Beware any product which claims that people would prefer information to communication, any service which claims that people will choose closed systems over open ones, and any protocol which claims that people will tolerate incompatibility to gain features. Any idea for a networking service which does not satisfy some basic desire of network users is doomed to fail. A time-honored marketing tool for sidestepping criticism is to make ridiculous assertions with enough confidence that people come to believe them. We're a year ahead of the competition. We don't have any competition.
Information Wants to be Cheap.
Information has been decoupled from objects . Like the rise of written text displacing the oral tradition, the separation of data from its containers will never be reversed. Network users recognize this, even if they can't articulate it directly, and behave accordingly. Anyone who is basing their plans on the willingness of network users to pay for electronic information in the same way that they now pay for physical objects like CDs and books will fail. Many Web-based services have tried to get users to pay for pretend scarcity, as if downloading information should be treated no differently from printing, shipping, storing, displaying and selling physical objects offline.