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Ok, here goes (from my perspective, obviously): 1) If the costs of distribution are high enough that rights holders will not make a profit, they may cease dist
by fphhotchips 12y ago
Ok, here goes (from my perspective, obviously):
1) If the costs of distribution are high enough that rights holders will not make a profit, they may cease distribution to avoid the loss. This is fine and fair and good.
2) Distribution by others at that point by definition represents no loss to the rights holder, so long as there is no marginal cost to the rights holder. For example, an online game may represent a continuing marginal cost to the rights holder if they are still running servers, but pirating a movie represents zero marginal cost.
3) Therefore, it is not immoral to pirate a work where the rights holder has made it impossible to obtain the film through legal, profit generating channels.
------- LINE OF MORAL AMBIGUITY -------
4) Where a rights holder makes it unreasonably difficult to obtain a work, either through price, geographical distribution or unnecessary technical encumberment, one may cease to be a potential profit generating customer of the rights holder.
5) Therefore, pirating (again with 0 marginal cost to the rights holder) is not immoral, as the rights holder is not losing potential profit as a result.
- anigbrowl 12y agoDistribution by others at that point by definition represents no loss to the rights holder Oh yes it does. What if the rightsholder can't afford to legally distribute it, but hopes to be able to at a later stage eg due to lowering of technical costs? Copyright infringement substantially reduces the net present value of an IP asset. Because the marginal cost of torrenting etc. is virtually zero, it's easy for copyright infringers to permanently crowd out rights holders. The bait-and-switch in a lot of pro-piracy arguments, which many proponents are not really conscious of, is that the rights holders are not monolithic. You're telling today's film production companies and professionals that they don't deserve to get paid because of what other firms did in the past. A vast amount of film production is carried out by small startup-like businesses that have about as much in common with the big studios as a small-time app developer has with Apple Computer. Should I be able to download apps for free because iPhones are expensive?