Forbes’s Paul Tassi argues that piracy is, first and foremost, a service problem:

So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks.

(This is all purely theoretical of course)

1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark

2. Type in “The Hangover 2? (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example)

3. Click on result with highest seeds

4. Click download torrent

5. Auto open uTorrent

6. Wait ten minutes to download

7. Play movie, own it forever

He also cites price. I am sympathetic to this argument, but I have become increasingly less so over the years. In large part because it ignores the existence of the music industry.

Namely, the music industry has something very much like what he’s talking about. Except that it’s a buffet. I have subscribed to Rhapsody since 2005 and with it comes a lifetime’s library of listening. As much as I want, whenever I want. It does require a computer, but if I want to listen to it in my car, I can buy it with less hassle than I can download an illicit copy of it. And now, with Spotify, you can listen to music for free. In short, the music industry has (reluctantly, belatedly) done everything that has been asked of it.

Has piracy abated? I don’t know, but I don’t think it has. If it has, I haven’t heard about it. (Note: I am not saying that piracy is to blame for the industry’s doldrums.) Instead, we’re hearing the same things about the music industry we’ve heard all along. Namely, that they’re just going to have to deal with it.

And you know what? They are. The only way to really crush down on it would be burning the village to save it. Or rather, burning the Internet down to protect their turf. I have my doubts that even SOPA/PIPA would have been sufficient.

Now, to get back to movies, I don’t disagree with Tassi’s plan, in the overall. Not as a way to combat piracy in any meaningful sense, but as a way to make a few extra bucks.

The music industry isn’t actually necessary for music. As music has become easier and cheaper to produce at professional-sounding levels, they can actually outsource and crowdsource their artist selection and focus more on the real service they provide, which is promotion (and, to a lesser extent, distribution). And that’s something of a zero-sum game where everybody can make due with less as long as everybody is spending less (at least I think).

Movies are in a bit of a different predicament, because we need movie-makers and networks in a way that we don’t need the record industry. Good movies, and good TV shows, tend to be pretty expensive. Ultimately, there has to be a way for them to recoup those costs. The good news is that movies have more at their disposal to do so. Initial release. International release. Video release. Commercials on television. Music has other forms of revenue, too (licensing), but it has fewer bases.

So I am not particularly worried about the destruction of Hollywood. And at least tentatively, I am actually inclined to say the same of the movie/TV industry as I do the music industry. A worst case scenario, if it were to come to fruition, though, is far worse for video entertainment than audio. But it doesn’t seem to be affected. While theater movies seem to be getting more and more conservative, (something I might attribute to piracy, if it weren’t for…) secondary movies seem to be proliferating. Look at the average Redbox or Safeway rental stand and you’ll see a lot of movies with recognizable names still getting made. And when these movies to straight to video, that’s a pretty strong suggestion of a strong market for such things, which is precisely where piracy should cut the deepest.

So, who knows what tomorrow brings. I’d still like to see Tassi’s service. Somehow, this is all going to have to get organized. I think it’s unfortunate that the Netflix model has taken the lead on this. Not because I don’t like the Netflix (streaming model). I do! But the all-you-can-watch is problematic and as people get used to it, the notion of paying for individual movies (even at a dollar or two) becomes increasingly foreign. That leaves us in a model where everything is a stable and everything will be spread out between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and so on. And worse, there will be little in the way of content reliability. You can (more or less) count on Rhapsody to have this month what it had last month. You can’t found on Hulu. Which itself may be enough for people to say “Hey, if I download it, it’ll be there as long as I don’t delete it.”

In the years I have known her, my wife has never had a purse. It’s just not her way. Nor, really, does she tend to carry her wallet around with her. Her wallet is huge and bulky, and she spends a lot of time in scrub pants that are ill-equipped to carry them. Me? I feel naked without my wallet, even when it’s so overstuffed to be uncomfortable to sit down.

So she ends up carrying cash and credit cards along in her pocket. She also changes her pants a lot (she doesn’t like to wear her slacks any longer than she has to and she has to change in and out of jeans and scrubs… meanwhile I wear only one pair of pants a day, sometimes for more than one day, and sometimes to bed). She has a little bit of trouble keeping track of her credit cards. And one by one, because of this and discontinued accounts, they’ve been disappearing. Until it reached the point that the last one went missing and I had to give her mine for her flight back from Delosa. And that one did not make it all the way to Arapaho.

