Slashdot Mirror
Digital Shoplifting From Bookstores?
ipandithurts writes "According to a report from Tokyo via IOL, Japanese publishers have launched a campaign to stop 'digital shoplifters.' These 'digital shoplifters' are using cellphones to photograph magazine pages in bookstores, rather than buying them. 'Digital shoplifting is becoming a big problem as camera-equipped mobile handsets are spreading fast and their quality is improving greatly,' said Kenji Takahashi, an official at the Japan Magazine Publishers Association. Will entry into a bookstore soon include a 'cell-phone patdown?'"
Sounds to me like magazines must be WAY overpriced there.
People do obnoxious things like this (man I have been waiting to slashdot them for a while).
Don't these people know there are bookstores where you can just go in, buy a coffee, sit around and read the magazine, then put it back on the shelf and leave?
-a
Subject says it all.
I've been waiting for a story like this to come along for awhile now. IMHO this signifies the start of an unevitable transition to paperless media. with hard copy so easy to get for free, about the only for print media to ensure it's position would be to become exclusively mail-based.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
in more than one way
If you're going to stand in a bookstore, taking 500 pictures of the latest fav-novel of your choice, and *not* get caught, then you probably deserve to get away with the pictures.
On the other hand, if someone didn't spend so much money on the cell phone to take 600 pictures of a book, they probably could.. well.. buy the book.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
How long before stores start installing cellphone jammers?
All of modern technology seems to be going that way: A constant arms race between the people trying to sell a device to perform a function and the people trying to sell a device or service to prevent the function from being performed.
It's one thing to photograph a 100 page magazine where half the pages are ads, but do you really think people will sit there in the store undetected while they take pictures of all 900 and some pages of the new Harry Potter book?
Simple solution if they don't want people browsing the magazines with the risk of them photgraphing them, put them behind the counter.
I think this is bad and we should ( we the open source community) stop it.
It is bad and shall NOT remove IP benefit from them IAAIPAL oppioin of me.
You walk into the bookstore. Two army officers approach you with AK-47s. "Excuse me sit, could you step into the office here? Thank you. Now, you have been chosen at random to be strip-searched. This is not racial profiling. Please remove all of your clothes and bend over."
I came, I saw, She conquered.
I suffer from lack of photographic memory, thus such devices are my aids. On a similar note, my ability to perfectly memorize movies and music is also impaired, thus I am justified in downloading MP3's and movies.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
It's troubling that the intellectually unwholesome analogy which the record and movie industry lobby groups in America, that copying is identical to stealing, is finding purchase in other cultures.
Copying is one thing, stealing/shoplifting is another. Copying may not be good, but for goodness sake it's different than stealing! This press release, and the 'educational' campaign that it outlines, clouds thought in contexts where it need not be clouded.
Isn't paper obsolete yet?
We need a cheap source of e-readers / tablets. I mean *super* cheap, like $10 each. When they're everywhere, sell all magazine content digitally, pass the savings through lack of physical printing on to the consumer and be done with it.
There is clearly a requirement here for some sort of DRM for printed materials. What about something like those 3D glasses they used to hand out in theaters. Make it so you can only read the magazine with those glasses on.
Might have some interesting side effects for Playboy magazine.
(This is a joke - unless you want to patent this idea. Then it is prior art.)
Bureaucracy loves company.
it happens just as much if not more there and club owners have come to accept that there is only so far you can go..
--- If I were a fish, I'd be wet
Between this, the problems with music/movie/software piracy and copyright abuse and confusion, and even micropayment schemes, it is becoming apparent that technology is fast approaching a point where it will be hard for companies that provide a service, specifically concerning information and even products whose sole purpose is to inform (books and magazines) to continue to justify why we have to pay for the material the book is made out of and the shelves that hold the books and the people that make and stock them when we could do it all digitally. as it becomes easier to store, move and view digital information, business built around the fact that the info had to physically get out there are panicking, how much worse can it get?
I remember when all the newspapers began to publish their work on the internet. Everyone said that none would buy the paper version anymore and that the newspapers would have to charge money for viewing their news on the net.
I think this is these "doomsday" warnings all over again
The problem with any society is that there is always going to be some low life that does not want to work for what they have. Rather they want to take it without appreciation for the investment in time and effort that any thing worth while takes to either manufacture or compensate the creator of that item for. Technology will always facillitate this and will open new pathways for old crimes.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
LMAO (I have read your comment)
I think (IANNALAIPL ) that the open source commubity should do something for you.
What do you think of being the future happy acquirer of a digital camera embedded into a cellphone?
Ask Cowbow Neal for the shipping.
... in Japanese?
They probably caught one person doing it and had to make a big stink about it.
This is pretty bogus if you think about it. Try taking a picture of a magazine page at a news stand and see just how readable it is.
Must be a slow news day in Japan. I guess Godzilla and Gamera are shacking up in Mexico again...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
from recording labels to movie publishers to bookstores, I think companies dealing in "digitizable information" are going to have to seriously reconsider their business model in the coming years
Yeah, high tech cameras, cell-phone detectors, visual monitoring, flash detection, that'll stop those digital shop lifters....but I guess putting plastic covers on magazines would have the same effect
I can't think of anyone in thier right mind that would actually want to try and read these photos rather than the actual magazine/book ?
:)
And if they want to print them out, they'll probably end up spending almost as much as buying the damn thing in the first place, plus the quality will suck.
Ok - so they want to read them on screen - sure, wonderful to read 50 pages of a bit skew maybe slightly blurry text
Storm in a tea-cup.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
Perhaps money intended to be allocated to preventing digital shoplifting would be best invested in or donated to libraries - the books are free to borrow and if there isn't a copy available, you either wait until it's returned or suck it up and buy the book. I mean sweet merciful crap - taking 1000 pictures in a readable quality (a quality you would WANT to read) would amount to like 700MB. That's a hella-expensive phone/camera/mailbox.
...When I read the article, I thought "who the hell is cheap enough to take bad screenshots of a magazine to read it" and then I remembered that Edge magazine costs 12 fricking euros and they had an E3 special feature with a different edition for each platform, plus an E3 coverage edition.
That was something I was really interested in, then I realised that with the money I was about to spend on videogame magazines I could actually buy a videogame.
Expunging the brains of people who's memories contain unlicensed copyrighted material?
I'm not too current on cell phones (I still use an original StarTac) but do these things have a high enough resolution to take a good snapshot of a page of a book or magazine? From the demos I've seen, I'm guessing the resolution of the cameras found on most phones is 640x480 at most.
Is this really a problem or is this just some case where *one* crazy guy walked into a bookstore and started taking snapshots with his phone (or camera)?
