Any time these forums discuss the marketing of books/music/tech there is a general tendency to kick the big companies involved who want to make money. Add to that a general loathing of DRM without offering any idea as to how content creators are supposed to make any money.
-johnk
Okay, I have issue with several things you say and at the end I will provide my solution which I think is obvious but overlooked. Taking a page from your book - Not true. Many have offered solutions, just none that have been accepted by the proponents of DRM.
Book authors face a serious problem making money from ebooks. No DRM, no income.
-johnk
Again false. See above.
I'm sure the good folk here will happily sponsor their favourite authors by sending them a few dollars a month direct. -johnk
Further proof damning your previous argument. While DC'ers are great people in general (I am sure some are like me and merely average), this is not the only group of good people willing to pay for their consumption.
I used to be a local newspaper journalist and editor. The industry's income has vanished. Few people will pay for online news. The paper I worked for employed 35 journalists in its heyday. It now employs a handful. The story is repeated in countless papers across the UK. More importantly, the news they used to provide has vanished. Detailed analysis of local government spending, for example, or the performance of local schools and hospitals. And no-one has stepped in to do the same thing. Sure, all this information is out there, somewhere, if you know how to dig, and how to make Freedom of Information requests to government/official bodies, and how to analyse the data. But the average punter doesn't have the time or the inclination. Many local government officials and politicians are delighted to see local newspapers vanishing. And at its essence it's the same debate as books. If no-one will pay for the information, the writers and skills will simply disappear. And our lives will be the poorer for it.
-johnk
This gets at the crux of your argument and misses the biggest point of the issue. Just because the data is there and can be gotten more efficiently by analysts doesn't mean anyone is willing to pay for that content. As they say, content is king, and if you don't create content the people want you won't make money. It isn't that this service isn't valuable to someone, it is that people (masses) are not willing to pay the price for content they can get themselves or are not willing to pay that high a price for information that is only marginally valuable to
them.
In your example, the paper industry died not because there wasn't news or that people didn't want the news, what they wanted was the news in an easier fashion to consume. It had very little to do with the internet if truth be told (though that hastened it a lot!). The industry was dying long before due to television getting in on the action. The internet did a one-up on TV by making it available anytime the user wanted it. Industry players that had the foresight and wherewithal to move with the changing market instead of fighting against it are still thriving and, indeed growing, today. Just as an example, take the Wall Street Journal. Like other papers, their print division has taken a beating and the subscription rate is only a fraction of what it used to be. But they moved to the Wall Street Journal Online in conjunction with the paper, and are growing steadily. You can argue that it is because they are a niche reporting group, but I argue that makes them MORE susceptible to loss due to the changing tide instead of less susceptible due to the significantly smaller user base.
The "simple" way to make money is to create content people want and sell it at a price they are willing to pay. Are people going to steal it and/or copy it or otherwise devalue the full amount due? Sure - they always have and always will. But do authors stop writing? Nope. Looking for proof? Do you see people still writing games? Are they selling them, or giving them away for free? They are authors who have created content and are able to sell it - most often without some form of DRM. They often employ copy protection (NOT ALWAYS), but this is a far cry from the intrusiveness of DRM. The key is that people (read corporations and producers) MUST change with the times. Many times people don't want to or are unable. Sorry - that is the price of competition. Are companies going to go bankrupt because of it? Well not with the current political environment around most of the world (at least not large companies. Small companies are on their own - unfortunately); but they should. That is what competition is all about. Is it necessarily painful? Maybe, but you can argue necessity - it will definitely be painful and many innocent people will get hurt. Again it is the nature of a changing world.
DRM is an old methodology view of dealing with new circumstances. It works, sometimes, for a while; but people don't like beholden to other people. It will change. Solutions will come and go until someone can find a solution equitable to all involved - and that doesn't mean the consumer will change.