Depends on whether you're looking at the short-run or the long-run. Agree with parent that, in the short run, extreme punishment destroys value. But any punishment has a deterrent effect in the future: when John Q CEO evaluates the gains from cheating against the expected punishment, the larger that punishment, the lower the likelihood that cheating occurs. How you evaluate the long- vs. short-run implications of punishment is tricky, but if one cares at all about the long-run, one would probably want to increase the punishment over what constitutes reasonable reparations.
That sounds very logical, but the real world doesn't appear to work that way.
Enron's CEO was going to prison, was he not? Yet less than 10 years later, we had Goldman Saks doing the same thing, give or take.
John Q CEO doesn't care if VW gets a huge fine in 5 years, or even goes bankrupt, if he gets $100 million today and gets to keep it.
The other issue is that making the punishment larger only does one thing, makes the punishment larger. Certainty of getting caught is the bigger issue. You can make the penalty as large as you want, but if people don't think they will be caught, then it doesn't matter.
I'd like to share that YouTube video with you, about Mandatory Minimums. The TL;DR version is, our prisons are filled with people serving decades long sentences who didn't think they would get caught.
To quote one line in the video, you could make jaywalking carry the death penalty, it isn't going to stop it if people don't think they'll be caught for it.
Do not misunderstand me, I totally see a future in EV cars.
Will they totally replace gas cars? Not for a long time, if ever, but they will grow slowly to be an ever larger share of the market.
It isn't just price, humans are emotional creatures and range anxiety is an issue and won't be easily overcome.
Yes, I'm well aware that most people don't need a vehicle with tons of range, but the edge cases are not so rare as to be swept under the rug either.
EVs largely need to be second vehicles for the time being, and you largely need a garage in most situations to make use of one. That cuts out at least half the market right there. Fear, "new", change, expensive, etc. all cut out more.
Which explains why plug in EVs were a rounding error in vehicle sales last year, about 1% of the market, give or take a bit. It will go up, but not at the pace the news seems to make it seem. I'd expect it to be around 5% of the market in 10 years, depending largely on how well the Model 3 plans work out.
You should drive some of the newer vehicles, they are a cut above...
Give the Ford Fusion a try, a really nice car all things considered. In many ways, nicer than a Camry or Accord...
GM is still working its way out of the crap dept, but some of the newer vehicles are nice. Their cars have improved leaps and bounds over the past, in fact the new Impala is one of the best cars on the road, from anyone.
If you made it with the intent of distribution, then you're outside of fair use. If you made it for personal use, word it or drove it for 5 years, then sold it when bored, that could be defended under fair use.
It is worth remembering that it is one thing to be right, yet another to pay a lawyer to prove that you're right in a court of law...
Yes, there is some point where it becomes a derivative work, however if you're just attempting to skirt around the edges of the law, I can tell you the courts take a VERY dim view of "game playing" when it comes to the law.
If you should know better, then you should know better.
Judges do not generally have a sense of humor, and such arguments are often not very useful in court.
Source: I've been to court, I've sued people and been sued, it only makes the lawyers money in the end.
"It is sometimes erroneously stated that the Mickey Mouse character is only copyrighted. In fact, the character, like all major Disney characters, is also trademarked, which lasts in perpetuity as long as it continues to be used commercially by its owner. So, whether or not a particular Disney cartoon goes into the public domain, the characters themselves may not be used as trademarks without authorization."
Are you claiming that Disney would have a valid case or only that Disney would bring vexatious litigation? If the former, what cause of action would Disney have against DreamWorks Animation that, say, the Collodi and Kipling estates didn't have against Disney when it released Pinocchio and The Jungle Book within a year after the respective authors' copyrights expired?
I'm claiming that Disney has enough money to buy enough votes in Congress to get their way and that this issue isn't so important to the average member of the public to stop them.
This isn't guns or religion or schools, this is copyright/trademarks/etc. The Collodi and Kipling estates weren't big, weren't using their stuff (not enough anyway), and didn't own a handful of Congress critters.
Disney is actively making billions and billions of dollars today, right now, using Mickey. The chances of it being used by someone else is as close to zero as it gets.
I'm not telling you my feelings, I'm telling you which way the wind is blowing...
Right, so the moral hazard should be finding those who ACTUALLY did this and putting them in prison.
Punishing everyone else and letting the people who ACTUALLY did it go free is the real moral hazard.
---
Right now, if I was a CEO of a huge company, I'd be thinking, "gosh, I can do something illegal, make millions personally, then resign and retire scott free while the world cuts up the company I don't really care about anyway".
The IRS fixed the problems of the old leaf springs working with the 95-01 front suspension.
The 90-94 front suspension was completely different and that line didn't have nearly the roll over problems of the 95-01 line, even through it was largely the same vehicle.
