Over the years the recording industry has opposed (in chronological order):
The mute button on your TV
Cassette tapes
VCRs (1976, Universal City Studios and Walt Disney Co vs Sony Betamax)
Recordable CDs
Recordable DVDs (remember when blank DVDs cost around a buck apeice because we had to pay the swine a fee on each one?)
MP3 players RIAA Goes After Fair Use
DVRs
The RIAA proposed to put libraries out of business by perverting long standing fair use laws for their own profit. Fair Use and DRM RIAA opposes new fair use bill
The RIAA/MPAA locked up all the golden oldies by applying payola to get the copyright laws extended to ludicrous time spans.
The RIAA/MPAA shoved the DMCA and the abomination that is the HDMI standard down our throats. Coming soon if they can manage it; DRM built into every CPU for sale in America.
The RIAA has proven themselves to be a bunch of low down, high smelling, sidewinding shitstains who create nothing and are desperately buying influence in an attempt to profit from the creations of others and suck money out of you any way they can. They would have you pay to whistle a popular tune if they could. Anything I want to do to them is fair game. My one constraint is that I want the artist to get paid. That is the single reason I pay for any content these days (and I do).
In conclusion, thank Ogg for the Consumer Electronics Association and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and fuck the RIAA sideways with a red hot chainsaw.
His first post certainly was, shithead. I was going to ignore it, but then he posted a second time to again state that he didn’t give a shit about the thread.
I have already argued that the two pillars of this hypothetical situation (no financial loss to the company providing it, and no way to obtain it legally) are not realistic.
However, if you insist - I suppose there is nothing immoral about this particular hypothetical situation. But that is meaningless - you can construct a situation in which it would be moral to do just about anything that is generally considered immoral. Murder is occasionally justifiable, for example.
But in general, it’s not, and bringing up specific hypothetical corner cases just obscures the bigger the bigger picture. Most people pirating software are not poor starving orphans in a third-world country who yet somehow have access to a computer and have decided that learning Photoshop is their way out of poverty.
I pay $70 a month for my satellite tv, and yet I find that I still download a number of tv shows. Between my pvr and downloading shows that aren’t available in Canada, I probably never watch commercials anymore. I occasionally forget to pvr a show, and then I’ll download it, as well.
I would gladly transfer my $70.00 a month to a quality reliable bittorrent tv distribution site, cancel my cable, and download all my programming. I’m even find with commercials that I can’t skip through at period breaks and in-program embedded advertising. What I find frustrating is that there is -as of yet- not a legal way for me to enjoy programming in my preferred method. Online streaming is coming close (at official sites), but it no way matches the quality of a downloaded show. I delete the program after I watch it - this is, to me, no way different that recording on a video tape or pvr.
I wish that there was a clearing house I could give my money to, and watch whatever shows I wanted, regardless of what network or cable station they are affiated with. Also, I think if they went with this model, we would find a lot let shows being cancelled out of the gate - the method of determining viewers is heavily skewed by upsurge in downloading and pvr’ing. And if I have to see Jack Bauer driving a ford suv, while drinking a starbucks coffee and casually remarking how much he loves cheetos in order for the show to be funded, I’m find with that.
I apologize if I accused you of something you did not do.
But it seems obvious to me that the post you responded to already contained a pretty clear answer to the question you posted in response. Do you disagree?
I don’t. For clarification, I asked if there was a specific monetary figure you could use to express your daughter’s worth. You said no. What I don’t understand is how that jibes with your previous statement that all value can be expressed in monetary terms.
Yeah that was poorly worded on my part. In an ideal world, no. I’d like to find some other method, but I don’t know what that is. It is, however, clear to me that commercials are going to way of the dodo. I am seeing in program advertising more and more, and some shows do a clever job of it (30 rock) while others fail miserably. I think what I was trying to say is that I’d rather not fight with the people who make my tv - I want them to make money, and I just think the current strategy isn’t working.
Quite easily. “My daughter’s life is worth more to my than all the money in the world.” That was a value expressed in monetary terms. I don’t see why “monetary terms” has to mean a specific number.
I can do this any number of ways “My daughter’s life is worth whatever you are willing to pay me for it, plus one dollar.” “My daughter’s life is worth infinite wealth.” “My daughter’s life is worth more than $400,000,000,000,000.” And so forth. Which of these four statements is not expressed in terms of money?
