IP
One of the most frequent arguments I have with friends in the tech industry is about copyrights. A lot of them take a similar stance to Mike Arrington‘s, that it’s time to more or less abandon them completely. Often they phrase it as intellectual property that needs to be abandoned, but you can almost always quickly get them to agree that trademarks (which are clearly intellectual property) should not.
The problem, as I see it, is that we don’t have many options. I’d like to believe in a world where all IP could reasonably be funded by voluntary micropayments or some form of philanthropy, but it seems that all evidence points to the contrary. In TechCrunch‘s own recent article on TipJoy, they pointed out that only 25% of people who clicked the tip button (which, in turn, is a small percentage of all people who view the content the button is attached to) actually pay up. And honestly, 25% is higher than I would have expected (though fitting with what I’ve seen from first hand use) and I think actually speaks well about them.
Micropayments have failed to materialize thus far largely because of the penny gap. The biggest cost difference on the web is that between $0 and $0.01. There’s just so much headache involved in paying for something on the internet. Typing in credit card numbers, personal information like address and telephone number. It’s easy to see why most people won’t go through that to tip, no matter how good their intentions.
They also fail because humans have a natural, ingrained tendency to want things for free. We have a strong aversion to paying for things that we don’t have to, especially when we know that our actions are unseen. We’ll do it for certain reasons (I’ll get to that in a second) but not frequently enough to support any sort of economy.
Don’t get me wrong, I think micropayments might have their place. They may actually work out for bloggers, people who write web comics, etc. if TipJoy or a service like it takes hold. Anyone who deposits to TipJoy only has to cross the penny gap once and can then make a large number of micropayments. There’s clearly a chicken/egg problem there, but that’s the best solution to it I’ve seen so far. I’m still skeptical of even that, but I’m open to the possibility that TipJoy or someone like them might figure it out and make micropayments at least relevant to some content creators.
But it isn’t going to replace the traditional revenue system supporting all forms of creation. It costs millions of dollars to produce a full-length album, and tens or even hundreds of millions to produce a movie. Micropayments will never make those viable; it just won’t happen. Bloggers who can pump out a few posts a day, sure. Artists who can make one CD a year, or a movie crew that might consume 100 man-years? No way.
And, most importantly, I don’t think our current copyright system is failing. I think that right now it’s working incredibly well. iTunes is proof of that. Despite the fact that anyone with an iPod could, with just a little effort, fill it with stolen music, millions of people are paying to do so. Without the laws we have in place, that would not happen.
People opt to pay for their music for a number of reasons. One is legality. Some people feel it immoral to steal music, so they don’t. Another, probably more important reason, is convenience. It’s just easier to find your music on iTunes, and you know the quality is going to be good. Download a CD off of eMule or Bittorrent (if you can even find what you want) and you have no clue what you’re going to get.
All of the above reasons exist only because of our current copyright law. Without it, it would be trivial for someone to set up an iTunes equivalent that was just as easy to use and far cheaper because they wouldn’t have to pay the content creation industry royalties. And it would be legal. People would get their music for free, or nearly free, and the record labels and recording artists would be screwed.
(As I’ve argued before though, I think music is going to shift to a profit model based on live performance, and CDs will be funded by promoters, so we’ll see more and more artists giving their recorded music away as a sort of advertisement for their main gig. This won’t work for books or movies though.)
Enforced copyrights incent creation. And even when they can only be enforced on corporations in our country and ones cooperative with our copyright laws, they still uphold a viable economic system. You might argue that musicians will still make music, writers will still write, and painters will still paint. And you’d be right to some extent, but it would clearly be far fewer. People played basketball for fun long before there was an NBA, but the popularity and salary that comes along with being a professional has brought millions to the game. Today some high school teams are probably as good as most professional ones of 50 years ago due to the increased competition. Without IP protection, the industries that have made our media our chief cultural export would be economically unfeasible.
I have to say that I largely side with Viacom in the lawsuit. YouTube is clearly not an ISP and, for a long time, clearly violated both the letter and the spirit of the law. They built a business on the infringement of copyrights, and they deserve to be penalized for doing so. Since the Google acquisition they seem to have shifted more and more toward being law-abiding citizens, and they might be making reasonable enough efforts in that regard now, but for the first part of their existence their violation was rampant and flagrant.
I might disagree with Viacom about whether or not it was harmful to them (and I think they get digital media more than most, as evidenced by The Daily Show’s website) but it’s certainly their right to decide that. It’s their content.