What about those savants with photographic memory? I'm sure their mental images have much higher resolution than a camera phone. Extrapolating, what about those with good aural memory who can playback a tune they heard, or even transcribe it onto musical score?
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
How the hell do they manage to read these magazines after taking quick pictures in "don't get caught" mode with these crappy cameras ?
We had this Slashdot-post yesterday... Maybe it's just DARPA that needs to bring a solution to this!
In some cases it might just come in handy. If you are interested in one specific article but do not want to buy the entire magazine, you just snapshot that article.
It sounds like people tend to try and get what they want, instead of what is offered. People got used to the WWW in a way that, if you don't like it, you zap away to another browserpage. Apparently, if magazines wish to survive they have to be that flexible, but they can't be in the paper-format. Which is why people found a way to be that flexible using technology.
You don't need to see my
They can go to all this effort or just goto the library and then get a copy for free and read it in the comfort of their own home or am I missing something?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I thought mine was the only one. It's funny though, I don't remember how it looked yesterday.
We have the RIAA "protecting" music. The MPAA "protecting" video. Now we have potential easy copyright infringement of articles and pictures.
First question.....What organization is going to "protect" the owners of this usage?
There is nothing new here. We have had this problem since the first Xerox machine. The limitations put in place were very small. Personal use only, limited distribution and restricted usage. Pretty simple.
Now we have the possibility of FUD being tossed around. Such that publishers may lobby the US Congress for new laws and restrictions.
There may be a time when cell phone service providers may provide a list of users with camera/cell phones to the publishers.
This is just making my skin crawl..........
Wait a minute....I'm going to photograph all my Playboys......:)
First of all, is 1 page of a magazine (or 3, or 4, or 10) really worth this much hooplah? Who's going to stand there and photograph every page...? I just don't see how this could EVEN be a problem... at least with mp3s/pirated movies you can see WHY someone would do this, but who the heck wants to open tons of images to read a lame magazine article that you can probably get online in a number of minutes? Assanine, totally assanine
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
e hard for companies that provide a service, specifically concerning information and even products whose sole purpose is to inform (books and magazines) to continue to justify why we have to pay for the material the book is made out of and the shelves that hold the books and the people that make and stock them when we could do it all digitally. as it becomes easier to store, move and view digital information, business built around the fact that the info had to physically get out there are panickin
I agree with that!
The local newspapers' articles were light on content so I can't say for sure, but I suspect the main "violators" are teenage kids who don't have a lot of pocket money in the first place. That aside, though, this has all the markings of an industry not being able to cope with technology. The main "victims" seem to be information magazines and books--restaurant guides and whatnot--but given that the same information is already available with a quick Internet search, I fail to see what effect disallowing pictures would have on readers, other than driving them away. I guess alienating your customer base is the "in" thing these days...
(I'll save my comments that you could do this just as easily with pen and paper for another post.)
Why didn't I think of that. Those Japanese always come up with the really cool ideas first! And to think, all this time I've been using the copy machine in the public library.
http://www.buyradardetectors.com/Products/Photo-Ra dar-Red-Light-Cameras.aspx
Just spray this on every page
Aside from someone (the newspaper? the publishers?) calling this "digital shoplifting", thus implying a crime, I see nothing worse than rudeness.
I was wondering, if instead of a phone camera, what if you just walked in with a real, good camera and started clicking away? And on the subject, what if you had a digital camera that encrypted the photos on the fly, so that there would be no evidence of what you may or may not have in there. Is there "self incrimination" protection that permits you to withhold encryption keys?
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
It may decrease sales of the magazine, but all a magazine publisher need do is envelope the mag. in plastic (like some others already have been doing).
Or maybe, they could just start making a restaurant-menu-style magazine with brief summaries of the current month's articles; the consumer views that menu at the magazine aisle, then receives the actual magazine after purchasing it from the cashier.
Here in Australia, there's been a fuss about people taking camera phones into gym change rooms. One of the current affairs TV shows did an "expose" (pardon the pun) where they showed just how easy it was for a woman reporter to go into a gym change room with a hidden cell phone; we got to see lots of pixellated naughty bits on TV while we were eating dinner.
Given this, I can see that camera phones will get killed off in the near future, before they get a chance to become deeply entrenched. At the moment, there's no real "killer app" for these devices and not huge market penetration, so I wouldn't expect a massive public outcry if governments were to ban either the phones themselves or legislate to stop phone networks carrying MMS data (which would be as good as banning the phones themselves).
Okay, where to start:
1) magazines are insanely priced here in Japan. A general purpose one (say, equiv to cosmo) would be 700 yen (think 6 dollars). A specialty one, say an hobby related RC magazine is a whopping 1,800 yen (about 15 dollars)*
2) generally all stores you can go in and read, but you have to stand there and do it - that has never prevented hordes of people from standing by the magazine racks and browsing through everything; japanese people are usually very accustomed to be on their legs, many having to stand on the train for commute and walk between the trainstation and their destinations
3) Interestingly, the porn sections in japan are not shrinkwrapped - and I do wonder if this is where the digital shoplifting takes place more than anywhere else: while it's fine and good to look at naked ladies standing next to an obasan browsing through summer-cooking recipies, where you really want to be is the privacy of your home with such magazines (let's be realistic here). So I can imagine that being a good candidate for such "theft." Of course, the obasan next to you might be stealing recipies too, but frankly the phones don't have THAT good of resolution - text won't come out.
now - you can stand and browse magazines ANYWHERE, including convenience stores (which, coincidentally, have adult sections - so if you suddenly have an urge to see pictures of naked woman at 3am, 7-E is the place to go), but nowhere I know have sit-down drinking coffee type.
side note: the "adult section" should probably include PC games section, which, as far as I can tell, is by far occupied with hentai-themed games than anything else. But none of them is censored or in a separate area. stupid american "decency laws"
other side note: the real popular stuff, they usually shrink wrap - this include popular comics, and game-hintguides, etc...
* last note: there is no such thing as subscription, or subscription discounts in japan: you can get a subscription, but then the book seller where you get it from would just mail you the said magazines on an interval and charge you cover price plus postage (ok maybe 5% discount). silly, eh? no wonder people "steal" the content.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Stores have the right to restrict whether you can or cannot take pictures on their premises: if they see you taking a picture, they can ask you to leave, or they can prohibit cameras on their premises altogether.
But that's all they can do. Being able to keep you from taking pictures doesn't mean that the act of taking pictures itself would be illegal. In fact, the article itself states that it is not.
This basically means that stores have a choice: disgruntle their customers or live with it. It doesn't sound like a big problem to me.
I knew there was a good reason not to have a camera in my phone. Now I'll never want to get one.
