Conrad Zero

Stop me if you’ve heard this one…

There’s been a lot of buzz on the web about piracy, this time not affiliated with the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Johnny Depp, but… e-books.

Every news article about the potential e-book market is another can of gas on the fire:

• The petition against Google’s e-book scanning
• Apple’s impending i-book store
• The Kindle-killing (and horrifically named) i-Pad

Seems that e-books are the talk of internetville. But doesn’t all this talk sound familiar? Stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Sales are down! Piracy is destroying the industry! Lawsuits! Copyright!! DRM!!!

Oh yes, that’s right. We DID hear all this before. From the music industry. We heard it when the cassette tape format was invented. We heard it again when CD burners became a household item. And we got to hear it again when Napster + broadband internet connections made it possible to download an entire library of audio in minutes. And now that books are on the block, we get to hear it again from the publishing industry.

Yawn.

I’ll direct the publishing industry to read my Open Letter to Gene Simmons (of the band KISS) and the RIAA. Simply replace the word “music” with “e-book” and replace “Recording Industry” with “Publishing Industry”.

Oh, and replace “Pirates” with “Pirates”.

The Problem is Virtual

Until recently, artistic works such as music, video, pictures and stories required a medium to contain the art and transfer it from one person to another. That medium (Tape, DVD, CD, Book, etc…) had a production cost, a fixed physical expense that someone had to pay because that THING had to be manufactured, packaged, shipped, received, warehoused, and stocked.

For decades, we’ve been told how much it costs to make THINGS and to ship THINGS and to stock THINGS. And the cost of the THINGS keeps going up because of [fill in the blank].

But consumers were never buying the THING. People don’t really want a cassette tape. Or a book. Or a computer file for that matter. Consumers want the art that the medium carries. They want the story about Frodo and Sam. They want the song by Jagged Spiral. They want the picture of the pirate flag.

With the internet, the medium is all but removed from the product, leaving an intangible stream of ones and zeros. At long last, the products of art have been un-THING-ified. Virtualized.

One of the reasons consumers never wanted the medium in the first place was that it adds unnecessary cost to the art. Well, now the medium is almost completely gone, but where are the savings? We should be seeing prices dive for the virtual products, but the industries still try to justify the old prices.

This is a problem.

Price Check

Why is an e-book selling for $9 when the hardcover book is $13? Why in the Hells do they both list at $29?

Seriously. Twenty Nine American Dollars is the Publisher’s Suggested Retail Price for an E-Book? Is that supposed to make you think that $9 is a good deal?

I’m not the only one calling the publishing industry out on it’s bullshit. New York Times Bestselling Author Michael Stackpole lists plenty of other reasons publishers can’t justify their e-book pricing.

The industry holds the price up, because they won’t let go of the THING-ness of their product. They see every sale of a virtual product as a direct equivalent of the sale of a physical product. They think that every e-book sold is a physical book not sold.

Reality Check: Virtual products are not Physical products.

Truth is, the publishing industry should be thrilled to death about internet distribution. E-books may have a lower cost, but they have a far higher margin than their physical counterparts. If you don’t know what that means, ask an accountant. If you can’t make your business work with this new math, then hire a fucking accountant, and change your business to become profitable. The last thing you’d want to do is waste money on lawyers to fight the system. Ask the recording industry.

Why is the industry is down? Why aren’t people buying? Its simple. The product is virtualized, but the price is not.

Hey, it’s a free market, and it’s not against the law for businesses or even the entire industry to use business practices leading to their own obsolescence. It also isn’t against the law for them to starve to death because they refuse to adapt to the new technology.

But it looks like instead of taking advantage of the new technology they have available, the publishing industry has decided to try to force a square peg into a round hole. When that doesn’t work, they sulk and stare at the dwindling sales and blame…

Pirates!

Before you break out the flamethrowers, understand that I’m not endorsing piracy.  Piracy is unlawful and unethical. Google is evil for doing it, and so is everyone else who does it.

