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Piracy and the Four Currencies

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Re: Piracy and the Four Currencies

#41

Post by paulhauggis »

davidw wrote: post #8
iwwr wrote: post #3

Don't forget silly things like fleecing European customers or region-locking.

Sometimes (but not always) the fleecing is being done by European governments. The Value Added Tax in Italy is currently at 21%, with the possibility that it'll rise to 23%! Not to mention various "fees" when importing stuff. They tried to get me to pay import fees on a birth certificate my dad sent me from the US. It cost him $50 to get it from the state of Oregon, so he declared that as the value (it would have cos…

"The Value Added Tax in Italy is currently at 21%"

Which is hilarious to me. Everyone wants socialized health care and huge government benefits..but then complain when they are forced to pay enormous taxes and take their mis-placed anger out on business owners.

Re: Piracy and the Four Currencies

#42

Post by davidw »

paulhauggis wrote: post #41
davidw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes (but not always) the fleecing is being done by European governments. The Value Added Tax in Italy is currently at 21%, with the possibility that it'll rise to 23%! Not to mention various "fees" when importing stuff. They tried to get me to pay import fees on a birth certificate my dad sent me from the US. It cost him $50 to get it from the state of Oregon, so he declared that as the value (it would have cos…

"The Value Added Tax in Italy is currently at 21%" Which is hilarious to me. Everyone wants socialized health care and huge government benefits..but then complain when they are forced to pay enormous taxes and take their mis-placed anger out on business owners.

That's actually a long and complex discussion, but suffice it to say that, overall, health care costs a lot less in Italy than it does in the US. The "waste" is elsewhere - people retiring at 59/60 and then living through their 90ies.

Re: Piracy and the Four Currencies

#43

Post by chc »

figglesonrails wrote: post #35
chc wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how Steam would be worse than piracy for someone on usage-capped broadband. It would be better than BitTorrent, at least. And I think Steam lists system requirements for everything in its inventory, so though the refund situation still sucks, it does address the "Is my PC up to scratch?" question somewhat.

I don't think I've ever seen a store that accepts refunds on software the moment you open the shrinkwrap, so I'm not really sure how Steam is that much different.

The comparison is to piracy, not to lousy retail stores.

Re: Piracy and the Four Currencies

#44

Post by tomflack »

paulhauggis wrote: post #40
gm wrote: post #7

I think this is just a different way of expressing the idea that piracy exists only because the pirate user experience is better than the non-pirate user experience. So if the non-pirate experience, for example, does not require that you have the disk in your dvd drive in order to play (since all the assets are copied to your hard drive at install time), then the pirate experience is better. And so on. so the trick i…

"so the trick is to make the non-pirate experience better and the piracy problem goes away. The only people pirating are the ones who would not buy your software/game anyway, so free advertisement/word of mouth should be welcome anyway." There are a couple of problems with this line of thinking. First, the Louis CK $5 comedy show is a good example of this not working. Even though it has no protection and is very chea…

> Piracy is also much worse than theft because if a TV is stolen, you just lose that TV. Over time, piracy can ruin an entire product line. Not just that one copy.

You'll need to be more specific if you want to assert that.

Re: Piracy and the Four Currencies

#45

Post by gm »

paulhauggis wrote: post #40
gm wrote: post #7

I think this is just a different way of expressing the idea that piracy exists only because the pirate user experience is better than the non-pirate user experience. So if the non-pirate experience, for example, does not require that you have the disk in your dvd drive in order to play (since all the assets are copied to your hard drive at install time), then the pirate experience is better. And so on. so the trick i…

"so the trick is to make the non-pirate experience better and the piracy problem goes away. The only people pirating are the ones who would not buy your software/game anyway, so free advertisement/word of mouth should be welcome anyway." There are a couple of problems with this line of thinking. First, the Louis CK $5 comedy show is a good example of this not working. Even though it has no protection and is very chea…

"Instead, since there is mass piracy, I'm just going to try to stop that first"

I didn't say the _incumbents_ would necessarily innovate; new competition will if they do not.

There are people that say piracy is a symptom of a broken business model. I tend to agree with that.

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