tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post4332742973723291487..comments2020-11-16T00:39:12.288-08:00Comments on Silent Ellipsis' Dreamscape: Crazy Ideas for Crazy Times: Centralized Digital DistributionEllipsishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-86636713874680903262009-10-20T13:48:02.587-07:002009-10-20T13:48:02.587-07:00Well, understandably there would be complications ...Well, understandably there would be complications in having an international distribution organization, but not insurmountable ones. Again, this organization simply keeps track of what exchanges have happened - it doesn't actually approve or facilitate the exchanges. The responsibility lies with any company trying to sell products in an area to abide by their copyright laws when selling that product, and if it was in fact sold it's noted in the database.<br /><br />And yes, things like itunes do still have a very important role to play, but ideally part of the technical solution is coming up with a fairly standardized framework for making products available to store/browsers. For instance, the database in question could have second component that's a list of items on sale. Company A has a product they want to sell for X dollars, they list that, and Company B that wants to distribute it can find it in the database and sell it for X+distributor fee dollars through their browser. This does require Company A to make the product available in a format that can be used by Company B, but I believe that part can and will be figured out by people who are not me.<br /><br />And yes, we could go a completely different route, but as long as we're interested in holding onto this concept of "owning" copies of or licenses to use digital media, I think a centralized database would be the most reasonable way to approach it.Ellipsishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13554930621825481241noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2633517549648128878.post-80958638687761494762009-10-20T06:57:46.642-07:002009-10-20T06:57:46.642-07:00Just a first impression: an international distribu...Just a first impression: an international distribution organization would have to deal with the copyright laws of every country... and deal with them consistently, unlike iTunes which gets away with basically having a different store for every country. This is probably impossible, even if there was a worldwide wave of enlightenment about intellectual property. There's also a matter of trust: how do we know it wouldn't get hacked, or go down, or fail outright? We trust Apple, and Amazon, and Valve, because they've been around for a while and built up a reputation for reliability (at least, I know this is true of Amazon and Apple, and I assume it's true of Valve).<br /><br />And... wait... are you saying that the database should distribute files, or just keep track of ownership? In the first case, there are a league of other problems, including the monopoly one in spades; in the second case, iTunes et al. still provide a vital service by contracting with content providers to distribute their products (and they'd keep their monopolies, since people want to deal with a trusted and popular distributor).<br /><br />That said, I'm all in favor, if the technical details can be worked out. Or, of course, you can drop DRM altogether, as iTunes is partially doing. Just about everyone can (and does) distribute files without DRM. It's just a matter of figuring out how to make money that way.spontaneous generationhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06862570641627963684noreply@blogger.com