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Thank-you for shopping with us, thief
My pet hate in Japan is the little stickers that are applied to your purchases if you decline to to put the goods in a plastic bag. Since I usually carry my own bag I always get the stickers, on everything.
That sticker encapsulates a negative aspect of the retailer/customer experience: "Thank-you for shopping at our store, but we don't trust you enough to walk out without stealing goods. So we apply this sticker to make you think it's easier for us to know what you've bought, and easier to identify you've just attempted to steal. Have a great day". Presumably the reason the sticker is applied is that it is an effective deterrent against theft, because it is highly visible and obvious what it applies to i.e. the object it is stuck on. (The sticker roll is ripe for a subversive makeover - drum roll designers...)
With increased purchases of digital goods content providers are looking to Digital Rights Management (DRM) solutions to limit where and how content is played. For me a fair DRM solution assumes people know what they own, and know the rights for what they own. With competing DRM solutions this is not going to be an easy task. Ask yourself this question:
Are there limits to how and where songs downloaded from the iTunes store can be played?
In my mind if you answer 'yes' you are already in the niche that is technology orientated consumers. Next question:
How many of you can list any use-boundaries of songs downloaded from the iTunes store?
If you can answer 'yes' you're otaku. Most people have a life where technology or the design and application of technology are not a central driver. It's a wonderful world out there, and it's got nothing to do with computer screens, keyboards and mice (I'm sitting here tapping out this article, looking forward to my morning cycle ride through Tokyo to get to the office).
If you are a P2P network user - how many times have you downloaded the same song? Looking at my (paid for) physical and digital music collection I frequently find duplicates - songs that I've paid for more than once. We used not to get a choice - you bought the album even it contained two songs identical to that other album you bought. Even on digital stores it's easier to select all the songs from an album than figure out the one or two you may have already, and (for this consumer) the cost of checking multiple devices where my the music is stored is more that the cost of buying a few duplicates.
I'm looking forward to the day when N million iTunes users start hitting use-boundaries and start looking for ways and perhaps demanding ways to free what they consider to be 'their music'. Maybe the delay between the time of purchase and the hitting of boundaries will be sufficiently long - 3 years? 5 years?, that the impact will be met with a resounding silence. Each consumer older and wiser?
Returning to the sticker... physical objects have presence, and although I dislike the sticker on the Coke bottle at least it noticeable enough to have feelings about.
Writing from Tokyo | August 10, 2005 | Permalink
Comments
Jan, I agree with your opinion. On the other side: these stickers seems to be a secrte valuta. Other than bills it might be easy to reprint some rolls of these stickers and use them in the stores to execute proper thefts.
iTunes duplicates. iTunes is very fair and tries to help you finding and providing duplicates. If you are going to buy an identical song a second time (identical means the same product number: same title, same artist, same album, ...) you will get a warning. Furthermore he edit menu contains somethin like ?Show duplicates? (I only know the German version) that helps very much finding identical data.
Posted by: J Siebert at August 11, 2005 11:05 PM
I use iTunes to track duplicates, but its primarily designed to find the same files, or files with largely the same metadata. Its weaker on:
- songs that are remixes of the same song (quite popular with younger music collectors)
- identical songs using different metadata e.g. different spelling of song titles, band names etc
In addition many people store content in different spaces. E.g downloading content to work computer or home computer or phone or backed up to external hard drive / dvd rom, and somehow always out of sync.
Posted by: Jan at August 11, 2005 11:10 PM
When you do accept a shopping bag, department stores will seal it with sticky tape, as in: "Thanks for shopping, but we do have to make sure you don't stuff your bag with stolen goods on your way out"...
And with the way iTunes treat downloads almost as physical goods: Shouldn't we be able to sell those tracks once we get bored with them? They're as good as new!
Posted by: Carsten at August 12, 2005 1:02 PM
> And with the way iTunes treat downloads almost as physical goods: Shouldn't we be able to sell those tracks once we get bored with them? They're as good as new!
Well, Apple and the contractual obligations I presume you (passively) agree to when you purchase a song from iTunes would say that those are the limits. However this does lead to a topic I've spent some time researching - recycling. Why do people not digitally 'recycle'. If the digital content you own but no longer use has unused distribution rights, why not recycle? What would it entail?
Posted by: Jan at August 15, 2005 6:18 AM
Recycle or resell? Recycling, to me, implies a degradation of the product and a shortage of raw material, both of which don't really apply to digital content.
Selling on unused distribution/usage rights doesn't seem to be possible with iTunes, but I've just checked Yahoo! Auction and there does indeed seem to be a market for second-hand software!
http://tinyurl.com/9c3rv
Posted by: Carsten at August 15, 2005 4:43 PM
American supermarkets apply stickers, too. Seems more like a retail practice than a nation-specific practice. Maybe we should be more annoyed with the thieves who raise the retail prices for the rest of us paying customers since the retailers have to cover their losses and spend money on security measures.
Posted by: M Sinclair Stevens at August 21, 2005 3:18 AM