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This reminds me of Record/Movie industries' "belief" that piracy robs them of billions of revenue. No. If some magical perfect anti-piracy field was in place

This reminds me of Record/Movie industries' "belief" that piracy robs them of billions of revenue. No. If some magical perfect anti-piracy field was in place the vast majority of people not paying for your crap would still be not paying for your crap. That money doesn't exist. Same here, inventing new taxes doesn't increase taxes (that much). It increases the incentive and energy expended on finding ways to avoid your new tax.

tzs 15y ago
> This reminds me of Record/Movie industries' "belief" that piracy robs them of billions of revenue. No. If some magical perfect anti-piracy field was in place the vast majority of people not paying for your crap would still be not paying for your crap. That money doesn't exist The record and movie industries are indeed wrong in their belief that every pirated copy represents a lost sale, but you are erring in the other direction. First, aside from people who are pirating a movie they don't know much about to try it out, generally people aren't pirating movies that they think are crap. It wastes their time, and if they have a bandwidth cap wastes their limited bandwidth. Second, most pirates, at least in the developed world, do have discretionary money for entertainment and other luxuries. If they could not pirate movies, the would most likely not give them up. They would reallocate their discretionary entertainment money so that they could get some movies. If a perfect anti-piracy technology were deployed, there would be two competing effects. 1. Many people would reallocate discretionary spending. The movie industry would gain. Restaurants, game companies, book publishers, fashion, and such would lose. 2. Piracy can serve to raise awareness of a movie, which increases demand among non-pirates. If piracy were stopped, the movie industry might have to raise advertising spends.

tzs 15y ago

> This reminds me of Record/Movie industries' "belief" that piracy robs them of billions of revenue. No. If some magical perfect anti-piracy field was in place the vast majority of people not paying for your crap would still be not paying for your crap. That money doesn't exist The record and movie industries are indeed wrong in their belief that every pirated copy represents a lost sale, but you are erring in the other direction. First, aside from people who are pirating a movie they don't know much about to try it out, generally people aren't pirating movies that they think are crap. It wastes their time, and if they have a bandwidth cap wastes their limited bandwidth. Second, most pirates, at least in the developed world, do have discretionary money for entertainment and other luxuries. If they could not pirate movies, the would most likely not give them up. They would reallocate their discretionary entertainment money so that they could get some movies. If a perfect anti-piracy technology were deployed, there would be two competing effects. 1. Many people would reallocate discretionary spending. The movie industry would gain. Restaurants, game companies, book publishers, fashion, and such would lose. 2. Piracy can serve to raise awareness of a movie, which increases demand among non-pirates. If piracy were stopped, the movie industry might have to raise advertising spends.