Where did I say people should not get paid? I have no problem with people getting paid for their work.
You implied it by undermining the system whereby creators can get paid.
As far as I am concerned, it is time to find a new way to pay journalists and artists.
If you're undermining the copyright system whereby creators get paid, and not suggesting any alternatives, then, yes, you are undermining people's ability to get paid. One of my irritations is when people undermine copyright but don't suggest alternatives or suggest bad alternatives, and act like they're being reasonable.
Please point out where I said we should repeal copyright law.
It's implied in your comment.
All I said was that it is time for the focus to shift away from greed and toward improving the public's ability to access creative works.
Yes, "information wants to be free" trolls like Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson supported copyright. Yes, he supported a shorter version of copyright than we currently see, but don't try to co-opt Jefferson into some extreme "information wants to be free" supporter - which, by definition, requires that Jefferson opposed any form of copyright.
The IRS wants to know all about your online transactions.
No, they don't want to know "all about your online transactions" - they just want to know the amount of money someone is earning *if* they're earning more than $20,000 / year. They don't know what you're buying/selling, and they don't care if you're a casual buyer/seller.
And unlike Facebook, the IRS will definitely use the information against you.
Yeah, I know. They also demand to know how much money you earn at your job, and then they *use that information against you* by making you pay taxes.
But where are all the people who love to complain about their precious privacy?
No kidding. I hear that they even want to know how much money everyone earns and what their social security number is! Sorry, Gestapo, you can take your prying eyes somewhere else!
"are trying to hold on to a government granted artificial scarcity where there is no scarcity (it's just bits and bytes)."
I don't see the "artificial scarcity" argument as having much weight. Concerts, theaters, and amusement parks are not forced to allow people in their doors for free just "because there's still room; you aren't filled to capacity". I'd also argue that the ability to deny people free entry into concerts, theaters, and amusement parks is an important factor in getting people to pay for a ticket. The same can be said for copyright-based industries. People generally won't pay if they don't have to.
I agree with you that some pirates will download anything they have half an interest in playing. By the way, do you have a source for your claim?
Although, I also saw some numbers recently in another article describing the huge differences in sales and piracy between the PC and XBox. Their numbers for Modern Warfare 2 were:
PC sales: 270,000
PC pirated copies: 4.1 million copies
XBox sales: 6+ million
XBox pirated copies: 970,000 copies
"My friends and I used to play cracked Warcraft and Starcraft copies on our PCs. After we graduated and eventually had jobs, some of my friends bought authentic CDs because they felt that it was the right thing to do. They said that they've always wanted to buy the real thing but they didn't have money to do so. It was then that I realized that the figures that some companies claim to have lost to piracy are just a bunch of BS."
What's funny is that I didn't expect you to say that last sentence. I thought you were going to say that piracy hurts companies because most people were not as virtuous as your friends who bought copies. Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by "figures that some companies claim to have lost to piracy" - since most companies don't claim that 1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale. If they don't claim that, then they can't claim to have solid estimates about sales lost to piracy, although they might have some guesstimates based on a fraction of pirated copies.
Is this a review of the iPad as a magazine-reader ("Is This Really the Future of Magazines"), or a review of the Wired magazine App on the iPad? Judging from the title, it sounds like the former. I'd recommend looking at some other magazines or newspapers on the iPad if you're going to judge it as an eReader.
For example, here's the USA Today App for the iPad (jump to 0:50) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nJVtLygOM
If you store anything on the internet, what you are storing is a number. People most certainly are allowed to recreate the number 462826674840809873425894986513859764213550 even if I have declared it to be my own and stored it in a house with unlocked doors.
[sarcasm]
Yeah, no kidding. For example, some guy wrote a book and it exists in digital format: "2983529087897329872394928734". I took that number and changed the first four digits, so it's "1212529087897329872394928734". Now, they call me a plagarist? All just because the "2983" was the author's name, and "1212" is my name?
[/sarcasm]
My point being that treating digital media like numbers is a way of stripping away meaning and information. Once you've done that, then you can treat it as "just a number", and then do all kinds of shady things with it. Similarly, you can say that child pornography is "just a series of numbers" and who is the government to "regulate numbers"? You could say that someone's medical history is "just some numbers" and who is the government to say whether or not I can release a bunch of numbers on the internet? It's funny - there's a big uproar over Facebook privacy, but once you say that someone's information is "just numbers", well, privacy ceases to have meaning. Who are you to tell Facebook not to release numbers "2324983423423"? The reality is that *it has meaning*, and treating stuff as "just numbers" is a way of stripping meaning from it and legitimizing all kinds of bad things that we don't want. All kinds of things (plagarism, privacy, wiretapping, selling pirated material, death threats, etc) become meaningless if we treat it as "just numbers".
teenagers are the future what they believe is what the future of society believes.
