raymor

Actually you quoted where I compared digital video to digital video - both "digital goods" to
use your wording. Just like online video, the cost of producing hollywood movies isn't the
$1 to press a DVD, but all of the millions of dollars spent producing and promoting the movie.
DVDs have a very small per unit cost, just like online video has a small per unit cost in bandwidth
plus the number and power of the servers you need to meet the demand. DVD video and online
video are very similar in this respect. When you talk about RENTING a DVD, which is what the
discussion was about, it's almost identical to online video. Figure $1-$2 to press a DVD that
will be rented by say ten people - that's 10-20 cents per person - pretty much the same cost
as delivering two hours of high quality video online. So your argument falls completely flat -
the per unit cost of pressing DVDs for rental is the same as the per unit cost for a webmaster.

The reason that people who rent one video aren't allowed to take home a basket full is quite
simple - they want you to keep coming back the next time you want a movie. RETENTION,
we call it. If for $5 you could walk out wiht as many DVS as you wanted, people would go
to the rental store once, take home a shitload of movies to copy, then never return to the
video rental store again. The video store rents you a couple of movies at a time, then the
next month if you want to have another movie night you have to pay again - retention.


I absolutely agree. Do you promise them lots of good shit to jack off to?
That's what I would promise them. Do you promise to help them set up
their own site by providing them all of the content they need for their site,
which they can download overnight? I wouldn't promise them that. I would
promise them a good supply of hot bases to jack off to, and then I'd give
them plenty to jack off to and a little more, in case they want to jack off
four times that day.