14 ms·

Speaking as a (very small) software vendor, the problem I have with the mindset of "every copy has no value" is that it isn't grounded in reality. If the recip

Speaking as a (very small) software vendor, the problem I have with the mindset of "every copy has no value" is that it isn't grounded in reality. If the recipient of the copy went out of their way to obtain the copy, and is using/enjoying the benefits of it on even a limited basis, then they are effectively stealing the up-front investment of the producer. A good thought exercise is this: would it be equally valid to say that a producer has no claim against someone making thousands of copies of a digital good and selling them for $1 a piece ? If the answer is no, then what makes the fact that they are giving away the copies any different ? In both instances, the producer has had their right to determine the terms of the sale arbitrarily removed without their consent. In no other areas of our economies do we allow such nonsense to go on. You can't walk into a retail store, fill your cart with items, and then dictate to the cashier that you'll be paying 10 cents on the dollar for the items and walk out of the store. If you don't agree with the terms of the sale, then you find another producer that has more favorable terms or you go without. If you want/need the product that bad, then you'll agree to the terms of the sale. It's that simple. Edit: and yes, I understand that the linked article was about the cost attributed to such copies. It is correct to posit that not all copies equal valid lost sales. The problem with this type of argument is that it is often put forward by those that also promote the idea that sharing of copyrighted digital goods is a consumer's right because such goods are "information", and not a tangible good. It's a ridiculous stance to take because it completely hand-waves away the actual time and money that went into producing the "information".

crimsonalucard 11y ago
This art project is more of an unintentional argument against piracy. I mean it literally shows how copying something makes it worthless.
- TimJYoung 11y ago
  Absolutely. Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor. If I don't have to give up any of my time/labor in the deal, then of course I won't mentally assign any value to the good. It's a hell of a feedback loop: obtain something for free, use/copy it freely, and then preach to anyone that will listen about how it has no value, even though lots of people apparently have a significant desire to possess it.
  - gozo 11y ago
    "Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor." No it's not. If anything, that is a ridiculous opinion. It has no basis is society, law or discourse. There's little relation between labor and copyright. A more apt analogy is something like land rights. But that is still not talking about the real issue. Chefs puts significant amount of labor into their creations, they are not covered by copyright.
    - TimJYoung 11y ago
      Yes, and chefs are compensated for their time/labor. You can't just walk into a restaurant, eat a meal, and take off without paying what the owner of the restaurant has determined is the price of the food you just consumed. How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale ? There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work.
      - gozo 11y ago
        Chefs are compensated for their time (unless maybe you're the head chef), but they are also not compensated for their intellectual property, which is the point. Maybe a better example is copying a dress (if you imagine outsourced manufacturing). "How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale?" There are plenty of creative people who sell their time, just like chefs. Of course plenty of companies today don't even sell software, but essentially services. "There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work" Yes, but this is to some extent a different issue than copyright itself. I'm not even arguing for the removal of copyright (I'm personally for stronger authors rights with drastic reduction in terms), just that copyright is mainly rights to artistic, rather than utilitarian or scientific, things i.e. doesn't have a whole lot to do with labor. This should be even more apparent today with cloud distribution, where software can't be resold.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > I mean it literally shows how copying something makes it worthless. How's that? If the same copies were legally bought they would have had value, but now that they are illegally created they are worthless? Is it the law that gives them value, instead of something intrinsic? Is value the same thing as cost?
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    It's an intrinsic property. There's a academic field called economics which describes this property. The property is famously known as the law of supply and demand. If you take a product and increase the demand the price goes up. If you increase the supply the price goes down. If you make a billion copies of the product the price would go down to near zero.
    - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
      How can it be intrinsic if it's determined by external factors like supply and demand? And if value is determined by cost, how come people still want it when it's free?
      - crimsonalucard 11y ago
        >How can it be intrinsic if it's determined by external factors like supply and demand? Well it depends on how you interpret the word intrinsic. You were inquiring about how written law could influence value, I was responding by saying value isn't determined by some made up law written by humans, it's determined by laws intrinsic to economics: The law of supply and demand. >And if value is determined by cost, When did I say value is determined by cost? Cost is only an indirect contributor. Value itself is determined by supply and demand. >how come people still want it when it's free? If something is free, it doesn't change how much people want the product. Value does not influence Demand. It is the otherway around: Supply and demand influence value. Thus whether I charge a billion dollars or zero dollars for the oxygen you breath, you'll still want it as much as you did before regardless of the value.
gozo 11y ago
"In no other areas of our economies do we allow such nonsense to go on" Except food, fashion, boats, building etc. You can copy essentially any piece of clothing while " stealing the up-front investment of the producer".
- TimJYoung 11y ago
  The "nonsense" I was referring to was the inability to dictate the terms of the sale. If a chef takes 2 months to develop a special dish for a very wealthy customer, you can be pretty sure that the price is going to be very high, and only the person paying the price will be enjoying the dish. Likewise, if the chef spends the same amount of time developing a special dish for general consumption, you can also be pretty sure that he/she plans on recouping those costs by distributing them across many customers' meals, the price of which is determined by the chef based upon how much the original cost was, and how fast he/she wishes to recoup the costs.
  - gozo 11y ago
    A fashion designer can't design a collection and enjoy exclusivity. A couple of months (if not weeks) later the fast-fashion store are going to have copies. They can't dictate the terms of a sale anymore than a musician that gets copied can. So the fashion industry have worked out their own added value in forms of heritage, luxury and exclusivity. Just like people who sell open source add value with trust, support and consulting. And people who sell games add value with multiplayer, statistics and achievements. Less copyright means more labor not less. More performances, more innovation, more consulting. If that's a good thing and when it's not is of course a discussion in itself.
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> If you want/need the product that bad, then you'll agree to the terms of the sale. It's that simple. Let me rephrase that: you get access only to the culture you can afford. We don't care about the common good, we just care about getting rich. At some point we got the actor with a monopoly on violence to guarantee our artificial control over copy rights and now it's our God given right to impose it.
- TimJYoung 11y ago
  We're talking about a lot more than just MP3s here, so you're not doing yourself any favors by restricting the argument to just popular culture. Copyright covers any type of creative work, and is going to become more and more important as the world switches from work that is primarily dominated by physical labor to one where one's creative work is how they are compensated. Software developers can't keep popping out new versions of software every week, and authors can't write an entire book each week, so there is an economic requirement that they be able to amortize the costs of their labor. The only way to do that is to allow the developer to dictate the terms of the sale and artificially restrict access to only those that agree to the terms. Perhaps Kickstarter or others will change this and we won't need copyright anymore, but right now it doesn't just protect the rights of large distributors, but also the rights of millions of independent creators that rely on such laws to ensure that they are compensated for their work, and to prevent bigger, more established players, from stealing their work.
  - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
    > artificially restrict access to only those that agree to the terms But that's not possible. Technical locks can be overridden rather easily. The reality is that selling digital copies of anything is not a solid business model and it can only be kept in place by bullies with a monopoly on violence.

