"Are we going to systematically spread all injustices over the whole population? "
No. As the law states, it's only covering people who are most likely to violate IP laws (IE: people using devices which allow easy IP law violations). They already have taxes on blank CDs/etc in Canada, for example. That's just one example of this line of thought at work.
I think the biggest thing that annoyed me about the people in this thread, besides the whole, "I'm not stealing anything when I break the law" parts, was that none of these people were willing to sit down and see if the experimental legislation worked. You can't learn if you don't try new things, but a large bunch of the people who read Slashdot regularly don't like change. I, personally, hope the legistalion goes through. After a few years, everyone will know if it's a useful deterent or not, and if it helps companies keep their promise to produce more content.
Speaking of socialism: if you're like me and had to go to a doctor recently, you'll know that socialism doesn't suck. I mean, I don't have to use medical services often -- but every time I do I'm very happy that Trudeau socialized Canadian healthcare.
I'm not sure what your problem with insurance companies, banks, etc, is. They don't have a gun to your head stating you have to buy their services. Don't like it? Don't buy it. It's a lot better way of influencing the market than angsting about it on some internet forum.
If you are buying a copy second hand, that means the person you are purchasing it from has paid the content creator what they felt was an acceptable price. They've been paid for their work.
If you were only buying burnt CDs, well, that'd be different. In that case the original creators weren't paid for the content at all. The effects aren't the same.
If I say, "illegal copyright violation" only nerds like you or I understand what I'm saying.
If I say, "piracy" -- everyone knows what I'm talking about. Kinda like when I say, "rape seed" -- I'm obviously not talking about semen leaking out of a sex crime victim. I'm talking about a particular cash crop grown in the prairie regions of north america.
If you don't like how the language is, go learn another one. I doubt the actions of a single entity will change English.
"I'm not rationalising it, and I'm not lying. Theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different crimes. One deprives the owner of property, which then must be replaced at the owner's expense, one does not."
Both deprive the owner of revenue generated by a sale.
This is the, "it costs 2$ to make, so I'm only taking 2$ from them, not the 10$ it sells for" argument which doesn't work. When you take away a sale, you take away all revenue from that sale over and above your base cost.
If you have the money for something, you buy it. Otherwise you do without. This is a basic rule of society.
Any econ teacher will tell you that. The government is a regulating factor in any economy. Without it, pure capitalism would be very bad. In this case, the government is stepping in to counteract the effects of the theft on one industry.
Yes, it's outside the bounds of capitalism because the government is interviening, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. I'd like to see how this plays out.
"Because studios do some research it and try to hit that magic price point to maximize profits."
and then later
"When it was released it has something like 6 forms of copy protection on it. In addition to cd checks and new media protections like Safedisk, it was one of the first 80 minute pressed cd's. Guess how much it sold for? Just as much as any other new game."
Maybe you haven't noticed, but all new games are sold at a certain price point. I didn't buy Blueshift when it was 60$ or 40$, because I didn't want it that much. Now, a couple of years later, it's 18$. How much is the software you give in your example now? Less, because that's how the price curve goes on PC software.
Copyright violations affect the total cost of it. Things like Everquest can't really be pirated, because they require online keys and such. You can get a mega pack of Everquest with all the expansions in a gold box for only 65$ CDN. I think this is a good indication of how all PC software could be priced, if piracy weren't as rampant.
Please. The computer is the enabling factor here. How can you burn software without a PC?
If you can't think of a better argument than trying to tie in non-enabling factors as a straw man, then you've clearly not thought your side through, nor proven anything.
If I sell golden widgets for 40$, and they cost me 2$ to make, and you steal them -- I am losing money.
Unless I purposfully give something away, stealing it is still stealing.
"So how is it that I'm $36 richer than I was when I started?" You're 36$ richer, but you should've been 76$ richer. Notice how there's a 40$ difference -- that's because 40$ was stolen.
Now, in this contrived example, you're overly exagerating the profit margins here. There are a lot of middle men ensuring that optimal distrubitions of product are made in real life. Margins aren't that large. Theft drives up the cost for everyone. Go take any basic economics course.
This isn't about people buying replaceable parts of higher quality due to wear and tear, this is about people copying things they have no permission to copy. This leads to less creativity and less jobs for people who like to create.
