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Costless copies. I hear this one a lot, one of my last room mates used to say this one a lot. Its so black and white isn't it? How stupid am I that I don't unde

Costless copies. I hear this one a lot, one of my last room mates used to say this one a lot. Its so black and white isn't it? How stupid am I that I don't understand this? Copies cost nothing, of course they don't. It doesn't cost YOU anything to copy it. Lets invert our perspective on that same concept. One copy of the movie (or TV show, or song) is purchased, lets say somehow its a blu-ray that costs $99.99. An inflated price to be certain, but it helps us illustrate our point as nearly all blu-rays cost less than this. Using the "costless copies" model you're suggesting that there is zero economic damage from this first purchaser posting copies online and all other content consumers instead drawing from these "costless copies". This is false. You may argue there is some middle ground but then this is a logarithmically decreasing cost or something of the like, not costless. People's concept of what defines zero or nothing (in the case of cost here) continually astounds me. Anyone who argues this "costless copies" model is at best selfish and ignorant, at worst a thief. You may counter this argument and say that its not something you would have paid for -- well you wanted it on some level or you wouldn't have pirated it. These people continually want to have their cake and eat it too. There is little difference, morally, between this and me coming to your house, kidnapping you and forcing you to work for me, maybe you're an accountant or a laborer or something I could use, but probably wouldn't just pay for. (If you're still a fan of extreme, over-simplified analogies like "costless copies" we can call this slavery -- something we've nearly universally agreed is wrong.) The difference of course being that you can disconnect yourself from it by doing it online. If you're about to make the counter argument that unlike the movie you downloaded and watched, I actually need an accountant, or labor, don't. You wanted the movie enough to pirate it, and spend two hours watching it. Do yourself a favor and stop making yourself look like so foolish by citing this costless copies bull. Its infuriating to see otherwise very intelligent people make such a blind and over-simplified claim. You might have a hard time accepting this but both sides of the argument are "manipulating morality".

celegans 12y ago
The key difference between the tyranny of "costless copies" and slavery is the arrow of time. The work is already done, but it was done with a hope that something might become of it. I guess (to follow in this long-held tradition of contriving emotional pleas in defense or against intellectual property) this isn't entirely unlike pulling out of a war. There's a deep repugnance to the notion that thousands of people have given their lives in vain, and that the hope which drove them was never fulfilled. Yet we would never mistake their sacrifice as slavery nor even tantamount to it, because of the chronology. The fact that for the 20th century, the economy of movies and the tastes of the consumer were so consistently aligned that tinseltown could churn dozens of hundred-million dollar artistic edifices on a regular basis is remarkable and profound. And indeed, it'd be tragic if the advent of the digital age meant that cinema were done for—and all we had in its place was a hundred million amateur Vines and YouTube videos.
- ticviking 12y ago
  That's just it, the arrow of time. It makes all the difference in the world. A slave is made to work with no promise of recompense, and is denied their autonomy. It is a state defined by dehumanization and coercion. Slaves have a very small decision tree, ("do as they are told" OR ("be beaten" AND ("Do as they are told" OR "Be killed for insubordination") OR "Try and escape and hope you're not killed for it") When they worked, someone took the RISK, that they could somehow make a profit selling copies of the work to the public. They paid the employees, either in cash, or as an agreed upon share of any profits. It is no different than a VC taking a risk, that I will like Vine enough to buy whatever their in-app purchase is. The fact that a "costless copy" exists does not introduce an element of coercion to the risk the producer is taking, all it does is increase the risk. Pretending that copying is the same as theft was already ridiculous, doing so with slavery borders on the offensive.
scotty79 12y ago
By cost-less copy I just meant that the cost of making another functional copy of information is currently hovering near 0. Years ago copies required infrastructure to make them and they were almost only means of distribution of information and you could hide the fraction of the cost of creation of this information in the price of a copy. That's no longer viable strategy. Sooner people get that, sooner we'll get more honest future. Clean copy costs nothing. If a copy costs you then it's the cost of material waste plus cost of intellectual waste (DRM) plus fraction of the cost of the creation of this information plus healthy share for guys who set up all this chain to profit from it while creating nothing apart from this business model. If you wan't to be moral just download the torrent, track down guys who actually created the art and send them some cash.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  Years ago copies required infrastructure to make them The cost of duplication was never a large part of the equation. If you could get theaters to book the picture then the additional 35mm prints were paid for. You could open a film across 3000 screens for $5 million. Likewise duplication on DVD or Blu-ray disc is a tiny part of video distributors' outlay. It's the first print/disc master that costs money to produce. Duplication expenses are like 5% of the overhead, unless someone has horrendously miscalculated. If you wan't to be moral just download the torrent, track down guys who actually created the art and send them some cash. Protip: this never happens. Look at the credits of a movie, see that long list of names at the end; the vast majority of those people put in a fair amount of work to get the picture made. Nobody wants to write out 150 checks to different people who helped along the way, that's part of the producers' job. Even the shittiest no-budget straight-to-video film shot with a prosumer camera represents 2-3 man-years of work.
  - scotty79 12y ago
    > Nobody wants to write out 150 checks to different people who helped along the way So it's better to pay some other guy that set up whole unnecessary and obsolete delivery chain instead of picking one of those 150 guys at random?
curun1r 12y ago
@ $99.99, the cost of posting that material free online is probably pretty close to zero. Every download does not represent lost revenue. Only those downloads that take the place of purchases do. How many people torrenting a movie would be willing to pay $99.99 for the BluRay? Not many. Those downloads become a lot more relevant as the cost of legally consuming content drops. The thing that I've been continually amazed by is the industry's fascination on eliminating or limiting people viewing their content without paying. This is a meaningless metric and one that puts them at odds with their customers. If they had, instead, focused on increasing the average amount that each person spends on content, they'd not only make more money, but they'd be in the business of giving customers what they want and they'd truly be taking advantage of the zero marginal cost of their product. As long as I'm spending as much as I'm willing to spend on entertainment, the industry should want me watching everything they produce. The per-view or per-piece-of-content profit is only meaningful in a world where each copy they sell costs them money. When me viewing a piece of content costs them nothing, they should only be concerned that I'm paying for content, not that I'm paying for each piece of content.

