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Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

sendthemyourmoney.com

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Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#41

Post by zeteo »

maeon3 wrote: post #10

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong. A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for free from google or some other website, ptp or sneakernet. Joe blow sends the riaa some percentage of $20 in photocopied money. That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow. Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for…

>That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow.

Good old Adam Smith teaches us that value in exchange is often the opposite of value in use. (His example is that we pay very little for water, which is vital for survival, but lots for a diamond that has very limited value in use, in comparison.) Joe's utility for watching the movie is thus almost irrelevant to the question of how much he should pay for the privilege.

>The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD

Not true, considering our entire economy runs on consumer surplus:

http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Consumer-Surplus.topi...

For example, a rabid "Twilight" fan may readily spend a hundred dollars to see the movie, but will actually end up paying just as little as the guy who was dragged in by his fiancee.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#42

Post by baddox »

maeon3 wrote: post #10

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong. A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for free from google or some other website, ptp or sneakernet. Joe blow sends the riaa some percentage of $20 in photocopied money. That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow. Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for…

The RIAA doesn't sue you on the claim that you received some utility from the downloaded copy. They sue you simply because you made a copy. If I download a movie and absolutely hate it, or never even watch it, or it turns out to be terrible quality, then I didn't receive much utility from the pirated copy, but I'm still just as liable.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#43

Post by icebraining »

reaktivo wrote: post #40

Somewhat related? Is selling your physical dvd allowed in the US? A crowd sourced Netflix would be awesome, where you can rent directly from and to other users.

Yes, it is allowed. It's called the First-sale doctrine, and Wikipedia tells me it's been upheld specifically for DVDs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine#Applicatio...

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#44

Post by SkyMarshal »

maeon3 wrote: post #10

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong. A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for free from google or some other website, ptp or sneakernet. Joe blow sends the riaa some percentage of $20 in photocopied money. That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow. Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for…

Agreed. Imho this argument that copying is not stealing does a real disservice to the cause. No, you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers, be it entertainment, knowledge or whatever, that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft.

This is so transparent and obvious a flaw in the assertion that no trained lawyer (aka lawmakers) will suffer it, and the non-torrenting general public will remain mostly unconvinced. And when the ultimate goal is to force the content industry to open up, to switch from a business model based on artificial scarcity to one based on abundance, this argument is only going to do more harm than good.

I think it would be much more productive to instead focus on the fact that the fundamental problem is that articifical-scarcity-creating, rent-seeking cartels like Hollywood and the music industry have no place in our emerging culture of digital abundance. That their attempt to maintain control of a resource, limit supply, and charge rents for access is increasingly only possible with government force.

Further, as Steve Blank observes [1], we've seen this same thing play out over and over throughout history, any time a new technology made content more easily distributable, the content cartels vigorously opposed it, until finally losing, being forced to adapt, and eventually making more money than previously.

There is a win-win-win way forward, that is just as if not more profitable, but it doesn't include things like DRM, DVD region codes, SOPA/PIPA, etc. Neither the content industry nor the current generation of lawmakers will be able to get us there, so it's up to those of us on the bleeding edge of technology and culture to, but making silly [2], easily-refuted arguments won't help at all.

1. http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-the-movie-industry-cant...

2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#45

Post by baddox »

anthonyb wrote: post #34

> They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies of physical property to be just as valuable as the original. Wow, talk about missing the point. Digital copies of movies and music are just as valuable as the originals, particularly as CDs and DVDs become obsolete. Copies of dollar bills are somewhat less so - you can't buy stuff with them. If you actually want to argue against the movie and music indust…

I think you're the one missing the point. This is a parody of the very notion of intellectual property, which equates the "value" of a consensually-distributed stream of bits to the "value" of physical property that happens to contain the same stream of bits.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#46

Post by lwat »

AshleysBrain wrote: post #38

Don't a lot of copiers/scanners have technology that prevents them copying currency? Thought there was a special dot pattern or something.

Question for you: What do you think is the percentage of browsers with cookies disabled out in the wild today?

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#47

Post by zeteo »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #44
maeon3 wrote: post #10

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong. A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for free from google or some other website, ptp or sneakernet. Joe blow sends the riaa some percentage of $20 in photocopied money. That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow. Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for…

Agreed. Imho this argument that copying is not stealing does a real disservice to the cause. No, you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers, be it entertainment, knowledge or whatever, that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft. This is so transparent and obvious a flaw in the assertion that no trained la…

>you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers [...] that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft.

I think our metaphors of property and theft are stretched to the breaking limit with digital content. When social rules first appeared, it was clearly wrong if Fred Flintstone made himself an awesome hat and Barney Rubble took it away; but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own. Copyright and patents only appeared in the 18th century. They extended the notion of property into a sphere where it hadn't applied in the previous millenia. They also relied on the fact that, at the time, books and technical drawings couldn't be reproduced by the average person.

Now here we are in a new millenium, with intellectual content trivially easy to duplicate, and we try to stretch some already strained notions much further. I think we need a paradigm change in this matter (and there are some interesting attempts going on out there). The RIAA's version of morality is not handed down from Heaven, you know: its rectitude is at least as questionable as its practicality.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#48

Post by lisper »

kaybe wrote: post #14
ck2 wrote: post #3

The irony here is it's a much worse federal crime to photocopy US currency. You can get around this by making sure it's (much) smaller than the original and only copied on one side. http://www.secretservice.gov/money_illustrations.shtml

That and you will need a copy machine that actually copies bills. Some machines use software to block it. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation )

Help yourself to a dollar:

http://imgur.com/uFJht

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#49

Post by kreek »

To paraphrase James Taylor being a musician is a blue collar job, but at least blue collar jobs pay minimum wage. If the attitude conveyed in this site keeps up independent content creators are just going to say it's not worth it and all you'll be left with is the manufactured pablum the music industry serves up.

Re: Send Them Your Money: A Campaign to Send The RIAA/MPAA Billions

#50

Post by kreek »

tikhonj wrote: post #39
anthonyb wrote: post #34

> They've made it very clear that they consider digital copies of physical property to be just as valuable as the original. Wow, talk about missing the point. Digital copies of movies and music are just as valuable as the originals, particularly as CDs and DVDs become obsolete. Copies of dollar bills are somewhat less so - you can't buy stuff with them. If you actually want to argue against the movie and music indust…

First of all, I'm sure the actual original copy actually has more value for collectors and the like. The real argument is that they are just copies and literally cost the studios nothing--that is, the studios do not have to spend any money on your downloading the film from a third party. So, by extension, you pay them in a way that does not cost you anything, by using a copy of money. The only value a copy--distinct…

> (and I imagine the person who set this up does not)

From his site: All content copyright © 2011-2012 Get.com, Inc. -- All rights reserved

Looks like he believes in copyright :)

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