how does it affect you materially? juvenile snarky commentary about your sexuality affects you materially?
It certainly seems to have done so to the plaintiffs, but that's the matter in front of the court, isn't it?
no, i have a better idea: grow the fuck up. your fascist every-comment-must-not-be-anonymous attitude reveals an immaturity on your own part: a fragile ego. this is your personality defect, this is your character flaw. and we who are secure enough in ourselves to roll our eyes at retarded juvenile comments on the internet will not give up the concept of anonymity for the sake of your fragile ego.
I was unaware that mischaracterizing another's attitude, swearing at them, and giving a dime-store psychoanalysis of their personality based on a Slashdot comment were hallmarks of "MATURITY" and being "secure." Thanks for clearing that up.
so If i am in the town square and start screaming about how you are a crazy silly walking fool you can positively identify me?
If you started slandering me in public, I can identify at least which physical person is doing so, and probably get a police officer to tell you to quit disturbing the peace.
I think you do not even have a clue as to how hard it is to identify a person from memory or even photograph if you do not personally know them.
Not the point. The point is that you can be apprehended - a body can be associated with its speech. Posting anonymously on the Internet is more like leaving a boom box with a slanderous recording in the public square: while the speaker may ultimately be identified, it's immeasurably harder.
Then add in I can wear a wig and a fake beard and even make it nearly impossible for even close friends to identify me from a photograph.
You must have been watching a "Jeeves and Wooster" marathon.
I use the anonymous buttons. This allows me to talk about subjects that will get me labeled as a terrorist or political dissident.
Sorry, but you're just plain wrong. Unless you go to greater lengths to concel the place from where you're posting, the FBI or Secret Service can certainly find you from an anonymous post if you're noticed and deemed a possible threat worth investigating.
Posting anon on the net is EXACTLY the same as the town square wearing a wig or other disguise. it is not what you so carefully paint to be incredibly different.
I wonder how much time you must spend on the Internet to be unable to recognize the differences between a physical and an online presence?
I've personally never let an individual[...]service consume me. Some are nice, some are useful, some are downright cool. But this is the Internet Age -- if you wait five minutes, something new and better will invariably come along.
That's the exact reason I hit F5 every five minutes.
When I hear an anonymous coward call someone a child molester, I assume nothing. So would you.
Exactly. Of course, if the suit is correct in asserting material damages as the result of anonymous slander, then it just shows that the hiring folks at major law firms aren't quite so bright.
everyone is anonymous on the internet. you and i aren't posting as anonymous cowards, but we're still anonymous: all you know of me is my moniker, and a few tid bits of information about who i am that i choose to disclose which may or may not be true
Right. Now, if you should disclose anonymously that you have been giving my prospective bosses fraudulent information that negatively affects me materially, prepare to lose that anonymity at a judge's order, unless you're technically savvy enough to truly conceal your identity. I doubt that last condition applies to a bunch of idiot law students.
go ahead and view this thread with the cutoff point of -1 for posts. cheek to jowl with some high level intellignet and witty comments, you will find the most utterly retarded and ignorant asocial negative bullshit
I always read Slashdot at -1, in fact, and you're absolutely correct.
in other words, welcome to the internet. you should try to familiarize yourself a little more with your chosen subject matter. there is no such thing as an identity on the internet.
Thanks for presuming that I am unfamiliar with the Internet, but your contention is incorrect. One's real ID is certainly traceable in most instances from an online posting, given the proper court authority and technology.
Also, we do have some form of ID on Slashdot. Mine's "Sunburnt (890890)". When you read a post and see my ID at the top, you might recall previous posts of mine and think, "Hey, this guy's usually pretty sharp and probably onto something here, I should credit this more than most other posts" or "Hey, this guy's usually a total jackass and is probably lying about everything in this post." On the other hand, if I post anonymously, you can't even look at my comment history to make such a determination. The concept of anonymity can be applied to varying degrees in diverse situations.
so rather than some rather naive and idealistic individuals expecting that all human speech somehow become only good on the internet,
How did you get that conviction out of my comments? I'm a bit too misanthropic to ever expect such a thing.
maybe instead some of you, like these litigious law students, need to develop a higher level of tolerance to simple pointlessly negative and useless juvenile snark...when you use a rest stop on the highway, and you see the retarded commentary on the walls, does it devastate you? emotionally damage you? no. you just roll your eyes and forget about it 10 seconds later. so why would the snarky juvenile idiocy damage you on the internet?