Did you get one? Did you enter the contest? T-Moblie is encouraged you to buy one of these phone-cameras by sponsoring contests. How long before other more nefarious groups do the same? Who will be the first to send in a picture of a crime with a phone-camera? Who will catch a political candidate, a la Gary Hart, with a phone-camera, etc, etc?
People won't pay for what they don't value, and ultamatly, as technology progresses and if control of that technology stays in the hands of people, we'll begin to see new kinds of media such as people throwing up e-newspapers and instead of asking for payment, ask for donations.
The store owners are simply angry becuase an old system they've been using for years is finally beginning to fade away into obsolecence. What people are doing isn't even a crime; as far as the law is conserned you can take all the pictures you want in public in america you want. If you go into a store, it's considered rude to try to make a copy of something that way like it's rude to stand there and read the magazine in the store without buying it.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Your wish has come true :)
No, seriously, this might actually enhance the word-of-mouth publicity for certain magazines. If I were a porno magazine owner in Japan, (let's face it, I bet porno is the first thing people are copying), I'd embed the magazine logo and its url in each photograph worth taking.
And before banning anything, I'd also run some numbers on the effect of digital cameras on the marketplace. Here in the US, Barnes&Noble and Borders let us open and read books for hours on end. In Europe, some book chains have started doing this as well (I've read many books that way). This practice seems profitable for them, otherwise, I don't think they would be doing it.
I live in Japan. I can't imagine that this makes any significant difference in peoples buying habits. People already spend lots of time reading magazines in 7-11 and Lawsons and similar convenience stores, with no intention of buying in the first place. I'm sure this is a natural extension of that habit. I doubt if its ever to actually steal or retain the original information. Its probably more like jotting down a note. Also, people spend lots of time holding their open phones facing outwards sending email! So, I would think its difficult to distinguish when someone's taking a picture, and when someone's just emailing their friend. Finally, I think in Japan the notion of intellectual property and the illegality of it is not as severe as it is in the states. Its more a social issue, and I can't imagine any laws developing from this, or similar IP issues.
No newsstand or any other specific place was cited. No quotes from anyone who actually did it or actual "victims" were used. The closest anyone comes is the one who said that she took pictures out of a hair style catalogue to a hairdresser to avoid taking the actual (heavy) book. A human face is the sort of thing highly compressed low-res images do best. There's a very big difference between this (which probably is fair usage and grabbing a magazine full of text and images frame-by-frame.
Hand scanners might make sense, but low-res mobile phone cams?
How many newsstands are going to let a cell phone user stand and photograph every page a 100 page magazine? What's the quality going to be like? JPGs including text images are rather hard to read unless a very low level of compression is used. Are mobile phones that much better at handling text detail in uploadable pictures? More to the point, isn't the pixel count in a mobile phonecam low enough that reproducing copy that might be typeset at 1200-2400 dpi is sort of hopeless?
What's the billing per image as uploaded via mobile? At more than 10 cents USD / frame, it would be generally cheaper to buy the magazine even assuming the user's time is worth nothing.
Has anyone actually seen this done and what the results look like?
If this really is a serious concern, spend the extra penny and shrinkwrap the suckers. Busting the shrinkwrap is vandalism of merchandise. No new law is needed.
I think some content providers are trying to get some PR support for anti-technology copy control legislation of some sort in Japan... i.e. something that looks good to elected officials who don't think terribly hard about what they're being asked to support.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Digital Shoplifting . . . wow.
WHO GIVES A FLYING FUCK?
Where the hell is the T3 review? It's 14:29am and there's no review.
Time for a mutiny.
as far as the law is conserned you can take all the pictures you want in public in america you want. If you go into a store, it's considered rude to try to make a copy of something that way like it's rude to stand there and read the magazine in the store without buying it.
Uh, no. Copyright infringement isn't legal just because it's done in public. Even if it were, inside a store is private property. That's why store owners can kick you out if you stand around and don't buy the magazines.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
They'll need a whole new Orwellian pseudo-crime-name for that... I suggest "digital molestation of kittens".
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
They just want to feel like James Bond... or Peter Graves.
Tonight on Biography, should you choose to accept it, you must retrieve a copy of the enemy's secret plans. Though their headquarters looks like a normal bookstore, do not be fooled. Every moment you spend within those walls, their operatives will be watching you, andpaying special attention to your consealed cameras. They've already been alerted to the briefcase camera, so you'll have to make do with the cell phone model. As usual, if you or any of your team is captured in the course of this operation, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your existance, as well as every having paid for "those magazines".
*honk*
This is my sig. It's prescription, I swear. I need it for reading things... on the other side of things
Um, what is the resolution on those cameras? It can't be very high. How much are you really going to be able to see? The article wasn't too clear, but if it was articles you were taking pics of, you'd have to be pretty close up to have it be readable. If it's just pictures, then who cares? It says the phone/camera "are rising very fast in quality" but seriously, how many megapixels is a cellphone camera? It better be greater than 640x480 for a picture. If your average page is 11.5 inches, that's about 70 dots per inch, vertically on a page. You can't read text from a magazine at 70 dpi. Or you can, but it looks shitty. The small amount of document scanning I have done revealed that the lower the resolution, the harder it is for OCR software to be able to discern letters.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
well, not EVERYTHING.
n ary
what comes to mind right off my head are (in no particular order)
books / magazines
CDs / DVDs
movie tickets
gasoline
fruits
rice
vitamins
statio
postage (delivery fee, let's say)
beer
i think the above list are worse than others... most other stuff, if you know where to look, can be bought for reasonable prices.
what's CHEAP are
cigarettes
low-quality sake (rice-wine)
RC parts (that are made in japan)*
*it seems that either customs makes a fortune on these, or the overseas resellers does - but either way expect to pay double for the same stuff overseas, or at least in europe - so i hear.
what's equivalent to escort service in the US is usually between 85-100 dollars per incident; (maybe all such establishments do price fixing?) I have no idea how much is escort service in the US, so determining if it's cheap or expensive is left as an excercise to the reader.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
if someone didn't spend so much money on the cell phone to take 600 pictures of a book, they probably could.. well.. buy the book.
Cell phones with cameras can be bought in Japan for as little as 1 yen, and often not more than about 2,000 yen (around US$18). They're not expensive - the money is made on the call plans. Strangely enough, the call plan charges do not differ depending on what type of phone you get.
I grab my clie, find books I like, snap a shot of the ISBN, and look it up online. I could just write it down, but what's the difference?
http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/news/2003/98/news10. html
So with the removable media, you don't need to upload any of the pics through the phone.
