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<blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9211943" data-attributes="member: 7023840">It doesn't take a very long post, because it's both simple in the generality, and complex in the specifics.As a general rule, we are moving toward a &quot;licensing&quot; economy when it comes to digital. Think of this in terms of car ownership. With the vast majority of digital products (aka, those that we get access to &quot;on the cloud&quot; or &quot;through a service&quot; or purchase &quot;in a game&quot; or whatever), we are, in effect, leasing a car. We are paying to use the vehicle. We don't own the vehicle. It's complex, because different licensing will have different rules, different expectations, and different enforcement mechanisms. But when people keep talking about companies making money off of &quot;services,&quot; that's what they're talking about. Getting people to pay a little money, regularly, to access stuff. You don't get to own the Audi/BMW/Lexus, but you get to drive one for a while.This approach, as we've seen, necessarily gives more control to the entities that own the marketplace. To switch for a second- Amazon is able to control who gets to be on Amazon. They get a cut of the products that other people sell. They know the analytics for other products. They also get to leverage their control to make their own products better able to compete. Finally, they can extract further money simply by manipulating the marketplace- which products get shown first, which products get returned in searches, etc.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Snarf Zagyg, post: 9211943, member: 7023840"] It doesn't take a very long post, because it's both simple in the generality, and complex in the specifics. As a general rule, we are moving toward a "licensing" economy when it comes to digital. Think of this in terms of car ownership. With the vast majority of digital products (aka, those that we get access to "on the cloud" or "through a service" or purchase "in a game" or whatever), we are, in effect, leasing a car. We are paying to use the vehicle. We don't own the vehicle. It's complex, because different licensing will have different rules, different expectations, and different enforcement mechanisms. But when people keep talking about companies making money off of "services," that's what they're talking about. Getting people to pay a little money, regularly, to access stuff. You don't get to own the Audi/BMW/Lexus, but you get to drive one for a while. This approach, as we've seen, necessarily gives more control to the entities that own the marketplace. To switch for a second- Amazon is able to control who gets to be on Amazon. They get a cut of the products that other people sell. They know the analytics for other products. They also get to leverage their control to make their own products better able to compete. Finally, they can extract further money simply by manipulating the marketplace- which products get shown first, which products get returned in searches, etc. [/QUOTE]

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