Why can't pirates who give away their goods cost you a sale? If anything, they are far more problematic than your commercial pirates, since you can at least have a hope of competing against their price. Free pirates will always have the most attractively-priced goods.
The point of the list of business models certainly was not to be exhaustive.
They never are.
And I never claimed that any of them would work for any/all situations...
They never do.
... or that people would even like them. But that's life.
We already have a business model that works well in practically every situation. There's no real need to dig around for the perfect combination of hacks to replace it, because it already works. Sure, for the sake of curiosity, you can see what you can come up with, and if you think you've found something, you can start up a business based on that model and see how it competes. Who knows? There may be the off-chance that you can take a slice out of copyrighted media through legitimate competition. That's the really great thing about copyright is that we don't have to make it the exclusive business model of choice. The reason why it currently is (more or less) is because it's just so damn successful.
However, all of that is skirting away from the original issue.
It is, but I wasn't originally discussing the original issue. I agree with your evaluation of DRM - it doesn't work, or, at least, it doesn't work enough to warrant its use. It does stop a fair portion of casual piracy, but casual piracy (probably thanks to DRM) is now being dwarfed by serious piracy. And I have no doubt that there are plenty of people out there who's choice to pirate has been largely affected by the DRM on the legitimate version.
Essentially, its a pipe dream. DRM software writers sell companies the dream of having software police its users at little cost to them. After every failure, they just market it to be better and better. Since the user's rights are not high up on the company's list of priorities (in part, because the rights of the average user are not high up on the average user's list of priorities), they figure they might as well spend a little extra to try the DRM, in the hope that this generation is impregnable.
Actually, an interesting case study is the BD/HD-DVD's AACS. There is a DRM completely devoted to being impregnable, but still, before the HD formats even went mainstream, it was still broken. Still, judging by the cost of HD movies early on, they probably at least recouped costs from stopping piracy in the early months.
And as just a side note, I will add that Spore, the most pirated game last year, and the Dark Knight, the most pirated movie last year, were also the most successful in their respective media last year.
Which shows that the average pirate's taste is similar to the average legitimate media user's taste. What's your point?
The ONLY people upset about piracy is the middlemen that only make money by not actually doing anything of value. They see they are obsolete and are panicking.
That's not true! I'm a uni student who's reasonably poor, and has nothing to do with any artistic industry, thanks to my lack of talent. As someone who enjoys copyrighted music, movies, games, and other software (including GPL'd software) and who researches using copyrighted scientific papers, I care about piracy. I don't want to have to bear the costs of pirates who sap money from the respective industries, who will then pass the costs on to me. I don't want to have to fight for my rights, including my right to privacy, against the RIAA and MPAA every year, as they push for greater and greater restrictions. I don't want to trash copyright and hope that something better exists, and that it'll come along and save our culture.
See, the problem is, they are not immoral. You say they're illegitimate, but that's you. Fortunately, it isn't up to you, it's up to the voting public. If you break these "illegitimate" laws, and they turn out to be morally justified and legitimate, then you are the one who is being immoral. And narrow minded.
1. It works, for MMOs, for now 2. Again, overpriced figurines, cannot prop up business model to any significant extent, no-one will buy, $50, yadda, yadda, yadda 3. Guilt. Who knows how long it will last. 4. And how do consoles protect themselves? Closed hardware (i.e. security through obscurity) and DRM (essentially the same thing) 5. Great. The end of personal games. It works, but do we really want it to work? 6. Imagine what it'd be like buying a PS3 every time you wanted to buy a PS3 game. That's what hardware tying will be like. 7. Guilt. Again. 8. Again, these are just trinkets. We'll essentially be overpaying for the recording through these "more scarce goods". As it stands now, there is nothing stopping people from selling these trinkets with their copyrighted works, and the ones sold under copyright won't have to pay for the recording, so they have the potential to be much cheaper. If people stop buying music entirely, then these trinkets will sky-rocket in price, ruining all the work in establishing this shaky business model, and dashing our chances of actually having a decent flow of culture. 9. Still vulnerable to piracy. Instead of the DRM arms race, we'd have a patch arms race.
Allow me now to condense:
1. Guilt - absolutely no guarantee to work in the long term 2. Trinkets - again, absolutely no guarantee to work in the long term, thanks partially to its viability relying on 1 3. Subscription - probably the best solution of all of them, since it is relatively stable. However, it is vulnerable to that same weakness of (web-aware) DRM, where if the servers shut down, you're fucked. 4. Copyright + enforcement + guilt 5. Copyright + serious enforcement + a little guilt 6. Copyright + less enforcement + DRM + a little guilt
I sort of added the last three, but you did mention consoles, so I feel that the DRM issue was partially your suggestion.