And that's why the past few decades were all about free love, hippies, eastern religion, and peace. Glad we haven't had any wars since Vietnam.
You do know that they met their fund raising goal in only 5 days, right?
From the article: "They announced their project on April 24. They reached their $10,000 goal in 12 days".
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html
$170,000 is quite a bit of money, but the problems I see:
(1) They're on the hook to give people some physical merchandise - like t-shirts for everyone who pledged $25. This means they can't use all $170,000 for development.
(2) These are pledges, and you never know if you'll hear back from those people making those pledges.
(3) This project was particularly well-timed considering the people that have been unhappy with Facebook lately. There are how many millions of people on Facebook? (400 million users) My point is that this project's results are not generalizable to other projects because most other projects won't be in a position to capitalize on widespread discontent of the current "king" which has 400 million users.
(4) $170,000 (minus the money they spend on merch) is actually quite small for a development project. Think three software developers for one year. I don't think they can reproduce Facebook in three man-years.
I suppose if you look at this like an open-source project* (*that will get lots of free code contributions) that has funding, well, from that perspective, it's not bad. But, from the perspective that this is a funding model that is on par with regular, commercial projects - it's not good at all.
I would've commented on this article a few days ago when I read it, but Gizmodo has a whole "audition" process you have to go through in order to comment on their site.
First of all, let's be clear here. His arguments are not much of a justification for piracy, and sometimes he's even contradictory. I take this as a sign that he hasn't quite worked out the issue in his head yet.
Let's be clear here that there are different types of piracy. If someone would've bought or rented a movie, but they pirate it because it costs them less money, that's a loss for the creator. I think that basically rises to the level of theft. Someone did work that you should pay them for, and you didn't pay them. But, this guy's reasons for piracy are:
(1) He can't buy or watch the stuff in his country. While I still can't condone it, I see it as significantly better than "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay". People should not get confused and think this guy's argument acts as a justification for what other pirates do. In the next few years, I think this will largely disappear as companies roll-out their service in other countries.
(2) He pirated material he already owns because it's more convenient than ripping it, or sitting through Ads on the DVD. He's already paid for this material, so this is also not really a big deal. Again, this is nowhere near "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay".
(3) He pirated Solar because he couldn't buy the digital version from Amazon. Well, unless he was incapable of buying the print version, I don't see this as that good of an argument. He's not entitled to a digital version of the book, but I would recommend that, if he pirates the book, he should buy a copy of the physical book to "pay" for his pirated copy.
(4) "the video had to be hosted on EMI's official YouTube channel, which disabled non-UK users from viewing it, limiting its audience by around 80%. Frustrated, I put it up on my own YouTube channel with no region restrictions" This should probably just be lumped in with Item #1 - bad region restrictions. I think this will get sorted out in the next few years, but it still offers no consolation to "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay" pirates.
"I don't understand business, but I can see that the old model needs to change. Perhaps it'll involve direct micro-payments. Perhaps you'll pay Apple or whoever a monthly flat fee to license all their content." Quite frankly, this statement comes out of the blue. While alternative pay models might make sense, nothing in his article actually supports that idea. Most of his article was about crappy region restrictions, which is an entirely different issue.
"Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park have always tolerated torrent sites hosting pirate versions of their show, as I imagine they see it as constant promotion." No, SouthPark sends out cease and deist letters. Ignoring the crappy region-restriction problems for a moment, the justification for pirating SouthPark are pretty slim now that SouthPark has a website where you can watch their stuff. Yeah, they have Ads, but they have to pay for bandwidth and get paid somehow. Pirating their stuff at this point is just being a jerk because you don't want to watch ads - which is the lowest-possible method of making money for a creator. If that's not good enough, then you're really being unreasonable.
"The promotion argument makes sense. South Park for example makes money from from syndication, advertising, merchandising and DVD sales (although the latter market is dwindling) so perhaps the extra visibility helps." Piracy undermines the syndication and advertising part of that equation. It's surprising that he could try to argue that "promotion" is so important for someone as big as SouthPark. Maybe he could make the argument that small shows need more promotion (although, small shows also need money very badly - which is what piracy takes from them), but saying that someone as big as SouthPark needs promo
How many keygens contain malware? How many times have people downloaded movies to suddenly discover that the movie only plays in a "special exe-based player". Do we really need to revisit the iWork-crack botnet example? People who are trying to steal people's data online have a huge incentive to pay crackers to crack software and infect it with Malware. They have "no incentive to include malware in their cracks"? Yeah, right.