However, a few months ago there was one of these legal advice shows on Japanese telly, with the case of someone reading the mag in the shop and phoning some number from an ad, and the legal opinion of the show was that since the mags are open and readable for free, it was OK. Although the shop keeper can still kick you out for whatever reason, no law has been broken. Therefore, by extension snapping the page is possibly a copyright offense, but between you and the publisher, not the shop. By extension, if you use barcodes from the mag, that should be OK too.
What do you think I've been doing with this photographic memory of mine for the last 47 years...
All your book racks belong to us!
""
The Fish is your Friend. (I am aware that the above is likely to be highly insulting and/or sensual. Please read aloud at your own risk.)
-preview edit
Oops, that didn't work too well (stupid slashcode!) However, the English translation of that Japanese saying is "Compilation of mountain from mol hill," so there you go.
- the magazines are too expensive
- porn-related and other lame jokes
- it's not "stealing" it's "infringement"
- and so on..
(I'm surprised i haven't seen anybody screaming about corporations have abused 'fair use' yet).Now, this is slashdot, so I shouldn't be surprised, but I was hoping against hope that for one /. would actually live up to its own tripe and condemn the violators while not blaming the technology. In fact, I was hoping against all hope that somebody might actually suggest a credible scheme or two to curb such behavior. "Japaneses publishers should lower their prices" is not a credible scheme.
Do we have anybody with any credible schemes to prevent this, short of shrink-wrapping magazines, which sounds like sort of a cop-out?
Sue me.
Here in Pakistan, foreign books and magazines start at 10 dollars (no matter what the actual price) and go up to 50 dollars. Local books are priced from 5 to 25 dollars. Here, a middle class salaried person makes around a 100 dollars or less a month. He/she has to support a family. You can imagine that books are the last thing they are every going to buy. Even for the well off, buying a book is something which has to be planned in advance, budgeted, then finally bought. Since we have low literacy rates here, there isn't much local content of high quality available. Magazines are one thing, but as long as books are priced beyond your typical consumer, there is something wrong with the business model. If the costs have been covered in the first world then there should be cheaper priced editions available in the rest of the world. The problem is not that playboy is too expensive, it is that technical books and magazines are priced well beyond reason. Our govt. is too blame also as they do not do anything at all about getting books into the country, providing translations etc. Anyways my point was, over here our main source of new content is Piracy. either someone gets one copy and reprints it here, or they get a scanned copy from a agent/pirater abroad etc. etc. So the more piracy going on the more stuff we get to read. The choice isn't about pirating or buying. It's about being able to read the damn things. Pakistan has a developing IT industry, and 99% of the students don't have enough money to buy ONE copy of a typical academic book per year.
When you copy content, OTOH, the content provider isn't really out any money, excepting the ephemeral "possible sale" that he lost to you, since you might have purchased the content rather than copying it. Then again, perhaps you couldn't afford that magazine anyway, so there would have been no sale after all! And regardless, they still have possession of the magazine, and can sell it to another customer.
To reiterate:
OK, obviously you can't phone-copy a whole magazine, just a few of the pages you like the best, say the latest fashion shots, or whatever.
But. How about starting a club; 26 people in it. You take turns buying the magazine, scanning it on your home scanner, and then publishing it on a private homepage. Then you just have to pay for the mag every 2 years, and you still get to read every issue, in your home, with high quality picture.
- 640x480 is enough?
- where can I find a cam-phone in the UK with a better res?
A blog I run for the wealth
one of these days people will start recording music they hear on the radio on so called "tape recorders" which enables them to listen to the music again and again without paying for it. The industry is doomed...
Well, I'm always reading posts about the failure of the law to keep pace with technology, usually with the subtext (expressed or otherwise) that what's needed is for government basically just to butt out of the entire area of information transmission, content protection etc. (apart from dumping on Bill Gates' head, obviously: that seems to be okay). Maybe, though, the lawmakers should "keep up" by redrawing the theft / copyright violation distinction in the other direction.
In the past, property - including stuff which might now be described as Intellectual Property - was pretty much all physical, or at least had a physical manifestation (a book, for instance, or an artwork). Copying that property essentially entailed manufacturing it from scratch, with all the associated costs of production and distribution. While you could produce a cheap version of copyrighted material and market it in competition with the "official" product, the relative quality of the two would be evident to the buyer (all those bootleg "live" cassettes I bought back when I was a student, for example).
Nowadays there are companies who produce, in essence, nothing but information. That may be music or software or analysis of some kind; but whatever it is, it has no physical manifestation. Easily available technology allows this information to be replicated exactly, with no differentiation in quality from the "official" version. Yet that information clearly cost something to produce. Real money was spent in the creative or production process (and it doesn't matter how much went to each of the parties involved, so long as everybody got what they were entitled to on the basis of agreements freely entered into; so don't be whining about the RIAA and the artists' share) and the producer can only hope to secure a return on that investment if he can control distribution of the product. Creation of perfect copies from which the producer derives no benefit clearly represents a loss to him. Perhaps we should start recognising this as theft rather than as copyright violation, because the alternative is to say, in effect, that it is impossible to steal from these companies.
Anyone who has been to a bookstore in Japan (or convenience store for that matter) knows that Japanese people just read them in the store and leave them there anyway. Now they take pictures of magazines they wouldn't buy anyway, so what?
I also live in Japan and on the NHK news(sorry couldn't find the video clip) they showed people copying magazines. I think that the news/press release headline was lost in translation. I also think they are targeting magazines. No one is going to take 1000+ photos of a book. Yes it is true at every book store you see a mob in front of the magazine rack and rarely you see someone buy one. This story is highlighting the start of bigger problems with the marriage of cell phones and cameras. I can't wait until these unknown troubles start to come to the US. Up-skirting couldn't be easier (T.T)
[Bart and Lisa are reading a magazine at the Kwik-E-Mart]
Apu: "Hey, hey, this is not a lending library! If you're not going to buy that thing put it down or I'll blow your heads off! "
Why pat down? There have been numerous items of news on people who've come up with devices to block cellphone signals. I believe there was a Slashdot story a few years ago about a guy who came up with wooden panels for movie theatre seats, etc. that could completely block cell signals.
... ), and the idiots.
This is what we need. Just last week I was in Barnes and Noble and some dimwitted, inconsiderate ignoramus was chatting loudly on her mobile. I consider the bookstore to be like the library - it should have a certain level of quiet. Having yammering idiots with cell phones stuck to their heads ( which are often stuck up their asses in return ) yacking away kind of defeats all that.