Staff at Kinko's or other copy centres should not let people walk in and Xerox entire novels. People with home computers should not be copying software they have no permission to. While the first case has external agents ensuring that nothing bad's happening, the second case is left up to the people. Most people will not hesitate to break the law if they think it'll get them something extra.
Since law makers can't be there to stop them, they are passing the costs on in terms of higher fees for the tools used to break the law (averaged out over sales). Most people who commit crimes use guns, because of this all gun owners must register and have background checks when buying new guns. Every person who copies software uses a computer at some point, so everybody who uses a computer must pay for Pegleg and Redbeard's acts of piracy.
Music seems to be fairly inelastic, as does console hardware, but software itself has a decent elasticity.
Not as many people 60$ want software as people who 30$ want software. I know that part of the resurgance of the Dreamcast in 2001/2002 was the incredible price slashes possible with a console going away. I was able to pick up a collection which currently numbers 41 games. If I see a console game for 30$, I certainly don't have to think as hard about buying it as I do a 60$ one:)
eBay's a nice model of inelasticity. Try and get Suikoden 2 for less than 140$ CDN. Rabid fanboys keep the price far, far too high for most people, and this suits collectors fine since there's a relative scarcity of the item in question.
Unfortunately, it's the easiest solution. So everyone who wants to use these tools legitimately suffers because of Pegleg and Redbeard who like to swap warez by the gig.
The store and other people who made the item lost the money. If you want something, you have to pay for it. That's how economics work. When you steal, you break economics. You cause the profit graphs to shift, you change the costs, etc.
Even if you don't notice money out of your pocket (which you wouldn't, Mr. Thief), the company would notice its sales are less, and have to compensate for that somehow.
If you don't have money for something, you do not buy it. You also don't steal it.
If you want a game and can't afford it, try out the demo. Go to a friend's place and try it. Etc, etc.
Don't think that you can steal it and rationalize it by saying, "someone else will now pick up the slack I have created by stealing." because you still stole, and you still cost money to everyone involved in creating and retailing the item.
"If I copy something that I didn't create, and don't give money to the people who spent money to create it, I'm not stealing."
Sorry, I don't follow that logic. This is the Real World logic: "If a customer wants something, they will pay for it and get it. If they don't want it or can't afford it, they don't pay for it and don't get it"
You can rationalize it as saying there's "no loss" when you copy something without paying for it, but that's a lie. If you really cared about the music, you'd buy using money.
Stealing is stealing, I don't see why people here seem to think that just because the copy cost is 0, that implies permission to copy everything.
I'll leave you with another example. " If somebody walks out of a shop with something they haven't paid for, the shop has had property stolen, and they need to pay to replace it. The money has to come from somewhere, I agree. The same is not true of copyright infringement."
Ok. Say you're some kid, who buys a video game at a store. You go home and copy it. Then you go back to the store and return the game, claiming it doesn't work. You get your money back. Have you stolen something? Why, yes, you have. You've stolen a copy of the software -- a sale that would otherwise have remained a sale. Again, theft is theft. Dressing it up in a little dress doesn't make it any different.
If the government didn't aid businesses sometimes, it could destabilize parts of the economy that they need to stay competitive in the world market.
This is like saying that you don't need welfare, because everyone should never have hard times. Since this is something that's so hard to enforce, the government's just following the path of least resistance.
Granted, there is the danger that this won't be repealed if the piracy levels go down, but that's the job of the politicians to sort out.
That this has to be talked about in the first place reflects poorly on the morality of some people. "If they can't see that I'm stealing, is it still a crime?"
"If thefts decrease, they just keep the price the same, and pocket the additional profits. "
When you decrease theft, you reduce a non-fixed cost. When that happens, the point where the part of the graph that shows your profit being maximized also moves. This means that if theft stopped, and they still charged inflated prices, they'd make less money than if they lowered their prices.
Honestly, go take an introductory economics class before you spew on Slashdot. You just look like an idiot.
It changes your profit graphs as follows. In any situation where you creat IP, you have a larger fixed startup cost. This is usually a one-time fee (you negotiate X$ for the right to 100,000 copies of a book). Added on to that is the flexible costs of producing and shipping, which are subject to economies of scale.
Unlike most physical goods, the fixed startup cost is enough that it is very hard to get into it. Most companies are in debt to some extent to fund their next project (unless they make it really big, and can keep producing new IP at a rate faster than their old funds are used, such as iD software).