But I am telling you that it is entirely true that (music/movie/ebook) piracy is NOT “killing” the (recording/motion-picture/publishing)  industry. It wasn’t back when cassette tapes came out. It wasn’t back when the VCR was released to consumers. Author’s careers are not being destroyed because their books are available for free at the library, or borrowed from friends, or sold in used bookstores. Musicians aren’t going broke because their songs are played on terrestrial radio, myspace, and pandora at no cost to consumers.

The publishing industry is down because of many factors, but piracy is the last one to worry about. Wasting time on it is like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.  Keelhauling every pirate in the universe won’t fix what’s wrong with the publishing industry, the music industry, or any other industry, because Pirates are not a problem; they are a symptom.

Let’s look at the problem that causes piracy to become popular:

Free as in “E-Books”

Price a product high enough and two things will happen.

• Sales of that product will decrease.
• Customers will find other ways to get the product for less.

The music industry already learned this, but let’s look at how it pertains to the publishing industry, by examining these ‘other ways’ to get the product for less than the listed price:

• You can get every Dean Koontz book ever written for free… at the public library.
• You can get every Stephanie Meyer book for free… by borrowing them from your niece.
• You can buy the latest Stephen King novel for One Dollar…  on Craigslist. (In hardcover.)
• You can buy Scott Sigler’s latest for just a couple bucks… at the used bookstore.
• Ebay.com
• Swaptree.com
• Bookcrossing.com
• And you can get the latest of pretty much any e-book for free… by pirating it via bittorrent.

Care to wager that library usage is way up? Borrowing/lending? But you won’t hear about the publishing industry claiming that libraries are “Destroying the industry” or trying pass laws banning the sharing of books. That would be just as laughable as saying that pirates are destroying the industry.  It’s just one more way customers can get the product if they don’t think it’s worth the list price.

Am I suggesting that publishers are causing an increase in piracy by setting their prices too high? Yes. Just like they are “causing” people to check books out at the library, or borrowing them instead of purchasing them at the bookstore. Just like they are causing consumers to obtain the product through other methods, or pass on the product altogether.

Of course publishers have to fight piracy, or people will think they’re OK with it. But to declare that piracy is destroying the publishing industry is simply not true. Illegal? Yes. On the rise? No doubt. But look at the cause:

Your business plan sucks.

Here’s where you should be focusing. Not on pirates. Solve this problem, and piracy will diminish, along with borrowing/lending and library usage.

But, we doesn’t understand business or teh Interwebs!

I can already hear the publishing industry screaming at me that it can’t make a profit off what people are willing to pay for e-books. Sorry, but that argument does not fly.

You can price your product whereever you like, but products are never worth more than people are willing to pay for them. It doesn’t matter how much they cost to make.  Like I said, price it too high and people won’t buy it or they will find cheaper alternatives. Yes, including piracy.

This is the spot where I’d make a “buggy whip manufacturer” reference, but q.e.d. right?

The Solution

The solution starts by acknowledging the real problem.

The solution starts with letting go of the paradigm of treating ones and zeros on the web as a physical product. Virtual products are not Physical products.

The solution starts when people stop crying that change is bad, fighting against the new tech, and trying to cover up bad business models by blaming pirates.

I suspect the solution requires a generation of post-internet people growing up with virtualized products; people who weren’t born into a system of 100% THINGS and then had to suffer the paradigm shift to the virtual. These people will have a more intimate understanding of this “problem”, and perhaps when they grow up to take over for the current regime, they will arrive at a more elegant solution – one that works to Everyone’s advantage.

Yours Darkly,
Conrad Zero

The Accidental (and Ironic) Pirate

While researching different authors perspectives on e-book piracy, I tripped over a blog post by a New York Times Bestselling Author. Let’s call her Jenn. (Not her real name) Jenn’s blog post explains how piracy affects people she knows in the music industry, and her own career as an author. She experiences the direct impact of piracy firsthand, and she is clearly against the theft of intellectual property.

