response 12 of 165:

Mar 29 22:29 UTC 2002

The old online journal NewMediaMusic had one of their best pieces
on this subject, maybe about a year ago.  Unfortunately I did not save
a copy and their site is now gone.

In the record company business model which is now rapidly breaking,
the record company would work like the dickens to get free temporary
copies delivered to customers over the radio, with the expectation
that this would motivate purchases of tangible, permanent copies.

(The effort to get those temporary copies out onto the radio waves
has become so expensive that industry execs cite it as a major
reason that major-label releases have to sell 500,000 copies to 
break even now.)

Now, map that old business model to the Internet world.
    The delivery of the free radio samples:  
         ship digital bits to user's computer.   
    The delivery of the paid-for copy: 
         ship digital bits to user's computer.
The difference between the marketing function (free radio) and the 
sales function has vanished.  Uh-oh... thus we come to 
the SSSCA-type proposals to cripple all computers to create
artificial distinctions between groups of bits, and restrict
the manipulation and processing of those bits accordingly:
essentially, to outlaw the general purpose, Turing-machine computer.