[bootlegga]

Mr_Canada Mr_Canada:

I don't actually know any Canadian piracy sites. I use ThePirateBay rather religiously for almost anything I want.

Isohunt?

[Public_Domain]

[BigKeithO]

RUEZ RUEZ:

It's funny the argument you guys put forward. How the business model is outdated or record companies are screwing artists so you're really not hurting anyone at all.

Ah where to start?... How about with economics 101? Basic economics says that as supply of something increases the cost of said item decreases. Now let's take digital music files. A digital file costs nothing more than time and a tiny little bit of electricity to duplicate, I can create as many copies of the file as I choose at the click of a button. According to economics 101 a supply that great must mean that the cost is now going to go down, correct? Funny you don't seem to see the costs of music files dropping now do you? Oh wait, P2P is free. Market forces at work. The business model does indeed seem to be outdated, you cannot artificially force a high price on an abundant resource.

RUEZ RUEZ:

Imagine if you started stealing gas because it's far more expensive than it should be, and after all the oil companies rake in billions and gas stations make next to nothing.

Stealing is the act of taking something from someone to deprive them of the use of said item for yourself. Stealing gas would mean I fill my car and get out of there as fast as possible without paying. In this case the gas station is deprived of the gas, it is gone, they cannot sell it to someone else. The gas station has lost out. With a digital music file nothing is missing, I still have my copy of the song and I can still listen to it and yet you also have a copy of the song. It is like there are magically two copies of the song somehow. How can creating another identical copy of something be stealing? No one was deprived of anything, in fact I just saved the recording industry the time and effort of creating another copy for someone! Stealing and Copyright Infringement are not the same thing, you just sound stupid pretending they are. The US Supreme Court (yes I know we are Canadian) agrees with me, unless you think you understand law better than they do?

RUEZ RUEZ:

That's right your excuse wouldn't work there either. You can try to justify it any way you want, but in the end you are stealing and absolutely nothing you say makes it right.

False -- I am infringing on a government granted monopoly that says I will not copy this.

RUEZ RUEZ:

You take something for free that the rights owner is trying to sell and you are stealing. If the artists are being screwed over then they aren't that smart.

The artists see pennies from the sale of a CD. Don't let these RECORDING INDUSTRY stats fool you. The MUSIC INDUSTRY is doing just fine, in fact it is growing. It is the recording industry that is in trouble here. Refer back to economics 101, the recording industry is trying to sell you an abundant good at high cost. It just won't work supply and demand my man, supply and demand.

RUEZ RUEZ:

For a second let's take the music industry out of the equation. Consider writers, we all know it's easy to download full books. Or how about software, and movies. Face it you guys are trying to justify your cheapness.

Again you are putting things online and they are becoming an abundant good. Price must go down, there is no getting around that. There are many, many examples of artists giving away free copies of their music (or movies or books if that makes you happy) and selling a scarce good instead. By bundling the abundant good with a scarce good you give your fans a reason to buy, simply decreeing that you deserve to get paid doesn't work anymore.

[Public_Domain]

[RUEZ]

bootlegga bootlegga:

RUEZ RUEZ:

Guess what? iTunes, or other online sellers will allow you to buy one song from an album. I guess you will be relieved now to know you can buy a single song and not freeload.

iTunes? Please.

Why would I pay for a song that I can only use where Apple lets me? That's ridiculous. If I buy a song, I should be able to listen to it when and how I want, not be locked into using one company's products only, and then only being able to use it on one piece of hardware at a time.

iTunes music is DRM free, you can indeed use it wherever you want.

[RUEZ]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Nope, it's not considered to be theft in Canada. So I will continue to d/l whatever music I want, and do so LEGALLY until that changes

You can be proud to know you are depriving someone of their right to profit from their work.

[Proculation]

BigKeithO BigKeithO:

RUEZ RUEZ:

It's funny the argument you guys put forward. How the business model is outdated or record companies are screwing artists so you're really not hurting anyone at all.

Ah where to start?... How about with economics 101? Basic economics says that as supply of something increases the cost of said item decreases. Now let's take digital music files. A digital file costs nothing more than time and a tiny little bit of electricity to duplicate, I can create as many copies of the file as I choose at the click of a button. According to economics 101 a supply that great must mean that the cost is now going to go down, correct? Funny you don't seem to see the costs of music files dropping now do you? Oh wait, P2P is free. Market forces at work. The business model does indeed seem to be outdated, you cannot artificially force a high price on an abundant resource.