And yet the irony is that Jenn, herself, is a pirate.

That’s right. A New York Times Bestselling Author, a person who is directly affected by pirates stealing electronic versions of her work, a person who knows and understands piracy and even fears that it may be destroying the publishing industry…

…is a pirate herself.

At the top of her article, she used a graphic of a pirate flag which looks similar to the one at the upper-right of this post.

Unfortunately, the watermark on the image Jenn used shows it to be a copyrighted image, unlicensed and unapproved for public use.

Its ironic (in lots of ways) that an author opposed to piracy would use a pirated version of a pirate flag in her anti-piracy post.

You probably noticed that I’m not linking to Jenn or providing her real name. I’ve informed the author of her indiscretion, and she took the image down immediately. I know Jenn didn’t mean to use an image without permission. But there’s something we can all learn from this, and this simple oversight by someone who should know better hits the nail on the head with an aircraft carrier.

Jenn is a particular kind of pirate, one most people don’t think of when they talk about pirates. I’m calling this type of pirate a Zombie Pirate.

Zombie Pirates

Jenn never meant to break the law, she simply didn’t know better. She didn’t know the image was copyrighted. There’s tons of free graphics on the internet and she grabbed that one just like it was any other.

Full stop. Let’s reword that thought quickly and play it back again:

Jenn never meant to break the law, she simply didn’t know better. She didn’t know the music was copyrighted. There’s tons of free songs on the internet and she grabbed that one just like it was any other.

And again:

Jenn never meant to break the law, she simply didn’t know better. She didn’t know the e-book was copyrighted. There’s tons of free e-books on the internet and she grabbed that one just like it was any other.

I call this Zombie Piracy because the people doing it have their brains turned off. They know piracy is wrong, (Hells, Jenn just blogged a whole post about how piracy was damaging her personally!)  but they don’t realize they are doing it. They aren’t paying attention.

Here is another example of Zombie Piracy performed by a national commercial newspaper!

How about people who install torrent clients, unaware that they’ve just turned their computers into webhosts for copyright media files.

Brain. Turned. Off.

Causes of Zombie Piracy

Granted, there are some people who opt-in to Zombie Piracy by embracing their own ignorance. Copyright law is confusing, (even to newspapers and bestselling authors, apparently) and it takes a bit of work to dig up the owner and copyright status of any electronic file. Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, right? So they throw their hands up and say, “Aw Hells, I dunno!”  Then Right-Click, Save-As, and live the life of the blissfully ignorant zombie pirate.

There are websites out there that make it easy for the casual user to become a Zombie Pirate… they’re called search engines.

Jenn found her pirate flag graphic using the ubiquitous Google Image Search. But Google can’t be blamed for Zombie Piracy.  Knowing the copyright status of the media is the users responsibility. To their credit, Google does provide the lukewarm warning, “Image may be subject to copyright” beside every graphic it presents.

Threat Level of Zombie Pirates

I suspect the Zombie Pirate is the most common of the pirate types. I also suspect they are the easiest to cure.

Unlike other types of pirates, Zombie Pirates don’t intend any harm. They would be likely to buy a song, graphic or e-book if they knew they were supposed to pay for it. In that respect, these pirates do cost the industries in potential lost sales.

They’re also the most likely to get caught, because they aren’t aware they are doing anything wrong, so they also aren’t aware that they should cover their tracks. But Piracy is Piracy right? The music and publishing industry think so, and history has  proven that they don’t accept ignorance as an excuse.

The Cure for Zombie Piracy

In Left 4 Dead, the cure for Zombies is the combat shotgun. But the cure for Zombie Piracy is awareness.

Remember this: All artwork is copyright of the artist immediately upon creation by default.

Assume that any media you come across on the web is copyright, and it’s your responsibility to track down the usage rights before you use it.  You should have the copyright source and status of media you use, just like you should be able to provide proof-of-purchase for physical products that you own.