Peter Molyneaux wants gov't support, because Black and White took too long and wasn't bought by enough people. EA may be able to take the write off, since they produce games each year that have profit margins to cover it (NBA Live 200X, etc), but Peter's credibility is ruined, and he can't make more games.
Just because something is cheap to reproduce, doesn't mean it's cost free. Go run a business for a few years in real life, then talk to me about how exactly it's different. Things cost money.
You say one true thing (busineses are built around maximizing profit) and use this to sneak in a bald-faced lie (stealing doesn't affect prices).
If stealing didn't affect prices, this law wouldn't even be being discussed anywhere.
When you steal something that cost 2$ to make, even if you think, "I'm only stealing 2$" you're actually stealing the 40$ some guy would've paid to enjoy that game. To think this doesn't affect prices is lunacy.
Everyone pays when people steal. You might not steal, but you have to pay for it. When something is stolen from a store, the company has 2 choices: take a loss (maybe go out of business), or pass on the costs.
The same thing happens with insurance. Are you contemplating insurance fraud? You are making everyone else's premiums go up when you do it.
So even if computers have legit uses, and even if you don't break the law, there are enough people out there misusing computers and breaking the law that bottoms lines are being affected. Naturally, businesses don't like this and are working to change it. The only way you can do anything useful about it is prove that the loss is negligible, and to stop illegal copying.
The stores didn't make $200 when a PS2 was released. Sony got all the money, the same as they do right now. If you actually cut open a current S hardware revision PS2 and compared it an R and first-gen, you'd notice the boards are simplified, and many of the chips in the first one have been combined using VLSI-like technology.
The PS2 costs less to make now, and Sony (MS, and Nintendo) pass that along to consumers. Stores make their money on the games, like everyone else. To think that a store makes money on a console is to live in your own unique word of fairies and prince frogs, who live in a lollypop house on gumdrop lane.
Slashdot Mirror
"Are we going to systematically spread all injustices over the whole population? "
No. As the law states, it's only covering people who are most likely to violate IP laws (IE: people using devices which allow easy IP law violations). They already have taxes on blank CDs/etc in Canada, for example. That's just one example of this line of thought at work.
I think the biggest thing that annoyed me about the people in this thread, besides the whole, "I'm not stealing anything when I break the law" parts, was that none of these people were willing to sit down and see if the experimental legislation worked. You can't learn if you don't try new things, but a large bunch of the people who read Slashdot regularly don't like change. I, personally, hope the legistalion goes through. After a few years, everyone will know if it's a useful deterent or not, and if it helps companies keep their promise to produce more content.
Speaking of socialism: if you're like me and had to go to a doctor recently, you'll know that socialism doesn't suck. I mean, I don't have to use medical services often -- but every time I do I'm very happy that Trudeau socialized Canadian healthcare.
I'm not sure what your problem with insurance companies, banks, etc, is. They don't have a gun to your head stating you have to buy their services. Don't like it? Don't buy it. It's a lot better way of influencing the market than angsting about it on some internet forum.
If you are buying a copy second hand, that means the person you are purchasing it from has paid the content creator what they felt was an acceptable price. They've been paid for their work.
If you were only buying burnt CDs, well, that'd be different. In that case the original creators weren't paid for the content at all. The effects aren't the same.
If I say, "illegal copyright violation" only nerds like you or I understand what I'm saying.
If I say, "piracy" -- everyone knows what I'm talking about. Kinda like when I say, "rape seed" -- I'm obviously not talking about semen leaking out of a sex crime victim. I'm talking about a particular cash crop grown in the prairie regions of north america.
If you don't like how the language is, go learn another one. I doubt the actions of a single entity will change English.
Maybe you don't understand. Plagarism is wrong, as is stealing my car. One is physical, one is not. However, in both cases, stealing == stealing.
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
In real life, you either buy something, or don't. You don't just steal as you like, because that breaks how society works.
"I'm not rationalising it, and I'm not lying. Theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different crimes. One deprives the owner of property, which then must be replaced at the owner's expense, one does not."
Both deprive the owner of revenue generated by a sale.
This is the, "it costs 2$ to make, so I'm only taking 2$ from them, not the 10$ it sells for" argument which doesn't work. When you take away a sale, you take away all revenue from that sale over and above your base cost.