Now let's examine:
1. has been tried a few times without copyright, and it currently, sort of, works. There are currently sufficiently morally-conscious people out there to pay the bills for the free-loaders. 2. has also been tried, and seems to currently work, like 1, but also like 1, it hasn't been superior enough to make a significant dent in the copyrighted media sales. 3. has been very successfully tried with MMOs, and is currently taking much of the MMO market share, with the (in principle) superfluous addition of copyright for added protection. 4. seems to be stable enough. It currently makes up most of the art sales, thus making it the most successful out of the ones we've tried. 5. never really been tried, despite numerous flirts with it 6. tried, seemed to sort of work, but is currently starting to fail epically.
Number 4 seems to be the encompassing and most successful of the business models, but that isn't to exclude others from competing with it. People who provide copyrighted works and own the copyright themselves have the option to sell however way will be most successful. If that means relinquishing copyright, and selling useless junk instead of it, then fine by me. Let's not pull the plug on copyright, however. We do want to give copyright at least an opportunity (well, yet another opportunity) to prove its superiority.
Mozart didn't make his money by selling lots of tickets, instead he had a few people who gave him endowments because they recognized the quality of his work.
And because copying was prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, back then. If people had HD-cams, home theatre systems, and they were used to paying $20 a CD, rather than thousands, then things might have been different. I hate these anti-copyright arguments that hinge on today being equivalent to hundreds of years ago. They are so easy to refute, yet they keep popping up like whack-a-moles. I just don't get it.
It's a business model issue. If piracy is rampant, games will have to come up with new models. Valve and Blizzard seem to be able to do so while piracy is rampant.
Valve is just as susceptible to piracy as anyone, and the only reason that Blizzard is (currently) immune is because they don't make traditional games. If you don't want all your games to be MMO, then you're stuffed in the long term. Disclaimer: that includes me.
Not to mention the possibility of pirates cracking the game and running their own servers, thus bypassing Blizzard entirely. I just thank my lucky stars that I still live in a time where game (and music and movie) business models can still start up, and the games they collectively produce are reasonably varied.
Yet here you are saying its necessary.
Hey, hold up, bub. I never said DRM was necessary, only some form of enforcement of copyright. DRM has not proven to be an ideal solution, still, the concept of having games autonomously police their users without spending on anti-piracy advertising campaigns and expensive, risky lawsuits will forever remain an attractive proposition to any games studio.
Instead, they could have spent some time thinking up a new business model.
It's so simple to say that when you don't have to think of them, or if you decide to do, you don't bear the costs of trying them (and possibly failing them).
Of course, as a consumer in the free market, you probably feel that it's entirely the company's responsibility to be original and come up with a more successful business model, right? Unfortunately, free market doesn't work here. Free market rational only works under several assumptions, one of which that consumers are rational, and will purchase the product with the lowest cost. This principle we teach in schools for crying out loud - that's how ingrained it is into our psyche. Lower cost to you = better for you.
Now we have a situation where the lowest cost is approximately 0, yet the product actually costs far more than that to create. Even worse, this product is in high demand. What do we do? Just think of another business model? Yeah, real fucking original. How do you fix the situation, unless by:
a) intervening into the mechanisms by which the cost approaches 0 (e.g. copyright, DRM, legislative witch-hunts) b) direct government subsidies?
You could rely on guilt, but unfortunately, with people being educated to think in terms of their own personal gain, this will most likely not last for long.
Unfortunately, free advertising won't work in the long term if there's no money being spent on the real thing, and selling merchandise and trinkets will inevitably end up with a bloated price-tag in an effort to recoup losses. People will be given the choice of playing the game as much as they want, whenever they want, for free, or playing the game and paying $50 for a little action figurine. No takers? Go figure(ine).
Basically, if pirates want to have their little entertainment orgy, then they need to be the ones to provide it. It's not fair or plausible to expect companies to provide it, and at the same time, tell them it's their responsibility to come up with a way of cleaning up the mess.
I call BS on this. Piracy gets people interested in both games and media, as recent news articles about studies of the subject seem to indicate.