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I have a total of four cards from Bank of the Northern Hemisphere (BNH). One is a credit card and three are debit cards linked to different accounts. The problem with BNH debit cards is that they all look the same. When we opened the second account (the joint account from Estacado), I made sure that it was only a Gold account rather than a Platinum so that the card would look different. This until we got to Arapaho and opened another account. We got the Platinum card. The main way I could really tell the difference between my personal account and the Arapaho account was the due date.

One of them expired last month. I got a new one and lo and behold, they changed the design. This was awesome! Except for the fact that Clancy had lost my other card and I had to get that replaced. Meaning I now had the same design on two cards. Not only that, but the same expiration date. So now I have to start memorizing numbers. At least until I order a specialty card or something.

Meanwhile, I fished up all of the replacement cards that BNH had been sending her. I even found one that matched a separate letter with a PIN number on it. So she has her own card. And another card without a PIN. And the BNH credit card that may or may not be activated. I activated my replacement card, which may have activated hers because it won’t let me activate hers without speaking to a representative, and I don’t do a good Clancy impersonation.

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Because of the credit/debit card turnover, one by one our monthly subscriptions have been notifying me of a possible discontinuation/disconnect if I don’t put in a new credit card. Satellite. Rhapsody. CBS All-Access.

I’ve never been good at keeping track of my usernames and passwords. So every day has been a matter of checking all of my email boxes to make sure I don’t get a pending disconnect notice.

I sometimes frustrate my dear wife when I leave crucial words out of sentences. It’s genetic. Mom does the same thing. So, without much in the way of context, I will say something like “I’m thinking we should use 53.”

“Absent words.”

“Oh. Sorry. When we go to Alexandria tonight, we should go on State Highway 53 instead of through Redstone.”

Absent Words replaced “What the hell are you talking about?” as a conversational lubricant.

Having been married for a while, though, she is increasingly able to fill in the blanks. Yesterday, I asked, “Is that thing going to be with those other things?”

“Yes,” she answered, “the ovulation kit will be with the feminine products.”

And so off to Safeway I went. It turned out that the ovulation kits were not with the feminine products. I know this because I spent a good half hour looking over every kind of tampon, cream, and gel that I never knew existed in search for it. Finally, I had to do what I always have to do when I am looking for something like an ovulation kit. I had to ask customer service.

It turned out that the ovulation kits were in a separate part of the store. Right by customer service, in the wide open front of the store. With the condoms, pregnancy tests, and just about everything else that kids would not want their parents or neighbors to know that they are buying. I am thinking that this is not coincidental.

Ordinarily, something like an ovulation kit – or condoms – wouldn’t bother me, but this is a small town and not a visit to the pharmacy went by when I was picking up my wife’s birth control where the pharmacist didn’t say “You’re still not trying?” For some reason, announcing that we are trying (by way of purchasing an ovulation kit) is more private than the fact that we’re trying not to. It’s not logical. The check-out girl (who lives five houses down from us) looked pleasantly surprised to see the kit.

My only other real experience purchasing feminine products (except birth control) was in college, when my then-girlfriend Julianne needed me to go to the campus convenience store and pick up tampons. And so, of course, the conversation ended with the clerk saying, as I stood in line in front of about five people, “Now did you want the tampons in the blue box or the green box?!”

Felix Salmon complains about a pricing innovation I had not yet heard of: ATM’s working off a percentage fee rather than a flat fee. Or, as these things generally go, whichever fee is greater. In the case he cites, it’s $3 or 3%.

Look, I’m not going to get all market-worshipper on this, but as far as price gouging goes, this is far less of a big deal than what we put up with at sports arenas, amusement parks, and so on. If I don’t like Holiday Inn’s charge, I really, genuinely can go elsewhere. Maybe this will take up like wildfire and all of them will be doing this and so at some point in the future I won’t have a choice.

