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Piracy More Serious Than Bank Robbery?
Posted by
kdawson
on Sun Jun 17, 2007 08:09 AM
from the copyright-trumps-all dept.
from the copyright-trumps-all dept.
An anonymous reader writes sends us to Ars Technica for a dissertation on how detached and manipulative the discussion about copyright is becoming. "NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. 'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'" Ars points out how completely specious that "hundreds of billions" is.
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Entertainment: NBC Still Down On P2P But Plans To Use It Themselves 153 comments
Cotton Eye Joe writes "Ars Technica has an interview with Rick Cotton, the general counsel for NBC Universal who is best known for saying that piracy is a more serious offence than robbery. Cotton still has some strong opinions on P2P, even though the network will be using it for distribution. 'He's convinced that the pirate problem is costing NBC Universal real revenue and that the scale of the problem is so vast as to discourage investment in the carrots, positive solutions like Hulu. "With all that pirated material available, it creates tremendous disincentives to content owners who need to invest in new content," Cotton says, "and that just hurts consumers over time."'"
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Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Insightful)
Copying a bunch of bits that i wasnt going to purchase is no different. The owner has not had his product reduced in value and he still has possession of it to sell to a buying customer ( which im not, nor was i ever going to be ).
People that twist the facts around and inflate the numbers in order to invade/reduce my privacy disgust me. ( though for the record, i dont agree with 'for-profit' or 'purchase avoidance' piracy.. )
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Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Insightful)
Firstly define 'wasn't going to purchase' for me. If I know absolutely 100% that I can not get a piece of software / movie / game for free, I am pretty sure I am much more likely to admit to myself and others that I want it, and will purchase it, than if I have a big demon sat on my shoulder whispering "don't be a mug, you can warez it!".
Most films have trailers, software has demo's (as do games), if you see the demo and wish to enjoy the product for longer, then its pretty hard to argue that you will be getting entertainment or use from it no?
People can NEVER be honest about saying "I wouldn't have bought it" once they have the full thing for free. Our brains are great at backwards-justification. We can easily find all sorts of ways to make what we have done seem justified, we may well even delude ourselves. But that doesn't mean it's true. It's like telling yourself you would have resigned anyway if you get fired, or that she was a pain in the neck anyway when someone dumps you. Anything to make you feel like the good guy.
I spoke to a guy who does DRM for an online game publisher. Once, they rewrote their algorithm which instantly rendered all existing cracks for the games useless. Sales jumped by 40% that month. Why? surely none of those who cracked the stuff would have bought it anyway?
Secondly, your comparison is not accurate. A car is made for a single user, and priced accordingly. A movie, game or application is made with some estimation of sales, based upon the market size and product quality. Nobody makes Photoshop or Lightwave and expects to sell one copy. If you are in the target market, and get use from the product, yet you take it for free, then of course you are affecting the producer of the product. The fact that nothing physical was moved from a to b makes no difference.
People will make all kinds of rationalisation to justify taking other peoples work for free. The problem is, their philosophy never scales up to the whole of society. Why the fuck should I pay to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film, it was made anyway, and I probably wouldn't have paid for it right? so what's the harm?
Until everyone thinks that way, in which case the whole business model collapses. That's the problem with people who leech, it works out fine for them (in the short run) but they fuck things up for everyone else.
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Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Insightful)
An excellent question in itself.
Gee, I thought the whole point of a free market was to let businesses succeed/fail based on their ability to deliver a product that people are willing to pay for. There are obviously enough people still paying to see shitty movies that the industry that produces them is being sustained. When there aren't, then I guess it shows that not enough people gave enough of a fuck about that industry's products.
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Re:Pirates disgust me (Score:5, Funny)
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His misconception... (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? (Score:5, Insightful)
I pirate an album and Britney Spears loses 2 dollars. A girl gets violently raped and her entire life is damaged and she may never recover. Which of these two things are more important?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
> recover. Which of these two things are more important?
If I pirate a Britney Spears album, my entire life is damaged and I may never recover.
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just another rich guy living in his own world (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:just another rich guy living in his own world (Score:5, Interesting)
This should lend a little light over what lobbyists and various government officials and legislators might be thinking and where the root of the problem may actually lie.
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Re:just another rich guy living in his own world (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that corporations cannot be trusted to "do the right thing" is because they have been legally constructed in such a way as to prevent any shareholder or employee of that corporation let moral judgements interfere with the profit motive.
If the CEO of a large company decides not to campaign for more police time to be spent on protecting intellectual property because he believes to do so would be "immoral", not only can he be fired, shareholders in the corporation can in fact bring legal action against him for not acting in the best interests of the corporation.
Basically, it's not just that amoral soulless assholes are attracted to executive positions in large corporations, it's also that you cannot serve in an executive position at a large corporation without being an amoral soulless asshole.
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I've been on IRC. I've seen rampant trading. (Score:5, Informative)
It's a problem of analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
*sighs* Mod article "troll" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Intellectual property crime" (Score:5, Insightful)
Some examples:
* The way patent offices globally have turned the patent system into a pyramid scheme for their friends, printing coupons that are not backed by any state bank and yet are used as collateral to secure huge credits.
* The shakedown of numerous small businesses and large customers for "patent violations" based on legal instruments created by a mafia-style clique of lawyers.
* The wide use of patent "licensing deals" to create cartels that would be illegal and criminal under normal competition law.
* The use of patent "licenses" to tax the use of technology by the public, even though very often the public subsidised the original research.
* The use of "intellectual property laws" (designed and paid for by content industries) to prevent content falling into the public domain.
