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Piracy More Serious Than Bank Robbery?
An anonymous reader writes sends us to Ars Technica for a dissertation on how detached and manipulative the discussion about copyright is becoming. "NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. 'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'" Ars points out how completely specious that "hundreds of billions" is.
What the hell is this guy on?
I pirate an album and Britney Spears loses 2 dollars. A girl gets violently raped and her entire life is damaged and she may never recover. Which of these two things are more important?
I like muppets.
Don't try to convince a big American corporate guy that his quarterly bonus is less important than the life of the average American. They are completely out for themselves. This is a perfect example of why we can't trust corporations to do the right thing in this country. They are led by greedy, self-serving a-holes like this guy.
Is there any use of posting this article, kdawson? You already know the exact discussion that's going to happen. It's the same discussion that happens twice a day every other time we discuss piracy.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Actually the figure is probably much too low, if one considers the abuse of patents as "intellectual property crime".
Some examples:
* The way patent offices globally have turned the patent system into a pyramid scheme for their friends, printing coupons that are not backed by any state bank and yet are used as collateral to secure huge credits.
* The shakedown of numerous small businesses and large customers for "patent violations" based on legal instruments created by a mafia-style clique of lawyers.
* The wide use of patent "licensing deals" to create cartels that would be illegal and criminal under normal competition law.
* The use of patent "licenses" to tax the use of technology by the public, even though very often the public subsidised the original research.
* The use of "intellectual property laws" (designed and paid for by content industries) to prevent content falling into the public domain.
* The use of said laws to create artificial barriers to free trade, so prices can be raised in specific geographic areas.
* The use of the global patent system to keep the costs of medicines artificially high (even at the cost of millions of deaths)
* The use of the global patent system to prevent free competition in many markets.
* The use of the global patent system to stop alternative energy technologies being developed.
* The use of patents to create conflict and litigation than enriches lawyers and specialists.
And on and on and on... the cost of "intellectual property crime" surely runs into the trillions...
Of course we're supposed to think that when corporations abuse the law, it's a different thing than when individuals do it. Corporations can buy laws, individuals usually can't.
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Cost "the country" hundreds of billions. hmm. dont you mean the entertainment industry? way to conflate you interests with the public good. and way to vastly exagerate your own interests too.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
Today, every single Slashdot reader failed to give me $10. Do you realise that this has cost me and, by extension, the economy, over $10,000,000 for today alone? Over the course of a year, that means that not devoting law enforcement resources to fulfilling my every whim costs me (and the economy. Won't someone please think of the economy?) $3,650,000,000. That's right, well over three billion dollars.
Has any bank robber come close to stealing three billion dollars? Even Nick Leeson only cost Barings $1.4bn. Obviously our priorities are very, very wrong.
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I believe this to be wrong on two points.
Firstly define 'wasn't going to purchase' for me. If I know absolutely 100% that I can not get a piece of software / movie / game for free, I am pretty sure I am much more likely to admit to myself and others that I want it, and will purchase it, than if I have a big demon sat on my shoulder whispering "don't be a mug, you can warez it!".
Most films have trailers, software has demo's (as do games), if you see the demo and wish to enjoy the product for longer, then its pretty hard to argue that you will be getting entertainment or use from it no?
People can NEVER be honest about saying "I wouldn't have bought it" once they have the full thing for free. Our brains are great at backwards-justification. We can easily find all sorts of ways to make what we have done seem justified, we may well even delude ourselves. But that doesn't mean it's true. It's like telling yourself you would have resigned anyway if you get fired, or that she was a pain in the neck anyway when someone dumps you. Anything to make you feel like the good guy.
I spoke to a guy who does DRM for an online game publisher. Once, they rewrote their algorithm which instantly rendered all existing cracks for the games useless. Sales jumped by 40% that month. Why? surely none of those who cracked the stuff would have bought it anyway?
Secondly, your comparison is not accurate. A car is made for a single user, and priced accordingly. A movie, game or application is made with some estimation of sales, based upon the market size and product quality. Nobody makes Photoshop or Lightwave and expects to sell one copy. If you are in the target market, and get use from the product, yet you take it for free, then of course you are affecting the producer of the product. The fact that nothing physical was moved from a to b makes no difference.
People will make all kinds of rationalisation to justify taking other peoples work for free. The problem is, their philosophy never scales up to the whole of society. Why the fuck should I pay to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, it was made anyway, and I probably wouldn't have paid for it right? so what's the harm?
Until everyone thinks that way, in which case the whole business model collapses. That's the problem with people who leech, it works out fine for them (in the short run) but they fuck things up for everyone else.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
I'd say that doesn't hold for those who view the destruction - or at least marginalization - of a particularly bad industry, with its attendant effects on the culture of music, as a desirable long-term consequence. I doubt the demise of top-down music culture counts as a "loss" that "mak[es] everyone suffer."
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
I particularly have a hard time defending the content producers when the pirates provide a better product - ignoring price. If I want a particular song, the music industry will sell me a CD with that song along with several others I don't want, or I can buy a fairly low quality digital copy, probably with DRM in a format I don't like. Pirates offer a variety of formats and quality levels, and you can play their versions on anything you want.
Movies aren't much different. You can buy a DVD, which can only be played legally in authorized devices, or you can download a heavily DRMed copy that - unless you have a media center PC - you're stuck playing on your computer monitor. Pirates offer a variety of quality levels, you can burn them to DVD's if you have the proper software, and play them on anything capable of playing them.
Like I said, I'm not a pirate. I have an older taste in music, so I get most of my CD's used for a couple of bucks. I rent movies and go to the theater on occasion. If the content industry starts offering the same quality of product the pirates offer, but they can't compete in price, then they will have my sympathy. But so long as the content industry refuses to match the pirates' level of quality, and keeping making specious claims like the ones in this article, they get no sympathy from me.
"If there was no way for piracy to take place, people would buy more movies."
And if you were only allowed to buy telephones from AT&T, more people would pay more for AT&T phones. If you were only allowed to breathe metered air from Standard Air Corp, people would be spending a whole lot more for air.
The question is wether paying more for AT&T phones and metered air benefits the economy and market at a whole. Or if a free market could produce better phones cheaper without the monopoly. And if air could maybe be provided to everyone without a high overhead if you dont have hundreds of thousands of people employed to account for everyones breathing...
Yes, denying AT&T a monopoly on phones, and not creating an air monopoly means those companies (or potential companies) will be employing fewer people and they'd 'lose' a lucruative source of income. Allowing them the monopoly, however, means that the ones paying for it will be unable to pay for some other service, costing jobs in _other_ sectors instead. Implementing tranfer systems as monopoly rights is no different from other forms of taxation; it shifts money from one sector to another. The question is wether it's the most efficient way to accompish the purpose and produce the desired good. And frankly, anyone who's read a public filing for any company involved in the IP industries would say no.
The failure of monopolies to produce competetive products cannot be used as a justification for maintaining or strengthening monopoly enforcement.