Comments on: Limiting Free to .edu

By: adampriest

adampriest — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:37:43 +0000

One other thing.

I live on a university campus that has supposedly blocked all piracy and torrent downloading, etc. My next door neighbor has a huge database of content that he shares with many students, easily bypassing the university block.

Students are just as smart and probably smarter (with technology) than the people trying to prevent them from piracy.

By: adampriest

adampriest — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 11:11:24 +0000

Paid content will only drive people to piracy.

People don’t care if the music star or movie studio doesn’t get their money. If they fail, someone else will come along to entertain us. There’s a never ending supply of entertainers, no one cares if a singer doesn’t sell records. Besides that, what is the consequence of piracy? It’s illegal sure, but it’s not a serious crime that is pursued by the law. And is it morally wrong? Hell no. You can go to the local library and check out a thousand CDs and DVDs for free.

By: bucfanpaka

bucfanpaka — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:35:35 +0000

Very interesting– though of course as pointed out it would include people like me who work for the Universities, and I believe the one I work for lets everyone keep their addresses forever (though the one I graduated from does not– cut mine off some months after with no warning). Another possibility– I remember reading that Hulu blocked the PS3′s browser. I think they should take the opposite approach and go after the gamers… for example, make it a free app for Xbox Live gold users. I would have to think MS would love it as it would be a good incentive to upgrade to gold, and if it goes over really well like the Netflix app (which has had over a million downloads I think) could be profitable depending on the deal they worked out. The logic would be exactly the same as you mentioned– this is a group that is highly likely to steal content. Sad to say, as I’m an honest gamer myself and all the pirates give us a bad name, but the fact that MS recently banned something like a *million* modded consoles definitely does tell you something about the rates.

By: Mike Hart

Mike Hart — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:21:28 +0000

Students will use the service as long as it is free. When it isn’t, they’ll move on. Hulu shouldn’t expect to build any brand loyalty by providing free .edu services for a period of time.

By: writtenMania

writtenMania — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:16:58 +0000

This is ridiculous. Facebook’s limit to .edu addresses wasn’t about REVENUE or PROMOTION, it was about ACCESS. They wanted to make sure that the only people who could get onto their network were university students/professors/alumni/etc. — to wit, anyone who was EVER associated with a university. Now, switching back to Hulu: does that sound like the right group of people to be giving a product like this to for free?

By: qboy316

qboy316 — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:39:38 +0000

Mark, here’s the thing. people without edu emails didn’t get facebook because they couldn’t, they didn’t get it because they didn’t WANT it. The demand rose greatly for facebook when it got much more popular and acceptable for all ages. However, the demand for TV will be the same regardless of what HULU does. People that want to see it, will do just that. Everyone knows someone that is willing to give them an edu email.

By: sandlott

sandlott — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:05:47 +0000

I like what courtlandallen had to say – especially about convenience.

I too am 22 years old and remember the days of all the music file sharing with Napster and LimeWire…some of which still continues today.

That being said, I was a huge user of Napste, Morpheus, LimeWire, and MyTunes(music sharing over a central network)…but with the recent emergence of the iTunes store in the last few years, and the demise of quality content being available via the illegal downloading programs – I found it much more convenient and less frustrating to just pay the $0.99 for a song on iTunes. In fact, over the last four years, I’ve spent over $300 on music through iTunes, but when it’s only $0.99 at a time, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal.

I think Hulu definitely runs the “online TV” market, but as long as competitors like YouTube and Crackle provide TV clips and episodes for free, Hulu will have a hard time retaining their non-.edu audience.

That being said, I fell like their main audience is .edu-based anyway, so I can’t really say how big of a difference it would make without having some legit stats. I do know that for Hulu users who are not .edu, or recent .edu graduates – they probably receive the content they watch from .edu users. For example, my father and uncle wouldn’t even know what Hulu was, if I didn’t email them family guy clips on it.

By: startuppro

startuppro — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:38:31 +0000

I think the already distributed material (the “stolen” material) is lost forever. Trying to chase ground on that material now seems like a waste of time. It’s lost, write it off.

Why not work on improving file format protection? Mark, do you know if there is any research done, or currently made on improved file format protection and file distribution problems?

It seems like if you make it hard or even impossible to share files across different IP adresses that it would make it less likely for people to succeed in peer-to-peer file sharing?

And also, in order to still make it possible to share files (because it is a good way to save time and also saving the enviroment from shuffling papers etc), why not make it possible for these new files (the new format) to be distributed only by a certain legitime gateway that is well controlled by someone. A legitime source? A company? Several chosen and well regarded companies? A govermental entity?

This way it would potentially make it impossible to share files in an illegal way? Because everything would be monitored and everyone who makes money on digital or media products would get paid for certain.

The gateway would have a key that has to be matched against the file key. If the right keys are not matched the file is denied to be shared. The encryption idea already exists so it shouldn’t really be that hard to implement in practice?

The gateway key would be a top secret of course and I guess you could change the gateway key every other day or week or month in order to make it impossible to hack or make it harder at least to succeed in a prolonged breach.

What do you think, Mark? Stupid or a good thought? Possible or not possible? If not possible, then why not?

Good blog by the way. The fact that you are a billionaire makes it so much more interesting to read:).

By: mojomikey

mojomikey — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 05:27:03 +0000

Mark, how would you manage the transition from free to paid? I think building up a user base is good (duh), but how would you get from here to there?

mike

By: adampdx

adampdx — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:48:29 +0000

Free will always be the way internet works, Mark. You still don’t get it, Mark. If you and Rupert go to a paid content model, you’re both gonna lose you’re ass.

There’s always a new way to get new content free. Take a look at the guys on twitter doing Breaking News. You can’t stop the next new thing. Rupert can’t stop the one after that.

Mark, you need to figure out how to make money with the free internet content model, or adjust to the idea you’re done with being a innovator, and moved into that next stage of holding on to the fortune you made when you were an innovator.

I like you, Mark. You ain’t Rupert. You’ve done quite a bit of good when you had to chance to. Don’t get stubborn now like Rupert has, and lose your ass trying to hold back the rising tide. Information has little value anymore. There’s too much of it out there.