WTO Sanctioned Piracy

[Ben Kenobi]

Please, if we allowed you that you could easily pirate it.

As opposed to not even having to get up to do that? Please. If it's good, people will buy it. If I want to spend my money for a hardcopy that is mine, then I should be able to do so.

Look at it this way - what happens if your game requires you to login to play and the business providing the game is no longer in existence? I have a ton of old games that I bought years ago. HOMM is a classic example. Is it right that I'm no longer able to access the game that I bought and paid for?

[DaShi]

So content producers get ****ed over in return?

Pretty much. Politicians rarely get directly punished for the policies they endorse. When conflict occurs between two countries it's the soldiers, farmers, or businesses that suffer. Occasionally that trickles up to the politicians, but you've got to make a lot of regular people suffer to reach them.

[DaShi]

We should be losing sleep over the fact that people are having their property, property which in many cases contains their entire livelihood, stolen from them by a government in coordination with an international bureaucracy.

This is simplistic, naive, and wrong.

[self biased]

Doesn't track on two levels--libraries lend, and also you pay for libraries with your tax dollars.

what is the functional difference if i borrow a book from a friend, read it and return it to that friend, or to pirate the book from wherever, read it once and delete it?

[SlowwHand]

Or record a television program?

[ColdWizard]

what is the functional difference if i borrow a book from a friend, read it and return it to that friend, or to pirate the book from wherever, read it once and delete it?

The friend paid for it and has none of the privileges of ownership while you have it.

Or record a television program?

TV station paid for it.

[Dinner]

Perhaps true, perhaps not; but it seems like the content producers ought to be able to choose the price, no? I think the arguments against DRM are very different from arguments for permissive piracy. Non-DRM files are much easier to use for _purchasers_, and don't really stop piracy anyway; so DRM is silly. However, arguments for permitting piracy explicitly (as opposed to just accepting it as a cost of doing business) are... dumb. Producers or retailers should always be able to choose price points based on the market. Suggesting they should have to lower their price because you think they might make more money is idiotic.

I'm not advocating everyone pirate everything; I'm saying the copyright holding companies were stupid not to embrace a relatively cheap and easy legal download method. Instead they're often trying to sell digital books for more than the price of real books even though the effective per unit cost to produce is nothing. Clearly that's out of touch with reality. In the last two years digital book prices have gone down and, low and behold, suddenly sales shot up but they dicked around so long now people are used to getting it for free and once stuff is free it is real hard to convince people to pay for it. They'll have to lower prices even more to convince people to buy a legal digital copy so their mistake, like the MPAA and RIAA, was initially being so greedy tens of millions of people just decided to give them the finger.

The last sentence of your's is provably false because as digital book prices have fallen sales have gone up substantially. What's more: Part of something or nothing of nothing? That's defacto their choice.

[Dinner]

The friend paid for it and has none of the privileges of ownership while you have it.


TV station paid for it.

Yet both were legal however the new copy right laws say it is suddenly illegal with digital media. Just because lobbyists bribed politicians now fair use is out of the window. MY personal take is an unjust law is no law at all so f'em. If I like the book I buy the book and I buy a fair number of books each year but I get very unsympathetic to companies and people who try to change the law to remove my legal rights. The more they go down that road the more people will give them the finger and just stiff them so it's time for them to change tack because they're only hurting themselves.

[kentonio]

I think the arguments against DRM are very different from arguments for permissive piracy. Non-DRM files are much easier to use for _purchasers_, and don't really stop piracy anyway; so DRM is silly.

Yes, and that's one of the big issues where the old school music industry and movie industries repeatedly **** up. They make their products so unwieldly so that not only do pirate copies cost nothing but they're more consumer friendly to the user as well! Oh you want to watch our movie? Well that's $15 and we're going to make you sit through a series of piracy warnings despite you already having paid for the damn thing! Want to listen to your new song on a portable device? Well **** you, despite the fact you paid for it we're going to make it as difficult as possible for you to use it in the way you want.

However, arguments for permitting piracy explicitly (as opposed to just accepting it as a cost of doing business) are... dumb.

Well yeah, but that's kind of the point here isn't it. America is being a dick to Antigua, so the WTO give Antigua a tool to be a dick to the US to encourage them to come to a settlement.

Producers or retailers should always be able to choose price points based on the market. Suggesting they should have to lower their price because you think they might make more money is idiotic.

In an ideal world yes they should be able to charge what they want, but when the whole industry is basically price gouging then they can't be surprised when the customer rebels. Does everyone remember when the music industry first started actually selling digital copies of their albums? That beautiful moment when they all decided that they could charge exactly the same for a DD copy of an album as they did for a disc version, despite the saving in printing, distribution, retail etc etc.

