11 ms·

Very creative and thought provoking, but wrong. A DVD version of avatar sells for say $20 and Riaa gets some percentage of that. Joe blow downloads avatar for

• marshray 15y ago
  What if Joe Blow watches Avatar and then comes to the realization that he's wasted 2 hours of his life? How shall that be recovered?
  • nextparadigms 15y ago
    Should it be recovered? If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? I see no reason for businesses to get money by basically tricking their customers into buying something they later find out it's not what they expected.
    • indiecore 15y ago
      No return on opened DVDs/Games usually.
      • Folcon 15y ago
        Depends on why your returning it right? I've successfully argued that games that do not run on my machine, because frankly someone was dreaming when they wrote out those minimum requirements are not "as described".
    • joezydeco 15y ago
      Now we're just getting silly. A huge portion of our economy is based on buying services and not physical goods. If every service was exactly as described and advertised we wouldn't need Consumer Reports, Yelp, or Epinions. We'd live in utopia. And yet, here we are.
      • nextparadigms 15y ago
        I know that the real world is not ideal or how it should be, but I'm saying the potential for disruption/more efficient alternatives is there. Since they seem to think that they are entitled to trick (a rather harsh word, but not that far from the truth) their customers, that means there is an opening for an alternative - whether that's more "honest" competition, or straight out piracy to "test" the product beforehand.
    • DanBC 15y ago
      > If you buy a product that you wish you didn't buy, wouldn't you normally return it? Consumer law in England doesn't let you do this. Many, but not all, shops do allow returns as a good-will measure. (Unless you buy online, where the Distance Selling Regulations give the customer remarkable rights.) Doesn't "Buyer Beware" mean anything anymore?
      • Folcon 15y ago
        We can't just return it, but The Sale of Goods Act 1979 makes it an implied term of the contract that goods be as described, fit for purpose and of satisfactory quality. That does give you some measure of leeway. Otherwise Buyer Beware indeed!
  • quorn3000 15y ago
    It felt more like 3 hours.
    • kamjam 15y ago
      It felt more like a lifetime to me!
  • maeon3 15y ago
    The same way a defective 3d printed vehicle would be returned, proof of destroying what you made for a full refund. In the case of avatar... You can't unsee the movie, maybe an equivalent dose of pain to counteract the plesure? Maybe if you can prove you only derived a few units of pleasure from it, you are compensated the delta between how much was claimed and how much was delivered. A startup where you sell movies for prices according to how much the watcher enjoyed it might be a billion dollar idea.
    • pyrhho 15y ago
      > maybe an equivalent dose of pain to counteract the plesure? So, they would have to watch it again?
      • marshray 15y ago
        I think Hollywood calls this a "sequel". E.g. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093857/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093857/
  • anthonyb 15y ago
    By not wasting any more of his money on shitty movies? "Fool me once, shame on you" and all that?
• belorn 15y ago
  The question on how much Joe would have paid is interesting in an academic setting, but quite impossible to answer. To make an example, tap water is worth exactly 0$, but had my only option been to purchase water from the store, then the price I would be willing to pay would be substantially large. The way west society solved the question on how we pay the utility guys who maintain the water supply is with taxes. Copyright is an outgrowth of taxes. A private monopoly granted by the state that can be used to generate revenue without any unit cost associated. In any free market, if the unit price is zero, the then market price must be zero too. The thing I personally wonder is, since copyright is a form of tax granted by the state, is this the best way to reward creators in the art of science and beauty?
  • crymer11 15y ago
    1. Where I'm from, I regularly pay a bill for my water/sewer usage, thus tap water is certainly worth more than $0.00. The funds collected are used to fund the operation of the water utility, not taxes. 2. I'm sorry, but I don't understand how copyright is an outgrowth of taxes. One is a mechanism to generate funds for the government, the other is a means to protect intellectual property. Could you clarify your point?
    • jstalin 15y ago
      Copyright is a form of rent seeking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking It's not a tax per se, but a cost imposed by the state solely for the benefit of a private party. The original US copyright act allowed for 14 years of protection. Of course, a portion of the rent-seeking copyright cartel's revenue goes to lobby the congress for ever longer copyright terms, making the original intent of the constitution mangled beyond recognition.
      • pbhjpbhj 15y ago
        >a cost imposed by the state solely for the benefit of a private party // Copyright is a [not so] limited-time state sponsored monopoly. It is not rent-seeking. Whilst copyright in the jurisdictions I know about is pretty much broken by over-extended time periods given to the monopoly rights holder at the [highly undemocratic IMO] detriment to the public domain it is nonetheless still given for creating new works. By definition copyright is granted on works that didn't exist before, new intellectual property has been created - how can this then be rent-seeking. To recapitulate, using the Wikipedia definition thus (my emphasis): "Rent [...] is obtained when a third party deprives one party of access to otherwise accessible transaction opportunities, making nominally "consensual" transactions a rent-collection opportunity for the third party." Works would not be otherwise accessible if they were not first created. I'll probably go along with a charge that extension of copyright terms (already granted) to the detriment of the public domain is rent-seeking behaviour however.
