Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 16:23:40 -0800 From: "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> To: "Brett Glass" <brett@lariat.org>, "Jonathon McKitrick" <jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> Cc: <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Video Stupidity Message-ID: <000101bf475b$cd432930$021d85d1@youwant.to> In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19991215171057.0494dcf0@localhost>
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> >Wouldn't that just encourage other companies to sell _cheaper_? > > Nope; it's like airline pricing. When the leader goes up, the others > generally follow. Yes, but the others don't set their pricing quite as high as the leader does. Eventually, the other companies competing with each other push the prices down and the leader's pricing becomes largely irrelevant. At that point, the 'leader' either has to do what the others or doing or abandon the market. This is perfectly demonstrated by IBM in the PC market. This isn't guaranteed to happen. It requires sufficient demand and that the leader set its pricing sufficiently high. So long as there are profits to be made by undercutting the leader, and people are free to do so, someone will. This will happen over and over until it's no longer profitable to undercut. > What's more, competitors can be goaded into going along via threats > of harrassing copyright suits. Only if the government makes it easy for them to do so. Take a look at some of the VCR and Rio lawsuits. But understand that it's not entirely fair to blame the government for holding back technology -- copyright holders have legitimate rights and interests too. If the government lets intellectual property rights get trampled on, eventually there will be no movies to record on your VCR. The only songs to play on your Rio will be the ones 'freely available'. And we all know how good those are. DS To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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