The simple truth is that they DO make more money when they lower prices and stop trying to act like a bunch of dishonest thieves. Ideally customers should just stop buying until they reach that conclusion or go bust, but when it comes to creative stuff people don't want to miss out and will just steal it instead. It's not a great solution, but if anyone deserves it its the movie and music production industries. At least game had the common sense to roll with the times and embrace digital distribution methods. Some of our big publishers still over charge a bit, but games is a lot more consumer friendly than any of the other industries.

[Dr Strangelove]

It's illegal to regulate it in another country...or at least, the WTO says it is.

But remember that the US actually settled with the other countries after it attempted to do so and Antigua refused the offer. All this is, is just another attempt to strong arm the US government into accepting a different deal. They might not even set up the retail website (though TBH I wonder what the would happen if the US government refused and kept on calling it piracy...it'd be like a toddler spitting out a dummy).

Was the US preventing them from offering on-line gambling with countries other than the US?
What was the deal offered to other countries?

[ColdWizard]

Yet both were legal however the new copy right laws say it is suddenly illegal with digital media. Just because lobbyists bribed politicians now fair use is out of the window. MY personal take is an unjust law is no law at all so f'em. If I like the book I buy the book and I buy a fair number of books each year but I get very unsympathetic to companies and people who try to change the law to remove my legal rights. The more they go down that road the more people will give them the finger and just stiff them so it's time for them to change tack because they're only hurting themselves.

Legal because someone paid for it. With pirating digital media, no one is paying and yet everyone is still getting the benefits of ownership. That's not fair use. Do you steal cable too because you wouldn't pay for it anyway and the company charges too much?

Just because I think MPAA and RIAA are a bunch of greedy ****headed ********* doesn't mean I have to sink to their level.

[rah]

Yeah, the because "I believe" you're over charging for your product gives me the moral OK to steal it doesn't fly with me either.

[Krill]

Was the US preventing them from offering on-line gambling with countries other than the US?
What was the deal offered to other countries?

The point was IIRC, and I could very well be wrong on this, that because gambling couldn't cross state lines it was viewed as uncompetitive practice, because it was allowed within the country but not outside the country. The US offered compensation to the other countries after enacting hte law, but I do not know the amount offered.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Only 21m... well, it is a wrist slap, but an interesting one nevertheless.

For the rest - obsolete industries fighting for life through regulation, is nothing new really, the only question is how much time will it take to correct itself, probably until a post y 2000 generation takes over in 20-30 years. They will have a different idea on how to make money out of entertainment. In the meantime we can hope for "faster", but it is not looking likely. Some people's lives will also be ruined on the way like all those defendants in the US being asked to pay hundreds of thousands of USD for few dozen songs, but hey... that's the world we live in and even some of the ordinary citizenry don't seem to mind such treatment.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Legal because someone paid for it. With pirating digital media, no one is paying and yet everyone is still getting the benefits of ownership. That's not fair use. Do you steal cable too because you wouldn't pay for it anyway and the company charges too much?

Just because I think MPAA and RIAA are a bunch of greedy ****headed ********* doesn't mean I have to sink to their level.

If you remove the paradigm that IP is the same as "real" stuff, this is not stealing. If I take your loaf of bread you are hungry - if Jesus comes takes it, gives it back to you and makes 5000 loafs to feed the masses he is saviour (at worst a communist ), not a thief. What tech enabled you to do is to multiply the wealth at very low cost. There is cost still, just very low one due to technological advances, and that cost is shared by the people sharing, supplying other "productive" industries (in this case telco's) with revenue.

Using the legal framework to censor certain types of behaviour never worked, nor should it - ie if it costs so little to reproduce the inherent value of the product is not as much as the producer wishes to charge. Sure they can charge 200k USD for a Ferrari, and they can afford to keep them out of the hands of the public, but if a Ferrari was "downloadable" for 0.00005 cents, they can take their imaginary pricing and stuff it. That would otherwise be called extortion, and that is precisely the behaviour the content industry engages in as they can still afford to grease the wheels of the lawmakers.

The issue of equating the two - ie "real" life goods and services which cannot be multiplied at almost zero cost, and digital ones, which can - is the issue of current legal framework.

So yes, for downloading, you are paying - electricity, your internet connection and your time, and the best point is that the content you are downloading is worth money to the actual content creators. First and foremost if you were selling a service where content is easy to find and organize, you would be making a ton of money off it too for both yourself as the middleman and for the creators - like Itunes, Steam, Amazon book store, etc... do already, there is inherent value right there, which cannot be "downloaded". You can charge for it.

The individual content creators will only have to deal with different middle man, for music, instead of "record" companies they will be "tour organizers"... for movies - well nothing really needs to change. For software - digital distribution services like Steam. For books - same old publishers, as long as there is a good and organized platfrorm to sell the books, money will still come in it's billions.

People who have at least for food on the table will be willing (and are willing as you can see from services on offer already today), to pay for easy access, good quality digital product. Anyhow, this Antigua thing could have been a bit more, but as it is, will be just a blip on the radar, until we wait for a new generation to come on board and correct this sector.