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Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

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Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#81

Post by endtime »

neild wrote: post #71
endtime wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think many people make only the case that the marginal cost is 0. But when the marginal cost is zero, and I wouldn't have bought the thing anyway (e.g. Photoshop), and when it's a non-scarce good, I really struggle to see the harm.

It's astonishingly easy to convince yourself that you "wouldn't have bought the thing anyway". The best way to be sure that you aren't lying to yourself is to not pirate things.

Or just not lie to myself. I have sufficiently high confidence that I wouldn't have bought Photoshop that I can sleep at night. :)

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#82

Post by metageek »

duke_sam wrote: post #16
WillyF wrote: post #4

I think that humans have an inherent problem with seeing piracy as theft unless they are the victims. Theft in a traditional sense is almost always zero-sum, and piracy isn't. We weren't really built to deal with this. The closest thing that I can think of is having someone sleep with your spouse—it's kind of like stealing, but it's not zero-sum. And it's not illegal. It also doesn't help that our intellectual proper…

It reminds me of some welfare recipients claiming welfare should be cut for others. As long as it's someone else benefiting from an action it's ripe for cutting but if I'm benefiting then it's justified.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/210904

>"I'm anti-spending and anti-government," crows David, as scooter-bound Janice looks on. "The welfare state is out of control."

>"OK," I say. "And what do you do for a living?"

>"Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

>I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

>Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#83

Post by xenophanes »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #78
krschultz wrote: post #56

I've seen the following argument a thousand times: "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" That argument is actually completly irrelevant. I took a train the other night, and there were only 2 people in my whole car. The previous week it was packed. Both times I had to buy a ticket at the same price. If you don't see what that has to do with pirating music (or software, or…

There are still a fixed number of seats on the train (or plane). If someone "steals" a seat then that's a seat that someone else cannot have. This is dramatically different from the case of digital media where there is no similar impact. For music piracy the only cost is the potential lost sale of the music to the "pirate". Edit: to follow up, I'm a music pirate and proud of it. In my experience there are three types…

The fixed seats on train is only relevant if it fills up. So just imagine the case where it doesn't totally fill and consider his point again and you should see the parallel.

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#84

Post by rjprins »

krschultz wrote: post #56

I've seen the following argument a thousand times: "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" That argument is actually completly irrelevant. I took a train the other night, and there were only 2 people in my whole car. The previous week it was packed. Both times I had to buy a ticket at the same price. If you don't see what that has to do with pirating music (or software, or…

It's not all about costs. In music there are many people who love to write and record songs for fun. This devalues music regardless of costs. In fact I think most music in itself is practically worthless. It's the face and name of musicians which are worth money, usually because of successful marketing.

For books it's a little different. Few people write long stories for fun and it's much harder to write a good book then it is to make a good song. Thus, there are not that many good books around and their value is higher. In this case, I would say copying is bad.

However, my own opinion is that the world just has to adapt to it's own developments. Copying is easy? Writers get less money for their books? Then writers will have to change their profession. Sometimes markets shrink or disappear.

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#85

Post by Kliment »

sethg wrote: post #42
arethuza wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This made me think of what is potentially a very large market - kids toys. As any parent will tell you, an awful lot of toys (especially for young kids) are cheap bits of plastic where the only "value" is the associated licensing of a brand/character from someone like Disney.

The relevant patents on Lego® bricks expired decades ago, and you would think clone bricks would have flooded the market by now. And yet Legos still sell—even the sets that aren’t licensed brands. My experience with Mega Blocks, cheaper bricks that are supposed to interlock with Legos, is that they don’t interlock very well—the tolerances are just far off enough to cause frustration. There must be something in Lego’s…

Lego bricks are easy to replicate on current-generation 3d printers. It's nothing to do with the manufacturing process, it's just that making the molds a bit looser makes them much easier to separate, and cheaper. They also tend to round the peg size up to 5mm, when actual legos are around 4.9. This http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1005 is a lego-compatible part designed from scratch that describes the issue. Using that, it's easy to make custom parts that attach to legos. Here's one that I designed and someone else printed: http://www.thingiverse.com/derivative:5042

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#86

Post by jessriedel »

xenophanes wrote: post #83
InclinedPlane wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still a fixed number of seats on the train (or plane). If someone "steals" a seat then that's a seat that someone else cannot have. This is dramatically different from the case of digital media where there is no similar impact. For music piracy the only cost is the potential lost sale of the music to the "pirate". Edit: to follow up, I'm a music pirate and proud of it. In my experience there are three types…

The fixed seats on train is only relevant if it fills up. So just imagine the case where it doesn't totally fill and consider his point again and you should see the parallel.