Part of the reason for the change in 95 was it allowed the 5.0L V8 to be installed. It wouldn't fit in the 90-94 line due to the design of the front suspension.
I owned a 98 5.0L V8 version, I know all too well about this. The vehicle had a design flaw that wasn't fixable within reason, Ford couldn't afford to buy back millions of Explorers, so Firestone was made the bad guy.
Except the exact same Firestone tires didn't have the same rollover problems on other vehicles.:)
That sounds great in theory, but the reality doesn't work that way...
Those people will get laid off, Ford and Toyota might build more cars to take up the slack, but they'll do it at their own factories, not the former VW ones...
The VW dealerships won't all get bought out, many would close, they are located too close to other dealerships to become something else...
You make comments without understanding the reality behind them, but you're not unique there, plenty of people do that.
Maybe, but I really don't see Warner getting into the custom automobile industry. They should have just settled to offer the guy a fairly priced license.
Perhaps they did and he turned them down, thinking he didn't have to pay them a cent.
I don't doubt that you will be able to do remakes... of those old films...
But you won't be able to make brand new works... For example, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a "new work". You couldn't make new episodes of that just because Steamboat Willie goes into the public domain.
The "Mouse" is so clearly Disney that it is as bullet proof as it gets.
And if by any slim chance someone comes up with a way around it, it won't last 10 seconds before Congress fixes that.
"Most other sport utility vehicles are also built on pickup truck underbodies. Indeed, many have rollover death rates considerably higher than the Explorer's. I'm no Ford-lover, but it wasn't just Ford. It was everyone. All early SUVs were tip-prone if driven by morons who refuse to acknowledge that they are driving something which is not a car. So they remade SUVs to be more like cars, making them worse at being off-road vehicles in the process, instead of making a better driver, which we now know to be impossible.
I've seen people post that before, but the truth is a bit different.
The front suspension was redesigned from the 90-94 model year for the 95 model year. It is the 95 model year and beyond (until the full redesign in 2002) that is the problem.
It is the combination of the new front suspension and the old rear suspension that was the issue, neither by themselves was a problem. It was a poor choice and shouldn't have been approved for production. I owned one back then, followed it closely. That info came out, then quickly vanished from the news, replaced by "Firestone evil" news.
The Ford Explorer didn't become a "unibody car design" until 2011, when it became a tall Ford Taurus station wagon (that is really what it is today). The 2002-2010 models were body on frame just like the 95-01 models.
It won't. The VW group has plenty of money, and they can re-sell those cars in other markets.
You think this is limited only to the US?
VW made 11 million vehicles with this defeat system in it.
The US cars are US vin'ed, they can't just be exported to other nations and they may well not be able to get permission to do it, even if they wanted to.
Finally, it isn't just the cost of buy backs, it is fines, legal costs, state lawsuits, etc.
This may well end up needing a political solution, rather than a legal one. Given the size of VW, the number of people employed around the world by VW and their child companies (and dealers and parts suppliers, etc.), this quickly becomes a jobs/economy issue as much as a legal one.
Yes, VW did something stupid, but there are limits to what you can do before you start hurting people who did nothing wrong.
There is a middle ground between the two options...
VW probably needs to come up with a solution to provide the owners a legal way to drive the cars, it will probably involve the loss of power and fuel economy, and probably involve the payment of a few thousand to each owner.
Full price buybacks of 5 year old cars is just not reasonable.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because something can be used for profit doesn't mean it will be.
I can make a Superman costume at home tomorrow and wear it to a private party for fun, I'm not breaking any laws.
If I make 50 of them and bring them for everyone to have one, then I have.
Depends on whether you're looking at the short-run or the long-run. Agree with parent that, in the short run, extreme punishment destroys value. But any punishment has a deterrent effect in the future: when John Q CEO evaluates the gains from cheating against the expected punishment, the larger that punishment, the lower the likelihood that cheating occurs. How you evaluate the long- vs. short-run implications of punishment is tricky, but if one cares at all about the long-run, one would probably want to increase the punishment over what constitutes reasonable reparations.
That sounds very logical, but the real world doesn't appear to work that way.
Enron's CEO was going to prison, was he not? Yet less than 10 years later, we had Goldman Saks doing the same thing, give or take.
John Q CEO doesn't care if VW gets a huge fine in 5 years, or even goes bankrupt, if he gets $100 million today and gets to keep it.
The other issue is that making the punishment larger only does one thing, makes the punishment larger. Certainty of getting caught is the bigger issue. You can make the penalty as large as you want, but if people don't think they will be caught, then it doesn't matter.
https://youtu.be/pDVmldTurqk
I'd like to share that YouTube video with you, about Mandatory Minimums. The TL;DR version is, our prisons are filled with people serving decades long sentences who didn't think they would get caught.
