The reason why I don't pirate everything is because I want to see more of whatever I had brought. It's not a legal or a moral question. The question is, do you want more of this?
Let's say I pirate something and I turn around and buy a copy. I didn't do it out of the kindness of my heart, I did it as an investment for more of the same in the future.
If you spent $5,000 developing a game or shooting a movie, and as soon as it was released (or, sometimes, beforehand) anyone could copy it whenever they wanted and no one was expected to pay you for it, do you think you'd make you $5,000 back?
This situation already exists yet the market is still here. In China where they don't give a ****, they still make movies, massive epics with thousands of extras and they continue to do so because there is money in it even with industrialised bootlegging. Bollywood gets stronger every year. There are indie
developers that spend upwards of 5/6 figures on a game and they make that back without issue.
Plenty of new innovations are coming out in this free environment, including new ways of funding development with kick starter programs, indie funds, direct end user funded development. The older models are still here, you can go to the big publishers, but now it is no longer the only option. This is literally voting with your dollars in action.
"
Fair use" (Effectively limited legalised copyright infringement)is worth almost double in added value to the US economy than copyright @ 2.2
Trillion dollars.
Now abolishing copyright would make the whole exercise moot. There has to be some level of protection to prevent people from copying your product and selling it as their own. Laws should be a shield, not a weapon and the people who wrote SOPA/PIPA in every way to be a weapon as will their future attempts will be. No one wants them, but they
bully, threaten,
plot in secret(ACTA), using the US government power to pass laws in foreign countries without representation of the citizens who had earlier rejected such law. Copyright laws are already too strong when you have a company suing a
Timezone database and almost winning just from the threat alone because they are a timezone database with no legal resources.
There are people like TJ that think saving the Music and Movie industry
$89 million is worth sacrificing the internet over. I won't summarise that article as I can't do it justice it deserves.(Thank you MegaByte for the link earlier) That is 28.9
CENTS per person in direct ecomonic damage caused by piracy assuming that it doesn't have positive effects or assuming that there is a level of economic damage that would call for the destruction of the internet not offset by the internet itself.
Lastly corporations maybe made up of people(Not always, see
shell corporations), but they are not people and they don't represent people. They are a legal construct used to mitigate personal risks in business. It is a useful construct, it lowers risks by pooling and limiting liability, help people work towards a singular goal regardless of motivations, creed or ability, increased productivity through scales of economy and enable big projects by pooling resources.
But never, ever mistake a company as a "person".
Topic: Nintendo Wises Up (Read 69104 times)