Arrington also writes:
My position is that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior.
I’d like to point out that most evolutionary biologists would tell you that rape, murder, and theft are all natural human behaviors. Theft of a song is no more natural than theft of a car, so should we take those laws off the books too? The entire point of civilization is to criminalize natural behaviors that are harmful to the group and impede the rights of individuals. And while I think we currently go too far in our attempts to do so, and it’s certainly a slippery slope, a blanket statement that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior is nonsense.
I point that out because it’s frequently heard in the IP argument. “People are going to steal music and video and you can’t stop them, so it shouldn’t be illegal.” Perhaps. But even if so, that doesn’t mean we should let corporations do it. Individuals stealing music or movies or books doesn’t make the industries that produce them economically unviable. In some cases the same technology that facilitates such theft makes them even more profitable, and it certainly seems that digital distribution may do the same once old media evolves. But letting corporations off the hook for flagrant copyright violation would give them no shot at sustained profits and destroy our creative culture.
June 2, 2008 at 9:26 am
I think people who want to abolish copyright are indeed crazy. You are right when you say enforced copyright incent creation.
However when you say the current copyright system is working incredibly well I disagree. In the old system, creative works would be protected for a limited time and after that time had passed (28 years in the beginning, then 56 in 1909, then 75 (for corporations) or life +50 (for independant authors) in 1976, and now sits at 95 from publication (again for corporations) or life +70 in 1998) those works would fall into the public domain.
We now have a system of perpetual copyright in that whenever the original Mickey Mouse cartoons get close to falling into the public domain Hollywood lobbies congress for a extension and is granted it. I think perpetual copyright is a horrible idea and diminishes our culture. Many early films are lost forever because the copyright holders didn't see the need to spare the expense to keep them. Perhaps if copyright had had a more sane length at that time, say 20-30 years we wouldn't be without that rather large chunk of our history. Copyright only works when it balances the public good from things falling into the public domain with the rights of the creators to be compensated for their work. We have a system today that has lost that balance and as a result we are poorer for it.
June 2, 2008 at 1:04 pm
>It costs millions of dollars to produce a full-length album
No it doesn't. At least, that type of album is not very popular or successful or good anymore. To produce an album now, it takes a $300 USB sound card, instruments or pirated loops, and a pirated copy of Pro-tools. Talent helps, also.
>Download a CD off of eMule or Bittorrent (if you can even find what you want) and you have no clue what you’re going to get.
You are missing out on the current state of music piracy utopia. waffles.fm or what.cd. More music than iTunes at V0/flac rips, always available for high speed bittorrent download. Email me for an invite. They are the best music services to ever exist, legal or illegal.
June 2, 2008 at 1:34 pm
“Enforced copyrights incent creation”
Actually, I think the creative drive and the desire to be loved and adored by others are the incenting forces behind content creation.
The ideal system would be one of simple patronage – but so easy that it fits into the unlimited distribution model that filesharing provides.
People 'steal' content because that mechanism is so much more convenient to get it. It isn't all about price. It has been shown time and again that people want to support things they love.
A system to make it dead simple to give back to support what you love is the solution. Tipjoy will solve this. It isn't just about tipping. It's about any incarnation of voluntary payments and micropayments.
This is why we're a disruptive payments processor. Our priorities are a smooth user experience and a focus on creative culture.
You're also right that this might not fund the mega-hits in movies and music. But that is changing because the long tail is getting bigger, and the hits are getting smaller. The cost to produce content is also rapidly falling. The dynamics are changing.
It costs around $1K to get a good camcorder. You now have a movie studio.
June 2, 2008 at 1:36 pm
“Theft of a song is no more natural than theft of a car, so should we take those laws off the books too?”
You're implicitly accepting as fact that copyright infringement is theft, which is wrong on several levels.
First, copyright infringement is not theft in the eyes of the law. They are governed by different sections of the USC and have a different set of rules and precedents. Also, most copyright infringement cases are civil in nature, whereas theft is always criminal.
Second, even if you think the legal distinction carries no weight, there is a historical distinction. Theft is as old as the law itself and rests in deprivation. If I take the game you've caught and eat it you might starve. It wasn't until the 17th century that copyright even entered the scene.
Third, there are philosophical differences which I believe every reasonable person understands. Making a copy of a CD or downloading a song is not like stealing a car, it's like having a device that can somehow clone a car.
Imagine a world with a device like this. You seem to believe the proper solution is to criminalize its use. I, on the other hand, believe that that's a losing battle.