I guess you know the "Pirate Party". That's exactly the basis of their thinking.

However, you missed economics 102: you consider only one variable: the cost of transmitting and storing the data. Intellectual property does have a cost.

When a pharma company puts a drug on the market, the pill itself cost almost nothing. Let's say, with all the chemicals and equipments used it cost 0.10$. So for 100 pills, it's only 10 dollars. However, you may buy them for 200$, 2$ a pill. Why ? Because there are hidden costs which in this case is the years of R&D to create the drug. All those years, scientists and chemists were paid even if the drug was not on the market. You also have to add to that the profit. Is it too big since it's a monopoly (the drug is patented by one company) ? That is arguable. But, saying that since the pill costs only 0.10$ it should be sold 0.10$ is non-sense.

The music industry is another thing, I know. They can sell items, make concerts, etc. But still, without the creation which is the song itself, their would not be any of that.

The movie industry is also another thing. What if people never cares about watching a movie in a theater and prefer to just download it. Let's say the movie is 1GB and 1GB download costs 0.50$ with your ISP. Does that mean the movie only worths that ? Plus, that 0.50$ won't go to the producer but to the ISP.

As I said, you can argue about the big profits they make. But, you can't argue that the creators have some rights on their creation. It costs money.

[Proculation]

Your point about supply and demand is only true with what you said: economics 101. We learn basic theoretical concepts in economics 101, to understand the concepts. But that's not real life.

We learn that in a truly competitive market with tons of same size companies who sell the exact same product, the price is where the supply and demand curves meet. That's theory. It doesn't happen in real life.

[BigKeithO]

Proculation Proculation:

The music industry is another thing, I know. They can sell items, make concerts, etc. But still, without the creation which is the song itself, their would not be any of that.

The movie industry is also another thing. What if people never cares about watching a movie in a theater and prefer to just download it. Let's say the movie is 1GB and 1GB download costs 0.50$ with your ISP. Does that mean the movie only worths that ? Plus, that 0.50$ won't go to the producer but to the ISP.

As I said, you can argue about the big profits they make. But, you can't argue that the creators have some rights on their creation. It costs money.

I won't talk about the Pharma industry here. Patents and copyright are similar but they don't both belong in this debate. As to your other points however...

"Without the creation which is the song itself..." That, my friend, is the crux of the argument. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe that artists shouldn't get paid, quite the opposite in fact. All that I am arguing is that the "old" recording industry contract no longer works to get the artist paid. The recording industry is in decline here people, NOT the artists. That is why people talk business models when they talk P2P. The recording industry (or the IFPI in this example) are not in the business of "making music". The musicians make the music, and the IFPI hardly represents the musicians. The IFPI is the "recording industry" and they represent the interests of the record labels who, while they may claim are in the music business, appear to believe they're really in the "music selling business" rather than (as they really are) the "music entertainment business." They believe their job is to distribute music, promote it, and get people to buy it. They make money by keeping that system closed and locked down. If they recognized they were really in the "entertaining people with music business" they should only be ecstatic about new technologies and services that make their job easier. In the case of file sharing systems, that was a tremendous new distribution and promotion system all rolled up in one -- and it cost them nothing. What a tremendous resource -- if they were actually in the music entertainment business and wanted to make it easier to promote and distribute music. They could leverage that infinitely available, free resource to promote and distribute music and musicians, and then use that to make money in other ways (concerts, sponsorships, endorsements, appearances, fan clubs, etc., etc., etc.,) But by limiting the definition of what business they were in by what their existing business model said they were selling, they chose to fight it.

The same is very much true of the MPAA, who represents the movie studios, and still seems to think they're in the business of selling movies. That's not true. People don't go out to the movies because it's "a movie." They go out to the movies to be entertained. They're in the entertainment business, and the industry is falling down miserably by making the movie going experience dreadful. They've taken the entertainment part out of the entertainment business as they focus so desperately on holding onto the "movie selling business" and in the process, they're finding it actually tougher to sell movies.

[bootlegga]

RUEZ RUEZ:

bootlegga bootlegga:

RUEZ RUEZ:

Guess what? iTunes, or other online sellers will allow you to buy one song from an album. I guess you will be relieved now to know you can buy a single song and not freeload.

iTunes? Please.

