Namaste,

I thought the market determined the price. That is a cornerstone of capitalism as I understand it. If the producers raise the price above where the market will support it people will stop buying it. The simple fact is that some people will get it anyway. What the producers have to decide is whether they want to raise the price where the legitimate users can't or won't pay for it.

Like someone pointed out you don't need the software to produce goods that will use it. You just have to be willing to use another method or product that will produce the same results. Fortunately, there is such a location: open source software.

Do current business models justify previous theft? A great number of companies have built on land/property stolen from people in various methods: Imminent domain, taking land from indeginous people, slavery.

In Peace,
Eglaelin

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If a business model doesn't work, the firm fails, that's true of software companies and yogurt stands.

If the price a company charges results in nobody buying their product, they go out of business, because the product was priced wrong.

Laws only work when enforcement is practical.
We have laws against software piracy, and laws against drugs, they aren't working.

I wasn't making a moral judgment, I was just stating a fact, that a business needs to produce something that people are willing to pay for, or the business model fails.

The internet, and everything that goes with it, is part of the present day business environment. Business models that don't take this into account will fail. That's the way the system works and calling it "stealing" misses the point, it's reality and companies that don't address it will fail.

The current copyright situation can only be enforced with a massive invasion of privacy, and draconian penalties leveled against people who for the most part aren't the ones who actually did the downloading, huge fines are being leveled against the parents of kids who download. That particular business model is doomed.

Distribution of information, and music, movies and software are just information, is moving from the physical media, where the "pay for each copy" business model works, to the internet, where the pay for each copy model does not work, unless the economies of the internet are reflected in the price.

Free market theory tells us that the long run equilibrium price is equal to the marginal cost of production, what is the marginal cost to produce one additional copy of a file?

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“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Speaking of piracy, here is a article written about a member of the physical piracy bitching about being ripped off by the PSP file-sharing. Its quiet humorous. P2P File-Sharing Ruins Physical Piracy Business | TorrentFreak

That being said, I agree with Goober. Now, can we please stop going to these cookie-cutter movies and throwing away our money? Hollywood needs either competition or a consumer base that gives a damn about quality. Of course neither are going to happen. -_-

In light of the fact that the wealthy and powerful tend not to give a shit about desires other than their own, you appear to be suggesting that the peons, rather than our fearless leaders, are the ones who should be setting the standard insofar as ethics is concerned.

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...If you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.

Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England, 1927

It ain't stealing, it's copyright breach and the two are very different beasts indeed.

If I steal a car the car is no longer available to the rightful owner. If I copy a software CD the original is still 100% available to the owner. In both cases the original manufacturer is not denied any profit - as there is no profit to be made from people who are not willing to spend. The insurance industry (may vary from region to region) will only cover the loss of a physical CD (<50 cents) not the IP on it as it is not stolen.

Unless you are a fundamentalist, one is more wrong than the other. Little Johnny grabbing a copy of Photoshop from a torrent to make funny pictures of his big sister is harmless compared to him going out and 'jacking cars for remanufacture. It may even lead to a fulfilling career in graphics design where he will go on to recommend the tools he grew up with to every employer he comes in contact with. Employers generally buy.

I have worked in software sales most of my working life. These were highly specialised, big ticket ($10,000 plus) software tools. My market territory had several known users (and probably more) of our product that had not paid for their copy. As I was paid for my sales performance you might think this would worry me. Not at all. Instead of attacking these people through the legal means I had available to me I made them my "friends", got to know them and learnt that they were never a good sales prospect to begin with but maybe one day that would. Should I waste my time or follow up genuine leads? Extracting $2K to $10K plus each from 3,000 users is hard work unless your product is quality, and (most of the time) it was.

The bottom line is people buy quality at competitive prices. They copy crap when it's convenient and wouldn't be real worried if they couldn't get hold of it. Companies need to respond to this and do some serious evaluation of their product to determine what is it about their product that would compel people to pay for it - then stop bitching and go out and sell it. If there is a segment that just won't pay no matter what you do - forget 'em there are plenty who do, just look at Microsoft.

