Frank Mayhar wrote: > Andrew Bailey wrote: > > > >>On other things, while it may and probably is true that CDs are >>overpriced, this doesn't in any way justify piracy. Sure the RIAA is on >>a crusade to maintain its monopoly on the distribution of music, and has >>behaved badly IMHO, but thats capitalism[1] for you. > Ok, I think you may have misunderstood what I meant by the above. > > This, on the other hand, is BS. I consider the electronic piracy (a la > Napster) of music in particular to be evolution (of a sort) in action. > The big music distribution companies are dead, they just don't know it > yet and they're fighting to hold on to their cartel. As long as that > was The Way to distribute music from maker to fan, they had a good business. > It's no longer The Way, though. In fact, although it's good for the > middlemen, it's terrible for both the music maker and the fan. > In what way is the agressive attempts by a corporation to maintain its marketshare _not_ capitalism, or at least what we consider to be capitalism these days? Yes the Reocording industries marketing model is outdated and broken, and they do realise it, THATS why they are opposed to an internet model. There is less money in it and a much lower cost entry for competitors. This is bad for their buisness, thus they use every means at there disposal to protect themselves. > >>There are many costs associated with any kind of artistic promotion. If >>we look at say the movie industry, not every film will make money ( can >>anyone say waterworld ), so the films that DO make money have to >>subsidise those that don't. And this will be factored into prices. > > > I find this argument suspect, as well. Did you know that there is _yet_ > to be a Hollywood production that has "made money" on paper? It's a game > the accountants play. Settle for a "percentage of net profit" of a film > like, say, _Titanic_, and you'll never see a dime. > Yes I did but I always thought that was a taxation issue. Tax minimisation aside some movies will loose money. Or to put it another way the return for the people who put up the seed capital isn't there and they are getting points of the gross. So if the studios share of the gross is less than the initial capital outlay, then its fair to say that film lost the studio money. There are other factors as well like payments back to the studio for hire etc etc. It was a simple example to point out that not everything produced by a content distributer will be revenue positive. The arts are after all a speculative buisness. > Personally, I think that in the case of both music and movies, make them > downloadable for a reasonable fee, "reasonable" being "the highest price > most people will cheerfully pay," and you'll virtually eliminate Napster- > type "piracy" overnight. > True. But it has to be viable on both sides of the coin. There is also issues of access to an internet model. Try for instance doing a internet based transaction without a credit card. > >>And interestingly enough piracy is almost certainly a price affecting >>factor in itself, in the same way that shoplifting is. > > > Piffle. Shoplifting is plain theft of an item that has been paid for. > It truly costs the shopkeeper money, in the price he paid for the item > Music and movie piracy, on the other hand, just means that CDs or DVDs > that _might_ have sold, don't. For some percentage of the pirates. No > money is lost as a direct result of the piracy, it's all extremely > indirect and depends on how much weight you give the arguments of the > RIAA and the MPAA. Ok, I was saying that piracy is a cost affecting factor, just as shoplifting is. The degree to which they affect price is of course different, because, as you pointed out, there is no direct loss. Basically, a company will base its price based on a number of factors and one of them will be number of units sold if there is a reduction in the number of units sold due to piracy then in order to get the revenue to the required level they may have to charge more per unit. It may not be a major factor. Since reducing the number of units produced is a good way of controlling costs, however if the replication cost becomes zero, then it may have more of an effect. But then again it may not, who knows. > >>If more people bought CD rather than trading on the internet, in theory >>the prices should come down, > > > *heh* You believe in the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, too, don't > you? :-) > No, not really. But I do believe in public health care and free education which is close :) > >>though this is unlikely due to the fact >>that the music industry is an Oligarchy and probably lacks true compition. > > > Not an oligarchy, a cartel. And there's no "probably" about it. A much more appropiate term. Thank you. Yes these cartels are engaged in anti-competitive practices and should burn in hell for it. But I still fail to see how this justifies piracy, except perhaps as an act of social disobedience :) If we don't like the current model of intellectual property then we should change the law. The entirety of the intellectual property issue is very interesting. My take on it is that it shouldn't be dictated by market forces, mainly because this has lead to the situation that we have today, cartels. But rather with more consideration to the affect on society as a whole. There really has to be some kind of public interest criteria involved in the application of copyright law. Getting that right however is difficult. For instance the entire "gene patenting" issue is about to become very interesting in australia. At least one state government is going to start agitating for changes to federal copyright law so that basically public hospitals can continue to provide some of the genetic screening test that they up until recently did provide for free. Now the owner of that "gene patent" has signed an exclusive license agreement with a private company, and no longer can these test be provided. Andrew.