While I agree that their numbers are crap, what bothers me is that the article acts as a platform for pirates to get on their soapbox and lampoon at the other side - making them feel that they are "right" and the other side is just BS, as if "piracy is just fine" and "every act of piracy = one lost sale" are the only two positions. My suggestions: BSA should avoid writing crap articles, and Slashdot should stop putting them on the front page so that pirates have a shooting gallery to feel justified in the rightness of their side.
To be fair, the amount of money brought in through iTunes and other download sellers (like Amazon) doesn't come close to the amount of losses the music industry is seeing. Based on sales numbers from the past 10 years, for roughly every $1 decline in physical sales, digital sales have increased by about $0.10 - $0.15.
Hint: if it costs you nothing that I copy your game, you didn't lose jack shit.
Out of curiosity, I wonder how you'd react to these statements:
- If everyone decided tomorrow that they would pirate everything and software companies went out of business, they can't claim that they "lost jack shit" to piracy.
- If I sneak into a concert without paying, the musicians don't lose anything. (At worst, they lose a little space around the stage - but that's more of a problem for other concert goers, and they would've lost that space if I had paid, anyway.) Therefore, sneaking into concerts is okay.
- If an apartment is for rent, I should be allowed to live there for free until some real renters come and rent the place. Therefore, squatting is okay.
- If I park in a pay parking lot, but I don't pay, and that lot never gets more than 95% full, then the parking lot owner didn't lose anything. Therefore, everyone should be allowed to park in the parking lot for free, and the owner "didn't lose anything".
How do you distinguish between an imaginary downloader who would have paid for the game and one who wouldn't have?
Until you can prove that your imaginary friends are more real than mine, we have nothing to talk about.
We can't distinguish between them. However, we're pretty sure it's above 0%. People often get mocked for claiming every act of piracy is a lost sale - implying that 100% of the pirates would've bought. But, pirate-defenders make a bold claim: that 0% of them would've bought. It seems to me that both of these positions are wrong, and you'd have to know exactly what's inside the heads of every pirate in order to make either of those bold claims.
Good. You've managed to put yourself so far outside the mainstream that 99.9% of everyone now disagrees with your argument. I take this as a 'win' for my argument.
Note that it doesn't mean that I have to give anyone my information...
Not all of my examples involved someone deciding to give away their information. For example, my wiretapping example didn't involve anyone consenting to being monitored.
In the parent post it says the author did some trials and found out $2.49 was the price where he made the most profit.
Which parent post? All I see is a section called "A hypothetical", meaning that the author didn't do any experiments. Also, on a similar note, I was talking to an iPhone developer recently. He did some experiments with pricing his iPhone apps. He said that raising the price of his iPhone apps from $1 to $3 had no discernible effect on sales at all. So, he made 3x as much money. Personally, I don't think a $2.49 vs. $2.99 price is going to make that much of a difference. At certain low costs, it's all just 'throw away' amounts of money. That seems to be the results found by my iPhone developer friend.
After all, what is the difference in outcome which would justify making the production of a deliberate copy illegal, but not the creation of an identical copy by random convergence? Surely the "harm" is the same in either case? Accidental harm is still harm, but accidental creation of a copy is not considered copyright infringement.
To be consistent, you'd have to also agree to a whole bunch of other negative consequences. Random convergence "could have created" a copy of someone else's book with my name as the author (legalized plagarism). Random convergence "could have created" a bunch of your banking account details, your emails, or other personal information - therefore, companies should be allowed to release all your data onto the internet (no privacy). If someone at Facebook or your medical clinic doesn't like you, they can release all your data onto the internet with no legal consequences. Even further, the government can gather all information everywhere because "random convergence could have created" all the sounds traveling through your telephone line, and all the bits traveling over your ISP (no warrants needed to monitor everything). Random convergence "could have created" any digital sequence of bits, and therefore, you have to argue for complete copyright anarchy - Walmart can print up all the books, music, movies, and software that they want without paying anybody anything. Piracy - even when it involves the exchange of money - would have to be completely legal. These are the consequences of your position.
The enlightened argument is not that the act of copying is theft, but that illegal copying deprives the copyright owner of monetary gains which would otherwise have been earned.
So does simply choosing to go without. Should that be illegal now as well?
