HiredGun wrote:
Or that it was just too much trouble and too time consuming to go after buyers each time they didn't include the byline or changed an article they purchased for usage rights only.
See, I thought about that, too, but nothing I've seen here ever suggested that they spent much time going after violators in the first place (and it's not like removing usage eliminates the possibility of license abuse), so I doubt that was it. Nor because writers were bitching about it, because we bitch about stuff all the time anyway.
Like Lysis says, it's hard to see inside the business, but the only justification they gave was "...there is more demand for unique content that the purchaser has ultimate control over, and is not found anywhere else." Which, just based on my sales numbers, seems true as far as it goes, but shows a pretty narrow perspective. The inference seems to be "if we don't allow writers to sell use licenses, they have to sell full rights content, for which there is more demand!" but that's sort of a toddler-level view of how markets work. Really it just removed the supply for a different sort of demand completely, eliminating that revenue stream. While, if you follow their theory all the way through, increasing supply and therefore lowering market prices for the full rights content.
Which would be one potential explanation for the sales slump which most of us saw in Q3/4 last year, I guess... I hadn't thought about that before.
Anyway, getting back toward thread topicality, I just remember thinking that the licensing options they had here when I signed up were quite a bit more innovative than most and reflected a position ahead of the curve of content use and production. But most of the steps they have taken recently seem increasingly out-of-step with where the market is heading, at least from what I'm seeing elsewhere.