The price of anything digital, is free

In the end, people pay for protons.

In the end, digital content, unless backed by some kind of exclusionary scheme, drops to the price of advertising for protons.

this is because most people don't want to pay for culture, because they believe their existence is as important to culture as the culture itself. Bands make less money on recordings, than on tours. The recording is, mostly, an advertisement for the protons.

That's why cyber-escorting is basically dead, it is advertising for protons now: pictures, voice, cam. the seller gives away a minute or two of free cyber, and advertises. For the men, why pay for what you can camp for. As soon as he has slipped his virtual cock, for free, into the avie, he has gotten his value. He has "won" the game. 

This is also one reason, among many, for the sex ghetto. Because Ll wants to assure companies that their employees aren't doing cyber sex while at work, and because  the direct sex industry on sl continues to shrink. There used to be several large cyber sex strip clubs, and people made 10,000 a day stripping Now there is one, and a girl is lucky to take in 1000L. Now once it was hard to look good, now it is free and easy. So naturally the price drops.

The same thing is going to happen to clothes. As soon as rl can figure out how to sell clothes through sl, they will give away fashion, to pitch clothes.

It may take a year or so, but that's where it is going. Already the quality of freebies out there is much higher. It used to be that most freebies were bad, or new people trying to get in. Now, you can look pretty good on freebies, dollarbies, or campies. 

Eventually in a pipe system, as a friend of mine calls it, all money flows to the pipe, and not to the people who fill it or use it. The reason the "long tail" will not work is because the people far up the tail can take everything form the people down the tail, and the people down the tail don't have the resources to defend it. Even, or especially, if those down the tail people are working for free or nothing. The long tail is #fail #fail #fail, because our analog avatars need a certain minimum, but if you are making that minimum, someone will take it.

Don't believe me? Consider that in the last year LL has hired 100 employees. There are not 100 more people in all of SL making a living selling things. LL is the pipe. The way to make money in SL, is to get a job through SL, and convince your new employer to let you play here as advertising.

That's reality, LL is not a new world, it is just an extension of the old world. It did not have to be this way, but it is.

It is. It is. It is not. It is....

Beijos.