The solution is to rethink how we create and sell cars, not to hide our head in the sand.
June 2, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I don't believe that. I do think that the creative drive exists and is part of it. But we'd have an order of magnitude fewer people doing it if it were not very lucrative. That's why American music and movies have had so much success around the world. We were the first nation to have very strong financial incentive.
Also, a camcorder does not make a high quality Hollywood movie. (I should note, I'm defining quality in terms of mass appeal. The movies I generally prefer are probably far cheaper than the norm to produce, though still over $10 mil each I'd bet.) The budgets for those increase every year.
June 2, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Well, some of the people who copy a CD would have purchased it, so it is depriving someone of money. I suppose it's semantics, but I'd still call that theft, philosophically at least, though maybe not legally.
June 2, 2008 at 2:07 pm
It still costs millions to produce a good (in the mass appeal sense) full-length album. If you look at the top of the charts, I promise you nothing you see there cost $300. Studio time, producers, quality sound engineers, etc. are still very expensive, and that's not even counting the marketing that got it there which, for all of the democratization the web promises, is still the prevalent force behind what we listen to.
I'd definitely appreciate an invite but don't know if I have your email address. Mind sending via Facebook?
June 2, 2008 at 2:16 pm
“I'm defining quality in terms of mass appeal.”
That makes a big difference. With the long tail, you just can't define
quality by mass appeal.
While the best CGI might only come from expensive flicks, the tools
are becoming more democratized too. “Good enough” CGI is getting much
cheaper. Just look at Machinima.
I think one reason people don't pay much attention to this is that
they haven't been monetized well. They only need to make enough to let
the makers go full time. That bar is pretty low, and much lower than
the multimillion dollar box office returns needed. I actually think we
agree here though. The big hits cost lots of money. The big hits
matter less.
But look at 'Primer'. $50K to make, and the best SciFi movie this
decade. It made _lots_ of money.
June 2, 2008 at 2:25 pm
It can happen, just like a startup run by one guy with no funding can crack the Alexa Top 100. But if you look there, you'll see almost all sites created by publicly traded corporations or VC-backed startups (or some adult sites, which I have no idea where they come from). People have been able to attempt this for years full time in the startup world, and a few get through, but for the most part the old model still stands.
I think movies and music will be about the same. Money still has a lot of advantages.
June 2, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Just like a startup, musicians who are successful make enough money to
go mainstream and reach a huge audience.
The old model isn't replaced. It is diminished in mindshare and
accessible by more people.
June 2, 2008 at 2:30 pm
It seems counter-intuitive, but when you are producing for a target listening environment of iPod earphones, sound and production quality don't matter. Soulja Boy had a huge #1 hit with a song with absolutely terrible production quality because it was made using consumer level loop software. It didn't matter to the consumer consciousness, because one kid managed to blandly homogenize a genre into a Nickelback-ian work of pop art.
June 2, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Right, but that's as rare as one guy making a dating site that cracks the Alexa 100. It happens, but it's still not the norm, and probably never will be. Money still brings with it a serious competitive advantage.
Nice Nickleback slam though.
June 2, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Just like a startup, most musicians that gain mainstream acceptance do so only after receiving a large investment. Even the indie labels put up a nice chunk for recording and promotion. They're more like angels than VCs, but they're still investors.
In music, it's probably more likely to make it big on your own than in movies, books, or even startups. But the big money paradigm still prevails. And though their profitability is suffering, their ability to control what sells has not seemed to falter at all.
June 2, 2008 at 2:41 pm
“And though their profitability is suffering, their ability to control
what sells has not seemed to falter at all.”
Again, you're model is that of the hit. The music companies just don't
control the long tail. The long tail includes high school punk bands.
They just can't be controlled from a big company.
Just like being able to bootstrap cheaper, democratized tools makes it
easier to get to the next stage in music, even if that means an “angel
investment”.
For both music and startups, the cheaper things get, the more entrants
will make it that much further.
June 2, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Ok, if there's harm then quantify it. But once you launch the harm argument you open yourself up to the broader question of whether the status quo as such is beneficial or harmful.
Considering that publishers have never had as much control as they to today and that creative works have flourished just fine during periods of much weaker copyright (basically 1773 to the 1960s or so) the argument that the current scheme protects against some kind of egregious harm is going to require some interesting evidence.
Copyright has its place but since the 1960s the power has become concentrated in the hands of the copyright holder. It's about balance and right now the balance is off.