If you are looking for free media, your best bet is to look for items which are in the Public Domain. That stuff is FREE as in, EFF ARR double “E”.

You can also look at media released under Creative Commons licensing, but be careful. The umbrella term “Creative Commons” doesn’t mean “Free.” There are different license types within Creative Commons which have different requirements or restrictions. Explanations of Creative Commons licenses can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses

And please, if you are going to use Google Image Search, make sure to use the Advanced Search Settings and under “Usage Rights” select from the list of available filters.

Better yet, check out this post which lists a plethora of sources for free media.

Now you know. Turn. Brain. On.

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero

Resources for Free Media

To help prevent the spread of Zombie Piracy, I’ve collected some resources to help you find media files (audio, video, e-books etc…) which are free to use. Make sure to read and adhere to the terms of use carefully. Some media might not be free (or even usable) for commercial purposes, author attribution might be required, or there may be other conditions:

Free Media (Images, Sounds, Video, etc…)

• http://search.creativecommons.org/ – A search engine for media released under Creative Commons licensing. This does a sub-search of several other sites, including Flickr and Google Image Search.
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources This site lists many websites with content available in the Public Domain.
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page A database/wiki of media which are free to use. It also has a handy list of license types.

Free Pictures and Graphics:

• Morguefile.com/ Free images for use even in commercial applications, but you cannot claim ownership of, or resell the images.
• Flickr.com A popular picture-sharing site. The copyright and usage info for each picture can be found under “Additional Information”
• Google Image Search is useful for finding free pictures and graphics, if you know how to use it. Use the  Advanced Search Settings and under “Usage Rights” select from the list of available filters.
• Deviantart.com has tons of amazing art, but not all of it is free. You have to look at the details for each picture to see the copyright restrictions.

Free Sounds and Music:

• The Freesound Project at Freesound.org is filled with free sound effects licensed through Creative Commons. See here for more info about usage rights.
• Jagged Spiral’s debut album, “Days From Evil” is free to download, and licensed through Creative Commons Music Sharing License. (Full Disclosure – We Rock!)

Free E-books:

• Project Gutenberg has plenty of free e-books which are in the public domain.

If you know of other good sources for free-to-use material, please post them in the comments section.

Here are some bonus features for you to think about as you download all that “free” media…

Fair Use?

Those who want to know the truth about “Fair Use” can get it straight from the horse’s mouth here: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html

But here is all you really need to know, from the website:

The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined.

and this:

The safest course is always to get permission from the copyright owner before using copyrighted material.

Besides, you don’t really want to argue over the definition of “Fair Use” in court, right? It isn’t worth it.

One thing you can do to help avoid issues from the start is…

Attribution of Your Sources

Some “free” media require you to attribute the author/source/owner of the media. Attribution is simply mentioning the copyright holder. This could be as simple as putting their name near a quote like this:

Twitter is about as useful as a wet-nap is to a scuba diver.

-Conrad Zero

Or it could be listing the copyright holder in the tag of an mp3 file or movie credits.

Seems like every copyright holder has a different definition of “attribution” which makes it a pain in the ass to seem compliant.  I imagine that’s probably why very few websites actually do it. And even proper attribution to the copyright holder is no protection from accusation of unfair use. But providing attribution (even if it isn’t a requirement of use) certainly makes you look better, both online and in a court of law.

For more on attribution, check out this news article on the Blog Herald discussing “How to Provide Attribution in the Blogging World” or, examples of Copyright Attibution for Creative Commons Media(pdf).

And while WordPress thoughtlessly strips links out of image captions, making it near impossible to attribute graphics, this kind soul has developed a working solution, which I now implement here at conradzero.com.

Commercial/Business use

Much of the “free” media is only free for non-commercial use. As you can imagine, the definition of “Commercial Use” has become a slippery topic. If you have Google Adwords running on your personal blog, is that “Commercial”? What if you use your blog as a focal point for adding readers to an e-mail list where you send out ‘exclusive offers’? What if you have a Paypal ‘Donate’ button at the bottom of your site?