• zeteo 15y ago
  >That does not provide the same utility for riaa as the avatar.mp4 did for Joe blow. Good old Adam Smith teaches us that value in exchange is often the opposite of value in use. (His example is that we pay very little for water, which is vital for survival, but lots for a diamond that has very limited value in use, in comparison.) Joe's utility for watching the movie is thus almost irrelevant to the question of how much he should pay for the privilege. >The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD Not true, considering our entire economy runs on consumer surplus: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Consumer-Surplus.topicArticleId-9789,articleId-9756.html http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/Consumer-Surplus.topi... For example, a rabid "Twilight" fan may readily spend a hundred dollars to see the movie, but will actually end up paying just as little as the guy who was dragged in by his fiancee.
  • CWuestefeld 15y ago
    Good old Adam Smith teaches us that value in exchange is often the opposite of value in use. (His example is that we pay very little for water, which is vital for survival, but lots for a diamond that has very limited value in use, in comparison.) That's because, as brilliantly as Smith was able to demonstrate his ideas, the concept of marginal utility wasn't among them. Nearly a century later, Jevons, Wenger, and Walras brought about the "Marginal Revolution", which gave us the understanding that the reason water is so cheap for us is because we've already got so much of it. And this, in turn, allows us to understand that both sides of a transaction are unloading something they hold in (relative) excess for something that would increase their total utility function.
    • zeteo 15y ago
      Ah, but I didn't say anything about the reason why water is so cheap. (Smith would explain it takes little effort to procure it - not that different from the marginalist argument.) What matters for the issue at hand is that its utility can be a very small factor in its price.
      • pdonis 15y ago
• baddox 15y ago
  The RIAA doesn't sue you on the claim that you received some utility from the downloaded copy. They sue you simply because you made a copy. If I download a movie and absolutely hate it, or never even watch it, or it turns out to be terrible quality, then I didn't receive much utility from the pirated copy, but I'm still just as liable.
  • Karunamon 15y ago
    Actually, to my knowledge, the MafiAA has never sued someone for downloading a pirated copy of something - only for actually sharing out a copy (which they may or may not have had legal right to) to others (when they did not have any distribution rights in any case). Note: BitTorrent counts as doing both, by definition
• SkyMarshal 15y ago
  Agreed. Imho this argument that copying is not stealing does a real disservice to the cause. No, you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers, be it entertainment, knowledge or whatever, that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft. This is so transparent and obvious a flaw in the assertion that no trained lawyer (aka lawmakers) will suffer it, and the non-torrenting general public will remain mostly unconvinced. And when the ultimate goal is to force the content industry to open up, to switch from a business model based on artificial scarcity to one based on abundance, this argument is only going to do more harm than good. I think it would be much more productive to instead focus on the fact that the fundamental problem is that articifical-scarcity-creating, rent-seeking cartels like Hollywood and the music industry have no place in our emerging culture of digital abundance. That their attempt to maintain control of a resource, limit supply, and charge rents for access is increasingly only possible with government force. Further, as Steve Blank observes [1], we've seen this same thing play out over and over throughout history, any time a new technology made content more easily distributable, the content cartels vigorously opposed it, until finally losing, being forced to adapt, and eventually making more money than previously. There is a win-win-win way forward, that is just as if not more profitable, but it doesn't include things like DRM, DVD region codes, SOPA/PIPA, etc. Neither the content industry nor the current generation of lawmakers will be able to get us there, so it's up to those of us on the bleeding edge of technology and culture to, but making silly [2], easily-refuted arguments won't help at all. 1. http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-the-movie-industry-cant-innovate-and-the-result-is-sopa/ http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-the-movie-industry-cant... 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4
  • zeteo 15y ago
    >you're not stealing a thing when you copy it, but you are stealing the utility that it confers [...] that you would otherwise have had to pay for. You're taking value and not compensating for it, aka theft. I think our metaphors of property and theft are stretched to the breaking limit with digital content. When social rules first appeared, it was clearly wrong if Fred Flintstone made himself an awesome hat and Barney Rubble took it away; but not so clear if Barney just copied the exact design and made his own. Copyright and patents only appeared in the 18th century. They extended the notion of property into a sphere where it hadn't applied in the previous millenia. They also relied on the fact that, at the time, books and technical drawings couldn't be reproduced by the average person. Now here we are in a new millenium, with intellectual content trivially easy to duplicate, and we try to stretch some already strained notions much further. I think we need a paradigm change in this matter (and there are some interesting attempts going on out there). The RIAA's version of morality is not handed down from Heaven, you know: its rectitude is at least as questionable as its practicality.