June 2, 2008 at 3:44 pm
Inability to precisely pinpoint how much revenue is lost doesn't mean that revenue is not lost. You cannot accurately quantify it, but it clearly exists.
June 2, 2008 at 3:55 pm
So?
June 2, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I have to agree with Jesse, Copyright Infrigement != Theft.
Saying so is like saying rape is the same as killing. While you might have some philosophical reasons to say that raping a woman is like killing her, having 2 different concepts helps studying each one differently. And while you might conclude punish for rape should be the same as killing, you can't say they are the same thing.
Same happens in the case theft/copyright infringement. They are different things, and they should be studied separately. You might say for example that copyright infringement consequences are worse than theft because by uploading a song to bittorrent you are depriving the IP owners of potentially millions of dollars, while if you steal a cd it is just a couple of bucks. You might say consequences are better than theft, because pirating a song doesn't deprive the owner from it. Or you might say consequences are the same. But you can *not* say concepts are the same. That is just silly.
June 2, 2008 at 3:58 pm
It's just semantics. Define theft.
June 2, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Ok. A person is guilty of theft, if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
June 2, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Listen to this guy harp on about the long tail. Hasn't that been debunked already? I bet he left that out of his presentation…
June 2, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Are you seriously saying that a potential loss is equivalent to a real loss when there are no costs associated with the content?
That's like saying someone who sees your art without paying an attendance fee is stealing. Nothing is lost FFS!
June 2, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Perhaps theft only applies when a good can be physically stolen?
June 2, 2008 at 6:56 pm
It is not just semantics, in 100% of cases of theft one person deprives the other of 100% of the item taken. With copyright infringement that 100% changes to a different percentage (often to one much much lower). When a song is pirated say 1000 times it is likely that perhaps only 50 or 60 of those songs would have been bought otherwise, the rest of the time the person doing the pirating simply would have gone without. If a CD is stolen 1000 times, the store loses that value every single time. Though I made this example up, can't you see that it is totally plausible and the conclusion is that theft is 20 times more hurtful then infringement and though similar, can by no means be considered the equivalent.
June 2, 2008 at 8:11 pm
It doesn't cost millions to produce a pop production, it costs hundreds of thousands, probably the low hundreds of thousands for most. Some have larger marketing budgets than others. The costs for high quality production are diminishing significantly where very polished and fully professional albums are costing much less, $20,000 – $50,000. Producers are working for much less money as well.
June 2, 2008 at 8:36 pm
That's not in line with what I've read. Rock recordings are half a mil-ish, pop more, from what I've seen. Do you have a source for that?
June 2, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Ask the lazyweb, get a lazy answer
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+does+a+…
And here's the first hit. The summary logic is compelling: unless you think albums are a loss leader, you can calculate the break-even point for all albums produced in the aggregate based on music sales.
You could probably get this a bit more refined to profit on an album that goes gold, etc.
There are a range of estimates, from a few K to tens of K to hundreds of K.
One point they make that's important is that if you factor in the cost of marketing, or course the album will look more expensive.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/01/24…
Here is another classic dissection of the money flow from the first album of a decent band.
http://www.negativland.com/albini.html
This guy made an album for 54K.
http://www.barscott.com/articles/cost_of_cd.shtml
Et Cetera.
June 2, 2008 at 9:33 pm
No witty response?
Your argument, implicitly, goes like this. Copyright infringement is a kind of theft. Theft is wrong. Therefore copyright infringement is wrong.
But, as I think I've demonstrated, your syllogism is fallacious.
So, why do we have copyright? We have copyright because it makes political and economic sense. This reasoning is actually right in the US Consitution (Article I, Section 8).
The question shouldn't be about whether copyright infringement is moral or not, but whether the status quo makes economic sense or not.
June 2, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Im just bored of the semantics. You just defined theft so narrowly that pirating music isn't covered. I would define it much differently.
You certainly didn't give any evidence that it is not immoral. And I didn't say it was immoral for individuals anyway, only for corporations.
June 2, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Your Slashdot article would seem to prove my point. He estimates $250k as the break even point for the industry as a whole, which produces 27k albums a year (about 520 per week). If you've ever worked at BestBuy, you know that 520 albums per week do not come in from the major labels. It's some tiny fraction of that.
What that means is his 27k albums are counting probably damn near anything put onto a compact disc, almost all of which is far cheaper than a pop album, and almost none of which ever makes it into the Top 40. Audio books. Classical recordings. Indie label music. God only knows what else has to go in there to get to 520 new albums per week.