There are parallels, but surely there's a large, morally important difference between sneaking onto a half empty train with $50 seats, and stealing $50 from someone's wallet.

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#87

Post by Kliment »

wgj wrote: post #58
showerst wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that it depends on your definition of 'foreseeable'. One of the first markets I can see this disrupting are things like war-gaming miniatures, and board gaming pieces, which have a HUGE markup, but could be reproduced in plastic relatively easily after a more few generations of this tech. I'm not sure about patents per-se, but it's certainly an intellectual property issue. Once these printers gain the ability…

The next version of RepRap will supposedly draw circuit traces. It is designed to have interchangeable extruders.

The current one can do that already, with a sharpie. It has managed to replicate its own electronics in this way.

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#88

Post by tjr »

rjprins wrote: post #84
krschultz wrote: post #56

I've seen the following argument a thousand times: "Well the marginal cost of a copy of [some digital good] is 0 so it isn't stealing!" That argument is actually completly irrelevant. I took a train the other night, and there were only 2 people in my whole car. The previous week it was packed. Both times I had to buy a ticket at the same price. If you don't see what that has to do with pirating music (or software, or…

It's not all about costs. In music there are many people who love to write and record songs for fun. This devalues music regardless of costs. In fact I think most music in itself is practically worthless. It's the face and name of musicians which are worth money, usually because of successful marketing. For books it's a little different. Few people write long stories for fun and it's much harder to write a good book…

Few people write long stories for fun and it's much harder to write a good book then it is to make a good song.

Probably. It might be more equivalent to compare a book with a whole album, or a chapter with a song. I'm not sure what quality of music you have in mind, or what quality of book, but I don't think writing good prose is of necessity significantly more difficult than producing good recorded music.

Sometimes markets shrink or disappear.

Certainly. But when markets disappear because the producers in the market say "I would like X dollars in exchange for this product" and the consumers say "No, we'd rather violate copyright law and procure your product free of charge", it seems to me that something is going on beyond the simple disappearance of a market.

Consumers still want recorded music, and written prose, and all sorts of things that are easy to copy. Many of them just don't feel compelled to give the producers anything in exchange for their work [if they can avoid doing so]. Their work must have value, or else the consumers wouldn't want it.

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#89

Post by steveklabnik »

krschultz wrote: post #63
tjr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked on numerous music recording projects. In many cases, I did everything by myself. In one case, I hired (and learned from) some of the very best in the industry, and between my partner and I, incurred approximately $20,000 in costs... and had an awesome time doing so. But even when I do everything myself, I'm using high-end equipment and software that I've paid thousands of dollars for. It's not free of cha…

Exactly. I'm not a muscian (I'm freaking terrible at anything involved with music), and I have no stake in this game. But software development is the same freaking business model, but for some reason we don't collectively take a stand against piracy.

> for some reason we don't collectively take a stand against piracy.

You're assuming we want to 'take a stand.' You're assuming 'taking a stand' would actually do anything. You haven't said what 'taking a stand' actually _is_, other than some vague idea of 'doing something!1!1'

I, for one, will be very sad if our industry tries to 'take a stand' against piracy. It's a fool's errand.

Re: Author Slams eBook Piracy, Son Outs Her As a Music Pirate

#90

Post by InclinedPlane »

xenophanes wrote: post #83
InclinedPlane wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still a fixed number of seats on the train (or plane). If someone "steals" a seat then that's a seat that someone else cannot have. This is dramatically different from the case of digital media where there is no similar impact. For music piracy the only cost is the potential lost sale of the music to the "pirate". Edit: to follow up, I'm a music pirate and proud of it. In my experience there are three types…

The fixed seats on train is only relevant if it fills up. So just imagine the case where it doesn't totally fill and consider his point again and you should see the parallel.

That's a bit too far into abstract hypotheticals for me. If I steal a candybar from a convenience store and it just happens to be a candybar that wouldn't have sold before it expired and had to be thrown out, is that stealing? If I shop-lift a screwdriver from home depot and then return it a week later is that stealing?
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