Even then, though, the pricing model itself doesn’t seem particularly outrageous. In order to trip up to the percentage-based fee, that means that you have to be extracting more than $100. If you’re extracting more than $100, maybe you need to find the nearest branch of your bank. If anything, I think this fee is to guide people to do just that. Extracting large sums from an ATM machine actually does cost them more money. It means more regular restocking. So I can very easily see why they would be cool with people taking out $40, but wanting those who intend to take more out to think twice, go elsewhere, or pay extra.

Of course it does not cost them $3 per small transaction or an extra $3 for a transaction of $200. But the ATM, the security involved, and restocking all do cost money. Is Holiday Inn making money off the ATM? I would imagine so. Maybe it would be better if they provided it as a cost-neutral convenience. Maybe we should go to hotels that do just that.

But really, there has never been a better time for a consumer as far as this stuff goes. More and more places offer cash-back on purchases to the point that I almost never use an ATM anymore (not even my own bank’s). But more to the point, we need cash a lot less than we used to. $100 in cash goes a lot further than it used to with credit card swipers everywhere. And if there is one benefit to the increasing consolidation of banks, it’s that it’s more likely your bank has an ATM nearby just in case you happen to need one. The last couple of times I did use an ATM it was while traveling. A quick google and a quick drive and no ATM fees at all.

Now, maybe it’s not worth it to get in your car and drive for ten minutes in order to save $3 or $6. If so, that only suggests that the Holiday Inn’s convenience charge is reasonable.

My name has found itself on a new mailing list. Of that I am sure.

What’s curious is that my name on this mailing list is W.S. Truman. I never fill out forms by that name. None of my credit cards are in that name. My Frequent Flier Miles are not under that name. I mention my FFMs because I was recently told it was time to cash them in and I picked up a subscription to Forbes, The Atlantic, and ESPN Magazine. I suspect that one of those three passed my name along. I suspect it was Forbes because two of the three things I received in the mail today came from conservative organizations. One of them, on the envelope, asking a loaded question that my answer to was actually not the one they were assuming I would have.

My mom made a habit out of using different names whenever she would sign for things that could put her on a mailing list. She has four names, so it wasn’t hard for her to do (she used the dog’s name once, and Roscoe received a credit card in the mail*). For a while, she kept track of who put the lists out where. She wrote an great article about it that she published in her local newsletter. It was good enough that it should have been in a more formal newspaper or magazine (I got only some of her writing talent).

* – Yes, this is a true story. It said “Just call to activate” though I assume that calling would have meant a more lengthy process than that. Among other things, to be sure that they didn’t actually give a credit card to a dog.

Larry Downes got a lot of publicity with a screed against Best Buy, declaring its imminent demise:

To discover the real reasons behind the company’s decline, just take this simple test. Walk into one of the company’s retail locations or shop online. And try, really try, not to lose your temper.

I admit. I can’t do it. A few days ago, I visited a Best Buy store in Pinole, CA with a friend. He’s a devoted consumer electronics and media shopper, and wanted to buy the 3D blu ray of “How to Train Your Dragon,” which Best Buy sells exclusively. According to the company’s website, it’s backordered but available for pickup at the store we visited. The item wasn’t there, however, and the sales staff had no information.

But my friend decided to buy some other blu-ray discs. Or at least he tried to, until we were “assisted” by a young, poorly groomed sales clerk from the TV department, who wandered over to interrogate us. What kind of TV do you have? Do you have a cable service, or a satellite service? Do you have a triple play service plan?

He was clearly—and clumsily–trying to sell some alternative. (My guess is CinemaNow, Best Buy’s private label on-demand content service.) My friend politely but firmly told him he was not interested in switching his service from Comcast. I tried to change the subject by asking if there was a separate bin for 3D blu rays; he didn’t know.

The used car style questions continued. “I have just one last question for you,” he finally said to my friend. “How much do you pay Comcast every month?”

My friend is too polite. “How is that any of your business?” I asked him. “All right then,” he said, the fake smile unaffected, “You folks have a nice day.” He slinked back to his pit.