crimsonalucard 11y ago

This art project is more of an unintentional argument against piracy. I mean it literally shows how copying something makes it worthless.

TimJYoung 11y ago
Absolutely. Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor. If I don't have to give up any of my time/labor in the deal, then of course I won't mentally assign any value to the good. It's a hell of a feedback loop: obtain something for free, use/copy it freely, and then preach to anyone that will listen about how it has no value, even though lots of people apparently have a significant desire to possess it.
- gozo 11y ago
  "Sales of digital goods, like any other sale, are about me trading a portion of my time/labor for someone else's time/labor." No it's not. If anything, that is a ridiculous opinion. It has no basis is society, law or discourse. There's little relation between labor and copyright. A more apt analogy is something like land rights. But that is still not talking about the real issue. Chefs puts significant amount of labor into their creations, they are not covered by copyright.
  - TimJYoung 11y ago
    Yes, and chefs are compensated for their time/labor. You can't just walk into a restaurant, eat a meal, and take off without paying what the owner of the restaurant has determined is the price of the food you just consumed. How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale ? There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work.
    - gozo 11y ago
      Chefs are compensated for their time (unless maybe you're the head chef), but they are also not compensated for their intellectual property, which is the point. Maybe a better example is copying a dress (if you imagine outsourced manufacturing). "How exactly is a software developer/musician/artist supposed to be compensated for their time/labor without copyright and the ability to determine the terms of the sale?" There are plenty of creative people who sell their time, just like chefs. Of course plenty of companies today don't even sell software, but essentially services. "There is significant up-front time and expense involved with any type of creative work" Yes, but this is to some extent a different issue than copyright itself. I'm not even arguing for the removal of copyright (I'm personally for stronger authors rights with drastic reduction in terms), just that copyright is mainly rights to artistic, rather than utilitarian or scientific, things i.e. doesn't have a whole lot to do with labor. This should be even more apparent today with cloud distribution, where software can't be resold.
stefantalpalaru 11y ago
> I mean it literally shows how copying something makes it worthless. How's that? If the same copies were legally bought they would have had value, but now that they are illegally created they are worthless? Is it the law that gives them value, instead of something intrinsic? Is value the same thing as cost?
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  It's an intrinsic property. There's a academic field called economics which describes this property. The property is famously known as the law of supply and demand. If you take a product and increase the demand the price goes up. If you increase the supply the price goes down. If you make a billion copies of the product the price would go down to near zero.
  - stefantalpalaru 11y ago
    How can it be intrinsic if it's determined by external factors like supply and demand? And if value is determined by cost, how come people still want it when it's free?
    - crimsonalucard 11y ago
      >How can it be intrinsic if it's determined by external factors like supply and demand? Well it depends on how you interpret the word intrinsic. You were inquiring about how written law could influence value, I was responding by saying value isn't determined by some made up law written by humans, it's determined by laws intrinsic to economics: The law of supply and demand. >And if value is determined by cost, When did I say value is determined by cost? Cost is only an indirect contributor. Value itself is determined by supply and demand. >how come people still want it when it's free? If something is free, it doesn't change how much people want the product. Value does not influence Demand. It is the otherway around: Supply and demand influence value. Thus whether I charge a billion dollars or zero dollars for the oxygen you breath, you'll still want it as much as you did before regardless of the value.

gozo 11y ago

"In no other areas of our economies do we allow such nonsense to go on" Except food, fashion, boats, building etc. You can copy essentially any piece of clothing while " stealing the up-front investment of the producer".

TimJYoung 11y ago
The "nonsense" I was referring to was the inability to dictate the terms of the sale. If a chef takes 2 months to develop a special dish for a very wealthy customer, you can be pretty sure that the price is going to be very high, and only the person paying the price will be enjoying the dish. Likewise, if the chef spends the same amount of time developing a special dish for general consumption, you can also be pretty sure that he/she plans on recouping those costs by distributing them across many customers' meals, the price of which is determined by the chef based upon how much the original cost was, and how fast he/she wishes to recoup the costs.
- gozo 11y ago
  A fashion designer can't design a collection and enjoy exclusivity. A couple of months (if not weeks) later the fast-fashion store are going to have copies. They can't dictate the terms of a sale anymore than a musician that gets copied can. So the fashion industry have worked out their own added value in forms of heritage, luxury and exclusivity. Just like people who sell open source add value with trust, support and consulting. And people who sell games add value with multiplayer, statistics and achievements. Less copyright means more labor not less. More performances, more innovation, more consulting. If that's a good thing and when it's not is of course a discussion in itself.

stefantalpalaru 11y ago

> If you want/need the product that bad, then you'll agree to the terms of the sale. It's that simple. Let me rephrase that: you get access only to the culture you can afford. We don't care about the common good, we just care about getting rich. At some point we got the actor with a monopoly on violence to guarantee our artificial control over copy rights and now it's our God given right to impose it.

TimJYoung 11y ago
We're talking about a lot more than just MP3s here, so you're not doing yourself any favors by restricting the argument to just popular culture. Copyright covers any type of creative work, and is going to become more and more important as the world switches from work that is primarily dominated by physical labor to one where one's creative work is how they are compensated. Software developers can't keep popping out new versions of software every week, and authors can't write an entire book each week, so there is an economic requirement that they be able to amortize the costs of their labor. The only way to do that is to allow the developer to dictate the terms of the sale and artificially restrict access to only those that agree to the terms. Perhaps Kickstarter or others will change this and we won't need copyright anymore, but right now it doesn't just protect the rights of large distributors, but also the rights of millions of independent creators that rely on such laws to ensure that they are compensated for their work, and to prevent bigger, more established players, from stealing their work.
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago
  > artificially restrict access to only those that agree to the terms But that's not possible. Technical locks can be overridden rather easily. The reality is that selling digital copies of anything is not a solid business model and it can only be kept in place by bullies with a monopoly on violence.