Topic: Pre-order Bitcoin Magazine - Quality control, final revisions on proofs - page 46. (Read 93728 times)

All good points. I want to remind everyone here that I am communicating from my own opinion and that no one at BitTalk Media or the magazine's team is supporting my personal opinion on this thread. I just want to share honestly and openly, and am always game to being taught a lesson.

Keep it coming!

Woohoo!

Pope's favourite book: The Bible
Pope's Second favourite book: The God Delusion

Of course I can't back that with stats and I made it up, but I noticed a lot of christians buying that book just to take a dump on it.

Everyone wants to be cool, even if they're wearing a suit, and suits just want guaranteed return on top, but both the suit and the pope know to know their enemy, and this is about information.

I'll present an additional option that you omitted:

People who appreciate the fact that there actually is a Bitcoin magazine now, will fight for it regardless, and are happy to pay for a high quality issue, but as human beings would also just take it for free and not donate otherwise.

I appreciate the philosophical debate any day of the week, but we're talking business, the life of the magazine, etc. and it seems like although you are presenting very good points, that you're only thinking about what benefits you without thinking about the horrible consequences to the magazine's future.

I see requests to 'make it free', but I don't see anyone tracking down advertisers to make it possible. I see requests to sell it cheaper, but I don't see anyone offering a cheaper printing solution. Trust me when I say that balance is not my specialty, opportunity however is. I don't think I'll ever trade the opportunity to bring this magazine to the masses just to please a few people who want to feel good about stealing it.

We haven't made up our minds yet though so I'll give more information as decisions are made.

UPDATE: Looks like we're going to bagging the issues in plastic as well. It's not cheap, but I think it's a necessary investment on our part to keep our magazine in good condition and keep that quality level high for our readers.

Thanks again everyone for the tremendous support. We still have a long way to go.

Because writers and editors (and other staff) still have to be paid, and physical publishing of the magazine has to be covered as well.

I hate to say it Matthew, because I am one of the most anti-piracy people you'll ever meet, but I think you're barking up the wrong tree on this one, namely because the crowd you are dealing with is composed mostly of people who are outspokenly pro-piracy (libertarians and all that).  The fact is, it will be pirated no matter how much you try to protect it, and people here will be less apt to support your operation if you try to fight it.  You can already see the animosity rising in this very thread.

I would recommend that your team seriously considers coblee's suggestion.  Release it as a downloadable PDF (or in-page PDF) to paid subscribers, frown on anyone who file shares it or torrents it (make them at least feel guilty about it), and have a note inside the cover suggesting that anyone who downloaded the magazine without paying for it should send 0.5 BTC to an address you specify.  That way, you'll still have the support of EVERYONE from the community.  As it is, you've already received tremendous support from people both verbally and monetarily, and it'd be a shame to see that flushed away trying to control the materials with DRM.

You'll have my support regardless of what you decide to do, but I think a lot of the community support will drop away if you continue with the pro-DRM stance.  It's exactly the wrong crowd to market anything with DRM to.

Somebody else already pointed out that DRM doesn't work and only harms paying customers. Copyright infringement is not the same as "stealing." It also appears you don't support copyright law at all, by suggesting that "unprotected" works do not deserve copyright protection. By that logic, it is Okay for me to buy a copy, scan it at high resolution, and post it on the Internet.


You sound like you may be willing to release back-issues under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license. Getting the magazine in a timely manner may be enough incentive to encourage purchases of the print edition.

You also seem to be falling into the same trap as my local newspaper's parent company (On a "digital first" strategy). The text is digital information already. Only the graphics are analog. By partnering with e-distributers, you are no longer the publisher. For example, Apple takes a 30% cut and exercises editorial discretion. In the future, they may even inject their own advertisements over your magazine.

PDF if a widely supported standard. You can even lock down a PDF with DRM, though it can be broken like any other. Not by Joe Bloe, though, he'll just have to suffer the negative consequences of DRM. Polly Pirate will break the DRM, and Techie Timmy will download it off of Polly's site.


You can separate all of humanity into four categories:

1. People who aren't interested at all
2. People who are interested but won't pay
3. People who are interested and might pay
4. People who are interested and will pay

Groups 1 and 2 are off the table. You'll never get any money from them. Group 4 is a sure thing. Group 3 is the one you want to convince to pay. Do you think there are more people in the Bitcoin community who...

