Piracy

[orion949]

Still leaving them with a record fucking breaking profit (with inflation) of $30 fucking billion dollars right?

you act like this is a lot of money! Do you know how many Air Jordan shoes five black kids wear!

What does this mean? I dont understand you.

Sorry.... Im watching Get Him to the Greek. It is a line Pdiddy uses as an exec at a major label company that is complaining his profits are down.

Ahh!! rofl! Ok, nowwww I get it!

 

[hawthorne]

I know a guy who self-publishes a magazine---on paper. When he first started out, he lost money due to printing costs. But then the popularity of his work increased and he started making some profit. That's when some wiseguy decided to buy a copy, cut it up, scan it and then post it on some warez site for others to enjoy---without paying for it. Now this happens with every issue. He talked with a lawyer but they told him not to waste his money. This kind of thing is hosted on anonymous overseas servers and there's no chance of trying to stop it, or recover damages. He's still publishing and his sales have increased but I can guarantee you he doesn't think it's because his friendly neighborhood pirate has contributed to his popularity.

Here's the thing about this argument, and I have heard it so many times before, you cannot prove that the people who pirated the item in question would have bought the item if they had not pirated it. You cannot. While some would no doubt have done so, others would not.

So, while it's not a justification, the work in question is exposed to more people, some of whom will pay for the item after being exposed to it through piracy. If they never intended to pay in the first place, the existence or lack of piracy would have zero bearing on them. If they were going to pay and pirated instead, and then didn't pay in the future and only pirated, that is a lost sale, however, there is no way to prove how much of a percentage this actually represents. It could be as low as 5% or as high as 95% but there is truly no way to answer it.

This is where I find the largest fault with the MPAA and RIAA. They assume that every download represents a lost sale. I disagree. I cannot count the number of shows and/or movies that I have only looked at because I could download it and try it out. And, again, if I like it, I buy it. It's a filter that allows me to find the things I like, test out some new content to see if it appeals to me, and disregard the things that don't.

Radiohead released an album as donationware. Was one of their highest selling albums ever. The concept that we should be forced to pay for content before we know if it's something we would enjoy, is dying and well it should. If you want me to buy your stuff, make stuff worth buying, and not something you shit out while snorting a line of coke, drinking and driving through Beverly Hills.

 

[orion949]

If you want me to buy your stuff, make stuff worth buying, and not something you shit out while snorting a line of coke, drinking and driving through Beverly Hills.

You sir, just made me lol!

 

[SiegeTank]

Notice I NEVER claimed that pirated downloads of my friend's magazine represented lost sales. And I also pointed out he continued to see RISING sales despite the pirating.

BUT... like the poster 2 above concedes, some of those downloads probably represent lost sales. And I argue that rising sales does not mean that additional sales are not being lost to piracy. It's interesting that some of the posters did show some sympathy to my friend...reinforcing my contention that piracy tends to hurt "little" creative people much more than the big outfits.

I will also concede that pirated postings of copyrighted material on the Internet MIGHT boost legit sales because it represents a perverse form of advertising for the material involved.

Whether or not penicillin was ever PATENTED (you don't COPYRIGHT products like drugs, you patent them) is kinda irrelevant to this discussion. In any case, you'd making a better argument pointing out that AIDS has become endemic in sub-Saharan Africa because of the high pricing of anti-AIDS drugs, especially in the early days, when there was still a chance of stopping its spread.

Companies restrict distribution of new "wonder drugs" and charge what looks to be "high" prices to recoup the enormous (billions of $) cost of development and meeting government approval requirements. Yeah, they may still make billions of dollars from these drugs. THEY would argue these profits are justified because of other drugs they spend billions on in development which never make it to the market. And to defend lawsuits from people who suffer unanticipated damage from drugs which were approved but later turned out to be dangerous.

This last paragraph is kinda off the main point but I'm just responding to the post about penicillin. It IS relevant in that it seems some of the "pro-piracy" arguments here point to the supposedly ungodly and "unjustified" profits that recording companies and artists, and movie studios make from their copyrighted works. Well, there's no law against making a lot of money from YOUR OWN WORK. I suspedt anyone making this argument would feel differently if a song they created or a book they wrote suddenly started making them millions of $.

It's all in the point of view, eh?

To the guy who said "copyright is evil"...I disagree. Copyright was invented to encourage creativity. Otherwise people who create new works have no incentive to continue doing so because without copyright anyone could rip off their stuff and sell it as their own, or give it away. I do agree that copyright should have limits. Disney recently pressured Congress to extend copyrights by many years, especially for corporations and I think that was a bad thing. Further Disney managed to get some of their old works that had entered the public domain (meaning anyone could copy or distribute them) back into copyright protection and this even upset a lot of copyright lawyers because a sacred principle of copyright law has always been that once a copyrighted work entered the public domain it would remain there forever. I do think that principle should have been preserved. The concept of the public domain was to encourage valuable works to survive through free reproduction "forever." I think excessively long copyright protection hurts society because it can deny the public access to certain works due to the quirks of the copyright holder, who may arbitrarily decide to sit on the creations for decades. This has happened with some songs, movies and books.