Great, so piracy is good! I can do as much as I like, and the results are positive, and not just for my personal entertainment, but for other people too! Or, perhaps, some moderation is required, in which case, people are required to balance their momentary enjoyment with everyone's long-term satisfaction. Yeah right. Which human race are we talking about again?
In fact, this whole argument hinges on the assumption that copyright holders can't market their wares themselves. If they think copyright infringement is good for them, then they'll permit it (thus robbing it of the status of copyright infringement). It also assumes that people can responsibly choose between their repeated short-term personal gratification, and the enjoyment (and occasionally, the livelihood) of countless others. People are human beings. Of course they're biased towards personal short-term gains.
This kind of stuff has potential without profiling or tracking. You could take a measure of how effective an ad is, by measuring the number of faces looking at the billboard, maybe bonus points for people who stop and stare. It'd mean more effective ads, which would, in turn, mean lower prices. If the ads are too annoying, then there'd be less faces in the shop to stare, since everyone would have shopped somewhere else by then. It's a win-win.
Schools like we mostly have them right now don't train anyone to think for themselves, at least not where I'm from. They teach you to stick to rules, to believe what authorities tell you and that you need a piece of paper declaring your abilities.
I came out of the schooling system, from my neck of the woods, only a few years ago. We were taught that tests were important to take seriously, but just about every teacher I knew openly acknowledged that either they were a lousy way of evaluating your ability, or they cynically taught the subject with the single-minded purpose of passing the exams.
We were also taught, in addition to obeying authority, to question the teacher and fellow classmates in discussions (especially in English and History classes). Science and maths taught me how to logically reason, and even how to apply that logic to real life situations, like evaluating rhetoric. And, don't forget, there's always fellow students, out of earshot of the teacher (or in earshot - it didn't really matter to them), they taught rebellion and questioning authority like no-one else.
WTF? Your argument makes no sense at all. If they're banning pot because it makes you think, then why aren't they banning, say, chess clubs? Or schools? Or any intellectual organisation? Or books?
Someone explain to me exactly how the riaa and their like are not the exact same thing as the mafia?
Sure. The mafia's operations are often highly illegal. They threaten people's lives, and even carry out those threats, which is even worse. Furthermore, they use intimidation, often using the afore-mentioned threats, to strong-arm competitors out of the field.
The RIAA does none of that. They're operation is entirely legal, and, if they have a problem with a person, they don't rely on violence, or threats thereof, in order resolve their disputes. Instead, they use the court system like we are all supposed to when negotiation fails. Also, unlike the mafia, they make all their money from legitimate business that contributes to society around them.
The RIAA didn't do this. The RIAA added (sort of, through lobbying):
1) Anit-circumvention restrictions 2) Safe harbour provisions 3) Other DMCA stuff I don't know about 4) Longer copyright term lengths (or was that Disney?) 5) Certain law precedents defining copyright infringement around P2P (not through lobbying, though)
None of these apply here. This would have been just as sticky before the RIAA's influence.
Their battle is to enforce (a certain subsection of) the law until it doesn't need to be enforced. Just like any honest law enforcement agency you care to name. That's no conspiracy; anyone in a functioning democracy can read up about their responsibilities regarding IP.
However, just like most dishonest law enforcement agencies, they are not above threatening people who aren't doing anything wrong.
There really isn't much more to read into it than that.
Hold on, who said anything about not having any of that music?
etc.
Agreed.
That sort of "value" is called utility, and it's subjective just like economic value is. You might think that $15 for a CD provides the same utility-per-dollar as some other form of entertainment, but of course not everyone will agree with that.
Also agreed, however I never contended that it was objective (in fact, I often bring people up on that exact point in copyright discussions when they start talking about fantasy worlds where all music is according to their tastes). The question is: if you didn't have the option of keeping your dollar and getting the goods, then would it be worth your $1, or $15?
Well, that alleviates my fear a little. However, I'd like to point out one thing:
I reiterate: there is plenty of demand for the RIAA's products. That makes them a political chip. It could actually become a political issue if they start going under, despite the demand. As music prices rise, and people are reluctant to foot the bill, measures such as filtering, or draconian new penalties will seem increasingly reasonable. People will start to resent pirates. It won't be quite so obvious that the government is in the RIAA's pocket when the measures they lobbied for are met with positive feedback.
Actually, come to think about it, this puts us in the pocket of the RIAA. We rely on them, and we owe them big. Sooner or later, if piracy keeps the way it is, they'll be able to ask for whatever they want, and get it before the week is out.