RTFA. The plaintiffs are specifically alleging material damages as a result of the posts in question. If anyone in this situation needs to adjust their credibility detectors, it's probably the hiring managers who apparently take this sort of juvenile shit-slinging seriously. (Not hard to believe, given their profession.)
Oh, I think that people are eager to share their thoughts, but many think they get to hide behind some degree of anonymity in doing so
You may have something there. Even those putting their pictures, locations, and private thoughts on their MySpace page may think, "It's not like anyone really cares about who I am." What they're not getting is that, with the refined searching mechanisms that have risen alongside Internet technology, it takes just one crazy/stupid person to abuse the posters' privacy.
If you're sitting around thinking that so and so is molesting children, either they are indeed molesting children, and we need to get that sorted out right away before it happens again, or you're sitting there imagining horrors that aren't real to fill in the gaps of your ignorance and fear, and we need to get that sorted out right away before you do something stupid.
Strange. I would think that a free society would be one that cannot assume, based on a person's private thoughts, that said person would "do something stupid." Nor, for that matter, would a free society be one where people may be investigated based on the private, groundless suspicions of others. A free society is not one that seeks to deal with every paranoid instance of its members' private thoughts.
Now, if I periodically saw other peoples' crying children leave the individual's house, or saw illegal child porn on display after being invited into their house, I certainly would have an obligation to have this "sorted out right away." Fact is, people have groundless suspicions about things every day, and a society with the right to get to the bottom of every such suspicion - even when the suspicious person understands that there is no tangible certainty - is the opposite of free.
When are people going to learn that typing stuff and putting it out on the public Internet is the electronic equivalent of shouting things to the world?
See, now I just feel cynical. I think most already know this, and are in fact eager to share their thoughtful gems with the world-at-large. MySpace, Blogger, Livejournal, etc...it seems that one can make a fair bit of cash by encouraging folks to seek the attention of anonymous others.
Really? I would assert that privacy is fundamental to the perpetuation of a free society. But this isn't an issue about privacy, it's about anonymity, which is different. I may privately think that another person molests children. I may even write this down in my diary, and I would maintain that it would be unethical for others to force me to reveal these completely private thoughts.
I certainly wouldn't have the ethical standing to publish this diary anonymously, however. Do you see the difference?
The site's founder, Jarret Cohen, the insurance agent, said the site merely provides a forum for free speech. "I want it to be a place where people can express themselves freely, just as if they were to go to a town square and say whatever brilliant or foolish thoughts they have," Cohen said.
Except that isn't what you've created, you naive jackass. There is no anonymity in the town square: people speaking their "brilliant or foolish" (or slanderous and defamatory) thoughts are identifiable, and the repercussions for their actions can range from social disapproval to legal sanction. Blanket anonymity creates the exact fucking opposite environment from that of the town square. What Mr. Cohen has created rather resembles a public toilet. This is the same problem with news articles that rely entirely on anonymous sources to divulge personal details about the subject: how is the content any more credible than the random scrawlings of an interstate rest area?
Anonymity is one thing if there is the possibility of unjust sanction for free speech, as in the case of whistleblowing. But if major law firms are, apparently, making decisions about others' character based on a bunch of anonymous cowards on online forums, it just goes to show that no amount of expensive education can cure idiocy.
Of course, Congress is mostly a bunch of lawyers, and it's fun to imagine leading politicians being brought up on specious charges. Perhaps I'll have a change of heart if the president gets impeached, and the impeachment cites "A reputable source named Sunburnt on an anonymous Internet forum, who repeatedly asserts that the President secretly collaborates with the North Korean government."
I'm talking about a specific failure of copyright law. You choose, once again, to ignore or dismiss any of my actual arguments in this thread, and then shadowbox against a strawman "all-copyright-is-teh-evil" perspective that fits into your shallow and one-sided perspective on IP law. Since I'm sure you're more than capable of doing so without my help, have a good week.
I wish some of these slashdot discussions on intellectual property rights would actually debate legal issues and attempt serious discussion, rather than approach the issue under the assumption that all digital file sharing is right because you say it is.
I wish some of these slashdot commenters would actually read the entire discussion before commenting, instead of just hitting the first post with facile sterotypes like "anarchist-thieves-big-corporation-hating-sticking - it-to-the-man types do a little homework on intellectual property rights issues and come back and post when you're done."