Why would I pay for a song that I can only use where Apple lets me? That's ridiculous. If I buy a song, I should be able to listen to it when and how I want, not be locked into using one company's products only, and then only being able to use it on one piece of hardware at a time.

iTunes music is DRM free, you can indeed use it wherever you want.

Only if you play it on an iPod. Try and play it on anything else...nada.

The iTunes movies aren't DRM free either, IMHO. I can watch them on my PC, but if I want to download it onto a stick and play it on my TV (or Blu-Ray), I can't. That is because of compatibility issues (iTunes formats in a format my Blu-Ray player/TV isn't capable of playing). You can argue that that is the TV's fault, but I see it as ITunes locking my file to prevent me from watching it where I want.

With iTunes, you can only use it on an iPod. Hardly DRM free...

[BigKeithO]

Proculation Proculation:

Your point about supply and demand is only true with what you said: economics 101. We learn basic theoretical concepts in economics 101, to understand the concepts. But that's not real life.

We learn that in a truly competitive market with tons of same size companies who sell the exact same product, the price is where the supply and demand curves meet. That's theory. It doesn't happen in real life.

Here, follow this think and read the article. It will debunk your argument far more eloquently than I can:

Saying You Can't Compete With FREE Is Saying You Can't Compete Period
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070215/002923.shtml

[Scape]

Drug companies have patents but they expire. Music industry doesn't because the copyright is forever, that is not sustainable and requires reform. Creative commons would be a way around that issue but I doubt someone who is trying to have a monopoly is truly interested in such a distribution.

[BigKeithO]

bootlegga bootlegga:

Only if you play it on an iPod. Try and play it on anything else...nada.

The iTunes movies aren't DRM free either, IMHO. I can watch them on my PC, but if I want to download it onto a stick and play it on my TV (or Blu-Ray), I can't. That is because of compatibility issues (iTunes formats in a format my Blu-Ray player/TV isn't capable of playing). You can argue that that is the TV's fault, but I see it as ITunes locking my file to prevent me from watching it where I want.

With iTunes, you can only use it on an iPod. Hardly DRM free...

iTunes MUSIC is all DRM free now. DRM free means you can play it on any device you want, it is just a straight MP3 file. This move is... fairly recent I guess, you could be talking about old school iTunes.

Video files from iTunes are still full of DRM, you are correct about that.

[Lemmy]

BigKeithO BigKeithO:

Ah where to start?... How about with economics 101? Basic economics says that as supply of something increases the cost of said item decreases. Now let's take digital music files. A digital file costs nothing more than time and a tiny little bit of electricity to duplicate, I can create as many copies of the file as I choose at the click of a button. According to economics 101 a supply that great must mean that the cost is now going to go down, correct? Funny you don't seem to see the costs of music files dropping now do you? Oh wait, P2P is free. Market forces at work. The business model does indeed seem to be outdated, you cannot artificially force a high price on an abundant resource.

Not to nitpick, but "cost" and "price" are different things. If you're gonna teach economics, teach it properly. And you certainly CAN "force a high price on an abundant resource". You've glossed over too many of the determinants of price (market structure, cost curves, capitalization, elasticity, etc). Maybe you'll get into all of that next September when you enroll in Economics 201.

[Proculation]

Lemmy Lemmy:

BigKeithO BigKeithO:

Ah where to start?... How about with economics 101? Basic economics says that as supply of something increases the cost of said item decreases. Now let's take digital music files. A digital file costs nothing more than time and a tiny little bit of electricity to duplicate, I can create as many copies of the file as I choose at the click of a button. According to economics 101 a supply that great must mean that the cost is now going to go down, correct? Funny you don't seem to see the costs of music files dropping now do you? Oh wait, P2P is free. Market forces at work. The business model does indeed seem to be outdated, you cannot artificially force a high price on an abundant resource.

Not to nitpick, but "cost" and "price" are different things. If you're gonna teach economics, teach it properly. And you certainly CAN "force a high price on an abundant resource". You've glossed over too many of the determinants of price (market structure, cost curves, capitalization, elasticity, etc). Maybe you'll get into all of that next September when you enroll in Economics 201.

(I was just going to say that )

The best example: water tax. At least in Canada.