Best Buy is on my blacklist of companies. They’re one of the Evil Corporations. I’m not a fan. I shop there sometimes, but only because I need to and there is no Fry’s around. What’s funny about this, though, is that the one thing Best Buy always did so much better than Circuit City is that they didn’t have the overly aggressive salespeople. I could shop in piece. And honestly, I can’t remember a problem even on more recent trips. So I don’t know if they changed their business practices from when I went there all the time (and the few times I’ve been recently I lucked out) or whether I just come with a “Don’t tread on me” demeanor.

His follow-up suggests that his experiences are not unique.

I also heard from plenty of current Best Buy employees, both via Forbes and through private emails. Best Buy has a strong sales culture at the stores, and some employees took the article personally. I called out some of their (non-obscene) comments on the original post, in part because I think they inadvertently highlight what’s wrong with the company’s current strategy.

Employees, I learned, are strongly conditioned to see every customer who walks in the store as a potential target, one who needs to be coerced into buying something other than what they came looking for.

But you can’t treat the customer as an adversary in a battle of wills. You can’t provide superior service when you’ve been drilled to view each person who walks into your store as prey. You can’t be a trusted source of expertise on consumer electronics when, as many former employees told me, failure to follow the company script means getting your hours cut or simply being fired.

A shame, if true. Since I consider Best Buy to be an Evil Corporation, I won’t mind if they go. I hope it provides an opportunity for Fry’s to expand. Fry’s has a bit of a different business model, with more of a bookstorish emphasis on “kick back, relax, have some coffee!” Of course, bookstores themselves are alleged to be in trouble. So Fry’s might choose to play it safe (one of Borders alleged mishaps was overexpansion, if I recall).

Web’s post the other day reminded me of one of life’s little irritations. To pull down the curtain of fictionalization for a second, one of my previous employers was involved in the photo-imaging industry. You know those kiosks where you get digital film developed? Those. Also, behind-the-counter stuff. Said employer is a relatively major player in the industry, but you have almost certainly never heard of them. Why? Because they house brand everything. If you go to Walgreens and use our product, everything will say Walgreens. Same with CVS. The former #1 player in the industry used their own well-known brand name, but #2 and #3 (who may be #1 and #2 now), one of which I worked for, don’t. Nor does anyone else I am aware of.

As a general rule, I like to patronize former employers. When I can, I get my hair cut at the chain where I used to sweep hair when I was a teenager. Some of it is simple loyalty (a couple employers I feel no such loyalty to, though – nor do I refer to them as “our”). In this case, though, it’s because I know the product back and forth. I know what it can do and I know what it cannot do as well. And it’s a product that I generally believe to be a good one. Maybe one of our (errr, their) competitors is better. But I know what I am getting when I use the product that I tested for the better part of two years.

Except that I never know if that’s what I am using. There is nowhere I can find out if that’s what they’re using. I ask the guy behind the counter and he looks at me like I am an alien. “It says CVS. It’s a CVS scanner.” Well no, it’s not. It’s a conglomeration of products that you purchased for other people. When I print something out on my printer at home, I don’t say it’s a Trumwill Printer. It’s a Canon or a Samsung (depending on which I use).

I get, of course, that they want people to believe it’s theirs. And most of the time I believe it to be harmless when companies did this. My former employer made more money on sales where this occurred, and I liked things that made my former employer more solvent. But for my particular needs, it’s kind of irritating.

Per Bakadesuyo:

A total of 68 15-min. observations of customers’ behavior at a food supermarket suggests that only about 7% of shoppers observe the item limit of the express lane. The averages tended to be about four pieces.

I’d be curious to know the methodology on this. This doesn’t even make sense to me.

If they were measuring people that had more than 10 items, surely more than 7% went through the regular checkout lane by default. Express lanes are usually a minority.

If they were measuring people with 11-15 items, that might make more sense, but how many people have 10-15 and is it enough to really draw from? When I go to the market I usually only have a couple items or a ton.

I may have broken the rule yesterday, though. Our local express lane is actually 15 items and I had… roughly 15. I didn’t check. There was nobody in the express lane. The usual excuses for scofflaws, I suppose. Nobody said anything!