Interesting discussion, btw...

 

[orion949]

Damn, you know we're deep in the woods when a thread on Piracy not really affecting the big media has now come to AIDS and Penicillin! lol

But like Siege said, alot of very good points being made here regardless of the topic though so its very interesting.

Something interesting about that Disney revelation you just laid on Siege, about them overturning previous public domain media.

Have a peek here, scroll all the way down to #1
http://www.bestcommunicationsdegrees.com/biggest-media-companies/

Disney is the number one most profitable media company today. And they probably stay that way by the use of these strong-arm litigation moves like re-copy-writing previously public domain media, that very few other companies could have ram-rodded through the courts. (I bet Disney has 2,000 litigators on the payroll working 24/7)

Something mindblowing I saw on there section the Avengers grossed over 1 billion dollars worldwide in 19 days! Holy cow! If anything proves my point that these scum bags aren't being hurt by the evil Pirates its that one sentence! lol

Just imagine, after Avengers ran its full course at the theaters, then went to video on demand/hotel networks, then to DVD/Blu-Ray on to the end of its (now perpetual) copyrighted life, how much fucking money they are going to make off that one single movie? So even if they did lose some due to piracy, and let me be clear, based on the study in my first post I dont believe they actually lose any money to piracy, they would still be making an insane profit.

 

[JimJohnson]

Piracy comes down to a feeling of self entitlement.

Do they deserve to be paid for the work they do ? Yes.

Do the public deserve to get raped just because? No

If music would have gone to the pay for what you want years ago, piracy would have not been so prevalent.

 

[Littleguy]

Otherwise people who create new works have no incentive to continue doing so because without copyright anyone could rip off their stuff and sell it as their own,

This is the biggest line of BS ever. Its right up there with the republican chant of raising the taxes on the rich will make them all leave and take their money with them! Think about how long copyright and patents have been around ( they are the same thing) and think about how long humans have been creating. It's whats called a red herring.

Yeah it costs them billions of dollars to make a drug, but their failure to have a good business model is not my problem. I bet if you went to any of these companies you could find 999 million in waste. They probably have 1,000 non scientist per 1 scientist. Hell probably a bigger spread.

Why do so many drugs they create fail government testing? Its because the big wigs push shit right away to try to make a buck instead of doing it right. Just like big banking, it is better to get a shitty drug through and make the billions off of it and pay any lawsuits.

Copyright and patents have dampened creativity as they are designed to do, it slows down the sharing of information for others to bare bigger fruit from. Thankfully there are countries that act all friendly to patent/copyright but actually ignore the shit and get the information out to the world.

 

[orion949]

Copyright and patents have dampened creativity as they are designed to do, it slows down the sharing of information for others to bare bigger fruit from. Thankfully there are countries that act all friendly to patent/copyright but actually ignore the shit and get the information out to the world.

Again, this is one of those debatable and unprovable questions but I really dont believe Copyrighting ind Patents stifle creativity in any way, I think they ensure that people are rewarded appropriately for their creativity.

Still, I have no proof but putting myself in the position of an inventor who had formulated an idea for the proverbial "better mousetrap" but I knew that if I poured my heart and soul into it and worked my ass of to create it, there would be nothing in place to protect my rights to it and I wouldnt make a dime off of it. I probably wouldnt bother taking the effort to invent it in the first place under those circumstances.

 

[SiegeTank]

Common sense says if you invest huge amounts of time and energy into creative effort and others can just copy it and rip you off at will, you're not going to be motivated to do the work---certainly not the SECOND time, after your first effort has been ripped off.

Yeah, Socrates, Milton, Shakespeare and many other writers produced their output in a world without copyrights. But in those days reproducing such works was a costly and tedious process and that itself limited the ability of others to rip them off. Not that it didn't happen. In the 1800s the British novelist Charles Dickens was the most popular and successful writer in the English language and his stuff was ripped off right and left especially by Americans. He was (in my mind, justifiably) pissed and this led to the development of copyright law in the English-speaking world.

Dickens had huge success touring the U.S. and reading excerpts from his books. But he irritated the audiences by complaining about how American publishers were pirating his novels and printing cheap editions of them---cheap because they didn't have to pay Dickens a cent because the U.S. then had no copyright agreement with England. Dickens pointed out that such piracy would undermine the development of American writers since American publishers could reprint Dickens's work without paying him a dime while they'd have to compensate American writers for their work.

Sure, Dickens was primarily interested in getting what he saw as his just compensation in America. But his point makes a lot of sense: here's an example of where the LACK of copyright law STIFLES CREATIVITY.

 

[JimJohnson]

Common sense says if you invest huge amounts of time and energy into creative effort and others can just copy it and rip you off at will, you're not going to be motivated to do the work---certainly not the SECOND time, after your first effort has been ripped off.