Will be upset that you use technological measures to prevent copying & sharing, making them not want to support you financially?

or

Will be happy to donate Bitcoin to you after downloading your magazine for free (say from The Pirate Bay) and enjoying your content?

Why don't you just distribute it for free, or just to cover the cost of online hosting (<$0.10) and support yourselves from advertisements.

You get to own code that represents the magazine on your phone. I won't bother to stop you from copying it and sending it out-- that's not my job. My job is to find the best way to distribute it to the largest audience without bankrupting the initiative.



Thank you for your suggestion, I will discuss it with the group but I think this method is a fast track to bankruptcy.

I would recommend that you do away with DRM, and put a bitcoin address (first bits or a link to open up bitcoin app) in the magazine for people to pay for their copy if they got it for free. I believe people who would normally pay for your magazine would send you bitcoins. And those that don't are likely people that wouldn't buy it in the first place, so it's no money lost. Then you can even do the raffles idea and pick a winner each month that gets a free subscription. That would incentivize people to pay for it.

Yeah, I paid. What do I get to own?

I haven't seen viewing as being an issue. People can go to Barnes and Noble and read the entire magazine without buying it for example. It's ownership that should cost money imo.

watching... keep up the good work guys especially you Matthew, seems like the trolling skills have paid up 

That's not implied at all. Simply everything that is free (copying digit information) is going to be free.

So sending me the digital copy isn't something you have in mind? Are you worried I'll show my magazine to people? Is it okay if I show the paper copy to people?

All good points, but I digress-- by that mentality everything in the world should just be free.

We'll discuss this in depth more as the magazine actually grows. No one in our organization feels even remotely that having a $3 android app, newsstand edition, etc is going to be met with massive amounts of piracy. They also don't feel that we will even need to sell it in the first place-- if we can get the print issues circulated in a high enough volume.

All in good time my friend.

DRM prevents people who don't know what they're doing from copying a "protected" work. It doesn't stop people who know what they're doing, or people who don't know what they're doing form getting it from those that do.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management#Impossible_task

(read from Impossible Task on into Shortcomings)

I'm not aware of a single type of DRM that has not been broken. That of Blu-ray discs took a very long time, but it was supposed to be unbreakable.

P.S. I ordered a 12 month digital + analog subscription. I really hope you reconsider treating your customers like criminals, and give us the digital content in format that we can use on all of our devices. I think that the digital edition is offered so cheaply is going to get anyone who is going to pay for it to pay for it. Anyone else who gets a copy without paying isn't going to pay you no matter what. So what if they read your content? Maybe they'll like it enough to pay.

Yeah a raffle would be good with free issues and bit coin prizes, I think in magazine offers would be great too though

I have been involved with a lot of clubs.  We try to raise money in different ways.  Car wash, door-to-door selling stuff, donations, etc.  However, there is one really effective way to raise money that is easy and effective.  The successful clubs I join run a raffle at each meeting and people can buy raffle tickets.  The prizes are donated or bought.  The revenue generated from the tickets funds the club.

So, if there was someway for you to run a raffle for prizes maybe you can use the money to fund the magazine, which will be for a good cause for bitcoiners.

That to me smells of speculation. If it were even remotely true, people wouldn't be using DRM in the first place.



We won't have a time limit. You bought what you bought. It's yours. Time limits used to be used as a way to help differ hosting costs, but when the file is a download to your mobile phone for example, why would we care?

The whole plan is not crystal clear yet to me either as I am rather new to this. I will tell you that we are planning for:

• iTunes newsstand
• Android
• Kindle
• BitcoinMagazine.net direct view

I haven't checked yet, but I have reason to believe none of those purchasing mediums would give you a timeline, and even if they did (like what, a whole year?) we would just give it to you again for free on request.

If that's not good enough, then we're arguing about free vs paid and we go back to my original statement that we simply haven't figured it out yet. We need to gauge interest, pay for printing+shipping, then we can see about making things better for everyone involved.

I really appreciate your passion and if you have any suggestions, I am more than willing to play Devil's Advocate.