Aw Sam Weston described is essentially what Patreon does. For those who didn't see the Wiki Talk thread about This Very Wiki setting up on there, here's my explanation from that thread:

I will also note that the model that most e-books use (and, incidentally, was used by the original Doom) is, in the case of a series, release the first one or two parts free and then charge for the rest. I suppose that it could see some more use, with the recent rise of episodic gaming (cough Telltale cough).

edited 19th Jul '14 2:37:35 PM by TotemicHero

It seems more viable an idea for smaller, long-term, ongoing projects. It not really all that viable for projects like Movies or one-shot video games.

It's also worth noting that Patreon doesn't quite follow Aw Sam Weston's example because people who donate with Patreon aren't just paying to say they want more of the product, they're also paying for the incentive of bonuses that the creator has agreed to make only if they're making so much money.

So even then, it still works by holding stuff back that doesn't come into existence until after money has been paid.

edited 19th Jul '14 2:46:29 PM by TheSpaceJawa

Frankly, I'm a fan of anything that reduces the glut of physical stuff that I have accumulated. Not only is it better for the environment and conserves resources, but digital media requires no shelf space, can be copied and shared indefinitely within the limits of its DRM, and can be redownloaded as needed if you happen to lose it.

There are some disadvantages, of course, but I will always buy digital music unless the physical media have some overwhelmingly compelling feature.

Movies are a bit bulkier to store on a hard drive, but given the availability of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, there's no real reason to buy a $20 DVD or Blu-Ray when you can watch as many movies and TV shows as you want for $8/month. Sooner or later we'll get to the point where Blu-Ray equivalent films can be downloaded and played back as easily as digital music, but for now it may be necessary to buy physical copies if you can't get them on streaming.

As for "donate-ware" or "shareware", as noted, those don't work if you intend to make a living off your products, unless you're already so well-known that you can bank on your established fan base to pay you for your stuff even when they don't have to.

Some streaming services like You Tube and Twitch seem to have established a profitable model, whereby you can get a share of ad revenue from views and, in Twitch, you can have subscriptions to your channel and can accept donations. The problem there is that you have to be really popular to be able to make it your primary occupation. The barrier for entry is pretty high once the market has shaken out and produced a few top players who get an overwhelming share of the views and revenue.

edited 19th Jul '14 3:20:07 PM by Fighteer

I do quite like Netflix streaming, but with the changing availability of certain movies and TV shows having something available to watch on a service like that doesn't feel as permanent as actually owning it. If I am a big fan of something, I tend to prefer having a physical copy because of that (even if it isn't necessarily a high quality Blu-Ray). There's also the fact that streaming video tends not to have commentaries and special features. I see Netflix as more of a replacement for cable TV than a physical video library.

You also get regional variations. Netflix Canada is incredibly stripped down and most of the world doesn't have Netflix or a good equivalent at all.

Just an errant thought, but you might find people more willing to donate if average incomes weren't so terrible. I know I've certainly had to cut back on donations, among other things, when in better times I wouldn't have given it a second thought to throw in a few bucks.

But as a general rule of thumb, you're always going to find more people who want to experience something for free than otherwise, unless you make the 'free' part extremely inconvenient. That's not something that's ever been new to commerce. So if you ARE giving stuff away for free, you have to plan for that in your marketing strategy and rope in as much traffic as possible to make up for it, because anything else is just bad finance. People do not have, and never will have, enough money to buy everything they want. And by definition, that means that they also don't have enough money to buy everything that other people are selling.

And I don't think that is a moral failing of the people in a capitalist system so much as it is a moral failing of the system itself.

It's not a moral failing at all. It's simply a fact.

We have a Jawa in this thread who seems to believe otherwise?

Which is a little ironic, for that choice of user name....

Since someone is probably going to ask about it sooner or later, I might as well break down the details behind Amazon's new Kindle Unlimited program (which was officially announced yesterday).

Kindle Unlimited is a book streaming program that grants you access to an unlimited number of books, drawn from a not-so-unlimited selection of currently 60k or so titles. All for the price of $9.99 a month. If you're a heavy reader (as in at least one or two new books every month), this is a pretty good deal...right?

Not so fast, as it turns out a couple of factors will ensure that selection will stay not-so-limited, weakening the service. First, the way profits are handled is via money drawn out a pool, calculated by Amazon based on numbers of books read, numbers of subscriptions, and so on. The exact formula is being kept secret, but the general approach points to profit shares being a rough bell curve. This means that increased reads only increase profit shares up to a point, and after that the profit the publishers/authors get starts dropping.

This has led to most publishers not putting their best sellers up for it initially, and I doubt that will change. Even if they are getting a better deal than indie writers (something Amazon is notorious for), they still don't want to "sell" too many books that way, as it actually would hurt their profits.

Speaking of indies, their side isn't any better. The reason is that for indie authors to enroll their books in Kindle Unlimited, they have to be enrolled in KDP Select first. And KDP Select requires exclusivity, meaning that they could not publish their e-books anywhere else. This is a huge deal breaker, and it's why so many indie authors don't use KDP Select. And now, that extends to Kindle Unlimited.

So the selection of available e-books is being cut down from both ends, and I don't see any signs that will change. Ultimately, the bottom line is that Kindle Unlimited is a good example of a digital distribution model that fundamentally doesn't work, and likely satisfies no one (except maybe Amazon shareholders).

It seems like they're trying to retain too much control over what's on their service, at the expense of quality to the customer (and the author). If it fails, it might generate a rethink of that strategy.