By blocking the cell signal outright, you'd eliminate the Cameras ( from what I've seen alot of these camera phones lack the storage to do a picture locally - rather, they send them off to a server for storage almost immediately
Golf is insanely priced in Japan. Magazines seem fairly reasonable, given the cost of living in Japan in the first place.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I shop this way !! I don't take pictures to read later, but take a picture of the cover or an picture that catches my eye (usualy a new product in an add) or something else I would like to buy (tearinng through Ikea with a camera). I almost always have my S110 with me.
The camera phone would have been great in one situation - I did emergency shopping for my wife - take a bunch of pictures, e-mail them, go back and buy what she wanted. I asked the store clerks, they just thought it interesting.
They should install a webcam surveillance system to monitor them.
raywright111@hotmail.com
you can download a webcam monitor at http://www.geocities.com/raylito/sentry.zip
Cheers,
Ray
The question of 'digital shoplifting' is an interesting one, but it comes in direct conflict with other well-established rights (or rather, non-rights).
Any person who goes out in public can expect that at some point someone may take a photograph of them. Maybe accidentally (as in the background) or on purpose as the subject. Anybody has the *RIGHT* to drive by your house and take a photograph of it (or whatever happens to face the street; fence, gate, whatever). In a public place, there is no expectation of privacy and no moral or legal standing to prevent someone from taking photographs. (Though there are some places where taking photos of "private skin" or underwear without the owner's knowledge is illegal.)
What if I happen to want to make a "photo-blog" that consists of high-res snapshots of my entire day taken at 1 minute intervals with a mounted head camera? Can the store prevent that? What happens when 3.1 megapixels can fit in a little under-hat-brim camera? What they gonna do then?
The only viable long-term solution that does not trample on someone's personal right, or the general public's rights, is to use simple measures to prevent IP rights (against copying) from being violated in the store. A sticker on the edge (break the seal you buy it or get arrested for distruction of property) or shrink wrap or something of that nature is the only way to go.
If they think techonlogy is going to not get to a point where people can easily gather that detail of information, they are flat out dumb.
If you take a moment to think about the reality, before hitting the reply or comment button. This really falls into the category of calling Wolf before you've sighted one. The truth is that the cameras in Mobile Phones are so pathetic that they phone companies should be charged for false advertising when they sell the market the product. You can't photograph anything which is usable, the chances of being able to actually make sense of a printed page photographed with a mobile phone camera, is absolutely zero. The story posted a week or so ago, about banning mobile phones from public swimming pools, falls into the same category. Take a photo of anyone with a mobile phone, and you'd be lucky if you can tell if it was a boy or a girl. As for reading any text from a magazine ... good luck.
At the best, this is bad reporting.
At the worst, it is scare-mongering.
Sadly, the media all over the world, seem to be blindly follow the leader. There is one minor problem here, they don't know who is leading.
I travel to washington DC from time to time and like to visit the gift shops at the smithsoneon museums. The one in the basement of American History has a particularly good collection of books for sale. If the book is reasonable, I buy it. If it's overpriced, I take out the digital camera (not an unusual thing to have in a musuem) and snap a photo of the ISBN number then visit Half.com when I get back to the office and buy it, often for half of what I saw it for in the bookstore.
This is the only reason I can see for having a camera equiped phone, a different sort of notepad.
I think Senator Hatch has something to do with this.
Just imagine. You are "digitally shoplifting" and all of a sudden
your cellphone begins to glow, the screen displays an image of Hatch's head in front of Crossbones, Your hear the most evil ringtone, the Macarena., As you get up to run, your phone explodes, riddling your body with small chunks of Nokia shrapnel.
You fall to the ground, and before you pass out, you hear a weird voice, exclaiming loudly, "That'll teach him."
Error 407 - No creative sig found
...purposely "accidently" dropping their mobile phone/camera next to women wear dresses/miniskirts just to get a cheap upskirt pic. I tell you, this has got to stop!
I can't afford a sig!
Someone takes a picture for a hairdresser? ..really...how much volume are they losing for that?
Sounds like they have the same lawyers we have over here--turn "not probably impossible" into "happens all the time and it's a serious problem."
This is completely stupid.
People who don't want to buy the magazines READ them in the store.
What are they going to do? Photograph a magazine, take it home, print it out, and read it on the crapper?
Seems a lot of work to save $3.95--especially for someone who can affoard the latest cell phone.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Huh?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I don't want to sound like the kill joy, laughing at everyone's book photo taking fun, but I've actually tried stuff like this. It's not hard to get away with, but I consider my time pretty valuable. That's the big reason I think this kind of behavior is just plain silly.
Do you have any idea how long it takes to copy a book this way? Not to mention that this really isn't what the cameras on the phones are meant to do, so the quality of it is going to be lousy. Wasted bandwidth storing and sending... etc. I have a hard time believing this is a serious problem anywhere.
Going out of your way to go after people who are going out of their way to do something stupid is... well... stupid.
If anyone ever got an entire 400-700 page book by taking a picture of it, I applaud them. They must have had an awful lot of time on their hands.
Isn't there some kind of award for that?
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Kenji Takahashi, an official at the Japan Magazine Publishers Association
Isn't that the casino owner/Yakuza warlord in GTA III? It's nice to see he got out of that mess with the Cartel.
I'd image someone could only be patient enough and have enough time to take a picture of one article...guess that proves that most mags only have one good article....kinda like music CDs only have one good song. hmmmm...
seriously reconsider your ethical and moral outlook and stop stealing from everyone you ungrateful, cheating cocksucker?
I tried out a cannon a70 3 megapixel camera at the library and with good lighting you can get readable images from 8 point font.
I thought about using the digital camera to take picutres of some of the reference books which are not available for checkout.
I forget where, but it isn't so much that people are standing at Japanese newsstands copying the entire magazine, but (for instance) if our "Digital Shoplifter" sees a picture they like, of an outfit, a hairstyle, or what have you, they take the picture and share it with their friends, instead of purchasing the magazine, taking it to each friend, and showing them the picture in question.
Of course, if it became socially unacceptable to do that, you could just send a text message, i.e. Italian Vogue, pg 133, upper left picture, would that look good on me?
Then your friends would just have to mosey on down to the newsstand, find the mag in question, and look at that page. But that's just a suggestion, of course.
Actually this is the perfect answer. If the shop owners get a digital camera, a big one with a wicked obnoxious flash on top and when folks are reading (or phone photo'ing) magazines all he has to do is walk up and start flashing that monster xenon bulb connected to his digital camera at them. Pictures of them gathered around a nudie magazine, pictures of their butts, pix of the look on their faces ...
... In this case, I can see where the lookie-loo magazine readers would never come back.