If you have the money for something, you buy it. Otherwise you do without. This is a basic rule of society.
Any econ teacher will tell you that. The government is a regulating factor in any economy. Without it, pure capitalism would be very bad. In this case, the government is stepping in to counteract the effects of the theft on one industry.
Yes, it's outside the bounds of capitalism because the government is interviening, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. I'd like to see how this plays out.
"Because studios do some research it and try to hit that magic price point to maximize profits."
and then later
"When it was released it has something like 6 forms of copy protection on it. In addition to cd checks and new media protections like Safedisk, it was one of the first 80 minute pressed cd's. Guess how much it sold for? Just as much as any other new game."
Maybe you haven't noticed, but all new games are sold at a certain price point. I didn't buy Blueshift when it was 60$ or 40$, because I didn't want it that much. Now, a couple of years later, it's 18$. How much is the software you give in your example now? Less, because that's how the price curve goes on PC software.
Copyright violations affect the total cost of it. Things like Everquest can't really be pirated, because they require online keys and such. You can get a mega pack of Everquest with all the expansions in a gold box for only 65$ CDN. I think this is a good indication of how all PC software could be priced, if piracy weren't as rampant.
"In this case copyright infringement had no affect on sales."
But how is it not stealing? How is in not wrong? I don't see where you put that.
"Serial killers eat bread. Outlaw bread"
Please. The computer is the enabling factor here. How can you burn software without a PC?
If you can't think of a better argument than trying to tie in non-enabling factors as a straw man, then you've clearly not thought your side through, nor proven anything.
If I sell golden widgets for 40$, and they cost me 2$ to make, and you steal them -- I am losing money.
Unless I purposfully give something away, stealing it is still stealing.
"So how is it that I'm $36 richer than I was when I started?" You're 36$ richer, but you should've been 76$ richer. Notice how there's a 40$ difference -- that's because 40$ was stolen.
Now, in this contrived example, you're overly exagerating the profit margins here. There are a lot of middle men ensuring that optimal distrubitions of product are made in real life. Margins aren't that large. Theft drives up the cost for everyone. Go take any basic economics course.
This isn't about people buying replaceable parts of higher quality due to wear and tear, this is about people copying things they have no permission to copy. This leads to less creativity and less jobs for people who like to create.
Staff at Kinko's or other copy centres should not let people walk in and Xerox entire novels. People with home computers should not be copying software they have no permission to. While the first case has external agents ensuring that nothing bad's happening, the second case is left up to the people. Most people will not hesitate to break the law if they think it'll get them something extra.
Since law makers can't be there to stop them, they are passing the costs on in terms of higher fees for the tools used to break the law (averaged out over sales). Most people who commit crimes use guns, because of this all gun owners must register and have background checks when buying new guns. Every person who copies software uses a computer at some point, so everybody who uses a computer must pay for Pegleg and Redbeard's acts of piracy.
Music seems to be fairly inelastic, as does console hardware, but software itself has a decent elasticity.
:)
Not as many people 60$ want software as people who 30$ want software. I know that part of the resurgance of the Dreamcast in 2001/2002 was the incredible price slashes possible with a console going away. I was able to pick up a collection which currently numbers 41 games. If I see a console game for 30$, I certainly don't have to think as hard about buying it as I do a 60$ one
eBay's a nice model of inelasticity. Try and get Suikoden 2 for less than 140$ CDN. Rabid fanboys keep the price far, far too high for most people, and this suits collectors fine since there's a relative scarcity of the item in question.
Unfortunately, it's the easiest solution. So everyone who wants to use these tools legitimately suffers because of Pegleg and Redbeard who like to swap warez by the gig.
The store and other people who made the item lost the money. If you want something, you have to pay for it. That's how economics work. When you steal, you break economics. You cause the profit graphs to shift, you change the costs, etc.
Even if you don't notice money out of your pocket (which you wouldn't, Mr. Thief), the company would notice its sales are less, and have to compensate for that somehow.
If you have money for something, you buy it.
If you don't have money for something, you do not buy it. You also don't steal it.
If you want a game and can't afford it, try out the demo. Go to a friend's place and try it. Etc, etc.
Don't think that you can steal it and rationalize it by saying, "someone else will now pick up the slack I have created by stealing." because you still stole, and you still cost money to everyone involved in creating and retailing the item.