Even if you give the record industry a 25% profit margin, that's still $200k per album, counting all of that crap that's dirt cheap to produce. Makes a $1 mil or higher price tag per pop album pretty easy to believe.
June 2, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Hasn't the long tail effect been pretty much discredited? It's been shown to not apply in many industries, and not even be as large for Amazon as the book seemed to think.
The music industry follows the much older 80/20 rule.
June 2, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Matt,
That's just the basic common law definition of theft.
It sounds to me like you're making an economic argument not one based in morality.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree (if we even do).
June 2, 2008 at 10:00 pm
That is semantics too, as you've just redefined theft and made it the only word in the dictionary to have a % sign in it's definition, but let's ignore that.
If someone somehow stole 20% of my car, I'd be just as pissed as if they stole the whole thing. And it would be just as much theft on their part. If they stole my hubcaps, I'd be similarly pissed, even though the hubcap is just a subunit of my overall car and has no value to me as a standalone object. Same with my car stereo.
June 2, 2008 at 10:08 pm
My point was more to highlight the absurdity of saying we shouldn't outlaw natural human behaviors than to get into an argument about the definition of theft. I don't know why you chose to worry so much about whether music piracy is theft or some other crime, it's basically irrelevant to my arguments.
June 2, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Your argument about criminalizing natural behavior is built atop a straw man fallcy or your friends are idiots. Either way the argument is that one should not criminalize societial norms. Just food for thought.
I agree that copyrights need to be enforced but do students need to be strong armed into paying humongous sums? Now as for the Viacom – YouTube judgement, I think siding with Viacom was wrong. First, YouTube is a service provider, no it is not an ISP…please read…
From here: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
For purposes of the other three limitations, “service provider” is more broadly defined insection 512(k)(l)(B) as “a provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor.”
So YouTube qualifies under the safe harbor act and furthermore has proactively pulled content and quickly responds to DMCA takedown notices. How does that make them an evil corporation that is keeping the latest blockbusters and TV shows to be made?
Besides who cares about any of those huge-multinational multibilllion dollar media companies…do you realize that most of the media that people consume on a daily basis is touched by one of the companies. I guess I think a more diverse ecosystem would be a healthy change.
Well sorry to rant all over your post, I'm into this kind of thing.
PS People pay for music because they like a band and they buy physical goods because they like those things. For instance vinyl sales are taking off and while they will not support the 'industry' they will support a niche market and so you might want to evaluate what you think the industry is, does and could become.
June 2, 2008 at 10:18 pm
From Techdirt quoting the Supreme Court…just saying…
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030922/02724…
the Supreme Court has even said so. They clearly distinguished between copyright infringement and theft in a 1985 case, where they said, “(copyright infringement) does not easily equate with theft, conversion, or fraud… The infringer invades a statutorily defined province guaranteed to the copyright holder alone. But he does not assume physical control over copyright; nor does he wholly deprive its owner of its use.”
Now as for morals it seems society has accepted a double standard of its moral to support a band but on the other side it isn't immoral per se to copyright their music. Therein lies the paradox of our situation.
June 2, 2008 at 10:23 pm
It's built on a quote, not a straw man. I wouldn't say that pirating music is a societal norm. I'd be curious to see a poll on the topic, but I'd bet most people consider it theft, even the ones who do it.
I'm guessing neither you nor I are qualified to make legal judgments as to whether or not YouTube violated the Safe Harbor. A lot of experts fall on either side. But what they clearly did do was build a business by infringing copyrights. Perhaps they squeezed through some legal loophole while doing so, but it's still clearly wrong.
June 2, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Its not wrong for me. I don't watch TV and I don't listen to the radio so I find my music via friends and various internet sources. Indeed, there are many CDs or concerts I would have never paid for had I not pirated their music. Moreover, you claim to think that is where we will end up, so stop lambasting people for clinging to an old system in a changing world and contribute something useful to this system.
Personally, I see much opportunity and care not for any corporate 'entity' that is losing out because they can't adapt. There's a lot of $$$ to be made in this new frontier, just food for thought.
June 2, 2008 at 11:19 pm
I didn't lambaste anyone, except for maybe YouTube. (I did let an unimportant semantic argument go on far too long.) Their copyright infringement was clearly wrong, whether or not it was illegal, and they're the only group I said that about. Not individuals and not you in specific.
