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Increased site-licensing and distribution with
hardware. Another solution we evaluated is the distribution of software through
site-licensing and bundled with hardware. This is another solution that makes the purchase
of the medium less important then the purchase of the content--businesses are directly
paying for the right to use the software, and pay according to how many users there will
be instead of how many discs they receive. Microsoft's two best-selling products, the
Windows operating system and the Office application suite, are both frequently distributed
with new computers. Payment is made by the hardware manufacturer directly to Microsoft for
the right to distribute their software; in many cases the hardware manufacturer is the one
responsible for producing the physical media, if any. This solution is minimally
intrusive, and accomplishes the goal of extracting payment for content separate from the
physical media; furthermore, it actually reduces the per-user cost of the content by
selling in volume. back
| to the future of content on optical media |