3 ms·

Fraud and embezzlement cause actual material harm to people. If someone pirates a game, has the publisher been harmed? No, they've just missed out on what mig

Fraud and embezzlement cause actual material harm to people. If someone pirates a game, has the publisher been harmed? No, they've just missed out on what might have been a sale. We need to stop making these silly analogies. Only then will we be able to attack the real problem - that we have no historical guidance on how to tackle piracy, and have not yet come up with a way that makes sense.

rayiner 14y ago
> Fraud and embezzlement cause actual material harm to people. If someone pirates a game, has the publisher been harmed? No, they've just missed out on what might have been a sale. This is a ridiculous trope. Say I take a Luis Vuitton bag from a store, leaving an amount of money that precisely compensates LVMH for the cost of replacing and restocking the bag, along with the fair rental value of the bag during the time until it is restocked. No harm no foul right? LVMH has not been materially harmed, right? They are in exactly the same position they would be if I hadn't taken the bag. Since I compensated them for the marginal cost of the bag, all they have lost is the potential profit on a potential sale, and there is after all no guarantee I could have afforded the bag anyway, right? In our system, we don't measure harm in terms of the cost to put someone back to the status quo ante. We also include the expected profit. E.g. if you breach a contract with someone, which causes them to lose $200, you don't just owe them the $200, you owe them the $200 plus their expected profit on the contract. We do this because in our system, people are entitled to the benefit of the bargain. People are entitled to profit from the difference between what the market will pay for a good and the cost of producing the good, even when the marginal cost of that good approaches zero. Re: analogies, analogies are tremendously valuable. They show us how things that seem different can actually be understood in terms of familiar concepts. The harm from copying is actually a perfect scenario in which analogies are useful. The common refrain among people who are pro-piracy is that the marginal cost of a copy approaches zero, so "no harm" is done by copying. This is based on the fallacy that digital copying is somehow sui generis. Yet, analogizing to other situations shows us that in the rest of the law, we don't protect the marginal cost--we protect the sale price. We protect peoples' right to profit from the market price of their products. The fact that the marginal cost of producing a good is 35% of the sale price (iPhone) or 5% of the sale price (LVMH bag), or 1% of the sale price (textbook) or 0.1% of the sale price (an MP3) is irrelevant.
anigbrowl 14y ago
If someone pirates a game, has the publisher been harmed? No, they've just missed out on what might have been a sale. I can't pay the mortgage with stats from the Pirate Bay. 10,000 people viewing my film for free is satisfying on an artistic level, but 1000 people paying a $ for the privilege is what actually puts food on the table. I don't want to get into a long argument and Rayiner is making these points excellently, but I'd like to point out that profit and loss are not abstractions that happen only to already-rich people in Beverly Hills who will have to be content with only one Ferrari this year.

rayiner 14y ago

> Fraud and embezzlement cause actual material harm to people. If someone pirates a game, has the publisher been harmed? No, they've just missed out on what might have been a sale. This is a ridiculous trope. Say I take a Luis Vuitton bag from a store, leaving an amount of money that precisely compensates LVMH for the cost of replacing and restocking the bag, along with the fair rental value of the bag during the time until it is restocked. No harm no foul right? LVMH has not been materially harmed, right? They are in exactly the same position they would be if I hadn't taken the bag. Since I compensated them for the marginal cost of the bag, all they have lost is the potential profit on a potential sale, and there is after all no guarantee I could have afforded the bag anyway, right? In our system, we don't measure harm in terms of the cost to put someone back to the status quo ante. We also include the expected profit. E.g. if you breach a contract with someone, which causes them to lose $200, you don't just owe them the $200, you owe them the $200 plus their expected profit on the contract. We do this because in our system, people are entitled to the benefit of the bargain. People are entitled to profit from the difference between what the market will pay for a good and the cost of producing the good, even when the marginal cost of that good approaches zero. Re: analogies, analogies are tremendously valuable. They show us how things that seem different can actually be understood in terms of familiar concepts. The harm from copying is actually a perfect scenario in which analogies are useful. The common refrain among people who are pro-piracy is that the marginal cost of a copy approaches zero, so "no harm" is done by copying. This is based on the fallacy that digital copying is somehow sui generis. Yet, analogizing to other situations shows us that in the rest of the law, we don't protect the marginal cost--we protect the sale price. We protect peoples' right to profit from the market price of their products. The fact that the marginal cost of producing a good is 35% of the sale price (iPhone) or 5% of the sale price (LVMH bag), or 1% of the sale price (textbook) or 0.1% of the sale price (an MP3) is irrelevant.

anigbrowl 14y ago

If someone pirates a game, has the publisher been harmed? No, they've just missed out on what might have been a sale. I can't pay the mortgage with stats from the Pirate Bay. 10,000 people viewing my film for free is satisfying on an artistic level, but 1000 people paying a $ for the privilege is what actually puts food on the table. I don't want to get into a long argument and Rayiner is making these points excellently, but I'd like to point out that profit and loss are not abstractions that happen only to already-rich people in Beverly Hills who will have to be content with only one Ferrari this year.