Slashdot Mirror
Why can't pirates who give away their goods cost you a sale? If anything, they are far more problematic than your commercial pirates, since you can at least have a hope of competing against their price. Free pirates will always have the most attractively-priced goods.
They never are.
They never do.
We already have a business model that works well in practically every situation. There's no real need to dig around for the perfect combination of hacks to replace it, because it already works. Sure, for the sake of curiosity, you can see what you can come up with, and if you think you've found something, you can start up a business based on that model and see how it competes. Who knows? There may be the off-chance that you can take a slice out of copyrighted media through legitimate competition. That's the really great thing about copyright is that we don't have to make it the exclusive business model of choice. The reason why it currently is (more or less) is because it's just so damn successful.
It is, but I wasn't originally discussing the original issue. I agree with your evaluation of DRM - it doesn't work, or, at least, it doesn't work enough to warrant its use. It does stop a fair portion of casual piracy, but casual piracy (probably thanks to DRM) is now being dwarfed by serious piracy. And I have no doubt that there are plenty of people out there who's choice to pirate has been largely affected by the DRM on the legitimate version.
Essentially, its a pipe dream. DRM software writers sell companies the dream of having software police its users at little cost to them. After every failure, they just market it to be better and better. Since the user's rights are not high up on the company's list of priorities (in part, because the rights of the average user are not high up on the average user's list of priorities), they figure they might as well spend a little extra to try the DRM, in the hope that this generation is impregnable.
Actually, an interesting case study is the BD/HD-DVD's AACS. There is a DRM completely devoted to being impregnable, but still, before the HD formats even went mainstream, it was still broken. Still, judging by the cost of HD movies early on, they probably at least recouped costs from stopping piracy in the early months.
Which shows that the average pirate's taste is similar to the average legitimate media user's taste. What's your point?
That's not true! I'm a uni student who's reasonably poor, and has nothing to do with any artistic industry, thanks to my lack of talent. As someone who enjoys copyrighted music, movies, games, and other software (including GPL'd software) and who researches using copyrighted scientific papers, I care about piracy. I don't want to have to bear the costs of pirates who sap money from the respective industries, who will then pass the costs on to me. I don't want to have to fight for my rights, including my right to privacy, against the RIAA and MPAA every year, as they push for greater and greater restrictions. I don't want to trash copyright and hope that something better exists, and that it'll come along and save our culture.
Likely? No. Technically possible? Yes. Technically, it is piracy, but I think we're pretty safe sharing it around. ;)
See, the problem is, they are not immoral. You say they're illegitimate, but that's you. Fortunately, it isn't up to you, it's up to the voting public. If you break these "illegitimate" laws, and they turn out to be morally justified and legitimate, then you are the one who is being immoral. And narrow minded.
What? That ridiculous. I can perfectly!
So you did. Allow me:
1. It works, for MMOs, for now
2. Again, overpriced figurines, cannot prop up business model to any significant extent, no-one will buy, $50, yadda, yadda, yadda
3. Guilt. Who knows how long it will last.
4. And how do consoles protect themselves? Closed hardware (i.e. security through obscurity) and DRM (essentially the same thing)
5. Great. The end of personal games. It works, but do we really want it to work?
6. Imagine what it'd be like buying a PS3 every time you wanted to buy a PS3 game. That's what hardware tying will be like.
7. Guilt. Again.
8. Again, these are just trinkets. We'll essentially be overpaying for the recording through these "more scarce goods". As it stands now, there is nothing stopping people from selling these trinkets with their copyrighted works, and the ones sold under copyright won't have to pay for the recording, so they have the potential to be much cheaper. If people stop buying music entirely, then these trinkets will sky-rocket in price, ruining all the work in establishing this shaky business model, and dashing our chances of actually having a decent flow of culture.
9. Still vulnerable to piracy. Instead of the DRM arms race, we'd have a patch arms race.
Allow me now to condense:
1. Guilt - absolutely no guarantee to work in the long term
2. Trinkets - again, absolutely no guarantee to work in the long term, thanks partially to its viability relying on 1
3. Subscription - probably the best solution of all of them, since it is relatively stable. However, it is vulnerable to that same weakness of (web-aware) DRM, where if the servers shut down, you're fucked.
4. Copyright + enforcement + guilt
5. Copyright + serious enforcement + a little guilt
6. Copyright + less enforcement + DRM + a little guilt
I sort of added the last three, but you did mention consoles, so I feel that the DRM issue was partially your suggestion.