Again, I recommend erring on the side of caution. If you are making money, then you should use media that allows for commercial use.

Editing, Remixing and Derivative Works

If you plan on editing a graphic, pic, sound file or video, make sure the usage license allows for derivative works, otherwise contact the media’s copyright holder for permission.

Other Resources

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero

Stretching the meaning of “Bestseller”

What do these people have in common? They are all Bestselling Authors. But lately, there have been a plethora of authors claiming “Bestseller” status. The problem is that they are bestsellers – technically . But you should know that some authors are using a new-and-improved definition of the term that might not match up with what you think of when you use the term “Bestseller.”

There’s little argument that a Bestselling Author is the Author of at least one Bestselling Book. Once Upon A Time, a Bestselling Book was defined as a book that had made it onto the New York Times Best-sellers List. But the more generic definition is a book that sells the best out of a specific category in a specific time. With this more generic definition in mind, a little technical help from online booksellers like amazon.com, and a little ethical flexibility, we can manipulate the category and the time period to raise almost ANY book (and its author) to bestseller status.

The more generic definition of “bestseller” is a book that sells the most out of a specific category in a specific time… we can manipulate the category and the time period to raise almost ANY book (and its author) to “bestseller” status.

Best of…something-or-other

Ever since the birth of Consumer Reports, marketing people realized that the ubiquitous title of “Best” has a high impact with consumers. (Especially American consumers.) Car companies realized that a midsized car with average fuel mileage and average price couldn’t really be considered “best” at anything except being a “midsized car with average fuel mileage and average price.”

Add a dash of Evil Marketing Genius and the problem is solved. They narrowed down the specs to weed out their competition until their car was the ‘best’ within the specified sub-section. The term for this status is “Best in Class,” a phrase likely to be found in any car commercial.

This same approach can be taken regarding published works. If you break the market down to a sub-sub-subsection where your book is the best out of those remaining…then you’re the best! Best of Class, of course, but you’re still the best. It’s like being King of your own tree-fort. You get all the bragging rights of being “Best” but there’s a big disclaimer that comes with that definition of Best-ness.

Applying this approach to Bestselling books, Amazon and other booksellers allow authors and audiences to sort the list of best sellers to sub-categories. Authors can use this to their advantage.

For example, the list of bestselling books at Amazon.com can be broken down into some pretty questionable categories. Just find a niche that isn’t being currently dominated, and drop your book in. If Literature>Genre Fiction>Horror>Dark Fantasy is too crowded, how about fiction authors whose first name starts with the letter “C”?

The values are recalculated Every Hour, which leads us to the next piece of best-seller-ness, Timing.

Timing The Bum Rush

Because sites like Amazon measure sales instantaneously and the Bestseller lists are recalculated every hour, it isn’t hard to get your book moved to the top of the list by gathering your friends, and leveraging your social media connections (with added gifts, discounts and other time-limited offers) and launching a timed, all-out purchasing assault in an attempt to “best-ify” books or music This activity is nicknamed a “Bum Rush”

A famous Bum Rush was performed on 22 Mar 2007. A website called  Bum Rush The Charts planned the large-scale push of the independent band Black Lab up onto music charts worldwide. It worked. The band peaked at #11 on the American I-Tunes charts and in the top 100 of most other countries. An UNSIGNED band broke the charts using nothing more than a strategically timed social media event.

The theory behind a Bum Rush is simple. Get a large number of people to purchase your book on a particular hour of a particular day. It won’t take a lot to get your book moved to the “Best” of your selected category for that one hour. Collect your title and brag forevermore that you are indeed a Bestseller.

Sneaky? No doubt. But there’s also no doubt that the Bum Rush works. In fact, certain book publishers expect their authors to participate in a Bum Rush, (probably called a “Release Event” or some other legal-speak) and will even add a clause requiring author participation into their “Book Deal” contracts.