You skipped over the "would otherwise have been earned" part in order to make your point. The fact of the matter is that, copyright was created in order to create a support a market for intellectual goods. You have two options, both of which are perfectly legal: (1) Get the copyrighted material, and pay, or (2) Don't get the copyrighted material and don't pay. The problem is that you want option #3: get the copyrighted material and don't pay. Under most circumstances, it's hard to see why someone wouldn't always choose option #3 over option #1 - since the consumer gets the stuff, but don't have to pay - which is the best possible option.
You can't "steal" the expectation of income. Only that which is owned is subject to theft, and theft only occurs when one is deprived of its use.
Saying it's theft is convenient shorthand. It's close enough to the truth to be a rounding error. If someone snuck into a concert, and the bouncer threw them out saying "sneaking into a concert without paying is the same as theft", I don't think anyone would really waste their time splitting hairs about whether is was or was not technically theft. Yet, people do this with piracy - because they want to make it sound legitimate. Would you come to the defense of some kid ranting about how the bouncer who threw him out of a concert was technically incorrect to call it "theft"? Maybe if you wanted to make it seem okay.
And, if it's not theft, what if some store started creating their own copies of copyrighted material and selling it (without paying the creator)? What if they priced it lower than the average price on the street? Would you say this is "theft", that they have "deprived the owner of sales"? Would you say it is wrong? You can't prove that any of the customers who bought those copies would've bought copies elsewhere, and you can't prove that they would've paid $10 for the item that they bought for $9 from this store. And, hey, maybe they should be allowed to make money because they are "providing the service of distribution". Would you have a problem if Netflix or Blockbuster started burning their own copies of movies, paying no money back to the original creators? Personally, I wouldn't have any problem calling what that "theft", but I guess you'd disagree.
"Even music and movies create new scarcities which can be monetized, even if the original work itself cannot be. "
One thing I hate about these types of articles is the way they dance past the issue of "can the new scarcities be monetized in a large enough way to compensate for the loss of monetization of digital sales?" Very often, the answer is "definitely not", but they never acknowledge that fact. Effectively, they end up saying: "You can't make money the old way, but you can make money the new way!" That sounds positive, until you examine the details: "Instead of X dollars from your work, you'll make 0.1X dollars from your work!" So sorry if that makes you bankrupt, I guess you'll have to find a different line of work and society will lose your contributions.
That'd be "customers are customers and should be treated as such". That was more just a general commentary, though, rather than any claim to it being their specific claim on what their view is.
Well, I don't know. It looked differently in the comment: "they're happy to have no or minimal DRM because pirates could be customers and customers are customers and should be treated as such."
Someone said that music/film was more like niche games and that niche games were equally strong on inconveniencing the legitimate customer for the sake of delaying the pirates by a few hours or so.
Right. And that was another reason they weren't using DRM - because it gets broken.
As far as 2dBoy's and Stardocks opinions towards pirates, here's what they've said in the past:
"Demigod is heavily pirated," writes Stardock boss Brad Wardell. "And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off." "If you’re playing a pirated copy right now, if you’re one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you’re a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way." http://www.destructoid.com/demigod-dev-to-pirates-accept-you-re-a-thief-131731.phtml
"ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes. we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but i’m hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is."
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
I've seen 2d boy say elsewhere that they didn't think pirates bought games, so there was little point in trying to block or convert pirates.
My point being that, neither of them have a positive view towards pirates. 2dBoy is somewhat neutral - seeing them as non-actors in the whole system, and Wardell hating pirates, but seeing the futility of trying to stop them. Their reasons for not using DRM didn't have to do with seeing them as potential customers.
Valve has said some things in the past about seeing pirates as potential customers. Admittedly, they also use DRM, and I think their "pirates are potential customers" is way of creating a constructive attitude towards the whole thing, and shouldn't be seen as thinking well of pirates.
Slashdot Mirror
Where did I say people should not get paid? I have no problem with people getting paid for their work.
You implied it by undermining the system whereby creators can get paid.
As far as I am concerned, it is time to find a new way to pay journalists and artists.
If you're undermining the copyright system whereby creators get paid, and not suggesting any alternatives, then, yes, you are undermining people's ability to get paid. One of my irritations is when people undermine copyright but don't suggest alternatives or suggest bad alternatives, and act like they're being reasonable.
Please point out where I said we should repeal copyright law.
It's implied in your comment.
All I said was that it is time for the focus to shift away from greed and toward improving the public's ability to access creative works.
Where did you say that?
