4 ms·

Fundamentally because supporting one receiver costs the same as supporting an infinite amount of them, the rest is politics.

amelius 3y ago
If the fundamental part of your argument played any role in medicine, then all the >$1M cancer treatments would be practically free too.
- SnowHill9902 3y ago
  Pharmaceutical companies are not charging for the cost it took to develop that drug, but for the rolling cost it’ll take to develop future ones.
  - schwartzworld 3y ago
    Also CEO bonuses
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      Not necessarily, incredibly large amounts of money pharmaceutical companies spend is actually spent on advertising their products to maintain their cash flow. Examples can be found online but this source [1], which is obviously biased, shows the statistics for the biggest companies in a nice list. The (hundreds of) millions spent on bonuses are nothing compared to the billions spent on making sure your doctor recommends UmbrellaCorp PainAWay™ over a generic brand that will cost you a tenth of the price [2]. That includes not just TV ads, but also buying conference tickets and free lunches for doctors; anything to make sure they get the upper hand. [1]: https://www.csrxp.org/icymi-new-study-finds-big-pharma-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-rd-during-pandemic/ https://www.csrxp.org/icymi-new-study-finds-big-pharma-spent... [2]: It should be noted that some generics can work less effectively or cause additional side effects in some people, but for many types of medication the difference is minimal and sometimes the big-brand products even come with more side effects than their competitors' product
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- HWR_14 3y ago
  In non-US major economies, aren't they?
- moffkalast 3y ago
  Good point actually, in medicine it's usually the high insurance risk that makes for the high costs I think. Interesting that nobody ever sues GPS providers for their connection dropping out or degrading, resulting in lost business. I'm sure it's happened but nobody would think of doing it.
lucb1e 3y ago
Nobody indeed buys a satellite, but they could have put a tax on receivers to fund the system. In my country they even tax data carriers (CD, HDD, laptop/phone with internal storage, etc.) for the music industry because we may store songs on it... clearly this is achievable, and funding satellites is a much more direct benefit than the bullshit that the music labels keep coming up with so the general public could actually be in favor of it.
- ThunderSizzle 3y ago
  If there's a tax for that, then all digital music should be free after that tax.
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    I'm Dutch and many people considered this to be a "piracy tax" of sorts. The government and police also weren't in a particular hurry to take care of piracy. The tax is based on a quirk of copyright law designed by the media industry all the way back in the age of cassette recorders. Music companies realized that people were making copies of their songs from the radio for free (you could put together entire albums if you timed it correctly!) and from the cassettes they bought, and after some mess the "thuiskopie" (home copy) system was born. Basically, you can make legal copies of any media you have legal access to as long as you pay the fee. This fee goes directly to on organisation (think MPAA but for all artists) which then redistributes the money according to Some Kind Of Model[1]. The fee is part of the sale of any digital or analogue container that can contain copyrighted works; it's a fixed price fee (https://www.thuiskopie.nl/nl/opgave/tarieven https://www.thuiskopie.nl/nl/opgave/tarieven). Professionals who won't use their devices to store other people's work can get their money back if they fill in a form and send over the right paperwork, but let's be honest, nobody does this. For a long time, the de facto interpretation of the thuiskopie law was that a copy you make for yourself (or your direct family/friends) at home is legal. That implied downloading MP3s and other files from the web was also legal [2]. Torrents involve sharing, so they were always off the table, but copies of torrented files given to family was treated like a legal copy. You could still be caught for piracy, but as long as someone else got you all of your pirated disks you were pretty much Technically Okay. This interpretation was killed off when the media industry won a lawsuit against the government. It was always too good to be true, but it seemed to be one of the ways many pirates were appeased about this law. I'm pretty sure everyone considers this system to be stupid now that it's no longer a de facto piracy license. The copyright lobby is incredibly strong, though, so I doubt we'll see a change any time soon. The copyright industry gets to charge you twice for the media you listen to. As long as this stupid system remains part of the law, I'm personally opposed to any subsidies for commercial media. If only a politician worth voting for actually cared about this crap... [1]: Yes, this is legal, though I still don't know why. [2]: Software has always been excluded from this, though; downloading software and games was never part of the deal, and software companies can't claim their take from the Thuiskopie system

amelius 3y ago

If the fundamental part of your argument played any role in medicine, then all the >$1M cancer treatments would be practically free too.