I believe in alternate distribution. I think that would negate the need to pirate. For example, digital music distribution which allow people to download tracks by tracks. Or even online streaming movies or animes. Most people don’t watch the same movie twice. Even downloadable movies and games would be good. And to pull those off, you need the infrastructure that makes internet piracy possible.
The second issue is - well, the content developer also has to stick to a minimum quality too. I have often pay full price for a game only to find out that it is not really worth the money. Reviews are subjective too and there are talks about liaisons about publishers and reviewers, which isn’t good for consumer confidence.
There is also the suspicion that publishers are ripping off people - making a profit far more than 200% or even 300%. No data to back me up here, but I have an example.
Gothic 3 in English cost SGD 60 here. Gothic 3 with a Chinese cover, a translated Chinese manual, but with the same English content, cost SGD 30. So far I haven’t been able to find a satisfactory explainable why besides rabid markup.
What isn’t helping is that games from online distribution costs as much as a boxed set. It doesn’t make sense - if we omit the cost of manuals, boxing, middle-man distribution and etc, shouldn’t it be cheaper? Of course, I believe the reason is publishers aren’t ready to sabotage their main line of revenue, so…
Solving piracy, I believe, requires a bipartisan approach. It’s time to reach across the fence!
What does it mean, if not “a specific amount of money”? You can move the goalposts all you like, but we’re talking about defining value in terms of money, which is totally meaningless and self-defeating without specific numbers. If money cannot be used to procure something, that thing does not have a monetary value. I might as well say that my car has value in terms of bananas, but no number of bananas would convince me to sell my car. You and I both know what that means for the guy with a barrel of bananas trying to buy my car.
So if I offered $300,000, Jillvyn could buy her for $300,001?
There is no such thing as infinite wealth, so this statement is meaningless.
Touché, but I could just as easily say that my car is worth more than 400,000,000,000,000 bananas, and that wouldn’t necessarily mean that my car has a value in terms of bananas. It could–but that would not be implied.
In order to be a value in monetary terms, this estimation has to be based on the definition of “all the money in the world”. If the amount of total wealth in the world increased dramatically, could it theoretically be possible for all of that money to be pooled together to buy your daughter? If not, I would suggest that this was never in monetary terms in the first place.
The point of this all is not to terrorize you with little nitpicks, but to illustrate that, if you define a term like “monetary terms” to the point where it can cover anything in the world, it ceases to have any meaning and loses all standing in this discussion.
And I constructed a situation which I’ve read is quite common for poor students in third world countries, so I don’t see how you agreeing that there are situations in which stealing software is not immoral is meaningless. I’ll give you another in which I’m sure you’ll agree is much more common.:
I heard the Rolling Stones put out an album not too long ago and I’m curious what they sound like these days. Not curious enough to pay for it, but if I could hear a few songs for free my curiosity would be satisfied. I fire up LimeWire, download a few songs, listen to them, think “Eh” and delete them. What’s wrong with my actions?
Wow, that’s really something. After hiring translators, you’d think it would be more expensive to sell it in China, but they’re clearly fixing the prices based on things other than “what they think they deserve”–do they deserve less money from Chinese speakers for the same product?
If you really stood behind the argument that the only reason you pirate music is the inconvenience of the DRM schemes, you’d do what Der Trihs does - buy the music to reward the publisher and then pirate it anyway.
And if you think the prices are exorbitant, you have no right to steal. I don’t see why this is such a foreign concept to people. Why do you think you are entitled to cheap music?
If you really can’t afford a measly $15, is it really so hard to do without the latest Metallica (or whatever) album that you’re willing to compromise and twist your sense of morality enough until you think it’s okay to steal it?
DRM is a whole 'nother can of worms, and I don’t really wish to argue it at the moment. I agree that DRM schemes can be intrusive and aggravating, and my simple, ethical solution to that problem would be to not purchase products that employ them. However, in practice, I’ve bought lots of music and movies from iTunes, I’ve bought lots of games that use the dreaded “StarForce” DRM encryption, I’ve bought Blu-Ray disks, and guess what? I can count on one hand the number of times the DRM has been an issue.
