On hindsight, I should have thought a little more before calling for a drastic change in the way we shared on the Local Area Network ( LAN ). I should have remembered Ariely's notes about shifting social norms to market norms and all its ill effects. Or maybe, for starters, I should simply have put a more popular movie for sale on LAN. Yeah, sale ! Whoever heard of that, right? Or was the price a little too steep for an introductory price? One thing I am sure about is when I put the following message to the guys on LAN, the responses were not favorable.
The message read thus :
Hello people! ( Before I go ahead, let me tell you that I am NO fan of free sharing. If anything's worth your time, it's worth your money too.)
From today I introduce "The Honour System" ( yeah, Freakonomics and more recently Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational ) according to which I decide a price range for each movie I have. If you want that movie, I'll give you it's minimum and maximum price ( depending upon the quality of audio / video, movie and demand ) and you decide how much you pay ( ofcourse staying within that range. )
I decided to introduce this because I spend time and money researching about every movie and I find absolutely no reason why you should get it for free and then not appreciate it.
So there, you heard it. Free sharing is evil unless absolutely necessary and so I'm charging for the movies I share. Who wants movies from me now?
My first paid movie : The Profit. ( 2001 )
Director : Peter N. Alexander
Genre : Drama.
Tagline: A dark journey into an evil mind where the only good is...The Profit.
IMDb rating : 7.2
Min price: Rs. 75 /-
Max. price: Rs. 100 /-.
And the responses ( in the typical no-holds-barred LAN lingo ) read thus :
( My responses in italics ).
>> bonzi >> SUJITH (JABBERWOCKY ) IS HOMOSEXUAL.
HE HAS SEX WITH DOGS SADIST ARSEHOLE.
>> tarun >>If everyone goes on charging for movie why the fuck do we need LAN? We can rent it or buy it from outside.
Ok, so how about if I charged 1 Re? Does that drive my point home? My point is value the fucking movies you get. If you pay for something, you just value it more.
>> monty >>Am not talkin about money here...I just mean that you TRADE here!! You ask for something you want and then when you get it you share something of your's which isn't much important! Like movies..I know you got good collection but you don't share..you just send anything thinking we all are choos and anything you send will make us happy...but sorry am not one of them.....
Well atleast you are getting close to the point. Yea, we are trading here. But if you look at it, most people here ( except you and bonzi ) have shit for movies. Do you call that fair trade?
Now, what's so horrible in charging a small amount for the movies? For me, the mere mention of money would :
1) Introduce an element of productivity into the time you spend downloading movies from the internet.
2) Slowly, but surely, better the quality of movies watched and talked about on LAN and consequently outside of LAN too.
So, then. Were the responses a result of a sudden and unexpected shift of social norm ( free sharing ) to a market norm ( price for each movie ) ? Or were they because the first movie I put up on sale was just not very popular or was it the price? Would the responses have been more favorable if I had, say, kept a lower limit of Re. 1 and a higher limit of Rs. 5 or if the movie was, say, recently released Dostana?
What do you think?
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