The whole point is that the pirated material is not worth the price it is sold for. I would happily pay £5(UK) for a CD/DVD as i consider that a reasonable price, but double or triple that? No chance.
I completely agree with you, but the people selling the offending material have a market non the less.
The consumer does (more or less) choose the price that gives him the best deal, but the price does not necessarily have to be zero. Take a look at iTunes for music downloads which you pay for yet the music can be just as easily downloaded for free.
In this case perhaps the customer thinks paying for the music is the best deal.
Faced with two choices, one being paying full price and another being paying half the full price for the same item, paying more is silly. So lower that to a quarter of the price. Lower it all the way down to zero. You would be an idiot to pay for something you can get for free. And with something intangible like music, it makes a hell of a lot of sense to get the free one.
What you say makes a lot of sense but I don't think it is the whole truth of the matter. Look at the success of iTunes. The music is available for free elsewhere yet people still buy the downloads from iTunes.
Your post is a self-justification for your refusal to follow the law. Yes, people don't like being ripped off, but no one is forcing them to buy the music or software.
There is no self justification in my post. My post stands on its own merits. People don't mind paying for music or movies at overly inflated prices. They don't seem to mind paying what they consider to be a fair price.
You have my sympathy but you were still fortunate. You were young and trusting and learned from your mistake. I'm 41 and even in my late(ish) thirties could still be incredibly naive when dealing with people in face to face situations. It is as if I cannot believe that someone would lie to my face because I wouldn't think of doing something similar to them.
I understand what you mean. The most effective phishing attempt on myself was purported to be from eBay and trouble with my account. I was instantly on my guard because you hear about these things, I think I would have fallen for it with a little less experience as I had been using eBay a lot recently. I followed the link, though I had no intention to put in any details, to see where it took me. It tooke to a copy of the eBay login screen, but the pasword and username were not automatically filled in which confirmed my suspicions. The URL of the page which I was taken to was (something like this) www.freevillageusa.com (or thereabouts).
The most effective part of this attempt was the English, which was credible. This is more than can be said the the bank phishing scams. I don't know how effective phishing scams are (I didn't RTFA), but my guess is they are very effective. You only have to let your guard down once.
I know what you are saying, but you are wrong. You only pay if you visit GMail. If you are using POP3 to receive your mail then then is no cost (apart from the initial cost of visiting the site and I cannot even remember if there were ads then).
This is something to which I've given some thought to lately. I'm currently taking the ECDL* (an extra qualification to help with job prospects) and it takes sometime to educate the user about virus killers using AVG as the example.
I'm not talking about anything particurarly hard, just how to use a virus killer, spyware removal tools and configure a firewall and to run as a user with limited rights. Really basic but important administration skills. Furthermore you'll need this before you can get an Internet connection.
I think that is what you can reasonably expect. Also, I think it's high time that some manufacturer tells the truth about where 90% of trojans, spyware, etc. come from. The truth is that people are going to some pretty nefarious places on the net to pick this stuff up, and that is the majority of the problem. They then pass it on to their contacts, and you have the massive infestation problem we have today.
I'm not too sure if I'm reading too much into this, but if by nefarious you mean porn sites and such, a lot of PCs which I clean up, are administered by children who install anything shiny on to their PC. The sites these children are visiting have a much more aproachable and acceptable (at least visually) image.
If by the use of "nefarious", you meant these sites as well, then your point stands.
Exactly... A lot of the stupidities of television can be easily be explained once you realise that the product is YOU, the viewer, and you are being sold to the advertisers, who are the real customers.
I'm finding it increasingly hard to take intelectual property seriously. Patents (while I understand why we have them) are turning out to be a huge, sad joke. They have become weapons for business
Actually, this is happening (people uses it) and the effect is the opposite: more traffic jams. Read the article: people who uses the predictions modifies their planned route... unfortunately this somehow breaks the model and leads to new, unforecasted jams.
Slashdot Mirror
I completely agree with you, but the people selling the offending material have a market non the less.
In this case perhaps the customer thinks paying for the music is the best deal.
I didn't mean to imply that everyone doesn't mind paying or vice versa.
What you say makes a lot of sense but I don't think it is the whole truth of the matter. Look at the success of iTunes. The music is available for free elsewhere yet people still buy the downloads from iTunes.
There are two words for it: "Copyright Infringement"
There is no self justification in my post. My post stands on its own merits. People don't mind paying for music or movies at overly inflated prices. They don't seem to mind paying what they consider to be a fair price.
"i wasn't gonna pay for it anyway, so it's not stealing"
because it isn't stealing.
Using your logic, my refusal to buy a particular music\movie is theft whether I "pirate" it or not.
People don't mind paying for software\music etc. They just don't like being ripped off with overly inflated prices.
You have my sympathy but you were still fortunate. You were young and trusting and learned from your mistake. I'm 41 and even in my late(ish) thirties could still be incredibly naive when dealing with people in face to face situations. It is as if I cannot believe that someone would lie to my face because I wouldn't think of doing something similar to them.
The most effective part of this attempt was the English, which was credible. This is more than can be said the the bank phishing scams. I don't know how effective phishing scams are (I didn't RTFA), but my guess is they are very effective. You only have to let your guard down once.
That really was an incredibly informative post. I wish I had mod points, because I learnt something here.
I know what you are saying, but you are wrong. You only pay if you visit GMail. If you are using POP3 to receive your mail then then is no cost (apart from the initial cost of visiting the site and I cannot even remember if there were ads then).
Thank you for taking the trouble to reply. Zebidiah
Out of interest; what blocker were you using?
I'm not talking about anything particurarly hard, just how to use a virus killer, spyware removal tools and configure a firewall and to run as a user with limited rights. Really basic but important administration skills. Furthermore you'll need this before you can get an Internet connection.
*ECDL=European Computer Driving Lisence
I'm not too sure if I'm reading too much into this, but if by nefarious you mean porn sites and such, a lot of PCs which I clean up, are administered by children who install anything shiny on to their PC. The sites these children are visiting have a much more aproachable and acceptable (at least visually) image.
If by the use of "nefarious", you meant these sites as well, then your point stands.
One of the more insightful comments on Slashdot!
Some businesses seem to make a living collecting patents simply to enforce them.
I see know advantage to me or other people like me for patents (especially software patents).
I'm finding it increasingly hard to take intelectual property seriously. Patents (while I understand why we have them) are turning out to be a huge, sad joke. They have become weapons for business
I think Mandrake 10 has something like this available for club members.
Shame you posted this as AC. It sound very interesting. Was/Is there a solution?
You've proved that by its own success that it doesn't work! :-)
It needs to take its own preditions as input!