Yeah, Socrates, Milton, Shakespeare and many other writers produced their output in a world without copyrights. But in those days reproducing such works was a costly and tedious process and that itself limited the ability of others to rip them off. Not that it didn't happen. In the 1800s the British novelist Charles Dickens was the most popular and successful writer in the English language and his stuff was ripped off right and left especially by Americans. He was (in my mind, justifiably) pissed and this led to the development of copyright law in the English-speaking world.

You should not be motivated financially to be truly creative. If you are only being creative to get rich. As someone else said.

If you want me to buy your stuff, make stuff worth buying, and not something you shit out while snorting a line of coke, drinking and driving through Beverly Hills.

If the people who are creative, stopped trying to extort the ones that they are trying to impress. More people would probably not feel like they are getting ripped off, justifying the act of piracy. When people feel they are getting what they paid for, they usually... Get this. Spend more money. I have 4 sets to "Wheel of Time" 3 in hardback 1 in paper back. For example.

The only person that piracy hurts is the local communities that lose jobs from loss of revenue due to lower sales at the box office/book stores.

Dickens had huge success touring the U.S. and reading excerpts from his books. But he irritated the audiences by complaining about how American publishers were pirating his novels and printing cheap editions of them---cheap because they didn't have to pay Dickens a cent because the U.S. then had no copyright agreement with England. Dickens pointed out that such piracy would undermine the development of American writers since American publishers could reprint Dickens's work without paying him a dime while they'd have to compensate American writers for their work.

Sure, Dickens was primarily interested in getting what he saw as his just compensation in America. But his point makes a lot of sense: here's an example of where the LACK of copyright law STIFLES CREATIVITY.

That is not the lack of copyright law. That is greed and wanting to keep money in America not letting others get rich off what we buy.

 

[orion949]

You should not be motivated financially to be truly creative. If you are only being creative to get rich. As someone else said.

Im going to have to disagree with this one JJ. Money, wealth and fame our powerful motivators that drive 90% of what we do. If the dude doesnt make some cash of his good idea originally how is he going to finance his next, even bigger/better idea?

I think its a chain, if Steve Jobs never made enough cash to ever get out of the garage with his ideas there would be no Apple today.

 

[SiegeTank]

You should not be motivated financially to be truly creative. If you are only being creative to get rich. As someone else said.

Im going to have to disagree with this one JJ. Money, wealth and fame our powerful motivators that drive 90% of what we do. If the dude doesnt make some cash of his good idea originally how is he going to finance his next, even bigger/better idea?

I think its a chain, if Steve Jobs never made enough cash to ever get out of the garage with his ideas there would be no Apple today.

A writer should not expect compensation for his creative work?

What about the architect who designs a new house?

The carpenter who constructs a beautiful piece of furniture?

The painter who paints your portrait?

All work involving creativitiy.

One of the problems here is because writers, artists and musicians "create" non-material objects, there's a tendency to think differently about their work process. But it's all "work", requiring mucho time and effort and unless some artist is the son of a billionaire, they all have to make a living.

 

[JimJohnson]

You should not be motivated financially to be truly creative. If you are only being creative to get rich. As someone else said.

Im going to have to disagree with this one JJ. Money, wealth and fame our powerful motivators that drive 90% of what we do. If the dude doesnt make some cash of his good idea originally how is he going to finance his next, even bigger/better idea?

I think its a chain, if Steve Jobs never made enough cash to ever get out of the garage with his ideas there would be no Apple today.

Is not having better quality life worth finding a better way to do something? Do you really need to get billions on an invention to make it a good invention?

The fact that people think monetary compensation is the only one that matters is sad.

 

[hawthorne]

I think Nikola Tesla is a perfect example of an inventor that only wanted to make the world better, and not for the monetary aspect of it. He wanted to give the world free energy in perpetuity. We see how well that worked out.
There is a great documentary called 'Future by Design' about an inventor that wants to transform the way we live. And doesn't want money for it.
So, I agree with JJ. There are some people who only want to transform society. Then there are others who only care about getting rich. I think the vast majority are somewhere in between.

 

[DT]

I've had two good ideas in my lifetime

1) A lot of people thought the first one was stupid
2) They told me my second idea of killing the people from the first idea was illegal.

Now I'm back to start....

 

[orion949]

I've had two good ideas in my lifetime

1) A lot of people thought the first one was stupid
2) They told me my second idea of killing the people from the first idea was illegal.

Now I'm back to start....

lol!

 

[DT]

I think Nikola Tesla is a perfect example of an inventor that only wanted to make the world better, and not for the monetary aspect of it. He wanted to give the world free energy in perpetuity. We see how well that worked out.
There is a great documentary called 'Future by Design' about an inventor that wants to transform the way we live. And doesn't want money for it.
So, I agree with JJ. There are some people who only want to transform society. Then there are others who only care about getting rich. I think the vast majority are somewhere in between.

Lies! Everyone knows the most generous inventer/scientist was Elizabeth Shue. She couldn't have done it without Val Kilmer though.