What, are you following me around? Do I have to argue with you on two fronts here?
What, are you paranoid? I don't get alert emails and don't pay attention to usernames. I've been responding to every idiotic post I find on this thread. You just seem to have a gift for producing.
The particular majority out there who believe there should be some form of copyright. The same majority that possess the wisdom and intelligence to see through the oversimplified "us" versus "them", "good" versus "evil" stereotypes.
What, like these oversimplified stereotypes?
Isn't that what Slashdotters always say when the democratic process isn't producing their desired results? Could copyright lobby indeed be supported by The People, which would explain why the anti-copyright lobby is failing? No, no. Naturally, everyone agrees with you. It's just we are living in a corrupt police state, and I'm a government agent (an enemy of The People).
So by arguing against nothing more than intrusive government regulation designed to protect the economic viability of one particular class of products, I apparently am "against copyrights." Let's see where you take this strawman stereotype of my position regarding IP and copyright:
If you think about it, stealing a car costs less than buying a car (please save me the lecture on why copying!=stealing).
Please, save me the tired lectures that assume content=cars.
Does that mean car sellers are also "outdated"? Do we complain that the government is protecting car manufacturers and sellers, when they could be leaving theft to the free market?
Oh, wait, you didn't. Ah well. What better way to argue rationally than to completely ignore the entire fucking point of the other person's argument, namely, the distinction between product and content, and just proceed to lay your equivocating metaphor out for all to see?
Do we whine when car manufacturers start complaining loudly and lobby the government for protection?
Remember the Chrysler bailout?
True, but the fact that copyright law is strengthening and the fact that the anti-copyright lobby is relatively small and seems to ignore all economic common sense show me that society is (and probably should be) generally for copyright.
Right, because laws, and the corporate lobbyists who write them, are the hallmarks of popular sentiment. I want to live in your dimension. The pot must be incredible.
You find me a respected person who advocates for a completely unadulterated, totally unregulated free market, regardless of established common law, and then we'll talk.
Ah, the appeal to authority fallacy and the oversimplified, stereotyped, and absolutely incorrect assumption that I might agree with that position. Tell you what: You find me a person at the other end of your keyboard willing to engage in discussion, instead of one who adopts strawman arguments and pompously identifies their own ideas with those of "society," and then we'll talk.
in effect, that you pay for every flop when you buy a record. While this may offend some people, there isn't any other better way to invest in bands.
What, like, buying tickets to their shows and distributing free recordings of those shows to generate interest in those shows among other people? Worked for these guys.
we encourage the business model because it is the best model we have to date that provides us with the culture that we as a society generally agreed that we want/need.
I'm sorry - who is this "we" to whom you refer? "We" don't encourage the business model of the movie/recording industries. "They" impose it on "us" through business practices and expensive lobbyists. Just because you happen to agree with legislation concerning "digital rights" doesn't mean you're tapping into some sort of sociocultural consensus.
Legitimate businesses were never meant to compete directly with illegal means.
That's nice and completely irrelevant, because the product is not the same. I'm not inclined to explain the difference between product and content as regards luxury goods in a free market for a third time in this thread, so I'll just end by pointing out the presumptuous condescension of your last statement:
By invoking the free market into this conversation, you are offending all the people who seriously support the principle in economics.
Ah, I wasn't aware that your judiciousness in economic affairs was so great as to empower you to speak for all the "serious" supporters of free markets. Silly me, thinking that you're wrong about free downloads limiting the market for movie tickets and DVDs. I must not take the market as seriously as you.
Why the fuck should I pay to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film
An excellent question in itself.
And one the downloader should be asking himself before he pulls this particular excuse out of his ass.
Well, yes. I'm sure some people have an answer to the first question, and they should certainly spring for the ticket or DVD. Using downloaded movies as a substitute for paying for any movies is certainly unethical, but that's not the point at issue in my comment. My point is that, in the absence of free options for movie viewing, there are plenty of movies that would just be seen by less people because the demand for the product would be reduced - it's a flawed leap of logic to assume that the removal of the free option would lead to higher consumption of movie products. See my reply to the above poster on the difference between "product" (a package including the theater experience/DVD case) and "content."
The truth is that the geek wants his pop culture fix without paying the price of entry - even when that price is nothing more than a four block walk to his nearest public library.