To quote one line in the video, you could make jaywalking carry the death penalty, it isn't going to stop it if people don't think they'll be caught for it.
Do not misunderstand me, I totally see a future in EV cars.
Will they totally replace gas cars? Not for a long time, if ever, but they will grow slowly to be an ever larger share of the market.
It isn't just price, humans are emotional creatures and range anxiety is an issue and won't be easily overcome.
Yes, I'm well aware that most people don't need a vehicle with tons of range, but the edge cases are not so rare as to be swept under the rug either.
EVs largely need to be second vehicles for the time being, and you largely need a garage in most situations to make use of one. That cuts out at least half the market right there. Fear, "new", change, expensive, etc. all cut out more.
Which explains why plug in EVs were a rounding error in vehicle sales last year, about 1% of the market, give or take a bit. It will go up, but not at the pace the news seems to make it seem. I'd expect it to be around 5% of the market in 10 years, depending largely on how well the Model 3 plans work out.
Except the cars DO pass emissions tests... That is the whole point of this...
Even the EPA said "they are legal to drive".
You should drive some of the newer vehicles, they are a cut above...
Give the Ford Fusion a try, a really nice car all things considered. In many ways, nicer than a Camry or Accord...
GM is still working its way out of the crap dept, but some of the newer vehicles are nice. Their cars have improved leaps and bounds over the past, in fact the new Impala is one of the best cars on the road, from anyone.
http://www.caranddriver.com/ch...
It is right up there with the Toyota Avalon and Nissan Maxima...
http://www.consumerreports.org...
If you don't like Car and Driver, try Consumer Reports...
Time will tell of course, but the American Auto Companies have finally figured out that quality sells cars.
Then it becomes about your "intent"...
If you made it with the intent of distribution, then you're outside of fair use. If you made it for personal use, word it or drove it for 5 years, then sold it when bored, that could be defended under fair use.
All fair points...
It is worth remembering that it is one thing to be right, yet another to pay a lawyer to prove that you're right in a court of law...
Yes, there is some point where it becomes a derivative work, however if you're just attempting to skirt around the edges of the law, I can tell you the courts take a VERY dim view of "game playing" when it comes to the law.
If you should know better, then you should know better.
Judges do not generally have a sense of humor, and such arguments are often not very useful in court.
Source: I've been to court, I've sued people and been sued, it only makes the lawyers money in the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"It is sometimes erroneously stated that the Mickey Mouse character is only copyrighted. In fact, the character, like all major Disney characters, is also trademarked, which lasts in perpetuity as long as it continues to be used commercially by its owner. So, whether or not a particular Disney cartoon goes into the public domain, the characters themselves may not be used as trademarks without authorization."
That all sounds nice, and it is a wonderful legal argument on Slashdot...
But the house that the mouse built would spend a billion dollars if it had to in order to make sure that doesn't happen.
They could fully fund an entire election campaign out of petty cash.
It just will not happen, there is too much money at stake and this isn't an issue that the general public cares about.
Are you claiming that Disney would have a valid case or only that Disney would bring vexatious litigation? If the former, what cause of action would Disney have against DreamWorks Animation that, say, the Collodi and Kipling estates didn't have against Disney when it released Pinocchio and The Jungle Book within a year after the respective authors' copyrights expired?
I'm claiming that Disney has enough money to buy enough votes in Congress to get their way and that this issue isn't so important to the average member of the public to stop them.
This isn't guns or religion or schools, this is copyright/trademarks/etc. The Collodi and Kipling estates weren't big, weren't using their stuff (not enough anyway), and didn't own a handful of Congress critters.
Disney is actively making billions and billions of dollars today, right now, using Mickey. The chances of it being used by someone else is as close to zero as it gets.
I'm not telling you my feelings, I'm telling you which way the wind is blowing...
Right, so the moral hazard should be finding those who ACTUALLY did this and putting them in prison.
Punishing everyone else and letting the people who ACTUALLY did it go free is the real moral hazard.
---
Right now, if I was a CEO of a huge company, I'd be thinking, "gosh, I can do something illegal, make millions personally, then resign and retire scott free while the world cuts up the company I don't really care about anyway".
THAT is the moral hazard.
Shall we play a game?
Lets play "Global Thermonuclear War".
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's estate is not one of the largest corporations in the US.
I didn't say it was right or wrong, I said that you will never be allowed to make a Mickey cartoon as long as the Walt Disney Company is around.
Otherwise Dreamworks could come out with a feature length Mickey Mouse movie in 2025, and there is zero chance that will happen.