SnowHill9902 3y ago
Pharmaceutical companies are not charging for the cost it took to develop that drug, but for the rolling cost it’ll take to develop future ones.
- schwartzworld 3y ago
  Also CEO bonuses
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    Not necessarily, incredibly large amounts of money pharmaceutical companies spend is actually spent on advertising their products to maintain their cash flow. Examples can be found online but this source [1], which is obviously biased, shows the statistics for the biggest companies in a nice list. The (hundreds of) millions spent on bonuses are nothing compared to the billions spent on making sure your doctor recommends UmbrellaCorp PainAWay™ over a generic brand that will cost you a tenth of the price [2]. That includes not just TV ads, but also buying conference tickets and free lunches for doctors; anything to make sure they get the upper hand. [1]: https://www.csrxp.org/icymi-new-study-finds-big-pharma-spent-more-on-sales-and-marketing-than-rd-during-pandemic/ https://www.csrxp.org/icymi-new-study-finds-big-pharma-spent... [2]: It should be noted that some generics can work less effectively or cause additional side effects in some people, but for many types of medication the difference is minimal and sometimes the big-brand products even come with more side effects than their competitors' product
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
HWR_14 3y ago
In non-US major economies, aren't they?
moffkalast 3y ago
Good point actually, in medicine it's usually the high insurance risk that makes for the high costs I think. Interesting that nobody ever sues GPS providers for their connection dropping out or degrading, resulting in lost business. I'm sure it's happened but nobody would think of doing it.

lucb1e 3y ago

Nobody indeed buys a satellite, but they could have put a tax on receivers to fund the system. In my country they even tax data carriers (CD, HDD, laptop/phone with internal storage, etc.) for the music industry because we may store songs on it... clearly this is achievable, and funding satellites is a much more direct benefit than the bullshit that the music labels keep coming up with so the general public could actually be in favor of it.

ThunderSizzle 3y ago
If there's a tax for that, then all digital music should be free after that tax.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I'm Dutch and many people considered this to be a "piracy tax" of sorts. The government and police also weren't in a particular hurry to take care of piracy. The tax is based on a quirk of copyright law designed by the media industry all the way back in the age of cassette recorders. Music companies realized that people were making copies of their songs from the radio for free (you could put together entire albums if you timed it correctly!) and from the cassettes they bought, and after some mess the "thuiskopie" (home copy) system was born. Basically, you can make legal copies of any media you have legal access to as long as you pay the fee. This fee goes directly to on organisation (think MPAA but for all artists) which then redistributes the money according to Some Kind Of Model[1]. The fee is part of the sale of any digital or analogue container that can contain copyrighted works; it's a fixed price fee (https://www.thuiskopie.nl/nl/opgave/tarieven https://www.thuiskopie.nl/nl/opgave/tarieven). Professionals who won't use their devices to store other people's work can get their money back if they fill in a form and send over the right paperwork, but let's be honest, nobody does this. For a long time, the de facto interpretation of the thuiskopie law was that a copy you make for yourself (or your direct family/friends) at home is legal. That implied downloading MP3s and other files from the web was also legal [2]. Torrents involve sharing, so they were always off the table, but copies of torrented files given to family was treated like a legal copy. You could still be caught for piracy, but as long as someone else got you all of your pirated disks you were pretty much Technically Okay. This interpretation was killed off when the media industry won a lawsuit against the government. It was always too good to be true, but it seemed to be one of the ways many pirates were appeased about this law. I'm pretty sure everyone considers this system to be stupid now that it's no longer a de facto piracy license. The copyright lobby is incredibly strong, though, so I doubt we'll see a change any time soon. The copyright industry gets to charge you twice for the media you listen to. As long as this stupid system remains part of the law, I'm personally opposed to any subsidies for commercial media. If only a politician worth voting for actually cared about this crap... [1]: Yes, this is legal, though I still don't know why. [2]: Software has always been excluded from this, though; downloading software and games was never part of the deal, and software companies can't claim their take from the Thuiskopie system