I’m sure plenty of TLFers already read Techdirt, but in case you needed yet another reason to add it to your feed reader, two of the smartest bloggers I know—Julian and Tom—have begun contributing to the site.
Meanwhile, my contributions to TLF have been a little slower than usual as a lot of my blogging energies have been diverted over there. One of the interesting things about contributing to Techdirt has been the opportunity to branch out a little bit into the kind of pure tech/business analysis that wouldn’t really be on-topic for TLF. My latest post is a spin-off of our recent discussion of Bill Rosenblatt’s article about Radiohead and the “race to the bottom”:
The strangest thing about Rosenblatt’s article is the pejorative use of the term “race to the bottom” to describe competition in the music industry. When Apple cuts the price on the iPod, we would be really surprised to see a columnist complaining about how Apple had started a “race to the bottom” that will undermine profits among consumer electronics companies. We understand that, as painful as competition can be for producers, consumers and the economy as a whole benefit from such aggressive price-cutting. Talking about a “race to the bottom” is the language of cartels, which try to hold prices above the competitive level. Music is like any other product As the marginal costs of production and distribution fall, it’s natural that the price of music will fall as well. Smart musicians and companies will find ways to adapt and prosper in the new, more competitive marketplace. As we’ve said before, saying you can’t compete with free is saying you can’t compete at all. The sooner musicians and record labels realize that, the more prepared they’ll be when the price of music drops out from under them.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.