Yes, "information wants to be free" trolls like Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson supported copyright. Yes, he supported a shorter version of copyright than we currently see, but don't try to co-opt Jefferson into some extreme "information wants to be free" supporter - which, by definition, requires that Jefferson opposed any form of copyright.
The IRS wants to know all about your online transactions.
No, they don't want to know "all about your online transactions" - they just want to know the amount of money someone is earning *if* they're earning more than $20,000 / year. They don't know what you're buying/selling, and they don't care if you're a casual buyer/seller.
And unlike Facebook, the IRS will definitely use the information against you.
Yeah, I know. They also demand to know how much money you earn at your job, and then they *use that information against you* by making you pay taxes.
But where are all the people who love to complain about their precious privacy?
No kidding. I hear that they even want to know how much money everyone earns and what their social security number is! Sorry, Gestapo, you can take your prying eyes somewhere else!
"are trying to hold on to a government granted artificial scarcity where there is no scarcity (it's just bits and bytes)."
I don't see the "artificial scarcity" argument as having much weight. Concerts, theaters, and amusement parks are not forced to allow people in their doors for free just "because there's still room; you aren't filled to capacity". I'd also argue that the ability to deny people free entry into concerts, theaters, and amusement parks is an important factor in getting people to pay for a ticket. The same can be said for copyright-based industries. People generally won't pay if they don't have to.
I agree with you that some pirates will download anything they have half an interest in playing. By the way, do you have a source for your claim?
Although, I also saw some numbers recently in another article describing the huge differences in sales and piracy between the PC and XBox. Their numbers for Modern Warfare 2 were:
PC sales: 270,000
PC pirated copies: 4.1 million copies
XBox sales: 6+ million
XBox pirated copies: 970,000 copies
When I look at discrepancies like that - both in terms of PC vs. XBox sales (270,000 vs 6,100,000), and percentage of pirated copies (94% pirated on the PC, 14% pirated on the XBox), it's hard not to believe that piracy is harming sales. Source: http://www.gamesradar.com/f/drm-necessary-evil-or-consumer-insult/a-20100518133549635045
"My friends and I used to play cracked Warcraft and Starcraft copies on our PCs. After we graduated and eventually had jobs, some of my friends bought authentic CDs because they felt that it was the right thing to do. They said that they've always wanted to buy the real thing but they didn't have money to do so. It was then that I realized that the figures that some companies claim to have lost to piracy are just a bunch of BS."
What's funny is that I didn't expect you to say that last sentence. I thought you were going to say that piracy hurts companies because most people were not as virtuous as your friends who bought copies. Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by "figures that some companies claim to have lost to piracy" - since most companies don't claim that 1 pirated copy = 1 lost sale. If they don't claim that, then they can't claim to have solid estimates about sales lost to piracy, although they might have some guesstimates based on a fraction of pirated copies.
Is this a review of the iPad as a magazine-reader ("Is This Really the Future of Magazines"), or a review of the Wired magazine App on the iPad? Judging from the title, it sounds like the former. I'd recommend looking at some other magazines or newspapers on the iPad if you're going to judge it as an eReader. For example, here's the USA Today App for the iPad (jump to 0:50) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5nJVtLygOM
If you store anything on the internet, what you are storing is a number. People most certainly are allowed to recreate the number 462826674840809873425894986513859764213550 even if I have declared it to be my own and stored it in a house with unlocked doors.
[sarcasm] Yeah, no kidding. For example, some guy wrote a book and it exists in digital format: "2983529087897329872394928734". I took that number and changed the first four digits, so it's "1212529087897329872394928734". Now, they call me a plagarist? All just because the "2983" was the author's name, and "1212" is my name? [/sarcasm]
My point being that treating digital media like numbers is a way of stripping away meaning and information. Once you've done that, then you can treat it as "just a number", and then do all kinds of shady things with it. Similarly, you can say that child pornography is "just a series of numbers" and who is the government to "regulate numbers"? You could say that someone's medical history is "just some numbers" and who is the government to say whether or not I can release a bunch of numbers on the internet? It's funny - there's a big uproar over Facebook privacy, but once you say that someone's information is "just numbers", well, privacy ceases to have meaning. Who are you to tell Facebook not to release numbers "2324983423423"? The reality is that *it has meaning*, and treating stuff as "just numbers" is a way of stripping meaning from it and legitimizing all kinds of bad things that we don't want. All kinds of things (plagarism, privacy, wiretapping, selling pirated material, death threats, etc) become meaningless if we treat it as "just numbers".
teenagers are the future what they believe is what the future of society believes.
