Re:Using Big Data to Estimate Consumer Surplus: The Case of...
by doctorpangloss on Monday September 12, 2016 @02:32PM
(#12482376)
The most popular consumer services usually transfer the most value from producers to consumers.
YouTube is a great example. YouTube hosts copyrighted videos and music. For most of its history, producers weren't remunerated. Even today, a great deal of user-generated content is reenacting or remixing conventional Hollywood IP.
Apple built a lot of iPhones with inexpensive overseas labor—HTC, Nokia and Motorola earlier on for that matter.
Facebook gets the vast majority of the content it shows people for free, from its own users. Crazy!
Google puts ads in front of other people's stuff. Regular search and direct navigation ads certainly don't pay producers. I assume most content on the internet took time, and therefore money, to make.
The producer-to-consumer value transfer doesn't always favor the mediator. Comcast's broadband internet was a great deal at $60/mo, considering piracy. Though in the late 90s/early 2000s people were paying for both broadband and TV—not so much the case today.
You might say, but that's all legal! Remixing copyrighted content! My tone might suggest that these business models depend on violating the law somehow. I'm just describing the facts. Facts have a well-known... bias.
Factually, a lot of popular services transfer as much as 100% of the value from producers to consumers.
Whether or not something should be illegal in there is a different question.
YouTube is a great example. YouTube hosts copyrighted videos and music. For most of its history, producers weren't remunerated. Even today, a great deal of user-generated content is reenacting or remixing conventional Hollywood IP.
Apple built a lot of iPhones with inexpensive overseas labor—HTC, Nokia and Motorola earlier on for that matter.
Facebook gets the vast majority of the content it shows people for free, from its own users. Crazy!
Google puts ads in front of other people's stuff. Regular search and direct navigation ads certainly don't pay producers. I assume most content on the internet took time, and therefore money, to make.
The producer-to-consumer value transfer doesn't always favor the mediator. Comcast's broadband internet was a great deal at $60/mo, considering piracy. Though in the late 90s/early 2000s people were paying for both broadband and TV—not so much the case today.
You might say, but that's all legal! Remixing copyrighted content! My tone might suggest that these business models depend on violating the law somehow. I'm just describing the facts. Facts have a well-known... bias.
Factually, a lot of popular services transfer as much as 100% of the value from producers to consumers.
Whether or not something should be illegal in there is a different question.