Now this is just self-righteous nonsense. Please explain how borrowing a movie from the library for free is any different to the producer of the movie than downloading it for free from the Internet. My local library (a twelve-block walk; what wonderful city do YOU inhabit?) doesn't give the studio a cut when I borrow a DVD. Does yours?
And your point is? Given that the guy you were replying too was talking about piracy, how does your point relate?
OK, I'll try to go a little slower this time around.
If people don't want to see a thing because its shit, it stands to reason it is also less likely to be pirated, because of being shit.
No, because you left the verb "to pay" out of that sentence's first clause, and demand for entertainment products is highly elastic. People have the ability to be entertained by shitty products (I certainly do), but it doesn't mean they view them as worthy of money, or that their absence would leave a gap in a person's entertainment that they'd be willing to pay to fill with those products.
'failure to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for' is nonsense as a justification for piracy. If there was no way for piracy to take place, people would buy more movies.
This is the same flawed logic put forth by the "Nader cost Gore the 2000 election" types. It is predicated on the mistaken assumption that, in the absence of some options, most people will select other options that they find undesirable just for the sake of selecting something. While this is true for products with a rather inelastic demand - food, for example - it is certainly not true for entertainment. This logical error also stems from equivocating demand for the product with demand for the content. Demand for luxury goods is not just a function of content, but of price, and the fact that someone pursues a free product does not logically imply that they would pursue the same product with a higher price. The market for free downloaded movies is not the same set of people who comprise the market for movie tickets and DVD's - there is crossover when looking at movies as a whole, but movies aren't purchased as a whole, but individually. For any one movie, these are different groups of consumers.
The fact that movie studios are making record profits from blockbuster movies indicates that they still have a large market of consumers willing to pay for their product - not just the audiovisual content of the product, but the associated theater experience or nice packaging. People aren't buying less DVD's, they're just seeing more movies that would have normally slipped under their radar when price is a consideration. In my experience, downloading movies enables consumers to make informed choices before laying down cash for a legitimate DVD. It doesn't lead to them buying less DVD's; it just greatly increases the likelihood that they will be pleased with their purchases.
Piracy cannot be used as justification for piracy, that's just silly.
As silly as conflating piracy (selling a substitute for a product, or stealing that product for resale) with the creation of an uncapitalized market for a product that did not previously exist, based on the confusion of "product" and "content?" Not really.
Why the fuck should I pay to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film
An excellent question in itself.
Until everyone thinks that way, in which case the whole business model collapses.
Gee, I thought the whole point of a free market was to let businesses succeed/fail based on their ability to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for. There are obviously enough people still paying to see shitty movies that the industry that produces them is being sustained. When there aren't, then I guess it shows that not enough people gave enough of a fuck about that industry's products.
*Piracy is an excellent example of short-term gain favored over long-term consequences.
I'd say that doesn't hold for those who view the destruction - or at least marginalization - of a particularly bad industry, with its attendant effects on the culture of music, as a desirable long-term consequence. I doubt the demise of top-down music culture counts as a "loss" that "mak[es] everyone suffer."
Slashdot Mirror
It certainly seems to have done so to the plaintiffs, but that's the matter in front of the court, isn't it?
I was unaware that mischaracterizing another's attitude, swearing at them, and giving a dime-store psychoanalysis of their personality based on a Slashdot comment were hallmarks of "MATURITY" and being "secure." Thanks for clearing that up.
Have a nice day, you illiterate shit.
What sort of shelf can fit 250 retail stores, exactly?
If you started slandering me in public, I can identify at least which physical person is doing so, and probably get a police officer to tell you to quit disturbing the peace.
Not the point. The point is that you can be apprehended - a body can be associated with its speech. Posting anonymously on the Internet is more like leaving a boom box with a slanderous recording in the public square: while the speaker may ultimately be identified, it's immeasurably harder.
You must have been watching a "Jeeves and Wooster" marathon.
Sorry, but you're just plain wrong. Unless you go to greater lengths to concel the place from where you're posting, the FBI or Secret Service can certainly find you from an anonymous post if you're noticed and deemed a possible threat worth investigating.
I wonder how much time you must spend on the Internet to be unable to recognize the differences between a physical and an online presence?That's the exact reason I hit F5 every five minutes.
And I mean every five minutes.
How, exactly, did this trolling article make it to the top of the Firehose? Have we become Digg while I was sleeping?
Man, I must be new here.
Exactly. Of course, if the suit is correct in asserting material damages as the result of anonymous slander, then it just shows that the hiring folks at major law firms aren't quite so bright.