And that's why the past few decades were all about free love, hippies, eastern religion, and peace. Glad we haven't had any wars since Vietnam.
Hm. Wasn't "Legion" the name of the demons that possessed a man in the Bible? I have to give you credit for subtly slamming pirates.
And He (Jesus) asked him (the man), "What is thy name?" And he answered, saying, "My name is Legion: for we [demons] are many."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_(demon)
You do know that they met their fund raising goal in only 5 days, right?
From the article: "They announced their project on April 24. They reached their $10,000 goal in 12 days". http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html
$170,000 is quite a bit of money, but the problems I see:
(1) They're on the hook to give people some physical merchandise - like t-shirts for everyone who pledged $25. This means they can't use all $170,000 for development.
(2) These are pledges, and you never know if you'll hear back from those people making those pledges.
(3) This project was particularly well-timed considering the people that have been unhappy with Facebook lately. There are how many millions of people on Facebook? (400 million users) My point is that this project's results are not generalizable to other projects because most other projects won't be in a position to capitalize on widespread discontent of the current "king" which has 400 million users.
(4) $170,000 (minus the money they spend on merch) is actually quite small for a development project. Think three software developers for one year. I don't think they can reproduce Facebook in three man-years.
I suppose if you look at this like an open-source project* (*that will get lots of free code contributions) that has funding, well, from that perspective, it's not bad. But, from the perspective that this is a funding model that is on par with regular, commercial projects - it's not good at all.
I would've commented on this article a few days ago when I read it, but Gizmodo has a whole "audition" process you have to go through in order to comment on their site.
First of all, let's be clear here. His arguments are not much of a justification for piracy, and sometimes he's even contradictory. I take this as a sign that he hasn't quite worked out the issue in his head yet.
Let's be clear here that there are different types of piracy. If someone would've bought or rented a movie, but they pirate it because it costs them less money, that's a loss for the creator. I think that basically rises to the level of theft. Someone did work that you should pay them for, and you didn't pay them. But, this guy's reasons for piracy are:
(1) He can't buy or watch the stuff in his country. While I still can't condone it, I see it as significantly better than "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay". People should not get confused and think this guy's argument acts as a justification for what other pirates do. In the next few years, I think this will largely disappear as companies roll-out their service in other countries.
(2) He pirated material he already owns because it's more convenient than ripping it, or sitting through Ads on the DVD. He's already paid for this material, so this is also not really a big deal. Again, this is nowhere near "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay".
(3) He pirated Solar because he couldn't buy the digital version from Amazon. Well, unless he was incapable of buying the print version, I don't see this as that good of an argument. He's not entitled to a digital version of the book, but I would recommend that, if he pirates the book, he should buy a copy of the physical book to "pay" for his pirated copy.
(4) "the video had to be hosted on EMI's official YouTube channel, which disabled non-UK users from viewing it, limiting its audience by around 80%. Frustrated, I put it up on my own YouTube channel with no region restrictions" This should probably just be lumped in with Item #1 - bad region restrictions. I think this will get sorted out in the next few years, but it still offers no consolation to "I pirated so I wouldn't have to pay" pirates.
"I don't understand business, but I can see that the old model needs to change. Perhaps it'll involve direct micro-payments. Perhaps you'll pay Apple or whoever a monthly flat fee to license all their content." Quite frankly, this statement comes out of the blue. While alternative pay models might make sense, nothing in his article actually supports that idea. Most of his article was about crappy region restrictions, which is an entirely different issue.
"Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park have always tolerated torrent sites hosting pirate versions of their show, as I imagine they see it as constant promotion." No, SouthPark sends out cease and deist letters. Ignoring the crappy region-restriction problems for a moment, the justification for pirating SouthPark are pretty slim now that SouthPark has a website where you can watch their stuff. Yeah, they have Ads, but they have to pay for bandwidth and get paid somehow. Pirating their stuff at this point is just being a jerk because you don't want to watch ads - which is the lowest-possible method of making money for a creator. If that's not good enough, then you're really being unreasonable.
"The promotion argument makes sense. South Park for example makes money from from syndication, advertising, merchandising and DVD sales (although the latter market is dwindling) so perhaps the extra visibility helps." Piracy undermines the syndication and advertising part of that equation. It's surprising that he could try to argue that "promotion" is so important for someone as big as SouthPark. Maybe he could make the argument that small shows need more promotion (although, small shows also need money very badly - which is what piracy takes from them), but saying that someone as big as SouthPark needs promo
How many keygens contain malware? How many times have people downloaded movies to suddenly discover that the movie only plays in a "special exe-based player". Do we really need to revisit the iWork-crack botnet example? People who are trying to steal people's data online have a huge incentive to pay crackers to crack software and infect it with Malware. They have "no incentive to include malware in their cracks"? Yeah, right.