Native American lore says that when you take someone's picture you capture a part of their soul. There is a very significant psychological impression of having a camera flash in your face, the stronger the flash bulb, the stronger the impression
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
If I want a book/magazine/etc. go to Books-A-Million or something, grab a (book|magazine), head over to their coffeeshop, and sit around for an hour digesting whatever seems interesting. If it's good then I'll probably buy it. Otherwise I just had a nice tasty coffee and some up-to-date reading.
How is this any different from taking a photo of a couple pages? In theory my method is worse since I fully digest short volumes while there, whereas these camera guys are getting crappy photos of magazines. Big whoop.
Isn't this why the coffee costs $3 to $5 a cup? TO make up for the books/mags you read while in the store. I always do this at Borders.
It seems one of the initial reactions is that people have a hard time believing that people would take the time to photograph a 100 page magazine. However, probably what is going on is that people are photographing that either that one good article or that really hot babe in the latest swimsuit issue.
How many times have you bought a magazine that you would waste time copying it from cover to cover? If you go to the library and make copies out of a magazine, do you photograph the whole magazine? No, it's usually just a couple of pages.
I'm an avid magazine reader and purchase one to three magazines per month. From experience, I know that most magazines have only one or two good articles in them at most and the rest is just filler (sounds familiar, doesn't it?). With the price of magazines going as high as four to five bucks, if you can tell there is only a couple of good articles in the magazine, it is better to stand there in the store and read the articles...or in this case, photograph the article.
Also, for all the copy protection schemes in the works, everything published on paper is a circumvention device! It's kind of hilarious when you think about it. The only thing that doesn't OCR well is text published on different colored backgrounds, like a magazine article with the text featured over a background picture...but even with that, there is the option of typing it in by hand (acceptable solution for a short magazine article).
I can just about envision digital versions only because it will be easier to implement copy protection than it will with a POPC (Plain Old Paper Copy).
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
But then the clerks would have to look at them and clerks don't pay to do that. It seems that no honest means of selling magazines exists except direct mail with a brown wrapper and self destruct mechanisms so that no one else can see your publication.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Really this is the source of most of the discussions about "piracy" or "copyright infringement". Society as a whole just needs to adapt to these new methods of information transmission and reception. Got a problem with people "digitally pirating" your magazine, make a nice high-quality digital version, put it for download on a fast server, and charge a decent amount for it. At least that way, a few people will pay for the convenience of the original. And now you've saved the price of printing it.
Governments should realize, no matter HOW much effort they put into trying to control information, the billions of people interested in subverting those methods will always triumph over the thousands that attempt to rule them. It's a simple matter of the inginuity and power of masses. Democracies especially take note, those people are supposedly your constituants.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
The only thing I can imagine this being useful for is playing 'secret agent' - What are you going to do with 800x600 pictures?
:)
Now, on the other hand, with a C-Pen 800C, you could do some real damage.
this technology matures:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/606938.stm
I remember when all the newspapers began to publish their work on the internet. Everyone said that none would buy the paper version anymore
Nonsense.
Would you buy fish and chips wrapped in a CRT? Oh, wait...
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
Obligatory smart ass reply:
:D
When was the last time you met a low life who actually believed they were a low life? (posters to slashdot don't count)
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
Explanations are not excuses.
/. group think, it is the law in most countries. IANAL but at least I can understand simple legal concepts, unlike others.
/. does not have to conform to your lame expectations, because after all there is no /. but individuals expressing varying opinions of which this website is just a thermometer.
Magazines are indeed expensive. And more so if you can copy them cheaply. The moment reality gets in the way of economics people making a living of the old model better adapt or perish. It is not people excusing something, it is reality screaming: " for chrissakes, printed content has become a commodity". Don't believe me? Well, magazines and newspapers seales have being going down for a while, in many metropolitan areas noy you receive newspapers for free when you take the train or the underground. Magazines costing 5 bucks on this environment are clearly overpriced.
In spite of whatever you wish, think, or believe, copyright infringement and theft are two different crimes, otherwise they would not be legisltaed and penalized as such. It is not
Finally
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Things like this attack the heart of capitalism
I'm missing your point. The title piqued my interest, but I can't tell what you think is attacking capitalism. (Disclaimer: I didn't RTFA)
I think this is capitalism at work. Technology has progressed and made print media (somewhat) obsolete. Business and government are still trying to make heads or tails of the situation, but capitalism supply and demand will shape the future of distributed media.
Xerox wasn't the end of book and magazine publishing, and we don't get all our printed media Xerographically, but I'm fairly sure it influenced the cost/benefit ratio of many publications. It also allowed much smaller publishers to distribute newsletters and other small media at a cost effective rate.
People won't pay for what they don't value, and ultamatly, as technology progresses and if control of that technology stays in the hands of people, we'll begin to see new kinds of media such as people throwing up e-newspapers and instead of asking for payment, ask for donations.
Slashdot, for example? See, I'm not sure if you're saying this is bad or good. I see it as good capitalism. If the product isn't valuable, then it falls by the wayside. Information is valuable, entertainment is valuable, but in the past we paid for the creation and distribution costs, but technology is making possible nearly negligible distribution costs, but the publishing companies aren't using the technology and passing the savings on to us. So we're revolting a bit.
The images are tiny and of poor quality. If a blurry 120x90 pixel image of a 1200 dpi origional is not a fair use, I don't know what is.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Imagine having a pair of glasses with a camera/microphone at the outside corner of each lens. You wear these everywhere you go, everything you see/hear gets recorded, you drop them in their holder next to your bed every night and they dump their contents to your personal memory backup. I'd start using something like this in a heartbeat, with appropriate protections (encrypted, password based on my biometrics, Fifth Amendment protected).
This kind of thing will be feasible in ten to twenty years if Moore's law continues to hold.
And a few years after that, it may be possible to have something like this, without the glasses - the microphones are implanted in your earlobes, the camera sits inside your eye on your blind spot, and you can't take it off...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Isn't this why the coffee costs $3 to $5 a cup? TO make up for the books/mags you read while in the store. I always do this at Borders.
$3 to $5 a cup? I've never seen that. The Starbucks inside bookstores seem to charge regular prices (which is $3-$5 a cup if you buy some fancy espresso drink). I don't think the bookstore gets a kickback from the coffeeshop, even though they should. But then of course the publishers of the books should get a kickback from the bookstore.
-a
Pretty soon you won't be able to go in with your retinas attached. Lest you see something and carry it out with you in your brain.
And GOD FORBID you go around telling people what you've seen. Yup, I for one am certainly glad that the Bush administration will be replacing all american eyeballs with gov't approved ones. Just so they can keep an eye on terrorists mind you. Not to invade your privacy, just the terrorists.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Cell Phone cameras must be a hell of a lot better in Japan than they are in the States. And transmission time (not latency) had better be a hell of a lot better too. Otherwise this is just an absurd way to steal a book or content.