Now let's examine:
1. has been tried a few times without copyright, and it currently, sort of, works. There are currently sufficiently morally-conscious people out there to pay the bills for the free-loaders.
2. has also been tried, and seems to currently work, like 1, but also like 1, it hasn't been superior enough to make a significant dent in the copyrighted media sales.
3. has been very successfully tried with MMOs, and is currently taking much of the MMO market share, with the (in principle) superfluous addition of copyright for added protection.
4. seems to be stable enough. It currently makes up most of the art sales, thus making it the most successful out of the ones we've tried.
5. never really been tried, despite numerous flirts with it
6. tried, seemed to sort of work, but is currently starting to fail epically.
Number 4 seems to be the encompassing and most successful of the business models, but that isn't to exclude others from competing with it. People who provide copyrighted works and own the copyright themselves have the option to sell however way will be most successful. If that means relinquishing copyright, and selling useless junk instead of it, then fine by me. Let's not pull the plug on copyright, however. We do want to give copyright at least an opportunity (well, yet another opportunity) to prove its superiority.
And because copying was prohibitively expensive, if not impossible, back then. If people had HD-cams, home theatre systems, and they were used to paying $20 a CD, rather than thousands, then things might have been different. I hate these anti-copyright arguments that hinge on today being equivalent to hundreds of years ago. They are so easy to refute, yet they keep popping up like whack-a-moles. I just don't get it.
Valve is just as susceptible to piracy as anyone, and the only reason that Blizzard is (currently) immune is because they don't make traditional games. If you don't want all your games to be MMO, then you're stuffed in the long term. Disclaimer: that includes me.
Not to mention the possibility of pirates cracking the game and running their own servers, thus bypassing Blizzard entirely. I just thank my lucky stars that I still live in a time where game (and music and movie) business models can still start up, and the games they collectively produce are reasonably varied.
Yet here you are saying its necessary.
Hey, hold up, bub. I never said DRM was necessary, only some form of enforcement of copyright. DRM has not proven to be an ideal solution, still, the concept of having games autonomously police their users without spending on anti-piracy advertising campaigns and expensive, risky lawsuits will forever remain an attractive proposition to any games studio.
It's so simple to say that when you don't have to think of them, or if you decide to do, you don't bear the costs of trying them (and possibly failing them).
Of course, as a consumer in the free market, you probably feel that it's entirely the company's responsibility to be original and come up with a more successful business model, right? Unfortunately, free market doesn't work here. Free market rational only works under several assumptions, one of which that consumers are rational, and will purchase the product with the lowest cost. This principle we teach in schools for crying out loud - that's how ingrained it is into our psyche. Lower cost to you = better for you.
Now we have a situation where the lowest cost is approximately 0, yet the product actually costs far more than that to create. Even worse, this product is in high demand. What do we do? Just think of another business model? Yeah, real fucking original. How do you fix the situation, unless by:
a) intervening into the mechanisms by which the cost approaches 0 (e.g. copyright, DRM, legislative witch-hunts)
b) direct government subsidies?
You could rely on guilt, but unfortunately, with people being educated to think in terms of their own personal gain, this will most likely not last for long.
Unfortunately, free advertising won't work in the long term if there's no money being spent on the real thing, and selling merchandise and trinkets will inevitably end up with a bloated price-tag in an effort to recoup losses. People will be given the choice of playing the game as much as they want, whenever they want, for free, or playing the game and paying $50 for a little action figurine. No takers? Go figure(ine).
Basically, if pirates want to have their little entertainment orgy, then they need to be the ones to provide it. It's not fair or plausible to expect companies to provide it, and at the same time, tell them it's their responsibility to come up with a way of cleaning up the mess.
Great, so piracy is good! I can do as much as I like, and the results are positive, and not just for my personal entertainment, but for other people too! Or, perhaps, some moderation is required, in which case, people are required to balance their momentary enjoyment with everyone's long-term satisfaction. Yeah right. Which human race are we talking about again?
In fact, this whole argument hinges on the assumption that copyright holders can't market their wares themselves. If they think copyright infringement is good for them, then they'll permit it (thus robbing it of the status of copyright infringement). It also assumes that people can responsibly choose between their repeated short-term personal gratification, and the enjoyment (and occasionally, the livelihood) of countless others. People are human beings. Of course they're biased towards personal short-term gains.
