Sorry, but how many people downloaded Q3Arena? It's not quite available in my local bookstore yet, but there are 200+ servers full of people playing constantly.
FPS may not be my favorite type of game, but there will always be a spot on my hard drive for the best-looking, repsonsive, multiplayer FPS.
If the US imposes an increase in the cost of sale of goods purchased over the internet, it will cause a direct exodus of the e-commerce industry from the US.
If you can reduce the cost to customers by 5% by not locating within the US, any content producers (selling downloadable, non-shipped material) will re-locate to Bermuda to avoid the taxes. As for regular Amazon.com types, there will come a time where they will say "why not go to Canada or Mexico, our savings on taxes will offset the extra shipping?"
Then the US Fed will understand why taxing transactions on an international location is unreasonable.... it would put any remaining businesses at a 5% disadvantage, and in a world with PriceScan and other ShopBots...
Tax revenues would be WAY, WAY, down in the long run as a result of this.
Actually, that is not the case either. Gold, being a widely traded commodity, trades quite independantly of any currency. It's fluctuations is not linked to inflation, or changes in consumer purchasing power.
Why? Because gold has no intrinsic value. As one other poster recognized, gold is just a lump of metal with no real purpose (at least not $250/oz worth of purpose!). Its value is linked to what people are willing to pay for it on the spot market, regardless of any other factors.
There really is nothing in the world that has no fluctuations the way you speak of gold.
If in fact MS would ever embrace Linux, they would most likely not buy Redhat. Remember all that Redhat isa brand name and support service. MS already has both, so they could just copy a distro.
Probably they would do something quite similar to what Corel is doing w/ Debian.
Just because it is illegal does not mean it is right. Theft is not just a legal consideration, instead it is taking something that does not belong to you without permission.
Just because the theft is not prosecuted in your jurisdiction (and I doubt that you are exempt from international laws), does not make it okay. It still does not take away from the fact that you are *STEALNG* when you watch a bootleged VCD or MP3.
Very simply. Just because there is no physical theft taking place, there is still loss to the company.
When the company produces the movie, they incur huge costs. They have the absolute right to distribute that movie in any way they want, and to charge however much they want. If they don't want to distribute it digitally, they have a reason.
That reason is as follows: they get different amounts of revenue (per viewer) at different times. The most profitable is the initial release in the theatres. Next is the pre-video sales (in hotels, on PPV cable, etc), and then comes the video release. Following that much later is the TV release. All this you may know already. What this does is gets the people who really want to see the movie, and are most willing and able to pay for it, to see the movie first.
When the population is able to view the movies before the above schedule, then the value of the schedule is diminished. Sure, perhaps you would never watch the movie anyhow, or you plan to rent it when it comes out on video.
What you are taking is the revenues to the company that produces it. Don't forget that they have to recover costs, and profits, if they are to keep making movies in the future (they aren't in the business for fun). Stealing copies increases the costs to the company, and they will certainly pass that along to the consumer (THAT'S YOU!!!).
Of course, all this applies to MP3's in a roundabout way.
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Sorry, but how many people downloaded Q3Arena? It's not quite available in my local bookstore yet, but there are 200+ servers full of people playing constantly.
FPS may not be my favorite type of game, but there will always be a spot on my hard drive for the best-looking, repsonsive, multiplayer FPS.
Um... does anyone else see the problem here?
If the US imposes an increase in the cost of sale of goods purchased over the internet, it will cause a direct exodus of the e-commerce industry from the US.
If you can reduce the cost to customers by 5% by not locating within the US, any content producers (selling downloadable, non-shipped material) will re-locate to Bermuda to avoid the taxes. As for regular Amazon.com types, there will come a time where they will say "why not go to Canada or Mexico, our savings on taxes will offset the extra shipping?"
Then the US Fed will understand why taxing transactions on an international location is unreasonable.... it would put any remaining businesses at a 5% disadvantage, and in a world with PriceScan and other ShopBots...
Tax revenues would be WAY, WAY, down in the long run as a result of this.
Someone help me out here!
Actually, that is not the case either. Gold, being a widely traded commodity, trades quite independantly of any currency. It's fluctuations is not linked to inflation, or changes in consumer purchasing power.
Why? Because gold has no intrinsic value. As one other poster recognized, gold is just a lump of metal with no real purpose (at least not $250/oz worth of purpose!). Its value is linked to what people are willing to pay for it on the spot market, regardless of any other factors.
There really is nothing in the world that has no fluctuations the way you speak of gold.
-rt
If in fact MS would ever embrace Linux, they would most likely not buy Redhat. Remember all that Redhat isa brand name and support service. MS already has both, so they could just copy a distro.
Probably they would do something quite similar to what Corel is doing w/ Debian.
Just because it is illegal does not mean it is right. Theft is not just a legal consideration, instead it is taking something that does not belong to you without permission.
Just because the theft is not prosecuted in your jurisdiction (and I doubt that you are exempt from international laws), does not make it okay. It still does not take away from the fact that you are *STEALNG* when you watch a bootleged VCD or MP3.
Very simply. Just because there is no physical theft taking place, there is still loss to the company.
When the company produces the movie, they incur huge costs. They have the absolute right to distribute that movie in any way they want, and to charge however much they want. If they don't want to distribute it digitally, they have a reason.
That reason is as follows: they get different amounts of revenue (per viewer) at different times. The most profitable is the initial release in the theatres. Next is the pre-video sales (in hotels, on PPV cable, etc), and then comes the video release. Following that much later is the TV release. All this you may know already. What this does is gets the people who really want to see the movie, and are most willing and able to pay for it, to see the movie first.
When the population is able to view the movies before the above schedule, then the value of the schedule is diminished. Sure, perhaps you would never watch the movie anyhow, or you plan to rent it when it comes out on video.
What you are taking is the revenues to the company that produces it. Don't forget that they have to recover costs, and profits, if they are to keep making movies in the future (they aren't in the business for fun). Stealing copies increases the costs to the company, and they will certainly pass that along to the consumer (THAT'S YOU!!!).
Of course, all this applies to MP3's in a roundabout way.
That still does not change the fact that you are stealing intellectual property