It's shortsighted (in a very left-leaning way) to not care about corporate entities while enjoying the fruits of their labor. I have little sympathy for the American recording industry because of a few odious things they've done in recent decades (price fixing, most notably) but I realize that without them, we'd have an order of magnitude less movies and music. I like some movies and some music, and most of the stuff I do like exists only because the industry does.
At this point it's not about clinging to anything. It's clear that the old model is done. It's about whether or not we should have copyright enforcement going forward. The answer is clearly yes.
June 3, 2008 at 6:39 am
It's not low hundreds of thousands. All these pop albums with big name producers and songwriters aren't cheap. A name producer/songwriter can fetch close to 100k per song, maybe more. Not all are but the ones who are constantly placing songs are making a lot of up-front money per track. The actual recording/engineer might not cost as much as it once did because of technology, but the actual song production, writing, and marketing can cost a label well over a million dollars.
If you're talking about a rock record where the artists are the songwriters and you just bring in a name producer to produce the album, it's going to be cheaper. But the recording and pre-production time is going to be longer and the producer is still going to fetch a hefty sum of money. If you don't understand the role of a producer, it's easy to see why you think you can record an album in your house for $300.
June 3, 2008 at 7:54 am
“The entire point of civilization is to criminalize natural behaviors that are harmful to the group and impede the rights of individuals.”
This statement 2+2=3, one should rethink it and the reasoning being used. On average the freer the society the better the benefit for the society on a whole.
June 3, 2008 at 11:46 am
Your statement does not disagree with mine. Most of us agree that we all need some laws, and a cursory study of EP shows that each of those laws (don't murder, don't steal, etc.) is simply prohibiting a natural human behavior.
June 3, 2008 at 11:47 am
Yeah, that's pretty much my understanding from what I've read.
June 4, 2008 at 9:51 am
I'd love to see some data on that. If you have any, please post it.
This could certainly be an issue with more content creators reaching a
wider audience. This would make creators who were once in the tail,
closer to the head.
This is the first I've heard of any discrediting, but if it is true,
why would the trend reverse? Was it just a blip of excitement with the
ability to get anything?
June 4, 2008 at 10:55 am
http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/…
The author himself admits that the numbers were wrong. In fact, according to Bezos, books sold by amazon would appear to follow the 80/20 rule.
It isn't really a reversed trend because it was never one at all, just a premise built on faulty numbers.
June 4, 2008 at 9:47 pm
It's pretty clear that Arrington's definition of “natural behavior” doesn't include rape and murder. You can say he's imprecise, but to say he's in favor of murder is a ridiculous strawman based on Maroon's definition of “natural behavior”. Arrington's argument that it is ridiculous that the behavior of watching a show on YouTube for free is breaking the law, while watching it on Hulu for free is legal, deserves a more thoughtful analysis.
June 6, 2008 at 9:57 am
I didn't say he was in favor of murder, which makes you the one guilty of a straw man. I just pointed out that blanket statements about natural behaviors are silly. There's no way for him to be more precise and not have an entirely different meaning.
June 8, 2008 at 8:37 pm
Which actually demonstrates the amount of middle-man cost in this scheme also. Salaries of execs in worthless trade organizations matter too. We are being led to believe many things in modern day cost far more than they actually do only to be fleeced out of money.
June 8, 2008 at 8:45 pm
Not true. You cannot quantify that a lost exists at all. In fact, considering the draconian copyright measures that exist just to prolong the licenses of copyright holders that have in fact had questionable involvement in the actual creation of content is more likely stealing from others to greedily hold onto that property through mere legislative means (and also stifling creating in the process…why bother to actually do something when you can legally fleece the populace for the same thing over and over when by all rights it should've had copyrights expire long ago). This is a big issue and while maybe anarchy isn't the correct answer…the argument that the big copyright holders and in any way/shape/form “losers” in all of this is succumbing to a brilliantly designed PR campaign whose sheer goal is to keep money rolling into the their pockets for the sake of their existence.
June 8, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Because it is not theft.
June 8, 2008 at 8:52 pm
…let's say you were trying to sell hubcaps and someone demonstrated your hubcap to someone else and got 5 other people that actually bought it? Would you be complaining then? The free advertising inherent in this system is never discussed…but can also end up in generating just as many sales as could possibly be lost. It's a worthless argument. Also…you can't go back to the physical item comparison, as there is none.
June 8, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Not true. There is nothing that says we'd have less of anything without these organizations that have been out to screw the consumers AND the artists for quite some time. It's more likely that without them we'd probably have a boom in content. There will ALWAYS be someone else to pick up the torch.