"If I copy something that I didn't create, and don't give money to the people who spent money to create it, I'm not stealing."
Sorry, I don't follow that logic. This is the Real World logic: "If a customer wants something, they will pay for it and get it. If they don't want it or can't afford it, they don't pay for it and don't get it"
You can rationalize it as saying there's "no loss" when you copy something without paying for it, but that's a lie. If you really cared about the music, you'd buy using money.
Stealing is stealing, I don't see why people here seem to think that just because the copy cost is 0, that implies permission to copy everything.
I'll leave you with another example. " If somebody walks out of a shop with something they haven't paid for, the shop has had property stolen, and they need to pay to replace it. The money has to come from somewhere, I agree. The same is not true of copyright infringement."
Ok. Say you're some kid, who buys a video game at a store. You go home and copy it. Then you go back to the store and return the game, claiming it doesn't work. You get your money back. Have you stolen something? Why, yes, you have. You've stolen a copy of the software -- a sale that would otherwise have remained a sale. Again, theft is theft. Dressing it up in a little dress doesn't make it any different.
If the government didn't aid businesses sometimes, it could destabilize parts of the economy that they need to stay competitive in the world market.
This is like saying that you don't need welfare, because everyone should never have hard times. Since this is something that's so hard to enforce, the government's just following the path of least resistance.
Granted, there is the danger that this won't be repealed if the piracy levels go down, but that's the job of the politicians to sort out.
That this has to be talked about in the first place reflects poorly on the morality of some people. "If they can't see that I'm stealing, is it still a crime?"
"If thefts decrease, they just keep the price the same, and pocket the additional profits. "
When you decrease theft, you reduce a non-fixed cost. When that happens, the point where the part of the graph that shows your profit being maximized also moves. This means that if theft stopped, and they still charged inflated prices, they'd make less money than if they lowered their prices.
Honestly, go take an introductory economics class before you spew on Slashdot. You just look like an idiot.
It changes your profit graphs as follows. In any situation where you creat IP, you have a larger fixed startup cost. This is usually a one-time fee (you negotiate X$ for the right to 100,000 copies of a book). Added on to that is the flexible costs of producing and shipping, which are subject to economies of scale.
Unlike most physical goods, the fixed startup cost is enough that it is very hard to get into it. Most companies are in debt to some extent to fund their next project (unless they make it really big, and can keep producing new IP at a rate faster than their old funds are used, such as iD software).
Peter Molyneaux wants gov't support, because Black and White took too long and wasn't bought by enough people. EA may be able to take the write off, since they produce games each year that have profit margins to cover it (NBA Live 200X, etc), but Peter's credibility is ruined, and he can't make more games.
Just because something is cheap to reproduce, doesn't mean it's cost free. Go run a business for a few years in real life, then talk to me about how exactly it's different. Things cost money.
You say one true thing (busineses are built around maximizing profit) and use this to sneak in a bald-faced lie (stealing doesn't affect prices).
If stealing didn't affect prices, this law wouldn't even be being discussed anywhere.
When you steal something that cost 2$ to make, even if you think, "I'm only stealing 2$" you're actually stealing the 40$ some guy would've paid to enjoy that game. To think this doesn't affect prices is lunacy.
And if you then start pirating, it'll just make it worse.
Everyone pays when people steal. You might not steal, but you have to pay for it. When something is stolen from a store, the company has 2 choices: take a loss (maybe go out of business), or pass on the costs.
The same thing happens with insurance. Are you contemplating insurance fraud? You are making everyone else's premiums go up when you do it.
So even if computers have legit uses, and even if you don't break the law, there are enough people out there misusing computers and breaking the law that bottoms lines are being affected. Naturally, businesses don't like this and are working to change it. The only way you can do anything useful about it is prove that the loss is negligible, and to stop illegal copying.
The stores didn't make $200 when a PS2 was released. Sony got all the money, the same as they do right now. If you actually cut open a current S hardware revision PS2 and compared it an R and first-gen, you'd notice the boards are simplified, and many of the chips in the first one have been combined using VLSI-like technology.
The PS2 costs less to make now, and Sony (MS, and Nintendo) pass that along to consumers. Stores make their money on the games, like everyone else. To think that a store makes money on a console is to live in your own unique word of fairies and prince frogs, who live in a lollypop house on gumdrop lane.