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A college degree is also not guaranteed to lead to a job immediately either, particularly if there are alternative sources of the expertise. (There is no equiva

A college degree is also not guaranteed to lead to a job immediately either, particularly if there are alternative sources of the expertise. (There is no equivalent to copyright, in that sense, guaranteeing a student the right to be the sole provider of their expertise because they paid to receive it...) Every sale is still a negotiation. I've said in the past that I think the economics of copies boils down to begging, but that seems a much harder sell when I say it first, so I like to argue a bit first... :) FWIW, I think people are also decrying the service-model appearing in games (similar to the Kindle model, where Amazon can delete your books) - recall the recent Microsoftie who was fired after some bad PR - so it looks to me like people are moving towards the same limiting equilibrium, with or without copyright: easy copying, and paying only when they feel an obligation. IMHO, we can get there the hard way (increasingly jack-booted copyright) or the easy way (accepting human nature and negotiating differently in light of it). (Note: I have edited the first paragraph a few times trying to be clearer, for lack of a perfect analogy.)

jiggy2011 13y ago
Getting a college degree will likely get you a job if there is demand in the area in which you did your degree. Imagine the situation where you get your CS degree but find that few people are willing to pay for programmers or software and the people who are willing to pay will still not pay very much yet the demand for software is still very high. Such a situation doesn't make sense in a rational market. Problem with piracy is that it isn't a "negotiation", a negotiation would imply that there are 2 sides attempting to reach a compromise. With piracy you can simply hit up TPB and download whatever you like without the consent of the author.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  "Such a situation doesn't make sense in a rational market." Tell that to philosophy majors. :) I can also turn on the radio and receive music for free, with ads. TPB has plenty of those (but isn't distributing anything themselves, so arguably isn't infringing... Perhaps they are facilitating, but if so they are largely facilitating non-commercial infringement; I can't imagine anyone downloading a movie and selling it would be common). Radio stations usually pay royalties, otherwise they would be commercially infringing copyright. I mention elsewhere that I can sympathize with commercial copyright enforcement. Non-commercial copyright infringement is harder to value IMHO. In the case of commercial copyright infringement, there is positive income, and the profit can be fought over. Now that we have dropped boxed distribution media and gone digital only for most types of content (and, importantly, I pay for my ISP), the "profit" to the infringer, and the cost to the originator, from any given copy is at best very ambiguous. The profit to argue over could be positive, non-existent, or negative (heck, they might be wasting their life, watching Game of Thrones, when they could be creating value). There is nothing obvious to fight over in the case of non-commercial copyright infringement, except the copy itself (whether the copier had the right to copy). But preventing copies needs a system similar to a cable TV network, not an amoebae-like Internet. I like the Internet and the ability to speak freely, and to mix what I find, too much to enforce copyright (even my own) anymore. It's taken a long time for me to get here, and I used to want to be a professional artist.
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    TPB do make money from advertising and I'm pretty sure they aren't cutting cheques from that to the artists/developers. The issue isn't so much the copies themselves, I could download every torrent on TPB and archive them on a stack of HDDs somewhere and it wouldn't hurt anybody. The issue is that there is no longer a requirement to pay to consume something where the business model requires that the consumer pay. Perhaps this is no longer a viable model, but the question is how to replace it? Does popular content simply move to locked down platforms? Do we deliver games under a SaaS model (WoW etc)? Both of these models have disadvantages to consumers, arguably it would be better if people simply refused to consume pirated goods and always paid the asking price but this seems unrealistic.
    - vy8vWJlco 13y ago
      Please don't think I'm not taking your question seriously, but I do think the future model is a donate button (I also say above, I think it boils down to begging). I do also consider this model sustainable since, even ignoring all the other ways fame can be monetized, the potential audience is 7 billion people and a gift of even $1 from even 0.001% is $100,000 - enough to justify most indie projects. But if that's too risky, I am encouraging people to put the horse back in front of the cart and to hit up people through kickstarter... (It still amounts to begging/patronage, but it's more predictable by being up-front.) The main difference between that and the old publisher-oriented model, is that creators have all the control over the terms. I would also love to see people release commercial stuff more under CC-SA and similar (even if they still charge for distribution), or the FOSS licenses - assuming they need one. There's no reason they can't generate income, even while being shown through a subscription. The license doesn't change the distribution model. (Ubuntu is asking for donations. I would love to see some stats.) I think people just need to get used to flying without a net (copyright). Take Netflix for example: they are producing their own shows. Like iTunes, all the content on Netflix can be torrented, but Netflix is easier for non-technical people. I don't even think copyright is necessary for either of Netflix's or iTunes' success. Netflix is a subscription, but I think they could make a similar amount if their shows were CC-SA licensed. People pay for both Netflix and iTunes because downloading is simply harder and more likely to give their computer an STD, even if the quality can be better ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5621119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5621119 ). Copyright still affects the food chain today, but Netflix has convinced me that they don't need copyright to keep the game going. What's more likely however, I think, is that we will see something like the 6.4/93.6 ratio continue into the future, painfully and in spite of copyright, and with much resentment, until that hostility turns to acceptance (though, by then we'll probably have other generational gaps to deal with) - assuming we can get through the next 10-20 years without a censorship/copyright-centric police state. 6.4% of 7 billion, for something priced as low as $1, is still revenue of 448 million, even without budging that ratio, so I have no doubt creators will do well. Edit: I don't feel like waiting 40 minutes for the reply button to appear on your comment, but I suppose only time will tell. In the mean time, the pro-copyright-ons and anti-copyright-ons will likely have to learn to live with each other, if for no other reason then so they don't collide and annihilate, sending us all back to the stone age (or industrial age).

