Hi!
Should I just lock this? It kind of just turned into another Piracy thread. I just wanted to share a video :/
Personally, I would find that a shame. Your video did touch upon the issue of copyright and if you really want to discuss about where to head as far as copyright is concerned, I think you can't avoid discussing what the actual meaning of copyright is - I mean, unless you understand it, you can't change it without running the risk of ruining it.
While I find it rather sad that some people were not able to keep their temper down eventually even leading to a mute, I think we do have some interesting discussions going on. Granted, there is a lot of harsh language in this thread, even after the cleansing, but I think there are also very interesting thoughts being exchanged.
Ah, your other post about the aim of the thread is beyond my quote reach, but you suggested discussing where to head because of the pressure the piracy problem puts on the industry.
The way I see it, those claims about the damage of the piracy damage are exaggerated. Of course, there are many good reasons to do so (as for instance putting the potential financial damage into a reasonable framework for court proceedings). However, if piracy was really bringing the industry to the edge of extinction, I doubt they would actually be investing any money into copyprotection, for, as 30 years of copyprotection history have shown us, it is wasted money that only reduces the appeal to honest customers but has never prevented piracy. If you don't have money to spare, I think you would not put money into something that does not work - and yet we get ever newer iterations of copyprotection, in most cases based on the same old concepts that have failed time and time again.
And they wouldn't be the only industry painting far too dark a picture: Here in Germany, basically every year, most of the year the people growing wine claim that the year has been so bad that they will not get any real harvest - and then, when the harvest is in, it is suddenly a record year with high quality and quantity. Don't ask me why they do it, but there seems to be a tendency to prefer to be seen as poor and harmless.
Except for maybe negligence towards their paying customers (like not including printed manuals or using insecure copyprotection harming honest customers), I don't see much what the industry is doing wrong in a way that would influence piracy (copyprotection has no influence on piracy, so that waste of money is not included here). It is more that there is a major problem in society that
respect for your fellow human beings is lacking. And the wanton piracy is an expression of that lack of common sense and also a main re-inforcer of that deficiency. So, it is not as much the industry which needs to change as it is society which has to have a look at the way it perceives its members..... And given the perversions we have seen in various management decisions like with BP and investment banking, it is actually not that unlikely that at least some pressure for such a revision is building.
First of all : there is many open source software that are widly used and distributed, among them firefox, open office, vlc..
I agree with that.
Those are perfectly good software, often superior by many aspect to their commercial counterpart.
I agree with there being a lot of very good or "perfectly good" pieces of software (along, of course, with not so good one). How often there is superiority to commercial counterparts is something I would not want to comment on, for it raises again the logic of why there are then pirates around. And it also raises the question why the commercial software should be forced into open source if the existing open source is already superior - I don't see the benefit there of making the inferior product available for autopsy.
Secondly, I thing it's mostly clear that copying a sofware is not sealing it because you have no net loss associated with it.
Technically, it is not the same as a physical theft. However, as I have pointed out before, it has the potential to cause harm to the creator of the software.
I skip the third point as that is a discussion I don't want to participate in. (However, I personally browse with
Firefox, and program with various freeware languages/engines, although I also have that version of
Visual Studio installed that
Microsoft gave out for free.
Pretending that free software aren' worth anything is just disonhest.
Truth be told, that is indeed one thing that has been bothering me about some of the comments coming from the pro-copyright camp: Just because it is freeware or open source does not automatically mean that the programmers have less skill. Of course, being forced to create revenue should theoretically eventually weed out at least the worst programmers from commercial businesses (you don't keep a programmer who can't produce results worth his wage unless you want to go bancrupt), but that does not mean that all good programmers engage only in commercial ventures.
In my own experience with freeware games, there are many, many pieces that are of very high quality, at least rivaling commercial products. Of course, there are also a lot of freeware titles that make your brain bleed. But making a blanket condemnation of freeware or open source seems wrong to me
as quality is always a case-by-case thing!Even were you to somehow magically remove the ability for the small percentage of consumers who are already your best costumers to consume media at the rate they desire, it would either mean that a) they don't give more money to you than they already were, because they only bought what they actually valued to begin with, b) they do, but spend less on more material luxuries, thus harming another industry, and one with massive physical investment of capital, or, if they're aware that you're responsible for the whole mess, c) stop purchasing anything out of spite for your actions.
Now that seems weird to me: You imply that making piracy impossible would reduce the media consumption of the pirates while at the same time claiming that they are the best customers of the industry? I am not a rich person, but I spend a good portion of the money I have to purchase games legally (if you must know, I spend about 100 to 200 Euro a month on digital items, including games, digital manga, and graphic collection), and I already end up with MORE GAMES than I can play. So, I am confused how the pirates who spend at least as much as I do according to you would be hindered in their media consumption. Or do they have some way of stretching time so they can do more playing?
Your argument that the pirates are the main customer base can also be interpreted the other way around - the ones seeding the illegal copies provide copies to so many people thus satisfying their demand that only very few non-pirate people remain to purchase the items. So, your argument actually proves that pirates cause a loss to the industry by neutralizing a major part of the normal customer base.
Deathworks
Author
Topic: These are the many profitable industries with no copyright protection (Read 10750 times)