You’re wasting your time here. Go look at some of the other threads he’s participated in. Long on assertions. Short on anything else.
I completely agree. It’s big companies rather than artists that are motivated to churn out crap, and fool people into buying it sight unseen, with misleading advertising. Free access is allowing people to make accurate judgements about the worth of art, and pay that value directly to the creators.
The only sensible way to end piracy, is to offer all digital content on a pay-what-you-will basis, cutting out most or all middlemen. This will ensure all revenues go straight to the artists. Artists who have tried this have found they make more than through traditional sales, including big names such as Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, as well as thousands of smaller bands.
Good point. lance’s rhetorical engagement is limited to terse insistence. It’s as if he feels it’s a sign of weakness to be caught defending a point, let alone provide a cite.
Who taught you how to debate, lance - pick-up artists?
It’s given me an opportunity to examine and flesh out my arguments, which is interesting to me, at least. Dunno if anyone else is interested, but that’s why there’s a scroll wheel.
Yes, that’s theft, because he had the right to copy his own pencil and sell it, and now you’ve taken one, denying him the sale to you or someone else.
LOL.
No, that’s not how basic debate works.
You don’t get to say something and then tell someone else to prove it’s wrong.
That’s right. So stop trying to get me to prove something I haven’t tried to show.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
No, you didn’t.
You can’t know how much sales would have been without piracy. See how that works?
It couldn’t be more relevant. This is really basic stuff. Any social sciences undergrad could see right through your numbers.
No, that’s completely wrong. I’ve not denied him anything. If I’d taken one of his pencils, you would be correct. If a new pencil is created, and he’s lost nothing - analagous to what happens in file sharing - I’ve not harmed him, and not taken anything.
As I’ve not taken anything, or done anything to harm him, you now have to show how I’ve done anything wrong. Of course, you’ve already shown you’re unwilling or unable to do so, and I don’t expect this time will be any different.
Hey now! Nobody gets to tell you to prove anything. And that is definitely not how debate works.
True, I chose extreme examples because the numbers were big, but the fact is that as Blaster Master said, it doesn’t seem like there would be a major effect on smaller producers either.
If I write a novel and don’t make much of any money off it in 15 years, then that novel has been a commercial failure. While it’s possible than 20 years down the line it’ll suddenly become popular, it’s pretty unlikely. If I’m making a reasonable but not hugely successful living off the novel, I’m going to want to write more novels and keep the income coming in - continuing to make a small amount of money from a few sales of the book 16+ years later might be nice, but it’s not likely to be my primary means of supporting myself. This is doubly true for 28 years later.
I’m also reasonably sure most books, music, games, and movies make the majority of their money in the first few years (although I’m failing to find the proper statistics to back that up). It is in fact only the incredibly successful works like Disney’s classics, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and so on, that can continue to pull in huge amounts of money decades after they’ve been released. And allowing those companies or people to maintain an exclusive stranglehold on publishing those works as well undoubtedly hurts creativity.
The small author that never hits a fantastic success needs to regularly publish books to maintain their income; this doesn’t really change if copyright is only 28 years, or only 15 years, rather than lifetime + 70 years.
Prove you don’t hate puppies. Until you do, you’re a puppy hater.
Damn puppy hater!
Sigh.
I just explained this.
You took away something he could sell. Now he can’t sell it.
I suppose that you think if you steal a dollar, all you stole is a scrap of paper, not a dollar.
IP is not the only kind of property that has value that you can’t actually hold in your hand. Doesn’t make it less real. For example, cap-and-trade certificates for carbon dioxide emissions, commodity futures, a promissory note. Just paper, right? Not an actual thing, right?
Ah, you still misunderstand. I took nothing from him, he still has his pencil and can sell it. I also have a pencil.
Please explain what I took from him, and how he’s prevented from selling it, by my action of creating a pencil identical to his.
Then, when you realise that I took nothing, and he’s prevented from doing nothing, understand how the analogy applies to file sharing. Then, admit you’re wrong.
And he has lost money that he might have made by selling the pencil you took, instead of you stealing it.
See above.
If you took “nothing” then why did you take it, and why are you so hellbent on asserting the right to take it?
I didn’t take anything, and I’m not asserting any right to take anything. Please make it clear that you understand this, and stop claiming that I’m saying things I’m not.
You’re living in a bizarro world.
Well, sort of. The big successes in novel writing managed to sell their first books quickly, which would be to their benefit under your scheme. Unfortunately, copyright inheres in a work as soon as it is “fixed”, by which is meant that the work is recorded in some medium from which it may be observed or reproduced. J.K. Rowling’s copyright in her first Harry Potter book started the moment she wrote it down, not the moment it was first published. If it had taken her five years to sell the book, she’d only have 10 years to earn from it. Given that she finished the book and started trying to sell it in 1995, that would mean that ripoff versions could have started appearing as early as 2010. Warner Brothers could very well have given her the finger on the movie rights and said, “We’ll just wait, thanks.” So much for her billions.
Of course, conversely, she might have made even more money as studios bid and scrambled to be first, before the crappy versions came out, but that would only happen for the absolute highest-value projects, and frankly it’s hard to imagine any movie studio spending squillions of dollars to make a movie when they only have 15 years to profit from it. George Lucas would probably have set fire to his entire work history by now just to keep other people from having it. There’d be no incentive to release movies more than a decade old on Blu-Ray or whatever new format comes next, because those copies would just be templates for super-pretty public domain copies shortly to follow. Most likely, we’d see a worsening of the current trend toward re-releasing movies with slight changes and added digital effects so that you can call it a “new work” and restart the copyright clock on it.
That’s not an argument, or a proof of anything. It’s another empty assertion, backed up by nothing. You’re not winning the argument, or impressing anybody, by continuing to do this, so why are you doing it?
I’ve already won. Now you’re just making bizarre claims. Let’s not continue this.
The vast majority of the profit on most movies is made in the few weeks following release, with a smaller but significant amount made in the few months after DVD release. It’s the extreme exception which is ever rereleased to a significant amount of cinemas.
Perhaps you’d be prepare to run through your winning argument again. That would be the argument that shows the harm done to a content producer by someone who takes nothing - neither content nor money - from them, and in copying their work does not reduce sales or saleability of it.
Or, you could show where any of my points there are wrong. Not simply assert that they are wrong, demonstrate it. Of course, you won’t do that, as the ones that aren’t directly observable are trivially demonstrable.
He does reduce sales. That’s the harm.