So e.g. Liebeck scalded herself while drinking coffee, so she sued McDonald’s. Now McDonald’s lost the lawsuit, of course—but how could it have protected itself with futuristic PRM technology? Let’s see: Liebeck was seated in a car and wearing cotton sweatpants which absorbed the hot coffee. If only the car she was in, and the pants she was wearing, had guarded her against her act of opening the cup in that fashion, then this whole nonsense wouldn’t have happened. The way forward is clear: anyone who wants to drink McDonald’s coffee in a car wearing cotton sweatpants, should only be allowed to do so if she were seated in a McDonald’s-certified car, and wearing McDonald’s-certified cotton sweatpants. Best to make sure she lives in a McDonald’s-certified house too, in case she starts drinking coffee and then there’s an earthquake or something.

…guess why we decided to design to interface with competing microscopes instead?

For instance, who gets sued if an accident in a Toyota is caused by a faulty or counterfeit part? Toyota does. So don’t they have the right to ensure that the part is compatible, or at least to build a historical record that the owner installed non-certified parts?

It’s the litigiousness of our society that drives at least part of this.

But what is the alternative to companies exercising their existing rights to do these sorts of things? Some weird new antitrust doctrine that assume that every product is a platform for anti-trust enforcement, and that manufacturers are forbidden from taking steps to ensure that they maintain a dominant market share on their own product? I think that would be far worse.

Having worked for a consumer goods company, I will agree with you that much of what goes on in the market research and advertising departements is in fact money-wasting pseudo-religion, but that some is not. And what isn’t is still 1000x more than what any except the most fanatical and dedicated individual buyer can bring to the table in terms of research and information. Hint: 99.9% of American buyers are not “fanatical and dedicated”.

Cranky

A pen may refuse to dispense ink unless it’s being used with licensed paper

But who is going to buy those pens? Pens are easy and cheap to manufacture, so there will never be a shortage of suppliers offering ‘universal pens’ which work on all traditional writing surfaces.

A shoe may refuse to provide some features, such as high-tech cushioning of the sole, unless used with licensed shoelaces

This is only sustainable if the advantages of the high-tech cushioning outweigh the restrictions on laces (in other words, if the customer continues to get better value-for-money from that shoe as compared to rival products). A combination of poor shoe design and lace restrictions would lead to extremely poor sales, so the lace restrictions only become viable if shoe quality is high enough (again, relative to the other competing products).

Let’s go back to the printer cartridge problem, since that has some basis in the present. It is possible that a printer company might be able to offer consumers better deals by tying them into a particular brand of ink cartridge – it enables the manufacturer to predict future cartridge demand based on sales of printers, which improves their efficiency and lowers their costs. They can then pass this saving on to the consumer and everyone wins. The purchase of a printer essentially acts as a future bulk order of cartridges (with payment deferred) and so you get a similar discount effect on the price per cartridge. (I think this is the point that was obliquely made in the original post, and missed by Cranky @ #7).

In the absence of such a saving, why would any consumer buy a printer that tied them into a deal where they were forced to pay over the odds for cartridges? Brand loyalty, exposure to advertising and so forth must be factors for consideration. But I would think that, in the printer market, many of the purchasing decisions will be made by companies, not individuals. In small companies, the decision will probably be made by an IT manager who is likely to be reasonably well aware of the issues and in regular contact with other IT managers (via mailing lists, forums, industry publications and the like). Since IT people talk to each other, they would quickly identify which printers were bad value for money and which were not. The internet provides an easy means for this information to be widely disseminated and fed into decision-making processes worldwide. A company which gets caught out trying to tie its customers into seriously bad deals is going to suffer a fall in sales.

None of this necessarily precludes the very real negative possibilities here, but I think we need some better examples than ‘omg they might make a pen that only writes on certain paper!!1122’. And the call for ‘policy choices’ is distinctly worrying; on past form, the choice most likely to be taken by government is ‘bend over and give big business whatever it wants’!

