It may be nice, but it only proves that you own a nice shiny disc, nothing else. Possessing such a disc does not give you any additional right to the music that is on that disc.
I agree fully, but you *do* get a really nice coaster if you ever stop liking the music on the disc.
When's the last time you've seen anyone walk around with a discman?
Yesterday, in a subway. Plus I own a Discman also, but I'm one of those dinosaurs who are still purchasing CDs (or was it CD's? Pardon my English). My CD-player is a unwieldy, but it's reliable and doesn't require a computer to use. Those are big plusses for me.
Is that so? Not according to my experience. I've tried very hard to install nothing at all on top of the initial setup of my Dell laptop I use at work. Didn't help, the windows shell got really slow after half an year or so. Could be a hardware fault, I dunno, but it's kinda annoying when performing some very basic shell functions takes about five to ten seconds.
Also my Media Player has been partially broken since that one time that Word crashed really badly. I still haven't figured out what happened except after the crash, I haven't been able to play some wmv-files that used to play okay before.
Why don't they just make the trackpad/mouse assembly user replacable so third parties can accomodate the needs of people who want a multi-button mouse on a notebook?
Oh, that's an easy one. Because such an assembly would cost more money.
It's the same in Finland. I have a card with about 100 disposable passwords and when I have used most of the passes the bank sends me a new card. In my opinion this is a lot more secure method than the permanent password scheme employed by many American banks.
No offense, but as can be seen from the many comments posted here already, the US banking system is not exactly the state of the art. I mean, US still uses paper checks which I find astonishing. There must be incredible amounts of work and thus expenses involved in handling all those checks.
Unfortunately, some (many?) asteroids are kind of porous, so they can absorb lots of kinetic energy and still stay intact and on course. So, nukes wouldn't help even if you could hit the asteroid with one. Ahem. That's all I know on the subject. Actually I saw it on tv recently, so it must be true.
There is no `removal of markets when someone copies a source and distributes it for free. Linux is a working example of a freely distributed package. Guess what, the people who profit from it, profit from it regardless the free distributions.
Okay, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned source code, but that was beside the point anyway. My point was that if you're trying to sell a product to people but those same people have the option of obtaining the product for free, you will lose sales. This applies to products like movies, music, computer games and generally stuff that's targeted for private customers. I'm also assuming that the product is such that people actually want to use it.
By the way, Linux is by definition open source, it was meant to be distributed freely, so I don't see how it fits the picture when talking about stuff that's not freely distributable. The business model for Linux is quite different from the business model for movies or computer games.
Similarly, when a closed source product or a CD or a Movie is pirated, there are those who wouldn't buy the product anyway, those who'd pirate the product and not buy it, those who pirate it and buy it and those who don't pirate. These people always exist no matter how strict the copyright holders or the law. The same people who bought CD's, Movies, Computer programmes and other intellectual property will nevertheless buy them whether there are pirates or not.
What about the people who would buy it but now that they can pirate it, don't have to? Seriously, it's not just that one friend of mine, I know lots of people who used to buy lots of music but don't anymore because it's so easy to download all that stuff instead. In this sense the world has really changed. For many people downloading stuff for free has only recently become a viable option, so instead of paying for stuff they are learning how to get it for free.
Yes, I agree that all that free circulation has a promotional effect also, but I still stand by my opinion that piracy causes more lost sales than it promotes new sales. This is based solely on my personal experience and the fact that given a choice, most (please note: most, not all) people would rather not pay for anything they can get for free.
1 - Did the vicitm actualy loose possession of the item in question? No, online piracy involves making a copy, not removing or destroying the origional. As a consequence, the copyright holder has not been deprived of any property.
Let's assume that you have just developed some fancy new piece of closed-source software that everyone really wants and you are intending to sell it online for a hefty price. Then someone manages to make a copy of the source and starts distributing it for free, thus removing commercial market for the product. However you still have the original copy. Now I'd love to see you try and convince me how you wouldn't be royally pissed off at this act of piracy, even though you still retain the originals.
2 - Did the victim loose some future benefit? While many would argue that piracy cuts into sales, the argument is flawed. Pirated copies are free. At zero cost demand can be assumed to be at its maximum. Maximum demand is well above equilibrium unless you're selling air. Further, authorized copies are typicaly at a higher bit rate and exhibit superior characteristics in nearly ever respect. As a consqeuence few if any sales of authorized copies will be lost to the inferior pirate copy.
I find this logic just as flawed as the BSA's version of the same. IMO piracy does lead to significant lost sales but not every pirated copy equates a lost sale.
First example: a friend of mine used to rent lots and lots of movies. Now he doesn't anymore because he can download high-quality copies of those movies via P2P-networks. That's lost sales right there.
