The Clicker: Digital content -- why the sense of entitlement?

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Darren Murph @ Sep 22nd 2006 12:12PM

Remarks were spot-on; for some reason we just don't connect inherit value to things that are cheap to produce.

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Ryan @ Sep 22nd 2006 1:59PM

That's interesting... how much 'inherent' value is there in something that is 'cheap to produce'. Doesn't the 'inherent' value of a good stem (at least in part) from the cost to produce it? And from limitations on it's supply? I'm not sure that digital content really is cheap to produce (rather than cheap to copy and distribute), but if we assume that it really is, and that there's no natural reason** for limitations on it's supply, then doesn't that mean that it has very little 'inherent' value?

I'm certainly not an economist, but it seems to me that the intangibility of the goods is one of the main keys to understanding how the digital content marketplace really works. And, distinct from other intangibles, such as a contract or financial instruments, digital content literally has to be experienced in order for the buyer to assign their relative value to the thing. If you buy a movie without having seen it first, you are doing so based on very incomplete information. Far more incomplete, it seems, than buying produce without tasting it. I'm not sure where these observations might lead, but they seem relevant if we're really trying to understand how and why parties behave the way that they do in this market.

** An un-natural reason would be if distributors offered only 1000 downloads of a song or movie, in order to great a sense of scarcity.

->R

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