If the DRM is really that bothersome, as I said above, just buy it and pirate it then, don’t be a cheap bastard using DRM as an excuse.
Talking about DRM just confuses the discussion. The question is whether you think piracy is moral, with or without DRM. No one would make the ridiculous argument that pirating is only moral if the publisher takes steps to prevent it that you disagree with.
Nonsense right back at you. Pirating content sends the message that DRM schemes need to be made more effective, and thus, more intrusive. Pirating content legitimizes DRM and makes it seem more necessary. If there was no piracy, there would be no DRM - there’d be no need for it, and it would be a waste of money on the publisher’s part. Plain and simple.
Once again - why do you think it is right to begin from the position that you are entitled to the products of these company’s work? You are free not to buy products that punish you for buying them.
All that proves is that some people are more ethical than you, and actually pay for things. Or perhaps they’re just worried about being prosecuted.
If Adobe really has made their software easy to pirate by using weak licensing schemes (which is a bullshit argument to begin with - they moved to internet activation a few years ago), why do they use any licensing scheme at all?
How do you expect Adobe to find the money to pay for their food when everyone thinks its okay to not pay for their software? You think they’re going to make a bunch of money selling what, training on how to use Photoshop? Please. Wouldn’t you then be arguing it’s okay to pirate their training videos, since you’re not actually stealing anything physical, and the DRM scheme attached to them is so damn onerous?
And don’t mention open-source companies like RedHat and Novell. An operating system is a completely different product than a desktop application. Few people need to buy 24x7 dedicated support for their Photoshop installation.
I don’t see what good mentioning IBM does either - they contribute to open-source because they don’t like Microsoft’s dominance. I don’t see them opening up DB2 or Z/OS and giving it away for free anytime soon.
If you think it’s okay for you to pirate software, you should think it’s okay for everyone to. So what’s the incentive for me to make a better product if everyone is going to pirate it anyway? Adobe already has a better product, and everyone is pirating that, so why would I expect it to be any different for my Photoshop killer?
Not really that much, since you deleted them. It’s not that different from just listening for them on the radio, or borrowing a friend’s CD, or whatever.
There are plenty of completely legal ways for you to hear songs before you buy them. Bands now release free tracks on their website, you can listen to samples on iTunes, etc. Hell, you can even subscribe to subscription music services that let you listen to as much music as you want!
But are you really telling me that if you decided you liked those songs, you would’ve gone out and bought the CD? Or would you have just downloaded the rest of the album and saved yourself $15 and trip to the store?
Are you going to believe me? I haven’t bought an album in years (way before the internet). I’m just not in to music enough anymore to pay for it- I listen to the radio in the car and that’s about it. However, I have downloaded and burned songs through LimeWire that I absolutely would not have bothered paying for. No one lost a penny by me doing this.
They’re setting the price at a level that they think will bring them the most money. I guess they think they’ll sell more copies at that price in China, and make up for the low per-unit price with high volume.
That’s their right, since they make the software.
If you don’t mind sharing, what do you do for a living?
I am an engineer. When you get down to it, I produce information for a living. Information about how the world works, and how to make it work in ways people want. I can only make money if I can charge money for access to the information I produce.
I simply cannot comprehend the mindset of people who think they are entitled to take the product of my hard work if they are unhappy with the terms under which I’m selling it, without compensating me at all.
The problem is that in order to buy the creative content, customers are also forced to buy the packaging. And the packaging can sometimes cost ten times as much as the content. I think there are many people who buy pirated goods who would be willing to pay the creator but object to paying an exorbitant mark-up to the packager.
People don’t like paying fifteen dollars for a CD when they know that only a dollar of that is going to the artist who wrote and performed the music. The other fourteen dollars is going to company executives who most certainly did not contribute 93% of the effort.
Technology is making it possible to distribute content by alternative means. We could create a system that allowed us to buy that same music for a dollar and send that dollar directly to the artist. The artists wouldn’t lose anything - it’s the packagers who are worried about losing their fourteen dollars who want these alternative distribution systems declared illegal.
In the long run, the packagers are fighting the future and will lose. By refusing to compromise and participate in the creation of alternative distribution systems, they’re ensuring that when those systems arrive anyway, they won’t be included in them.