Kickstarted Veronica Mars Promised Digital Download; Pirate Bay Delivers

ConfusedVorlon writes with word that Warner Bros backed out on their promise of digital downloads for backers of the Veronica Mars film "Backers were promised 'You will receive a digital version of the movie within a few days of the movie's theatrical debut.' Warner Bros are providing a non-downloadable ultra-violet coupon (although Veronica Mars is available for download through other stores). The download is already available on the Pirate Bay. The download is even available on commercial stores. The users have already passed over their $35+. But rather than meet the demand for a DRM-free download, Warner Bros would prefer to return the original pledge to backers who complain.

What does this tell us about how movie studios view the world? There can't be a better indication of willingness to pay than 'they have already paid' — are these the pirates WB fears?"

Comments

Re:Eh.

[Jesrad]

Capitalism is not a behavior and it's also not a social organisation. Capitalism is actually three different and complementary techniques for incorporating the passing of time into economy.

1) because people need different things differently as time passes, and because some things may be available more at some time and less at another, capitalism's first technique is speculation, where you buy stuff when it is less in demand and wait to sell it when it is more in demand. That allows us to buy from our own past, at the expense of some wealth being immobilized.
2) because people tend to like getting stuff earlier rather than later, capitalism's second technique is the interest rate of credit, where a given sum of money right now is traded for a larger sum of money later.
3) because some costs may or may not realize in the future, and you can only know (approximately) how likely they are to happen without knowing for sure they will happen, capitalism's third technique is insurance, where you agregate the costs of risks over several people and multiply it by the odds of those risks, and pool the money into a guaranteed credit for facing those costs.

Governments often use those techniques, and so do individuals who care at least a little about the passing of time. And sometimes, they do the opposite because they don't like the fact that time passes and has very real effects on the world, on wealth and on people, and it generally doesn't end up well.

Sometimes capitalism is also equated with the private ownership of production means, in which only individuals have, each, the exclusive rights (usus, abusus and fructus) to whatever tools and knowledge and resources they own. Left to themselves individual who own production means spontaneously turn to the same three techniques above, mostly because they do improve economic calculations when confronted with the passing of time.

And neither of those three techniques, nor the private ownership of production means, implies that people will take charitable or even rational decisions regarding what to do with wealth or tools or resources. That, my friends, only depends on how virtuous they each are.

Thank you for your attention.