I always read Slashdot at -1, in fact, and you're absolutely correct.
Thanks for presuming that I am unfamiliar with the Internet, but your contention is incorrect. One's real ID is certainly traceable in most instances from an online posting, given the proper court authority and technology.
Also, we do have some form of ID on Slashdot. Mine's "Sunburnt (890890)". When you read a post and see my ID at the top, you might recall previous posts of mine and think, "Hey, this guy's usually pretty sharp and probably onto something here, I should credit this more than most other posts" or "Hey, this guy's usually a total jackass and is probably lying about everything in this post." On the other hand, if I post anonymously, you can't even look at my comment history to make such a determination. The concept of anonymity can be applied to varying degrees in diverse situations.
How did you get that conviction out of my comments? I'm a bit too misanthropic to ever expect such a thing.
RTFA. The plaintiffs are specifically alleging material damages as a result of the posts in question. If anyone in this situation needs to adjust their credibility detectors, it's probably the hiring managers who apparently take this sort of juvenile shit-slinging seriously. (Not hard to believe, given their profession.)
You may have something there. Even those putting their pictures, locations, and private thoughts on their MySpace page may think, "It's not like anyone really cares about who I am." What they're not getting is that, with the refined searching mechanisms that have risen alongside Internet technology, it takes just one crazy/stupid person to abuse the posters' privacy.
Strange. I would think that a free society would be one that cannot assume, based on a person's private thoughts, that said person would "do something stupid." Nor, for that matter, would a free society be one where people may be investigated based on the private, groundless suspicions of others. A free society is not one that seeks to deal with every paranoid instance of its members' private thoughts.
Now, if I periodically saw other peoples' crying children leave the individual's house, or saw illegal child porn on display after being invited into their house, I certainly would have an obligation to have this "sorted out right away." Fact is, people have groundless suspicions about things every day, and a society with the right to get to the bottom of every such suspicion - even when the suspicious person understands that there is no tangible certainty - is the opposite of free.
See, now I just feel cynical. I think most already know this, and are in fact eager to share their thoughtful gems with the world-at-large. MySpace, Blogger, Livejournal, etc...it seems that one can make a fair bit of cash by encouraging folks to seek the attention of anonymous others.
Really? I would assert that privacy is fundamental to the perpetuation of a free society. But this isn't an issue about privacy, it's about anonymity, which is different. I may privately think that another person molests children. I may even write this down in my diary, and I would maintain that it would be unethical for others to force me to reveal these completely private thoughts.
I certainly wouldn't have the ethical standing to publish this diary anonymously, however. Do you see the difference?
Shhh....don't feed the trolls, it only makes them hungrier.
Are you kidding? It's still always September on U****t.
Nice...only six minutes before the first person who completely missed the joke responded, and in the meantime, somebody has modded you "Troll."
Except that isn't what you've created, you naive jackass. There is no anonymity in the town square: people speaking their "brilliant or foolish" (or slanderous and defamatory) thoughts are identifiable, and the repercussions for their actions can range from social disapproval to legal sanction. Blanket anonymity creates the exact fucking opposite environment from that of the town square. What Mr. Cohen has created rather resembles a public toilet. This is the same problem with news articles that rely entirely on anonymous sources to divulge personal details about the subject: how is the content any more credible than the random scrawlings of an interstate rest area?
Anonymity is one thing if there is the possibility of unjust sanction for free speech, as in the case of whistleblowing. But if major law firms are, apparently, making decisions about others' character based on a bunch of anonymous cowards on online forums, it just goes to show that no amount of expensive education can cure idiocy.
Of course, Congress is mostly a bunch of lawyers, and it's fun to imagine leading politicians being brought up on specious charges. Perhaps I'll have a change of heart if the president gets impeached, and the impeachment cites "A reputable source named Sunburnt on an anonymous Internet forum, who repeatedly asserts that the President secretly collaborates with the North Korean government."
I'm talking about a specific failure of copyright law. You choose, once again, to ignore or dismiss any of my actual arguments in this thread, and then shadowbox against a strawman "all-copyright-is-teh-evil" perspective that fits into your shallow and one-sided perspective on IP law. Since I'm sure you're more than capable of doing so without my help, have a good week.
I wish some of these slashdot commenters would actually read the entire discussion before commenting, instead of just hitting the first post with facile sterotypes like "anarchist-thieves-big-corporation-hating-sticking - it-to-the-man types do a little homework on intellectual property rights issues and come back and post when you're done."