Another approach is to sell the distribution systems rather than rely on per unit sales. There are any number of value adding distribution models that can be implemented making profit from advertising sales and added services. Many of these are used today (eg Linux) and the greedy companies just need to get with the program.

Copyright breach is not stealing by definition. We would not have copyright laws if it was. Theft laws would be enough.

The smaller feature set developer is not a competitor. He targets a different market segment. More fool him if he hasn't assessed the purchasing potential of that segment before going to battle.

The history of copyright protection tells us something.
For centuries, the remedy was for the guilty party to turn over all illegal copies and all monies received for illegal copies.
Thus the law would fall heavily on a firm that made 10000 illegal copies of a book, and sold several thousand, they would be out the cost of production, and all proceeds would be forfeited to the rights holder.

Little cases were not pursued because even a favorable judgment would yield little in return.
Early file sharing judgments were limited to the money received, which in most cases was nothing.
Then the industry got congress to pass laws that allowed an implied value to be assigned equal to the full retail price, resulting in things like a multibillion dollar judgment against Napster.

So for centuries, the law had protected rights holders from other people selling the material, not from sharing it.
What we have is that now sharing copyrighted material has been made illegal for the first time.

It's like taking books out of libraries, or making it illegal to lend books, in order to increase the number of people paying for the book.
What's next, outlawing the sale of used books over the internet?

There is a fundamental difference between sharing information, and making physical copies of protected material and selling them. One is commerce, the other is free speech. And despite the law, sharing information is a fundamental human right.

The law cannot change reality, it can only regulate commerce.

__________________
“ The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”

Adam Smith , The Wealth of Nations 1776

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics"
FDR's second Inaugural Address

Tech companies fired all of the innovators in favor of cheaper labor. Kind of like firing all your good sales associates at Circuit City, because they make too much.....

Sure some of the new guys from overseas are going to be good, but when their goal is to hire the cheapest labor, they are not going to attract the best and brightest. It is plain and simple.

I'm new here, so take it easy on me

I don't believe that Goober is trying to rationalize stealing. The music industry has failed miserably at keeping up with technology.

I won't pay 99 cents for a song when the song doesn't even exist on any sort of physical media, and I certianly won't pay 15 dollars for a CD. So what's the answer? I don't know. But it's clearly a failure of the music industry to capitolize on new technology.

People have been making mp3's for over 10 years now. But the music industry still tries to push CD's on people that don't want to buy them.

Glad you bought that up Goober. Yet another angle that demonstrates how copyright breach is very different to stealing. The effective remedies are more civil than criminal.

Welcome to the board, Pandawdy! Glad to have you.

Everything you've said here is right, but when it comes to "rationalizing stealing" its what you would say next that matters.

There have been God knows how many cases of companies over-pricing their products, either due to poor market research, excessive greed, or run-away production costs. But in almost every case, when an item costs more than we want to pay for it, we just think "Oh, well. That's too pricy for me. I'll bet they go out of business if they can't bring prices down."
In very, very few cases do we think, "Hey, that's more expensive than I'm willing to pay; therefore, it's OK if I just take it."

The music industry does indeed over-price many of their wares. But there is a legal response to that: don't buy the overpriced stuff.
At the end of the day, we have to remember that we don't have some sort of inalienable right to music at a reasonable price.

I'm not sure how you extracted that from my post, but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

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You didn't get the membership memo? I'm the most evil, angry, and heartless one here!



You're right. I was a bit harsh.

However, I still don't accept the right of the consumer to decide that it doesn't like how a bit of property is being marketed/sold and then to steal it (yeah, we can pick nits about what is "stealing," but taking posession of intellectual property without paying for it, IMHO, is stealing).

Does a song on your hard drive exist in any less of a real sense than a song on a CD?

Absolutely. I suspect, as the 'net evolves, that musicians will find a way to distribute their music and get paid for it without the interference of the music industry. It's not that far away.

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As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't exist.

Maybe that's what will have to happen in order for music to reach a price that people are willing to pay.

My memories of the 80's aren't as clear as they once were, but I don't think I ever paid 15 dollars for a vinyl record.

the truly artistic know their stuff is valuable.
the crappy artists have contracts and red tape and even more business crap.

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