Another example: I used to copy lots of games when I was younger. Some of those games I would have bought if a pirated copy would not have been available. So clearly piracy lead to some lost sales, but not in 1:1 ratio.
Basically the question comes down to reasonable profit margins, or how much money can copyright owners expect to make with their intellectual property. Now the problem is that copyright owners are making more money than ever but still want more while lots of consumers want everything for free. Also, consumers are not yet used to the idea of licensing a creative work for a certain amount of time instead of buying a physical copy that becomes their property for ever. I believe it just takes a while for the demands of consumers and producers to converge.
Hi, could someone please give me a reasonable explanation why being able to win marketshare from IE with Opera/Mozilla/Firefox/whatever is considered so important? The one good reason I can come up with is to reduce Microsoft's ability to stuff proprietary, non-standard technology into their webserver. Anything else, anyone?
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I agree fully, but you *do* get a really nice coaster if you ever stop liking the music on the disc.
Is that so? Not according to my experience. I've tried very hard to install nothing at all on top of the initial setup of my Dell laptop I use at work. Didn't help, the windows shell got really slow after half an year or so. Could be a hardware fault, I dunno, but it's kinda annoying when performing some very basic shell functions takes about five to ten seconds.
Also my Media Player has been partially broken since that one time that Word crashed really badly. I still haven't figured out what happened except after the crash, I haven't been able to play some wmv-files that used to play okay before.
It's the same in Finland. I have a card with about 100 disposable passwords and when I have used most of the passes the bank sends me a new card. In my opinion this is a lot more secure method than the permanent password scheme employed by many American banks. No offense, but as can be seen from the many comments posted here already, the US banking system is not exactly the state of the art. I mean, US still uses paper checks which I find astonishing. There must be incredible amounts of work and thus expenses involved in handling all those checks.
Unfortunately, some (many?) asteroids are kind of porous, so they can absorb lots of kinetic energy and still stay intact and on course. So, nukes wouldn't help even if you could hit the asteroid with one. Ahem. That's all I know on the subject. Actually I saw it on tv recently, so it must be true.
Okay, maybe I shouldn't have mentioned source code, but that was beside the point anyway. My point was that if you're trying to sell a product to people but those same people have the option of obtaining the product for free, you will lose sales. This applies to products like movies, music, computer games and generally stuff that's targeted for private customers. I'm also assuming that the product is such that people actually want to use it.
By the way, Linux is by definition open source, it was meant to be distributed freely, so I don't see how it fits the picture when talking about stuff that's not freely distributable. The business model for Linux is quite different from the business model for movies or computer games.
What about the people who would buy it but now that they can pirate it, don't have to? Seriously, it's not just that one friend of mine, I know lots of people who used to buy lots of music but don't anymore because it's so easy to download all that stuff instead. In this sense the world has really changed. For many people downloading stuff for free has only recently become a viable option, so instead of paying for stuff they are learning how to get it for free.
Yes, I agree that all that free circulation has a promotional effect also, but I still stand by my opinion that piracy causes more lost sales than it promotes new sales. This is based solely on my personal experience and the fact that given a choice, most (please note: most, not all) people would rather not pay for anything they can get for free.
Let's assume that you have just developed some fancy new piece of closed-source software that everyone really wants and you are intending to sell it online for a hefty price. Then someone manages to make a copy of the source and starts distributing it for free, thus removing commercial market for the product. However you still have the original copy. Now I'd love to see you try and convince me how you wouldn't be royally pissed off at this act of piracy, even though you still retain the originals.
I find this logic just as flawed as the BSA's version of the same. IMO piracy does lead to significant lost sales but not every pirated copy equates a lost sale.
First example: a friend of mine used to rent lots and lots of movies. Now he doesn't anymore because he can download high-quality copies of those movies via P2P-networks. That's lost sales right there.
Another example: I used to copy lots of games when I was younger. Some of those games I would have bought if a pirated copy would not have been available. So clearly piracy lead to some lost sales, but not in 1:1 ratio.
Basically the question comes down to reasonable profit margins, or how much money can copyright owners expect to make with their intellectual property. Now the problem is that copyright owners are making more money than ever but still want more while lots of consumers want everything for free. Also, consumers are not yet used to the idea of licensing a creative work for a certain amount of time instead of buying a physical copy that becomes their property for ever. I believe it just takes a while for the demands of consumers and producers to converge.
Hi, could someone please give me a reasonable explanation why being able to win marketshare from IE with Opera/Mozilla/Firefox/whatever is considered so important? The one good reason I can come up with is to reduce Microsoft's ability to stuff proprietary, non-standard technology into their webserver. Anything else, anyone?