Aussie Government Brings Back Piracy Talks 114
joshgnosis writes "The Australian Attorney-General's department is set to hold a closed-door meeting with internet service providers, film lobby groups and consumer groups over proposals to reduce piracy on Thursday. The meetings were at a stalemate after sources said that neither the ISPs or the film groups could see eye to eye on the best proposal but the department confirmed that the meetings will go ahead and will this time include consumer advocate groups, who were previously excluded from the meetings."
Re:Oh good. I can't wait go. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting, but that's what Amazon has. It actually really relies on what I wrote about purchasing being easy and cheap; to buy is easy, just a 1-click process, but to return you have to go to "My account" / "Manage my Kindle" / "Books" / Scroll down to the book in question / Click / Apply for refund / Enter refund reason / Click go.
For 99c, or $5, or whatever, it's just not worth it for some people. That said, there are a number of people on readers forums who boast that they've never paid for a book because they always just return it when they're done reading it, or return it then buy it again if they want to "keep" it for another 7 days.
I get probably 3-5 returns per 100 sales so I just don't really worry about them and I'm guessing Amazon isn't either, or they'd start tightening the return policy. The only main issue with a lot of returns is if you get a flood of returns all with the same reason ("copyright issues", "poor quality", "typos/editing issues", etc) you can get your book pulled for review.
Look at it this way. If you were at a cinema watching a movie and, at any point for 7 days after watching a film you could stand in line and fill in a short form to get an immediate refund... would you? And we're not talking about $13 or $14 here, it's $5. Or $0.99. Most people can't be bothered.
Some people will, some people will even if they make you fill in a mountain of paperwork, but they'd probably just pirate it anyway. I don't think the 7 day returns policy affects sales much and it's a definite selling point. "Try my book!" I say, "If you don't like it, 7 days, no questions asked return policy, even if you read the whole thing."
Re:What about the price of piracy enforcement (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Normal people often do stuff for free and even pay for the privilege, be it sports, hiking, handicrafts, or making music or being in plays. Why should the community pay for some else's hobby?
2. Copying is not stealing it is copying. If you want no one to copy it 'shh' keep it a secret, we wont care.
3. No one is taking your work from you, you still have your copy and you can sell it.
4. We don't believe you about massive downloading, you always lie, always. You lie about the quality of your content. You lie about the value of your content. You pay off politicians to lie for you. You sell advertisements which most often are lies. You infected news which now sells lies as news. You are lying liars that always lie.
5. So what? Get a real productive job to subsidise your hobby just like everyone else. You lie about the taxes, yet another lie. Money not spent on your content will be spent elsewhere in the economy, often with far better social returns and, still generating taxes, liar.
6. Yet another lie. Consumers for a start would be far better off spending that money on better quality food for example rather than on dubious quality often anti-social content. Besides when do we have enough content, there is already more than any one person can consume in a life time. Why should an artificial creation of value continue when it supplies something we already have to an excess.
7. All your points are distorted PR=B$, lies for profit and greed. It is what you do. To further the 'USEFULL' arts and sciences, an 'ARTIFICIAL' opportunity to profit was created, when that work fails in that regard it is not entitled to that artificial monopoly, when that work is not 'TESTED' to ensure it meets that requirement it is not entitled to that artificial temporary monopoly.
8. You are your industry are not a benefit to the economy it is a parasite upon the economy, that can only be afforded when the economy produces as surplus. Right now global economies are tightening due to increasing population and depletion of resources, guess where that places you parasitical industry versus food, clothing, healthcare, transportation, education, energy production, potable water provision, heck you're even way below refuse disposal on the requirement scale.