Geez, just buy the damn thing. What's wrong with people?
David Whatley
When I was in college, I would regularly do research by finding the shelf or shelves in the library that I needed and browsing through a huge number of books on them. One day, a guy in a wheelchair (who couldn't even get between the shelves, let alone browse the high shelves) was with an official librarian who went with him and found the two books he'd written down and brought them to the end of the stacks and handed them to him and left. I asked him if he wanted anything else, and he said "Everything," so I brought the entire shelf over and put them on a table so he could browse them. It was a simple thing to do and he seemed to appreciate the simple effort. Since then, I've been very aware of how often I originally reach for one thing, but wind up with the book that's next to it.
Man, there's a lot of it out there today!
Magazines are destroyed if they don't sell; the covers returned to the publisher for a refund. So the bookstore doesn't lose a dime, unlike if an actual product was stolen. As such, this IS not the same as shoplifting. The only money being 'lost' is that of a potential sale, which probably wouldn't happen anyway, since the 'thief' is clearly not concerned with the content of the article, (since you can't hope to read comprehensive text from a 120 x 120 dpi JPG image.)
As for the publisher, point of purchase sales, except in the cases of maybe the 5 or 6 leading magaaines, don't account for ANY significant amount of income. The publishers make virtually ALL their money from the advertisers. So they have no reason to care! --Heck, the simple fact that ANYBODY is bothering to leaf through their rag looking for pictures of dresses to scan, should make them happy.
All in all, this sounds like just another dumb excuse to clamp down on society with ever-increasing thumbscrews of social control.
Thank goodness people are wise enough to impeach stupid and dangerous leaders.
-FL
I had a long post but to sum it all up in a few words
You are an idiot.
Well, now it seems we have a world where everyone has a mini spy camera.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
People do this all the time at the Barnes & Noble where I used to work, except they would plop down in the art section with a stack of books, whip out a bigass digital camera and start snapping away. When politely informed that they were breaking the law and would be removed from the store if they continued they got amazingly indignant, like we actually WERE a library.
Sometimes I cannot believe the ballsiness of people.
Triv
The "Starbucks" within Barnes & Noble bookstores is actually not a separate business entity from B&N. B&N licenses the use, name, core products, and marketing materials from Starbucks. The people who work in the cafe are employees of B&N and get a paycheck from B&N.
As a matter of fact, many of the ingredients and equipment used to make the drinks sold in the B&N cafes is not the same ingredients and equipment you'll find in a real Starbucks cafe.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
If they guys need something to do, how about getting that incredibly silly censorship law Japan has changed. I'm tired of seeing big stinking pixels in my Japanese porn.
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Real bad idea
Trying to pin some abitrary felony on someone using part of the penal code way outside it's intended use is pretty much first step toward police state.
Try and Google Sedition and you will get a good feel for the risk involved.
Help fight continental drift.
My favorite geek newspaper is C't (If you speak German, this must be the best "Computer technik" newspaper in Europe).
If I must take a shot of each potentially interesting page, that would be 200 pages... every two weeks... There are not so much ads in it.
Better pay the 3 euros and go home with it!
Christophe (Don't hesitate to point out my spelling and grammar mistakes, I want to learn - Thanks).
What makes me wonder is these people are wasting not only thier time but thier cellular airtime? What's thier mindset. "COOL...the new 'Guitar Slayer' magazine is out." **click,click,click** "Cool got it all but now I have 5 minutes left for actual phonecalls."
Let 'em do it I say...they wanna waste thier time and money...fine by me.
Michael
To allude authorities who will be looking for me in the bookstore
While you're there, make sure you look at a dictionary...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
I mean, come on. To view the stuff you took a photo of, you have to look at it on your computer. And if you're going to be reading stuff off of a computer screen anwyays, why would you want to be reading outdated stuff from a magazine when you can get more interesting and accurate stuff from the web?
The main benefit to a printed medium is that you can easily take it with you to places, like the can. To do that with this, you'd have to print it all out, and now you're paying for the paper and ink anyway. Where's the benefit?
Reminds me of the first days of the iPod, where cunning users would sneak in to local computer stores and hijack all of the apps, such as full versions of Final Cut Pro and Office X, on to their iPods - all in a matter of seconds thanks to FireWire! I never tried it myself... I got my pirated software elsewhere!
Reminds of those old 007 movies where he has the mini camera and snaps pictures of top secret documents. With a license to kill I don't think the DMCA bothers him much.
HP made this scanner called the Capshare which did auto stitching of pages and could hold about 100 1-bit text pages in memory. They came out with a color model as well. Unfortunately, they stopped making them in 1999 or 2000. Retail on them was about $500, but were going for $200-$300 on clearance at the end. Now, they sell for $500+ on eBay.com.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Here's an idea from several years back - I couldn't get anyone interested, and there are most likely ethical implications...
Scan barcodes with a mobile device and instantly receive competing price quotes that include shipping costs, sales tax advantages and shipping delays.
This makes the whole world into your showroom. Any, by the way, it dopesn't have to be an item in a retail store or showroom you are scanning, that fits into the discussion of retail imaging.
most places are banning cellphones that have cameras because you don't know that you are being photographed.
From what I've read of those bans, any digital camera that produces noise when the picture is fixed, whether built into a phone or not, is exempt from such bans on silent phones.
Will I retire or break 10K?
All your cellphones are belong to us!!!!
Gamera is good to eat!
He is filled with turtle meat!
We're all eating Ga-me-raaaaa!
I strongly object to the characterization of these people as shoplifters. To me, shoplifting implies a situation where you're taking something (a physical something) away from someone else. Watch out for anti-piracy organizations that equate illegal copying with plain, standard physical theft--they're trying to pull a 1984-style maneuver.
It's true that this sort of copying is, technically IP theft, but when the anti-piracy orgs tell the masses, "bad, evil, nasty people are digitally shoplifting our stuff!!" it sounds much more sinister. This is a blatant attempt by those organizations to vilify something that's probably not that bad.
IMHO, the world would be a better place if these orgs would find ways to adapt rather than bitch and moan about something which is simply an irrevocable truth of the digital age. (I.e. it's really easy to copy stuff over and over and over...)
Furry cows moo and decompress.
dang /.ers
Please cite specific websites to support your theory.
Otherwise, I call horseshit.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
stationary ;)
That's what work is for, right?
I wonder what a Japanese Dilbert would be like.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Dear world,
That's what the world gets! Cameras don't need to be in everything anyway.
Later,
Slashdot Junky
.
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
People also do obnoxious things like this. (good luck slashdotting them)
I'm surprised I haven't seen that photo on Mobile Asses.com yet.