Again, I'm not telling you my feelings, I'm telling you what is. :)
Well then I'm glad you're not in charge, because that is a really stupid idea...
Because the shareholders obviously didn't hire the right people to run the company for them.
About half of all Americans own stocks now, very few have any say in who runs any of those companies.
Your ideas assume that only some rich, fancy pants fat cats will be hurt, but you'd be wrong.
They now have a car that isn't legal to drive.
That is not true, and you saying it largely invalidates the rest of your statements.
It helps a lot however...
The IRS fixed the problems of the old leaf springs working with the 95-01 front suspension.
The 90-94 front suspension was completely different and that line didn't have nearly the roll over problems of the 95-01 line, even through it was largely the same vehicle.
Part of the reason for the change in 95 was it allowed the 5.0L V8 to be installed. It wouldn't fit in the 90-94 line due to the design of the front suspension.
I owned a 98 5.0L V8 version, I know all too well about this. The vehicle had a design flaw that wasn't fixable within reason, Ford couldn't afford to buy back millions of Explorers, so Firestone was made the bad guy.
Except the exact same Firestone tires didn't have the same rollover problems on other vehicles. :)
That sounds great in theory, but the reality doesn't work that way...
Those people will get laid off, Ford and Toyota might build more cars to take up the slack, but they'll do it at their own factories, not the former VW ones...
The VW dealerships won't all get bought out, many would close, they are located too close to other dealerships to become something else...
You make comments without understanding the reality behind them, but you're not unique there, plenty of people do that.
Maybe, but I really don't see Warner getting into the custom automobile industry. They should have just settled to offer the guy a fairly priced license.
Perhaps they did and he turned them down, thinking he didn't have to pay them a cent.
I don't doubt that you will be able to do remakes... of those old films...
But you won't be able to make brand new works... For example, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is a "new work". You couldn't make new episodes of that just because Steamboat Willie goes into the public domain.
The "Mouse" is so clearly Disney that it is as bullet proof as it gets.
And if by any slim chance someone comes up with a way around it, it won't last 10 seconds before Congress fixes that.
Transfer shares of ownership to the victims.
From whom?
I own shares of VW (via index funds). Are you suggesting that you simply take them away from me for... reasons?
You really don't want to go down THAT path...
VW makes hundreds of thousands of cars right here in the US. VW dealerships employ a lot of people and are owned by some wealthy people.
Give it some time for the headlines to pass, then the lobbying to limit the damage will start.
VW is not just a German company, they have a lot of roots in the US as well, you'll hurt American workers if you kick them too hard.
The issues in 2008 were not of the car companies making, thus the help. Same reason, you can't let GM go bankrupt, you just can't.
Of course, that also means they have become "too big to fail", but that is another topic that hasn't been addressed either.
"Most other sport utility vehicles are also built on pickup truck underbodies. Indeed, many have rollover death rates considerably higher than the Explorer's. I'm no Ford-lover, but it wasn't just Ford. It was everyone. All early SUVs were tip-prone if driven by morons who refuse to acknowledge that they are driving something which is not a car. So they remade SUVs to be more like cars, making them worse at being off-road vehicles in the process, instead of making a better driver, which we now know to be impossible.
I've seen people post that before, but the truth is a bit different.
The front suspension was redesigned from the 90-94 model year for the 95 model year. It is the 95 model year and beyond (until the full redesign in 2002) that is the problem.
It is the combination of the new front suspension and the old rear suspension that was the issue, neither by themselves was a problem. It was a poor choice and shouldn't have been approved for production. I owned one back then, followed it closely. That info came out, then quickly vanished from the news, replaced by "Firestone evil" news.
The Ford Explorer didn't become a "unibody car design" until 2011, when it became a tall Ford Taurus station wagon (that is really what it is today). The 2002-2010 models were body on frame just like the 95-01 models.
It won't. The VW group has plenty of money, and they can re-sell those cars in other markets.
You think this is limited only to the US?
VW made 11 million vehicles with this defeat system in it.
The US cars are US vin'ed, they can't just be exported to other nations and they may well not be able to get permission to do it, even if they wanted to.
Finally, it isn't just the cost of buy backs, it is fines, legal costs, state lawsuits, etc.
This may well end up needing a political solution, rather than a legal one. Given the size of VW, the number of people employed around the world by VW and their child companies (and dealers and parts suppliers, etc.), this quickly becomes a jobs/economy issue as much as a legal one.
Yes, VW did something stupid, but there are limits to what you can do before you start hurting people who did nothing wrong.
There is a middle ground between the two options...
VW probably needs to come up with a solution to provide the owners a legal way to drive the cars, it will probably involve the loss of power and fuel economy, and probably involve the payment of a few thousand to each owner.
Full price buybacks of 5 year old cars is just not reasonable.