* The use of said laws to create artificial barriers to free trade, so prices can be raised in specific geographic areas.
* The use of the global patent system to keep the costs of medicines artificially high (even at the cost of millions of deaths)
* The use of the global patent system to prevent free competition in many markets.
* The use of the global patent system to stop alternative energy technologies being developed.
* The use of patents to create conflict and litigation than enriches lawyers and specialists.
And on and on and on... the cost of "intellectual property crime" surely runs into the trillions...
Of course we're supposed to think that when corporations abuse the law, it's a different thing than when individuals do it. Corporations can buy laws, individuals usually can't.
Oh no! What would Jesus do! (Score:5, Interesting)
These people fail to see how stupid it is to scare the public with billion dollar figures. I frankly don't give a crap if company x lose a y dollars per year. My point is that if a company is struck by heavy use of piracy, then their business module is entirely misplaced. It could be too expensive, too difficult to purchase, only a tiny useful function out of many less useful ones, and many other factors that contribute to such outcome.
Take a music CD for example. It's expensive, impractical to purchase, often DRM:ed and includes maybe two, three or four songs that you like. This is why iTunes and other comparable services are slowly taking over that "lost" segment that chose piracy over unthoughtful music labels.
I don't believe that we are criminals by nature and I doubt that most of us prefer to "steal" rather than purchasing, but the companies have to find solutions very soon and adapt before piracy becomes a habit and not just an escape.
Last but not least, I am yet to see an anti-piracy statement that admits to the positive effects of pirating. After all, that's how many artists, movies and software developers gain a lot of attention. Do you think Photoshop would be widespread in Europe if there was no alternative to that idiotic $1,500 price tag? At least people pirate Photoshop instead of turning to the cheaper alternatives. And when have you heard Adobe admit to this?
Easy answer to this one... (Score:5, Funny)
First thing you'd do when entering the bank would be to shout "are any of you copyright lawyers?", then proceed to shoot any of them in the legs. They'd soon start to realise that having the police deal with bank robberies is a far better idea than having them go and arrest college kids for downloading Metallica...
What a bunch of unethical twats...
Cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Who are the pirates after all? (Score:5, Interesting)
Eventually, music became something influential on a corporate level. Zoom forward to 1957, 50 years ago from today. Artists began trying to market themselves to "record companies" in stead of their audience. The record companies would fund up and coming artists, who were usually established acts already. The elusive "record contract" would be still geared to pay the artist a good sum of money, but the cut for the record companies was getting bigger. This is where it began to snowball.
Lets move to more recent times. Now we have record companies finding talentless bimbos and tryhard boybands to front this multi-billion dollar industry. Not only that, the record companies are taking most of the proceeds and the artist is forced to tour/mime in order to make the kind of cash that would have been available to them 50 years ago. Good artists who may not be the 'in' thing at the moment (as in, not pop/emo/rap) struggle to get a recording contract. Even when they eventually do, it's on the record companies terms. Desperate to get noticed, most new artists will sign anything just to become famous.
So now record companies are making ridiculous amounts of money off the consumer and kicking the artist to the kerb when they are no longer the 'in' thing. This is bad for music, and bad for the consumer.
So when I torrent the latest album from the artist I like, does that make me a criminal? Even if I go to their concerts, buy merchandise and do all I can to get them money knowing that the record companies don't get as much of a cut from touring? I think, if anything, I'm doing the right thing. It's a very Robin Hood mentality, but stealing from the record companies and giving to the musicians is the way I believe in.
I think if everyone else did what I do, music would be in a better place.
Re:Yes, just imagine... (Score:5, Insightful)
Today, every single Slashdot reader failed to give me $10. Do you realise that this has cost me and, by extension, the economy, over $10,000,000 for today alone? Over the course of a year, that means that not devoting law enforcement resources to fulfilling my every whim costs me (and the economy. Won't someone please think of the economy?) $3,650,000,000. That's right, well over three billion dollars.
Has any bank robber come close to stealing three billion dollars? Even Nick Leeson only cost Barings $1.4bn. Obviously our priorities are very, very wrong.
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Re:Imaginary crime (Score:5, Interesting)
As a proud member of the development corp, I do really feel insulted to hear the sum of my creative energies, and the sweat and blood of my work referred to as an imaginary product. That said, I understand what you're trying to say. The real problem the MPAA and RIAA have is trying to apply traditional economic theory (based on scarce-resource distribution and pricing) to an unlimited resource (something that once created, can be replicated ad-infinitum.
Why they want to do this is obvious, it's a licence to print money. Unfortunately for them, under these traditional economic theories it is the scarcity of a resource that makes it valuable (gold, platinum, wood) and an unlimited resource has very little, or no, monetary value.
Thus DRM, which is fundamentally an attempt to impose scarcity on an unlimited resource, thus creating artificial value. It doesn't work, because the methods are inefficient and if content has intrinsic worth itself, DRM reduces it by making it difficult to use.
I'm not sure how we're going to get around this particular problem and it is concerning for all of us involved in creating the content. There needs to be money in creation in order for us to get paid to do it, but the traditional methods of commercial software/music/films may not be the most efficient.
Perhaps we need to explore commoditization of software, or perhaps a return to the patron model enjoyed by artists of the last several centuries. Hard to say.
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Re:Imaginary crime. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say that doesn't hold for those who view the destruction - or at least marginalization - of a particularly bad industry, with its attendant effects on the culture of music, as a desirable long-term consequence. I doubt the demise of top-down music culture counts as a "loss" that "mak[es] everyone suffer."
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