HiTempguy wrote:
You say piracy needs to follow a revenue stream to be lucrative (amid all of the pontificating and wordiness of your posts). Is that not what you meant? Lucrative means there is something gained. A pirate does not gain wealth (typically, yes, there are exceptions).
Sorry about the verboseness, I have a tough time communicating otherwise.
I have a unique insight on piracy compared to most guys on this car forum as I run Anime conventions, and we have had rampant piracy problems for 20 years. The biggest problem in the fight is that people don't actually understand what piracy is...
okay, let me explain:
1- Piracy, whatever the reasons people partake in it, does not exist in a vaccum of consideration for economics. Yes, lucrative means something to gain, but you seem to be taking the view that lucrative is synonamous with making piles and piles of money. I went looking around online just now, and some contemporary dictionaries use lucrative like that, but when I was using it, I meant in a more original sense of the word.
Lucrative in this case is any gain by economy. Accumulated wealth is one measure, but not the only measure. And piracy must be self-sustaining enough to continue, meaning the cost of pirating must remain low enough in proportion to whatever gain is made for all parties.
2- A pirate is a term for describing everyone in the transaction. A person who uploads a song they don't own and the person who downloads it are both pirates. The pirate who downloads, or even buys bootleg, is accumulating more wealth than they otherwise would've had before the transaction. Even if you make an arguement that if someone couldn't pirate it in the first place, they wouldn'tve bought the good legitimately; that doesn't change the fact that they are now in possession of a good AND still have the economic position they had before getting the good to spend on other things, still representing a net gain.
No, in the case of (for instance) these textbooks, there is a demonstrated cost that it is appropriate for the company to sell them at. By having a monopoly on the product, they then charge astronomical prices for it but in this case, only to those in North America. What is "right" about that? That they can? I guess.
Here's is where it breaks down. Who defines a demonstrated cost that is appropriate? Or more importantly, whom do you want to give the force of law to define that?
And to the 2nd section, we already have anti-trust laws covering actual collusion and monopolies. If you feel these laws don't represent the problem you want to address, thats fine. But in both cases, the laws setup definitions for what real collusion is and real monopolies are.
In the case of a textbook for a college course; the college sets cirriculum. If they only list one book for the syllabus, then thats between you and the college, not you and the book publisher. If the publisher somehow works out an agreement with the college to be the only book on the syllabus, then that runs up against collusion. But if thats not the case, and one pirates the book, then what is right about the publisher not receiving any compensation in that transaction for the work they did in assembling it, just because someone disagrees with the price they want to sell it at? Its their property, not yours.
Your point is lost on me. What I am getting from you is "stealing is bad, mkay?" and "stealing can't be justified".
My first point was that I view the righteous indignation from some parties participating in the blackout as ringing very hollow to me. I havent found a convincing arguement that they -do- care about piracy ethically beyond the absolute letter of current law.