• dkersten 15y ago
  Whether or not Joe blow's download of avatar for free is unfair against the store that stocks the DVD, the trucker who moved it, the actors, producers and supporting staff or the media ads that promoted it is another question. Ummm no. If Joe downloads avatar for free, he is not ripping off anyone who may have been involved in the production, distribution and sale of a DVD - he is ripping off those involved in the production, distribution and sale of a digital copy of avatar.mp4 The value lost is NOT that of the physical copy because no physical copy was stolen.
  • seunghomattyang 15y ago
    Then is it okay to pirate software too? For instance, is it okay for me to pirate all the apps from Mac App Store since I didn't steal any physical copies?
    • dkersten 15y ago
      I never said it was ok to do so. I also never said that nobody gets hurt by not paying. I just said that they weren't the people that maeon3 was suggesting and that saying that pirating the movie hurts everyone who was in some way involved in the production, distribution and sale of the DVD, but thats simply not true - the people involved in the production, distribution and sale of the digital version may be hurt and some of those people (certainly some of the people in the production) will be the same people, but the analogy is not anywhere close to being correct. Anyway, people who are pro piracy will tell you that yes, it is in fact ok to pirate software too. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, just saying that the hardcore pro piracy people do not find anything wrong regardless of what is being pirated. They will also disagree with the term "piracy", but whatever. is it okay for me to pirate all the apps from Mac App Store Sure, why not! My most used "app stores" are the Linux package managers and everything on them is free, so not paying for apps doesn't mean that availability will be affected. No, I'm not saying I think its ok to pirate, but your comment does read as pretty disingenuous to me. In any case, so many people share music, movies and software all the time without thinking about it, maybe its the businesses who should be adapting? If yesterdays business models are failing, instead of trying to shoehorn them to work through laws and regulations, maybe they should adapt? I'm personally involved in a music industry startup and we're doing exactly that - piracy is promotion to us. I'm also involved in other software things and spend a lot of time talking and thinking about game development and my conclusion is that piracy can largely be sidestepped in all of these markets by... adapting the business model to be piracy tolerant.
• fossuser 15y ago
  I think any argument that involves file sharing has to start with an understanding of copyright. I wrote a bit about it here: http://zacharyalberico.com/day/2012/01/24 http://zacharyalberico.com/day/2012/01/24. The utility and ownership arguments become more problematic in this context.
• hendrix 15y ago
  I'll take the pirated 1080p version that doesn't have unskipable adverts, copy protection, and the extra commentary track. I don't care about any of the "extra features" that Hollywood seems to sprinkle into every DVD. Their business model is broken, but they are not going to go down without a fight.
  • kamjam 15y ago
    I always find it funny that they force the legit users to sit through all that rubbish, having paid good money to watch the movie, yet the pirates skip through all that. I particularly hate the DVDs that force me to watch the trailers for upcoming releases. Come on, if I wanted to watch trailers then I'd go to the cinema! :)
• rdtsc 15y ago
  > The question comes down to how much Joe blow WOULD have paid for avatar.mp4 had his only option been to purchase a DVD, wait and rent it, or watch it at a friends house. So how do you answer that question. I would argue that many a Joe blow would have payed exactly $0. I used to see a lot of free movies because my friend worked for the local movie theater. And there were a good number o f movies after which I wanted my "free" back. Yes a good amount of media is so close to garbage that the cost is negative (they would have to pay me to watch). So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument.
  • sha90 15y ago
    > So assuming that pirate copy = a lost sale is a ridiculous argument. This seems like a ridiculous counter-argument to me. You are basically trying to say that because a pirated copy is not exactly equal to one lost sale, then it's not an issue at all... forgetting the fact that the ratio doesn't need to be 1:1 for money to be lost. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that "100 pirate copies = a lost sale", on average. That's still a lot of lost sales in the grand scheme of things, and that's a very conservative number. As a sidenote, your anecdotal evidence is just that-- you got lucky having a friend with connections, most people without said friend would probably bite the bullet and make the purchase if they couldn't get it online. Let me inject my own anecdotal evidence for a second: before the internet, I remember renting a lot more movies than I do now. The internet has cut down on the amount of money I give to these organizations, fact. And finally, whether or not Joe Blow got his money's worth is irrelevant, so who cares if you wanted your "free" back? The argument about value has little to do with the economic stance, unless you're trying to say, "it's ethical to steal if what you are stealing is crappy". I'd disagree with that statement too. I think most sane people would.
    • d0mine 15y ago
      If you consider piracy as a form of marketing then you see that "100 pirate copies == a sale that would not have happened otherwise" So it is not clear (at least it is not ridiculously clear) whether money are lost because of piracy. There is no moral obligation to support business practices based on obsolete technology. Copyright infringement is not stealing.