This kind of stuff has potential without profiling or tracking. You could take a measure of how effective an ad is, by measuring the number of faces looking at the billboard, maybe bonus points for people who stop and stare. It'd mean more effective ads, which would, in turn, mean lower prices. If the ads are too annoying, then there'd be less faces in the shop to stare, since everyone would have shopped somewhere else by then. It's a win-win.
Because they're actively enjoying what they create, and what they create needs money to be made?
Well, obviously not everyone enjoys it, but there are enough to seriously consider making it a government-subsidised business.
Piracy grows when left unchecked. The only thing standing between us and pirating everything until everyone packs up and goes home is:
a) the law (or more precisely, the enforcement thereof)
b) guilt
c) for the seemingly select few, knowledge of what will happen in the long term
Without a), and with b) and c) dwindling as people increasingly choose free stuff over morals and reasoning, piracy will grow.
I came out of the schooling system, from my neck of the woods, only a few years ago. We were taught that tests were important to take seriously, but just about every teacher I knew openly acknowledged that either they were a lousy way of evaluating your ability, or they cynically taught the subject with the single-minded purpose of passing the exams.
We were also taught, in addition to obeying authority, to question the teacher and fellow classmates in discussions (especially in English and History classes). Science and maths taught me how to logically reason, and even how to apply that logic to real life situations, like evaluating rhetoric. And, don't forget, there's always fellow students, out of earshot of the teacher (or in earshot - it didn't really matter to them), they taught rebellion and questioning authority like no-one else.
Actually I don't. If I had to take a wild stab, I'd say Caesar, but I don't know. Please enlighten me!
WTF? Your argument makes no sense at all. If they're banning pot because it makes you think, then why aren't they banning, say, chess clubs? Or schools? Or any intellectual organisation? Or books?
I think you need to lay off the weed, man.
First they came for the public servants, but I did not speak up because I was not a public servant.
Then... well... the government collapsed, and we all rejoiced!
I believe the equivalent for foreigners is "an act of war".
Sure. The mafia's operations are often highly illegal. They threaten people's lives, and even carry out those threats, which is even worse. Furthermore, they use intimidation, often using the afore-mentioned threats, to strong-arm competitors out of the field.
The RIAA does none of that. They're operation is entirely legal, and, if they have a problem with a person, they don't rely on violence, or threats thereof, in order resolve their disputes. Instead, they use the court system like we are all supposed to when negotiation fails. Also, unlike the mafia, they make all their money from legitimate business that contributes to society around them.
Did that clear things up?
The RIAA didn't do this. The RIAA added (sort of, through lobbying):
1) Anit-circumvention restrictions
2) Safe harbour provisions
3) Other DMCA stuff I don't know about
4) Longer copyright term lengths (or was that Disney?)
5) Certain law precedents defining copyright infringement around P2P (not through lobbying, though)
None of these apply here. This would have been just as sticky before the RIAA's influence.
Their battle is to enforce (a certain subsection of) the law until it doesn't need to be enforced. Just like any honest law enforcement agency you care to name. That's no conspiracy; anyone in a functioning democracy can read up about their responsibilities regarding IP.
However, just like most dishonest law enforcement agencies, they are not above threatening people who aren't doing anything wrong.
There really isn't much more to read into it than that.
Maybe only an AC would bag it on Slashdot.
.
.
.
Oh shit, I forgot to post anonymously!
Agreed.
Also agreed, however I never contended that it was objective (in fact, I often bring people up on that exact point in copyright discussions when they start talking about fantasy worlds where all music is according to their tastes). The question is: if you didn't have the option of keeping your dollar and getting the goods, then would it be worth your $1, or $15?
(I could see this becoming a meme)
Linus Torvalds is a god damn thief!!! I gave Linux my credit card number, and two days later, he stole my virginity! Again!
I don't know where your brain is, buddy. I'm not sure I want to know.
Well, that alleviates my fear a little. However, I'd like to point out one thing:
I reiterate: there is plenty of demand for the RIAA's products. That makes them a political chip. It could actually become a political issue if they start going under, despite the demand. As music prices rise, and people are reluctant to foot the bill, measures such as filtering, or draconian new penalties will seem increasingly reasonable. People will start to resent pirates. It won't be quite so obvious that the government is in the RIAA's pocket when the measures they lobbied for are met with positive feedback.
Actually, come to think about it, this puts us in the pocket of the RIAA. We rely on them, and we owe them big. Sooner or later, if piracy keeps the way it is, they'll be able to ask for whatever they want, and get it before the week is out.