Indeed.
What, are you paranoid? I don't get alert emails and don't pay attention to usernames. I've been responding to every idiotic post I find on this thread. You just seem to have a gift for producing.
What, like these oversimplified stereotypes?
So by arguing against nothing more than intrusive government regulation designed to protect the economic viability of one particular class of products, I apparently am "against copyrights." Let's see where you take this strawman stereotype of my position regarding IP and copyright:
Please, save me the tired lectures that assume content=cars.
Oh, wait, you didn't. Ah well. What better way to argue rationally than to completely ignore the entire fucking point of the other person's argument, namely, the distinction between product and content, and just proceed to lay your equivocating metaphor out for all to see?
Remember the Chrysler bailout?
Right, because laws, and the corporate lobbyists who write them, are the hallmarks of popular sentiment. I want to live in your dimension. The pot must be incredible.
Ah, the appeal to authority fallacy and the oversimplified, stereotyped, and absolutely incorrect assumption that I might agree with that position. Tell you what: You find me a person at the other end of your keyboard willing to engage in discussion, instead of one who adopts strawman arguments and pompously identifies their own ideas with those of "society," and then we'll talk.
What, like, buying tickets to their shows and distributing free recordings of those shows to generate interest in those shows among other people? Worked for these guys.
I'm sorry - who is this "we" to whom you refer? "We" don't encourage the business model of the movie/recording industries. "They" impose it on "us" through business practices and expensive lobbyists. Just because you happen to agree with legislation concerning "digital rights" doesn't mean you're tapping into some sort of sociocultural consensus.
That's nice and completely irrelevant, because the product is not the same. I'm not inclined to explain the difference between product and content as regards luxury goods in a free market for a third time in this thread, so I'll just end by pointing out the presumptuous condescension of your last statement:Ah, I wasn't aware that your judiciousness in economic affairs was so great as to empower you to speak for all the "serious" supporters of free markets. Silly me, thinking that you're wrong about free downloads limiting the market for movie tickets and DVDs. I must not take the market as seriously as you.
OK, I'll try to go a little slower this time around.
No, because you left the verb "to pay" out of that sentence's first clause, and demand for entertainment products is highly elastic. People have the ability to be entertained by shitty products (I certainly do), but it doesn't mean they view them as worthy of money, or that their absence would leave a gap in a person's entertainment that they'd be willing to pay to fill with those products.
This is the same flawed logic put forth by the "Nader cost Gore the 2000 election" types. It is predicated on the mistaken assumption that, in the absence of some options, most people will select other options that they find undesirable just for the sake of selecting something. While this is true for products with a rather inelastic demand - food, for example - it is certainly not true for entertainment. This logical error also stems from equivocating demand for the product with demand for the content. Demand for luxury goods is not just a function of content, but of price, and the fact that someone pursues a free product does not logically imply that they would pursue the same product with a higher price. The market for free downloaded movies is not the same set of people who comprise the market for movie tickets and DVD's - there is crossover when looking at movies as a whole, but movies aren't purchased as a whole, but individually. For any one movie, these are different groups of consumers.
The fact that movie studios are making record profits from blockbuster movies indicates that they still have a large market of consumers willing to pay for their product - not just the audiovisual content of the product, but the associated theater experience or nice packaging. People aren't buying less DVD's, they're just seeing more movies that would have normally slipped under their radar when price is a consideration. In my experience, downloading movies enables consumers to make informed choices before laying down cash for a legitimate DVD. It doesn't lead to them buying less DVD's; it just greatly increases the likelihood that they will be pleased with their purchases.
As silly as conflating piracy (selling a substitute for a product, or stealing that product for resale) with the creation of an uncapitalized market for a product that did not previously exist, based on the confusion of "product" and "content?" Not really.An excellent question in itself.
Gee, I thought the whole point of a free market was to let businesses succeed/fail based on their ability to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for. There are obviously enough people still paying to see shitty movies that the industry that produces them is being sustained. When there aren't, then I guess it shows that not enough people gave enough of a fuck about that industry's products.
I'd say that doesn't hold for those who view the destruction - or at least marginalization - of a particularly bad industry, with its attendant effects on the culture of music, as a desirable long-term consequence. I doubt the demise of top-down music culture counts as a "loss" that "mak[es] everyone suffer."