[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“It’s no longer possible to make money selling hardware for most
companies; you have to be a huge conglomerate in most cases to turn
much of a profit. Selling operating systems and infrastructure
software is likewise a sucker’s game: you can choose to pay nothing
for Linux and its associated software, or spend more money and get
your solutions from Microsoft. A new vendor can’t really add much
value to the mix. The application software market is an even
tougher nut to crack. So what’s left?”
“In a word: *content*. Businesses new and old are rushing to put
*content* onto the Internet — movies, music, books, artwork, you
name it. And there are hundreds of schemes floating around to
extract payment for this content: micropayments, escrow accounts,
debit cards, direct account withdrawals, credit cards, and many
others. But something has happened that the media companies
especially have been dreading for years — the content is losing
its value even as the cost to produce the content is going up.”
“Some point to the “piracy” or “theft” of digital content on the
Internet as the reason for the decline. There is some truth to
this; why pay $15 for a CD when you can get it for free (in the
form of MP3) from Gnutella or Napster? The day is not far off when
the same will be true of motion pictures; broadband access will
make downloading a feature film a trivial exercise. When Stephen
King published the first e-book (which used a lame encryption
technique), it was cracked and distributed on Usenet within the
hour.”