In Perpetuity

The beauty is that once achieved, the Bestseller title stays with the author for the rest of his/her lifetime, as though they had achieved a doctorate or a Nobel Peace Prize. All the author’s marketing materials will have the words “…by the Bestselling Author of…” and whether the new material is “Bestselling” quality or not, it still says “Bestselling” on it.

Like I said, Evil Marketing Genius.

Backlash

Because of the glut “Bestselling Authors” out there, you will see authors who became Bestsellers using the traditional method refer to themselves as “New York Times Bestselling Author” and their books as “New York Times Bestseller” or possibly other, more specified titles which gives more detail about where their pedigree comes from and how they differentiate themselves from the rank-and-file “Bestsellers”.

The Upshot

I didn’t write this article so you could run out and become a Bestselling Author. My goal was to inform you that the term Bestseller doesn’t hold the same meaning it did before online booksellers came into play. And nothing against those who have achieved their bestseller status the old-fashioned way. Unfortunately, the new definition of Bestseller does water down the prestige of the title.

From now on, you know to be wary of the term “Bestselling” Anything. When you see an author or book listed as “Bestselling” the first thought in your mind should be “Best What out of Which, exactly?”

-Conrad Zero, Bestselling Author (of all published dark-fiction authors over 20 years of age with 10-letters in their name, a last name beginning with the letter “Z,” and living in Minneapolis metro area)

The full article on billboard.biz requires subscription, but you can read enough excerpts here and from the Motley Crue fan club site to get the point:

Gene Simmons is an Idiot with a Capitalist I.

“Free Music Nonsense”

In a recent interview with Billboard magazine, Gene Simmons admits that all of this “Free Music Nonsense” could have been prevented if the Recording Industry had taken action from the beginning:

Simmons: The record industry doesn’t have a f*cking clue how to make money. It’s only their fault for letting foxes get into the henhouse and then wondering why there’s no eggs or chickens. Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth. They should have taken their houses and cars and nipped it right there in the beginning. Those kids are putting 100,000 to a million people out of work. How can you pick on them? They’ve got freckles. That’s a crook. He may as well be wearing a bandit’s mask.

Gene Simmons must be the RIAA’s wet dream. He’s so entrenched in “the way we’ve always done it” that it is simply outside of his understanding that the world has changed.

And blaming the industry’s poor earnings on pirates instead of the RIAA’s own short-sightedness? Classic. Good luck with that, or haven’t you heard? Johnny Depp and Keith Richards have made pirates cool again.

Sorry Gene, that the internet has made things complicated for you. Here is something for you to think about (when you can break away from your book about all the prostitutes you’ve paid to have sex with)

• You can go online and view a picture of the Mona Lisa any time you want. For Free.
• You can also go to the Louvre and pay to see the real thing  for a short time.
• For slightly more money you can own a poster copy.
• With all of the money Gene Simmons has made, you could own the real thing.

Now, why would people pay to see the Mona Lisa, or pay for a poster-sized copy of the Mona Lisa, or pay to own the Mona Lisa, when they can see it online for Free? OH MY FUCKING GOD! HOW CAN THE ARTIST MAKE ANY MONEY WHEN YOU CAN ACCESS THE ART ONLINE FOR FREEEEEEeeee….. [insert sound of Gene Simmons screaming as he falls into the abyss of his own stupidity here]

As a musician, I would rather give my music away online for free (as a matter of fact, I do give it away for free) than to see a dime go into the pockets of the Recording Industry. Until they wise up and change their business practices to work with the technology available they are irrelevant – by their own choice, or lack thereof.

Hey, it’s a free country and it isn’t against the law for them to maintain business practices leading them into obscurity and uselessness. It also isn’t against the law for them to all die of starvation because they refused to change.

You think the system still has some value because it helped make you rich? Perhaps we should all go back to using cassette tapes, so the cassette tape manufacturers can stay in business?