First Mac Botnet Stems From iWork, Photoshop Trojans
http://www.crn.com/security/216700006
iWork Trojan reappears in Photoshop CS4 crack
http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/core-dump/22865-iwork-trojan-reappears-in-photoshop-cs4-crack
While I agree that their numbers are crap, what bothers me is that the article acts as a platform for pirates to get on their soapbox and lampoon at the other side - making them feel that they are "right" and the other side is just BS, as if "piracy is just fine" and "every act of piracy = one lost sale" are the only two positions. My suggestions: BSA should avoid writing crap articles, and Slashdot should stop putting them on the front page so that pirates have a shooting gallery to feel justified in the rightness of their side.
To be fair, the amount of money brought in through iTunes and other download sellers (like Amazon) doesn't come close to the amount of losses the music industry is seeing. Based on sales numbers from the past 10 years, for roughly every $1 decline in physical sales, digital sales have increased by about $0.10 - $0.15.
AllOfMp3 wasn't paying anybody. They were exploiting a loophole in Russian law and pocketing all the money.
Hint: if it costs you nothing that I copy your game, you didn't lose jack shit.
Out of curiosity, I wonder how you'd react to these statements:
- If everyone decided tomorrow that they would pirate everything and software companies went out of business, they can't claim that they "lost jack shit" to piracy.
- If I sneak into a concert without paying, the musicians don't lose anything. (At worst, they lose a little space around the stage - but that's more of a problem for other concert goers, and they would've lost that space if I had paid, anyway.) Therefore, sneaking into concerts is okay.
- If an apartment is for rent, I should be allowed to live there for free until some real renters come and rent the place. Therefore, squatting is okay.
- If I park in a pay parking lot, but I don't pay, and that lot never gets more than 95% full, then the parking lot owner didn't lose anything. Therefore, everyone should be allowed to park in the parking lot for free, and the owner "didn't lose anything".
How do you distinguish between an imaginary downloader who would have paid for the game and one who wouldn't have? Until you can prove that your imaginary friends are more real than mine, we have nothing to talk about.
We can't distinguish between them. However, we're pretty sure it's above 0%. People often get mocked for claiming every act of piracy is a lost sale - implying that 100% of the pirates would've bought. But, pirate-defenders make a bold claim: that 0% of them would've bought. It seems to me that both of these positions are wrong, and you'd have to know exactly what's inside the heads of every pirate in order to make either of those bold claims.
So? I do agree to all of that.
Good. You've managed to put yourself so far outside the mainstream that 99.9% of everyone now disagrees with your argument. I take this as a 'win' for my argument.
Note that it doesn't mean that I have to give anyone my information...
Not all of my examples involved someone deciding to give away their information. For example, my wiretapping example didn't involve anyone consenting to being monitored.
In the parent post it says the author did some trials and found out $2.49 was the price where he made the most profit.
Which parent post? All I see is a section called "A hypothetical", meaning that the author didn't do any experiments. Also, on a similar note, I was talking to an iPhone developer recently. He did some experiments with pricing his iPhone apps. He said that raising the price of his iPhone apps from $1 to $3 had no discernible effect on sales at all. So, he made 3x as much money. Personally, I don't think a $2.49 vs. $2.99 price is going to make that much of a difference. At certain low costs, it's all just 'throw away' amounts of money. That seems to be the results found by my iPhone developer friend.
After all, what is the difference in outcome which would justify making the production of a deliberate copy illegal, but not the creation of an identical copy by random convergence? Surely the "harm" is the same in either case? Accidental harm is still harm, but accidental creation of a copy is not considered copyright infringement.
To be consistent, you'd have to also agree to a whole bunch of other negative consequences. Random convergence "could have created" a copy of someone else's book with my name as the author (legalized plagarism). Random convergence "could have created" a bunch of your banking account details, your emails, or other personal information - therefore, companies should be allowed to release all your data onto the internet (no privacy). If someone at Facebook or your medical clinic doesn't like you, they can release all your data onto the internet with no legal consequences. Even further, the government can gather all information everywhere because "random convergence could have created" all the sounds traveling through your telephone line, and all the bits traveling over your ISP (no warrants needed to monitor everything). Random convergence "could have created" any digital sequence of bits, and therefore, you have to argue for complete copyright anarchy - Walmart can print up all the books, music, movies, and software that they want without paying anybody anything. Piracy - even when it involves the exchange of money - would have to be completely legal. These are the consequences of your position.
