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I think you're misunderstanding everyone here. "Scarcity" is a technical term in the academic field of economics, and was being used as such. You appeared to th
by laughinghan 14y ago
I think you're misunderstanding everyone here. "Scarcity" is a technical term in the academic field of economics, and was being used as such. You appeared to think tikhonj meant that the labels were limiting the supply of music to a fixed number of copies, making copies of the music "scarce" in the sense you're used to.
tikhonj then attempted to clarify what she or he meant, but rather than explaining that your interpretation, while reasonable, was different from what was meant, just went ahead and explained the economics definition of "scarcity". Based on this later reply, you appear to have read that as tikhonj disagreeing with you on what scarcity is, rather than clarifying what she or he meant. Your reply at the time "I still don't see how", however, doesn't make this clear at all.
Now, SoftwareMaven and tikhonj both interpret your reply as you not seeing how the music industry has, in fact, created "scarcity", in the technical sense, and proceed to reason through exactly how the actions of the music labels resulted in a phenomenon that satisfies the technical definition of "scarcity".
Isn't it amusing when humans try to communicate?
- res0nat0r 14y agoIt sounds like what is trying to be said is that the labels are somehow in the wrong trying to force people to pay for every copy of an mp3 album, but that since it is so easy to copy digital media that they should be allowing this to happen for free without consequence.
- boboblong 14y agoIf Person A buys a song, rips it, and puts it on bittorrent, when Person B downloads one or more copies he has not stolen anything from anyone nor broken any contract with anyone.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoHe has stolen the time and effort of the person who created the song. This is not hard to understand. You may choose not to understand it, but you're playing a game with yourself that the rest of us are not obligated to accept.
- X-Istence 14y agoThe time and effort were already expended. You can't steal those anymore than you can "steal" a digital file you made a copy of. If I build an app and sell it for a $1 and someone purchases it for that amount and then makes a copy for his friend I have simply missed out on revenue, but my time wasn't stolen nor was my app.
- boboblong 14y agoYou can't steal abstract nouns.