Digital BW, The Print

Ken Carney wrote:

>For what it's worth, here is my take on this.  The management of business
>corporations, especially publicly-held companies, is charged with making a
>profit. 
>
Seiko-EPSON just FWIW is NOT publicly held.  ;-)

> Operating ethically means operating within the law and
>administrative rules. 
>
Exactly, and some of those rules generally prohibit "tying".. The 
problem lays in a re-interpretation of those rules to create a "freer 
market" - of course, "freeing up the market" gave us ENRON, conflicts of 
interest between analysts and banking firms / brokerage houses, etc.. 
 The rules wee erected no to create market disutility, but to prevent 
abuses that actually make the marketplace operate in an inefficient 
fashion...  "Cheating" generally simply advantages one party to the 
benefit of another, it inequitably redistributes $$ without driving the 
market forward efficiently.

> It is entirely possible that management may decide to
>reduce the cost of consumables, thinking that will result in a volume
>increase.  I doubt it would ever be done for altruistic reasons, assuming
>management wishes to remain employed.  I would hate to see any movement
>here, as some have suggested,  towards a law restricting companies from
>employing their marketing strategy of choice, instead of letting the
>marketplace take care of it. 
>
Ummm. That's already the law..

You clearly either don't know or fully understand the law on this, one 
or the other..  Please reserve your comments then to opinion or editorial.

As I've made clear elsewhere, "tying" is already a generally disfavored 
anticompetitive practice, the issue is not the law, it is one of 
enforcement.

> Then there probably wouldn't be an Epson
>printer at all, at least like we have now.  
>

Very different issue.  As I've said, the rules tend to be invoked when a 
piece of technology has reached a "critical mass" of sorts.  That's also 
a straw man argument. No-one is suggesting we apply those rules 
post-facto, we ARE suggesting that the current state has reached that 
point.  We are no longer dealing with some infant technology that is 
confined to a niche market which needs incubation or insulation to survive.


>There is even a fairly strong
>trend of companies going to Sun Office ($86 for five licenses) instead of MS
>Office (mucho more under the new pricing structure).
>  
>
Which shows what?  That once tying is prohibited, as practiced by M$ in 
its licensing terms, that the market will adjust and options will 
increase. Thanks for providing an example to bolster my position.

Keith

 

"Just some guy," and caretaker of the Multiverse's largest EPSON printer 
User Community (highly recommended by Vogon Poets and MegaDodo 
Publications), at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EPSONx7x_Printers/
 
"For the rest of you out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together 
guys"

 


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