celegans 12y ago

The key difference between the tyranny of "costless copies" and slavery is the arrow of time. The work is already done, but it was done with a hope that something might become of it. I guess (to follow in this long-held tradition of contriving emotional pleas in defense or against intellectual property) this isn't entirely unlike pulling out of a war. There's a deep repugnance to the notion that thousands of people have given their lives in vain, and that the hope which drove them was never fulfilled. Yet we would never mistake their sacrifice as slavery nor even tantamount to it, because of the chronology. The fact that for the 20th century, the economy of movies and the tastes of the consumer were so consistently aligned that tinseltown could churn dozens of hundred-million dollar artistic edifices on a regular basis is remarkable and profound. And indeed, it'd be tragic if the advent of the digital age meant that cinema were done for—and all we had in its place was a hundred million amateur Vines and YouTube videos.

ticviking 12y ago
That's just it, the arrow of time. It makes all the difference in the world. A slave is made to work with no promise of recompense, and is denied their autonomy. It is a state defined by dehumanization and coercion. Slaves have a very small decision tree, ("do as they are told" OR ("be beaten" AND ("Do as they are told" OR "Be killed for insubordination") OR "Try and escape and hope you're not killed for it") When they worked, someone took the RISK, that they could somehow make a profit selling copies of the work to the public. They paid the employees, either in cash, or as an agreed upon share of any profits. It is no different than a VC taking a risk, that I will like Vine enough to buy whatever their in-app purchase is. The fact that a "costless copy" exists does not introduce an element of coercion to the risk the producer is taking, all it does is increase the risk. Pretending that copying is the same as theft was already ridiculous, doing so with slavery borders on the offensive.

scotty79 12y ago

By cost-less copy I just meant that the cost of making another functional copy of information is currently hovering near 0. Years ago copies required infrastructure to make them and they were almost only means of distribution of information and you could hide the fraction of the cost of creation of this information in the price of a copy. That's no longer viable strategy. Sooner people get that, sooner we'll get more honest future. Clean copy costs nothing. If a copy costs you then it's the cost of material waste plus cost of intellectual waste (DRM) plus fraction of the cost of the creation of this information plus healthy share for guys who set up all this chain to profit from it while creating nothing apart from this business model. If you wan't to be moral just download the torrent, track down guys who actually created the art and send them some cash.

anigbrowl 12y ago
Years ago copies required infrastructure to make them The cost of duplication was never a large part of the equation. If you could get theaters to book the picture then the additional 35mm prints were paid for. You could open a film across 3000 screens for $5 million. Likewise duplication on DVD or Blu-ray disc is a tiny part of video distributors' outlay. It's the first print/disc master that costs money to produce. Duplication expenses are like 5% of the overhead, unless someone has horrendously miscalculated. If you wan't to be moral just download the torrent, track down guys who actually created the art and send them some cash. Protip: this never happens. Look at the credits of a movie, see that long list of names at the end; the vast majority of those people put in a fair amount of work to get the picture made. Nobody wants to write out 150 checks to different people who helped along the way, that's part of the producers' job. Even the shittiest no-budget straight-to-video film shot with a prosumer camera represents 2-3 man-years of work.
- scotty79 12y ago
  > Nobody wants to write out 150 checks to different people who helped along the way So it's better to pay some other guy that set up whole unnecessary and obsolete delivery chain instead of picking one of those 150 guys at random?

curun1r 12y ago

@ $99.99, the cost of posting that material free online is probably pretty close to zero. Every download does not represent lost revenue. Only those downloads that take the place of purchases do. How many people torrenting a movie would be willing to pay $99.99 for the BluRay? Not many. Those downloads become a lot more relevant as the cost of legally consuming content drops. The thing that I've been continually amazed by is the industry's fascination on eliminating or limiting people viewing their content without paying. This is a meaningless metric and one that puts them at odds with their customers. If they had, instead, focused on increasing the average amount that each person spends on content, they'd not only make more money, but they'd be in the business of giving customers what they want and they'd truly be taking advantage of the zero marginal cost of their product. As long as I'm spending as much as I'm willing to spend on entertainment, the industry should want me watching everything they produce. The per-view or per-piece-of-content profit is only meaningful in a world where each copy they sell costs them money. When me viewing a piece of content costs them nothing, they should only be concerned that I'm paying for content, not that I'm paying for each piece of content.