[insert witty comment here]
The culture of skepticism is, I have concluded, one of the most amazingly powerful and effective control mechanisms currently in existence!
Follow along if you will. .
1. I don't care how stupid you want to remain. It's not my job to prove anything to you. If I do, it is because I am feeling gracious and generous. NOBODY automatically deserves convincing evidence EVER. You don't win a prize for staying ignorant.
2. I worked in the magazine industry for several years. I know what I'm talking about. You haven't so you don't. If something in what I say seems fishy to you, then look it up or shut up. Or at the very least, ask nicely for me to provide further info.
3. The internet is not the be-all end-all in evidence. You want to know how the magazine industry works? Go to your local bookstore and ask them. Get on the telephone and call up a magazine distributor and ask them
Gad, I hope you're just a troll, because nobody should be that stupid!
-FL
My point was, and I think that is was pretty clear, that there is very little loss of actual sales because if the magazine only had a few good pictures woth photographing, it wasn't worth the cost of the magazine to the person, and therefore the person wasn't going to buy in anyway, camera or no camera. I now continue by saying that taking these new high quality photographs is not free on these phones because often the only way to see the picture in a larger format is to email it to a computer. Emailing these photos to yourself or even just to a friends phone is not free. Every byte gets billed. And since the person was likely not going to buy the magazine anyway, this revenue is completely new. Of course that is just my opinion. I think it would take scientific unbiased surveys to determine if the camera's actually hurt sales or not.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
As a matter of fact, many of the ingredients and equipment used to make the drinks sold in the B&N cafes is not the same ingredients and equipment you'll find in a real Starbucks cafe.
Hmmm... I'm from Canada, where the most popular bookstore to browse at is called Chapters. As far as I can tell, the Starbucks inside these Chapters stores are full-fledged Starbucks franchises serving regulation Starbucks coffee. In fact, the Starbucks usually has a separate entrance onto the street.
-a
Ultimately what I think we'll see is the decline in the value of traditional physical media. Yeah people think its wrong that people are getting things for free on the internet. Guess what, the internet has made it technologically feasible for me to get something for free that I have had to pay for before. It has reduced the value of your product to me to near $0. This means that I will not purchase your product because I feel it is not worth my money. However, given the opportunity to get it for free, I will take it. While this may not be the most ethical behavior in many peoples views, guess what, times are changing. New generations are growing up with a new sense of value for things. Business models must change, and guess what, people won't be able to charge what they used to for some things. Sorry, thats what happens when technology makes things easier. People think piracy is bad now? Just wait till we live in a world where the only people alive are those who have grown up being able to download music.
Right now there is a big split in the way generations think. There are older ones who have more traditional views and who aren't used to this kind of way of life, and there are the new ones who know nothing but this way of life. Its only a matter of time before things completely change, so either adapt, or die.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Apparently, in Canada, recordable media like CD's have a tax on them, which may be a response to the mp3 p2p downloading thing. If that's the case, it seems possible that digital cameras and those cellphones in question might get a similar tax, some of which would go back to the publishers, writers, etc. Of course, all it takes is one person to copy a publication, and send it off over the net like an mp3 or movie. Then again, people write open software for free. Our society's changing. ...Anyone care to write a book to freely share with us?
Just for the sake of redundancy. . . I clearly know things that you don't. That makes me stronger than you. I am under no obligation to offer my info up for free, but I did anyway. If you don't want to believe me, or investigate my claims, or put them on 'hold' until other/better info comes along into your life. --If you don't even want to be polite. . . Well, fine. That's your problem. I'm still the one who knows more than you. I'm the one with the advantage.
I could prove my knowledge to you, it would be difficult, because you want to see easy websites whereas my knowledge comes from direct experience which cannot be 'hyperlinked', but it could be done. However, it would take a lot of effort and you're acting like an undeserving ass who values and defends his own ignorance. --Who hasn't figured out that society is set up in this way precisely to keep people from advancing.
So enjoy your stagnation. I'm that dot moving away from you on the horizon.
By the way. I do work in fiction.
-FL
You don't get it, it isn't copyright infringement. Taking a picture of something isn't copying it. It can't even be argued becuase we take pictures of advertisements, logo's, books, etc all the time. If I take a picture of someone in a magazine store and I happen to get a rack of magazines, am I infringing on their copyright? The answer is no, taking pictures of anything in public is perfectly legal in america, weither it be for the purpose of copying something or not. It's part of our freedom you need to understand.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
What captialism is and what it's turned into are 2 completly different things. What capitalism is, is a system of trade that awards people based on their level of ambition and how useful that ambition is; it's a system that prey's on the action/reward system our minds work off.
What capitalism has turned into is the unrealistic expectation you can create a rock with googlie eyes and make billions. So what happens is when people don't make their billions they try to lock up their ideas and inventions, and with that our culture as a humanity. Or when their rock makes billions they get greedy and try to get laws passed that outlaw the competing product.
Another problem are corperations, which you can only expect when the ability to communicate and coordinate millions of people come into being. The reason we didn't see a gigantic corperation like microsoft before is becuase of the communiation involved. The reason we see them now is is because of the communication systems. Anyway, as companies grow and inevitably destroy eachother, you're going to get a few eliete companies coming into being and when that happens, you're eventually going to reach the pinnacle omnicorp, which controls the goverment and commerce for the good of money and power. Orwellian much?
The reason people are doing this isn't because they don't value the product; if they didn't value it they wouldn't try to get it for free. On the contrary, they are trying to get something they value for nothing. They don't want to pay for it, which tells me they are fed up with the system in one way or another. This is why it attacks the heart of capitalism; once everyone stops being greedy and comes to the realization that they don't need or even want to be billionairs, that's the end of capitalism and the point where it becomes useless. I'd rather live in a system where the things that make us human, things like creativity, emotion and morals guide what we do instead of money. Unfortunatly, I'm forced into working a job and doing something that I don't neccissarily enjoy when I could be doing something better for myself and better for all of humanity, such as learning a new programming language or learning to solder circutry. Most people don't realize what they can learn in a lifetime and instead do what they are taught; to be dependant on a system and after their "work" is over, to rest by buying junk and hanging out with friends. It's actually really really sad imo, and since the most greedy and ambitious, and smart get into powerful positions you can only expect our society to go down from where it is right now. Once the corperations reach critical mass they get power of the goverment and, well, everything's downhill from there. That's why we need to stop capitalism now, before we're all enslaved through the system; working 16 hours a day like the kids in africa who make gap clothing to earn a measly living, or replaced with robot slave labor. Spend some time thinking about that, and listen to rantradio if you want more ideas, the link's in my sig.
Candy-Coated Knowledge