Hm. It'd have to be a deeper discount than that for me to want it.
Before easy electronic copying of media, buying the physical thing (a book, or a record) was the same as buying the license to use the thing. In fact no one talked about the license at all; you bought the physical thing and it was yours to use as you liked.
That's all more complex now, of course. But inasmuch as we're told that the reason a book (or CD) is so expensive is because of the intellectual property rights you're licensing, if we assume that the physical+digital copy bundle would be used only by the purchaser, why should it cost any more than the physical copy alone? If what I'm paying for is the license, why is it much more expensive to get two instances of the data instead of one? Shouldn't the digital version be practically free once you've paid the licensing fee?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-03-23 12:47 pm (UTC)Before easy electronic copying of media, buying the physical thing (a book, or a record) was the same as buying the license to use the thing. In fact no one talked about the license at all; you bought the physical thing and it was yours to use as you liked.
That's all more complex now, of course. But inasmuch as we're told that the reason a book (or CD) is so expensive is because of the intellectual property rights you're licensing, if we assume that the physical+digital copy bundle would be used only by the purchaser, why should it cost any more than the physical copy alone? If what I'm paying for is the license, why is it much more expensive to get two instances of the data instead of one? Shouldn't the digital version be practically free once you've paid the licensing fee?