The enlightened argument is not that the act of copying is theft, but that illegal copying deprives the copyright owner of monetary gains which would otherwise have been earned.
So does simply choosing to go without. Should that be illegal now as well?
You skipped over the "would otherwise have been earned" part in order to make your point. The fact of the matter is that, copyright was created in order to create a support a market for intellectual goods. You have two options, both of which are perfectly legal: (1) Get the copyrighted material, and pay, or (2) Don't get the copyrighted material and don't pay. The problem is that you want option #3: get the copyrighted material and don't pay. Under most circumstances, it's hard to see why someone wouldn't always choose option #3 over option #1 - since the consumer gets the stuff, but don't have to pay - which is the best possible option.
You can't "steal" the expectation of income. Only that which is owned is subject to theft, and theft only occurs when one is deprived of its use.
Saying it's theft is convenient shorthand. It's close enough to the truth to be a rounding error. If someone snuck into a concert, and the bouncer threw them out saying "sneaking into a concert without paying is the same as theft", I don't think anyone would really waste their time splitting hairs about whether is was or was not technically theft. Yet, people do this with piracy - because they want to make it sound legitimate. Would you come to the defense of some kid ranting about how the bouncer who threw him out of a concert was technically incorrect to call it "theft"? Maybe if you wanted to make it seem okay.
And, if it's not theft, what if some store started creating their own copies of copyrighted material and selling it (without paying the creator)? What if they priced it lower than the average price on the street? Would you say this is "theft", that they have "deprived the owner of sales"? Would you say it is wrong? You can't prove that any of the customers who bought those copies would've bought copies elsewhere, and you can't prove that they would've paid $10 for the item that they bought for $9 from this store. And, hey, maybe they should be allowed to make money because they are "providing the service of distribution". Would you have a problem if Netflix or Blockbuster started burning their own copies of movies, paying no money back to the original creators? Personally, I wouldn't have any problem calling what that "theft", but I guess you'd disagree.
"Even music and movies create new scarcities which can be monetized, even if the original work itself cannot be. "
One thing I hate about these types of articles is the way they dance past the issue of "can the new scarcities be monetized in a large enough way to compensate for the loss of monetization of digital sales?" Very often, the answer is "definitely not", but they never acknowledge that fact. Effectively, they end up saying: "You can't make money the old way, but you can make money the new way!" That sounds positive, until you examine the details: "Instead of X dollars from your work, you'll make 0.1X dollars from your work!" So sorry if that makes you bankrupt, I guess you'll have to find a different line of work and society will lose your contributions.
That'd be "customers are customers and should be treated as such". That was more just a general commentary, though, rather than any claim to it being their specific claim on what their view is.
Well, I don't know. It looked differently in the comment: "they're happy to have no or minimal DRM because pirates could be customers and customers are customers and should be treated as such."
Someone said that music/film was more like niche games and that niche games were equally strong on inconveniencing the legitimate customer for the sake of delaying the pirates by a few hours or so.
Right. And that was another reason they weren't using DRM - because it gets broken.
As far as 2dBoy's and Stardocks opinions towards pirates, here's what they've said in the past:
"Demigod is heavily pirated," writes Stardock boss Brad Wardell. "And make no mistake, piracy pisses me off." "If you’re playing a pirated copy right now, if you’re one of those people on Hamachi or GameRanger playing a pirated copy and have been for more than a few days, then you should either buy it or accept that you’re a thief and quit rationalizing it any other way."
http://www.destructoid.com/demigod-dev-to-pirates-accept-you-re-a-thief-131731.phtml
"ricochet shipped with DRM, world of goo shipped without it, and there seems to be no difference in the outcomes. we can’t draw any conclusions based on two data points, but i’m hoping that others will release information about piracy rates so that everyone could see if DRM is the waste of time and money that we think it is."
http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/
I've seen 2d boy say elsewhere that they didn't think pirates bought games, so there was little point in trying to block or convert pirates.
My point being that, neither of them have a positive view towards pirates. 2dBoy is somewhat neutral - seeing them as non-actors in the whole system, and Wardell hating pirates, but seeing the futility of trying to stop them. Their reasons for not using DRM didn't have to do with seeing them as potential customers.
Valve has said some things in the past about seeing pirates as potential customers. Admittedly, they also use DRM, and I think their "pirates are potential customers" is way of creating a constructive attitude towards the whole thing, and shouldn't be seen as thinking well of pirates.