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Congress Pressures DoJ With PIRATE Part II
Anonymous Pirate writes "Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) have re-introduced the 'PIRATE Act' (pdf) to Congress. According to Ars Technica, the purpose of this act is to get the DoJ to go after individual copyright infringers. It would allow the Department of Justice to bring civil lawsuits instead of criminal ones so that they would be able to prosecute copyright infringers with only a minimal burden of proof, rather than the heavier burden required for criminal prosecution." Took a long time to do a sequel; we first talked about this proposal quite some time ago.
It's important to remember that the EFF can help you when the fight gets to court, but doesn't necessarily help with the prevention of bad laws in the first place. http://www.ipaction.org/ May be a better site to visit, if you want to influence legislators before they pass laws.
If half the people on your block got their homes for free, how could you convince somebody to pay you $250k for YOURS?
Why should someone pay you $250k for your house if other people are able to get theirs for free? What's so fantastic about your house that it's worth so much, while other houses are being given away?
You can't give something away free for those who "can't afford it" and charge the ones that can.
The evidence we have suggests that that isn't true. Firstly, piracy exists, and is very widespread. What are some of the most pirated pieces of software in existence today? I'd hazard a guess that Windows and MS Office are in the top 10. And what pieces of software are some of the biggest money-earners in the software market? Windows and Office seem to have done a fantastic job of keeping Microsoft profitable over the years, even while they pour money into unprofitable markets. It's almost as if the people that can afford to pay hundreds of dollars for them are doing so, even though those that can't afford the arbitrary price tag don't.
What about the latest high-profile example: Radiohead's latest album. They explicitly gave it away for free, and made paying anything at all for it optional. Yet somehow they still made a profit from it. This isn't merely people finding an alternative way of acquiring the IP: this is a case of the owner and creator of that IP saying they don't believe it has any inherent value in and of itself; just pay whatever you think it's worth and can afford.
Another angle: I'm a slashdot subscriber and have been for ages, even though I don't really get anything out of it. Sure, no ads on pages, but I could just use adblock for that. But I like /. and I think the price is quite reasonable for what they offer, and I'm happy to support them in my little way. I periodically donate to subsim.com, because I find the forums useful. Neil (who runs it) pays for the hosting and bandwidth and so forth out of his own pocket, and tries to recoup some of the costs from people who can afford to pay for it, while letting everyone else use it for free.
So I really think your matter-of-fact statement "You can't give something away for free to those who can't afford it and charge the ones that can" is patently bogus. Charity organisations do this all the time. The OLPC project is doing this directly with the "buy one give one" programme.
To many, it's almost outrageous to suggest that music should be paid for.
Well, what's so wrong about that? Music is an easily produced and easily distributed commodity. Think about it. When was the last time you paid someone for having a conversation with you? Even if it was a really useful conversation which gave you great insight or clarity? What, you mean you don't pay people you converse with for their creativity and time when they pass on useful thoughts to you? For shame! How can you expect anyone to spend their time and creativity coming up with new original thoughts if you don't pay for every single one you hear?
Perhaps it's time to adjust our thinking, and face the fact that anything digital is a new economic paradigm. We can literally replicate this stuff an infinite number of times at no direct cost to the creator of the content. I have a torrent of Jimmy Eat World's latest album running on my server which I've uploaded 1,672 times over (make that 1,673 times). The cost to JEW of this: $0.00. That's at least 1,600 people who've heard the album because I haven't gotten around to stopping the torrent yet. Seems like a good deal to me.
I think content producers need to accept that not everyone is going to pay for their content, but that's okay, because not everybody has to. It's enough to simply have enough people pay.
In a way, this has been going on since the first days of commercial radio and TV: most people don't run out and buy everything that's advertised during thei