Final point, re Matt @ #11: I would certainly choose to buy the eggs with ads, happy in the knowledge that some idiot corporation has subsidised my egg purchase by paying for ads that I won’t bother looking at.

My new Verizon-branded RAZR phone has much of its USB functionality disabled, in order to compel me to share a few shekels with the phone company should I ever want to send a photo or acquire a ringtone (which I haven’t yet). A few minutes’ googling found tools to circumvent the crippling by flipping a couple of bits in the flash memory.

With so many young, energetic and clever people ranged against them, I don’t think I’d bet on the eventual success of anyone relying on DRM to protect their IP. Distribution models which don’t actually disadvantage their most ardent consumers are more likely to prevail.

The typical consumer goods company has hundreds if not thousands of people working 70 hours weeks using the most sophisticated research, tools, etc. known to man to persuade (generous interpretation) or trick (more reasonable interpretation) the consumer into buying its product. The consumer has about 7 seconds at the grocery store (or 7 minutes if considering a big ticket item) to make a choice. How do you think this tug-of-war will come out?

Cranky

Not if the egg ads are effective enough. Then ad eggs will be cheaper, or free, like broadcast TV.

I don’t think the ads will be effective, but I can imagine getting a premium price for eggs with some people’s faces printed on them. For a few cents extra you get to smash [fill in politician of choice] when you crack the egg.

>Actually, this would be an innovation.

Yes, but I can also see shoe companies not manufacturing enough laces to enourage people buy new shoes when their laces break. A whole new form of planned obsolescence.

I bring this up because I see this all as part of a great tug-of-war between vigilant consumers and clever companies. The companies try to take advantage of consumers in every way they can: advertise on eveything, even the shirts you buy for yourself, limit your options for compatibility and modification of products, force consumers to resupply their devices only by going through you for the highest price, and the list goes on. And vigiliant consumers try to ensure that they’re getting the best product for their money. We don’t buy products that limit our options, that require us to divulge our personal information, that allow companies to advertise to us in our own homes, that force us into a monopoly with the original vendor rather than going to the open market for parts.

If consumers as a whole are vigilant enough, eggs won’t come covered in ads because those eggs will languish on shelves unbought. And when all egg-producers band together to switch to ad-eggs, they’ll be slapped by anti-trust. But this all requires a vigilant populace, much in the way corrupt government required a vigilan populace to thwart it.

A shoe may refuse to provide some features, such as high-tech cushioning of the sole, unless used with licensed shoelaces

Actually, this would be an innovation. I’d finally be able to buy copies of the shoelaces that came with my shoes. Right now, virtually no retailer carries extra pairs of the shoelaces that come with the shoes they sell.

O course, PRM capability exists now—make hoses that only fit certain nozzles, specialized batteries, or watch-bands that use a non-standard mechanism (e.g., many Skagen watches)—but in most cases it not worth the hassle to capture such profits. By contrast, laser printer manufactures have developed a business model similar to video-game machine makers—the printer or player is sold below production cost and the profit is made on the toner cartridges or games.

Let’s face it, the next step would be to license the use of hardware in addition to software. So your car can be legally driven only by the single owner; otherwise, you would have to buy a multi-driver license from the manufacturer. This could be enforced using advanced biometric devices.

On a related note, I’m not sure whether I should see trusted computing as a good or bad thing, but I get really miffed when people make veiled attempts to outlaw Linux using various bogus pretexts.

“[iTunes’] success comes largely from two crucial innovations. First, Apple’s music store is simple and works extremely well with the iPod. Find the music. Click ‘Buy It.’ Drag the files onto the iPod icon.”

Man, that’s some innovation. Like putting nice shiny buttons and boxes with rounded boxes on your windows. Or painting iMacs with different colours. If only we had more such “innovations”, we’d have been much much closer to utopia.

Yes, because historically in the absence of competition in the laser printer toner market HP and Canon (the patent holder) were really driven to lower cost to the consumer and improve cartridge yield. It was only when low-cost, high-yield competitive cartridges appeared on the market that HP raised their cartridge prices to extortionate levels.

Oh wait…

Cranky