Megan McArdle tweeted yesterday about the dangers of going to the pharmacy on the 1st of the month. I didn’t think anything about it until I was told there was a 90-minute wait yesterday. That’s pretty unusually high, so I guess there is something to it.

Do other nations have pharmacies like we do? Where pharmacists get paid a lot of money to handle the drugs? I must confess some ignorance as to the necessity of all that. My sister-in-law is a PharmD (pharmacist with a doctorate). I should ask my wife. I haven’t seen her but for bits and pieces lately, though.

The image above is from the TBS TV show 10 Items Or Less. It’s funny in little bits, but there’s only so much entertainment to be had in watching a show focused around such… uhmmm… people that have not lead successful lives due at least in part to rather poor judgment on their part.

Coupon Shoebox has a piece up on ways to “increase your frugality” that range from the questionable to a couple that are okay.

Television programming: I have high speed Internet. I have Netflix. This means that I have access to TV shows the day after they air, and that I have access to movies — some of them using instant play with my TV via my Web-connected PS3. So, why am I paying more than $70 a month for TV service?

This one is fair enough… for the time being. But, as I will state more thoroughly in a future post, this model only works because others are paying for cable. If people start cancelling cable en masse, what do you think the odds are that the makers of television programs will take the hit and allow people to consume their product at lower prices? They are already hitting up Netflix hard and Hulu’s free offerings have diminished. Television programming is expensive at least in part because it is expensive to produce. The free (or cheap) ride will only take you so far. If you want TV programming, in the longer run, you’re going to have to be willing to pay for it.

Magazines: We are in the process of culling our magazines. Most have online versions, and there is no reason to be paying for magazine subscriptions when so much of what I read in terms of news and commentary is online anyway.

The same applies here, though to a much lesser extent. Content is not nearly as expensive to produce in the text form as the visual. Given this, I do believe that one way or another, it’s the content-producers that will have to make the adjustments and people in general are going to have to make due with lesser quality. So this one works, more or less.

Paper books: I love reading and I love books. But my husband recently pointed out that electronic versions of books for readers like the Nook, Kindle and iPad are much less expensive than buying hard copies. With the amount of reading I do, it would be relatively easy to recoup the initial cost of buying an electronic reader. Plus, electronic books would reduce the clutter in our home.

Errr, no, the electronic versions are not “much less expensive” than the hard copies. Unless you’re looking specifically at new release hard covers. A much better way to reduce spending on paperbacks is to buy used. Of course, buying used paperbacks won’t let you buy a neat new gadget under the banner of frugality, now will it?

Clutter: Speaking of clutter, we’ve got more of it than I like. I could definitely live without it. We’ve been practicing more mindful spending, so that we aren’t bringing in more clutter, but we could get rid of a lot of the stuff that we have.

Unless you think you’re going to make a lot of money getting rid of the existing clutter, this has little to do with frugality. More mindful spending does, of course, but that’s a thing unto itself.

Meat: I’m not saying I’m going vegetarian. But I have found that I don’t need so much meat. Meat is expensive, and it can affect your health if you eat too much of it. We’re looking into preparing more meatless dishes. This should lower health care costs down the road, as well as mean more money in our budget now.

This strikes me more as health sanctimony as it does frugality. McDonald’s hamburgers can be the cheapest food around.

Christmas presents: With the holidays just around the corner, many are already preparing for holiday shopping. But do you really need more stuff? You can save money by purchasing fewer, more thoughtful, presents. It’s hard to resist the consumer call of Christmas, but we are trying.

Well yes, spending less on gifts for others will save money.

This really isn’t the point of a well thought-out piece, but after reading the opening paragraph:

California police will now be able to conduct warrantless searches of optical disc (DVD, CD, BluRay) factories to look for piracy and seize pirated discs, under a bill just signed by California Governor Jerry Brown (full text). Even those who think copyright law has gone much too far, or cherish fair use, shouldn’t defend such blatant, commercial piracy, which does nothing but deny creators the market for their artistic products. One need only look at China to see how such infringement can destroy creative industries.

My thought was that raiding the factories here will only mean more of the piracy will be done in China. Yet another way our government is pushing industry abroad…

(I agree with the piece, but that was the first thought that came to mind.)