Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: The Lie of "IP"
Author: Jeremy Reichman Posted: 8/31/2000; 10:26:07 AM Topic: The Lie of "IP" Msg #: 20582 (In response to 20577) Prev/Next: 20581 / 20583
I would also point out the nonsense of using advertising to "support" everything in the Internet economy.The original purposes of advertising are a) informing people that you and your product exist and b) making your products more desirable than your competitors. (So why does Microsoft advertise if they have no competition?)
This is the "seeking to be chosen" factor — the race to get the consumer to buy your product over someone else's.
If all products are free to consumers — free Internet, free computers, free music, free software — then there is much less reason for advertising. Because consumers will just try out the multitude of free choices, see which one they like best, and continuing using that until something better for them comes along.
Advertising will only be effective when items have a cost associated with them and consumers need to make a choice between them. In the future, if every consumer insists on getting everything for free (as is happening with software and music now), then that cost may become the time associated with trying out every option. So advertising may have value in that situation.
If all products become free, how do we compensate our workforce for producing them? Is there then any incentive to even do that, if we don't have to buy things?
So I agree quite a bit with the post about "The Lie of IP" but there are some other ideas related to it that have been rattling around in my head for some time.
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