Meet the RIAA’s new way of doing business… Oh wait, it hasn’t changed

Billboard: But some artist [SIC] like RADIOHEAD and Trent Reznor are trying to find a new business model.

Simmons: That doesn’t count. You can’t pick on one person as an exception. And that’s not a business model that works. I open a store and say “Come on in and pay whatever you want.” Are you on f*cking crack? Do you really believe that’s a business model that works?

Someone points the way out of Gene Simmons stupidity, and he asks them if they are on drugs.

You know Gene, as a matter of fact, opening a store with almost negligible overhead and upkeep, ZERO manufacturing and distribution costs, GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION and open 24×7x365, and then asking for donations is a fucking phenomenal business model.

How do you think wikipedia.org is still in business? How do you think the projects on sourceforge are funded? Are you aware that Radiohead are actually making an average of $6 per download by Giving Away their music and letting people donate what they want? And not a penny goes to the RIAA middleman. $6 average per customer, Gene. Do YOU make that much?

I’m not saying the industry should adopt Radiohead’s buisness practices, but at least Radiohead are willing to try something, because it seems like the recording industry would sooner destroy the internet than to learn how to profit from it.

I wonder if the RIAA got this upset about the invention of electricity. “OMG! Electricity is going to ruin our industry! People will stop going to concerts! They are going to stay at home and listen to music broadcast over radio waves for FREE! How will we ever survive? PI-RATES!”

A Lesson In Value

Billboard: So what if music just becomes free and artists make their living off of touring and merchandise?

Simmons: Well, therein lies the most stupid mistake anybody can make. The most important part is the music. Without that, why would you care? Even the idea that you’re considering giving the music away for free makes it easier to give it away for free. The only reason why gold is expensive is because we all agree that it is. There’s no real use for it, except we all agree and abide by the idea that gold costs a certain amount per ounce. As soon as you give people the choice to deviate from it, you have chaos and anarchy. And that’s what going on.

Damn Gene, you almost figured this out. Things have always been worth what people are willing to pay for them. Now, change “Physical CDs” into “Bits on the internet”, and let’s see what happens…

When the value of the product decreases, the sticker price should also decrease. But that isn’t happening. The cost of a physical CD with 15 songs is around $15.00. The price of 15 songs on I-tunes is around… $15.00

And you want to know why people aren’t buying?

And you want to know why people are turning to piracy?

Change is Good… just not yet

Gene, calling this change “chaos and anarchy” may be your perception, but in reality it’s just Change. Change from one system to another system, one that you don’t like, because you don’t know how it will make you money. Your diatribe is just another dying gasp from an industry that is choking itself to death, because it isn’t smart enough to move to where the air is.

And blaming pirates. Honestly.

Gene, I know you worked hard using the system you had available at the time, and it worked out well for you. Congratulations. But the rules have changed. Clinging to the old way won’t help. And if people like you and the RIAA won’t figure out how to use the new way, others will. And it will seem like “chaos and anarchy” to you.

We don’t need people like you complaining that “change is bad.” We need people adapting to the change and figuring out how to make things better for both artists and consumers.

Yours Darkly,
-Conrad Zero

‘Know your enemy,’ right?

Especially when your enemy is getting more popular. Seems that the increasing interest in the occult is not lost on the Catholic Church. For the first time ever, a Vatican university is offering a qualification diploma in Satanism. The classes are offered through the school of theology at Regina Apostolorum.

From the Washington Times Article:

The first series of four-hour lectures, to start next month, will cover the anthropological, theological and liturgical aspects of Satanism, and will include instruction by an exorcist within the Roman Catholic Church.

With over 100 interested students, priests and others signed up for this $250 diploma course, there’s clearly some money to be made as well.

Satanists are “dismayed at the prospect of a Vatican campaign against them” which is kind of funny, if you think about it.

Maybe the Satanists should offer classes on Catholicism? Just a thought.

[Feb 2005 Update - MSNBC article on the same Vatican/Satansim classes.]