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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

#61

Post by CWuestefeld »

zeteo wrote: post #41
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 m…

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.)

That's because, as brilliantly as Smith was able to demonstrate his ideas, the concept of marginal utility wasn't among them. Nearly a century later, Jevons, Wenger, and Walras brought about the "Marginal Revolution", which gave us the understanding that the reason water is so cheap for us is because we've already got so much of it. And this, in turn, allows us to understand that both sides of a transaction are unloading something they hold in (relative) excess for something that would increase their total utility function.

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

#62

Post by zeteo »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #61
zeteo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 m…

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.) That's because, as brilliantly as Smith was able to demonstrate his ideas, the concept of marginal utility wasn't among them. Nearly a century later, Jevons, Wenger, and Wa…

Ah, but I didn't say anything about the reason why water is so cheap. (Smith would explain it takes little effort to procure it - not that different from the marginalist argument.) What matters for the issue at hand is that its utility can be a very small factor in its price.

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

#63

Post by furyofantares »

zeteo wrote: post #47
SkyMarshal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Barn…

> but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own

Actually, I think it was quite clearly a good thing if Barney made his own copy and they both had dry heads.

This remains true until everyone decides it's better for Fred to spend all his time designing hats rather than hunting, and we need a way to be sure to feed Fred. For this to happen we need technology to advance to the point where we have a surplus of the more basic needs, but also the cost of producing hats has to be cheap compared to the cost of designing hats. Otherwise a significant part of Fred's value is producing the hats, which is something he can easily get food for since it would require force to coerce him to produce a hat, while it requires no force to copy a hat's design.

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

#64

Post by nextparadigms »

joezydeco wrote: post #53
nextparadigms wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should it be recovered? If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? I see no reason for businesses to get money by basically tricking their customers into buying something they later find out it's not what they expected.

Now we're just getting silly. A huge portion of our economy is based on buying services and not physical goods. If every service was exactly as described and advertised we wouldn't need Consumer Reports, Yelp, or Epinions. We'd live in utopia. And yet, here we are.

I know that the real world is not ideal or how it should be, but I'm saying the potential for disruption/more efficient alternatives is there. Since they seem to think that they are entitled to trick (a rather harsh word, but not that far from the truth) their customers, that means there is an opening for an alternative - whether that's more "honest" competition, or straight out piracy to "test" the product beforehand.

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

#65

Post by zeteo »

furyofantares wrote: post #63
zeteo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 Barn…

> but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own Actually, I think it was quite clearly a good thing if Barney made his own copy and they both had dry heads. This remains true until everyone decides it's better for Fred to spend all his time designing hats rather than hunting, and we need a way to be sure to feed Fred. For this to happen we need technology to advance to the point where we ha…

>This remains true until everyone decides it's better for Fred to spend all his time designing hats rather than hunting

Specialization of labor became widespread around 3500BC, with the appearance of civilization. After that point, potters, goldsmiths, tailors etc. kept on freely copying designs from each other and "got away" with it for over 5000 years. (In times when punishment for theft was often physical mutilation.) If there was something obviously immoral about "stealing" intellectual "property", someone would have noticed, I think.

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

#66

Post by dkersten »

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…

Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for free is unfair against the store that stocks the DVD, the trucker who moved it, the actors, producers and supporting staff or the media ads that promoted it is another question.

Ummm no.

If Joe downloads avatar for free, he is not ripping off anyone who may have been involved in the production, distribution and sale of a DVD - he is ripping off those involved in the production, distribution and sale of a digital copy of avatar.mp4

The value lost is NOT that of the physical copy because no physical copy was stolen.

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

#67

Post by tomflack »

kreek wrote: post #49

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.

That sounds like it's true, but I don't think it is.

People have been making music for as long as we have recorded history, why would that change now?

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

#68

Post by pbhjpbhj »

JackC wrote: post #59
SkyMarshal wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This particular trained lawyer wishes that we could never talk about whether copyright infringement is stealing, ever again. It's 100% legally irrelevant. There are laws against stealing physical property. Copyright infringement doesn't violate them. There are laws against copyright infringement. Copyright infringement does violate them. The question of whether "stealing" is good shorthand for "copyright infringement…

There's an important distinction in the categorisation of theft as [primarily] criminal and copyright infringement as [primarily] tortuous which I feel you've simply ignored.

The category distinction is vital IMO as it is right that there is greater protection under the law against someone who steals your belongings vs someone who merely duplicates them.

If one considers that right to free enjoyment of ones personal property is oft considered a basic human right then it can readily be seen why denying someone ownership is considered to be a greater wrong, generally, that denying someone sole rights to reproduce a particular work.

Moreover the level at which the state intervenes has become twisted (at least in the UK) wherein the state is beginning to get involved (under USA's pressure it seems) in very low value tortfeasance on behalf of large corporations whilst at the same time ignoring rather higher value crimes (such as theft) against individuals. Indeed, though I'm not really on top of this one [perhaps you can elucidate], it seems that more copyright infringement is being treated in the USA as criminal than is elsewhere.

In short whilst, yes, copyright infringement is still illegal even if it's not criminal I don't agree that you can claim all denial of alienable rights is equal, or even nearly so, which appears to be the thrust of your argument.

--

"or with your name attached" is only true with provisos; there are several laws under which I could object to your passing off (in the common sense) of this work as mine which would prevent you from legally selling the right to do so.

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

#69

Post by joering2 »

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 )

wow...a xerox machine that has a built-in database of images to "do not reprint", WOW!!!
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