jiggy2011 13y ago

Getting a college degree will likely get you a job if there is demand in the area in which you did your degree. Imagine the situation where you get your CS degree but find that few people are willing to pay for programmers or software and the people who are willing to pay will still not pay very much yet the demand for software is still very high. Such a situation doesn't make sense in a rational market. Problem with piracy is that it isn't a "negotiation", a negotiation would imply that there are 2 sides attempting to reach a compromise. With piracy you can simply hit up TPB and download whatever you like without the consent of the author.

vy8vWJlco 13y ago
"Such a situation doesn't make sense in a rational market." Tell that to philosophy majors. :) I can also turn on the radio and receive music for free, with ads. TPB has plenty of those (but isn't distributing anything themselves, so arguably isn't infringing... Perhaps they are facilitating, but if so they are largely facilitating non-commercial infringement; I can't imagine anyone downloading a movie and selling it would be common). Radio stations usually pay royalties, otherwise they would be commercially infringing copyright. I mention elsewhere that I can sympathize with commercial copyright enforcement. Non-commercial copyright infringement is harder to value IMHO. In the case of commercial copyright infringement, there is positive income, and the profit can be fought over. Now that we have dropped boxed distribution media and gone digital only for most types of content (and, importantly, I pay for my ISP), the "profit" to the infringer, and the cost to the originator, from any given copy is at best very ambiguous. The profit to argue over could be positive, non-existent, or negative (heck, they might be wasting their life, watching Game of Thrones, when they could be creating value). There is nothing obvious to fight over in the case of non-commercial copyright infringement, except the copy itself (whether the copier had the right to copy). But preventing copies needs a system similar to a cable TV network, not an amoebae-like Internet. I like the Internet and the ability to speak freely, and to mix what I find, too much to enforce copyright (even my own) anymore. It's taken a long time for me to get here, and I used to want to be a professional artist.
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  TPB do make money from advertising and I'm pretty sure they aren't cutting cheques from that to the artists/developers. The issue isn't so much the copies themselves, I could download every torrent on TPB and archive them on a stack of HDDs somewhere and it wouldn't hurt anybody. The issue is that there is no longer a requirement to pay to consume something where the business model requires that the consumer pay. Perhaps this is no longer a viable model, but the question is how to replace it? Does popular content simply move to locked down platforms? Do we deliver games under a SaaS model (WoW etc)? Both of these models have disadvantages to consumers, arguably it would be better if people simply refused to consume pirated goods and always paid the asking price but this seems unrealistic.
  - vy8vWJlco 13y ago
    Please don't think I'm not taking your question seriously, but I do think the future model is a donate button (I also say above, I think it boils down to begging). I do also consider this model sustainable since, even ignoring all the other ways fame can be monetized, the potential audience is 7 billion people and a gift of even $1 from even 0.001% is $100,000 - enough to justify most indie projects. But if that's too risky, I am encouraging people to put the horse back in front of the cart and to hit up people through kickstarter... (It still amounts to begging/patronage, but it's more predictable by being up-front.) The main difference between that and the old publisher-oriented model, is that creators have all the control over the terms. I would also love to see people release commercial stuff more under CC-SA and similar (even if they still charge for distribution), or the FOSS licenses - assuming they need one. There's no reason they can't generate income, even while being shown through a subscription. The license doesn't change the distribution model. (Ubuntu is asking for donations. I would love to see some stats.) I think people just need to get used to flying without a net (copyright). Take Netflix for example: they are producing their own shows. Like iTunes, all the content on Netflix can be torrented, but Netflix is easier for non-technical people. I don't even think copyright is necessary for either of Netflix's or iTunes' success. Netflix is a subscription, but I think they could make a similar amount if their shows were CC-SA licensed. People pay for both Netflix and iTunes because downloading is simply harder and more likely to give their computer an STD, even if the quality can be better ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5621119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5621119 ). Copyright still affects the food chain today, but Netflix has convinced me that they don't need copyright to keep the game going. What's more likely however, I think, is that we will see something like the 6.4/93.6 ratio continue into the future, painfully and in spite of copyright, and with much resentment, until that hostility turns to acceptance (though, by then we'll probably have other generational gaps to deal with) - assuming we can get through the next 10-20 years without a censorship/copyright-centric police state. 6.4% of 7 billion, for something priced as low as $1, is still revenue of 448 million, even without budging that ratio, so I have no doubt creators will do well. Edit: I don't feel like waiting 40 minutes for the reply button to appear on your comment, but I suppose only time will tell. In the mean time, the pro-copyright-ons and anti-copyright-ons will likely have to learn to live with each other, if for no other reason then so they don't collide and annihilate, sending us all back to the stone age (or industrial age).