"To me a data service is lot like my water line. I pay for what I use. Now I can drink that water, use it on my phone; wash clothes with it, use it on my PC; or shower with it, use it on my iPod Touch."
I don't think you'll ever see change at the xxAA's; they will become irrelevant before they adapt.
I personally think what's more likely to happen is that they'll start to become irrelevant and finally change before they disappear completely. Yes, the people who do the hiring all have the same mentality, but "new blood" comes to every organization, albiet at a slow pace. What could happen is that you'll see a succession of MPAA presidents either resigning in frustration or being forced out for not solving that darn piracy problem.
The problem is that the MPAA isn't like a "normal" business. In the normal business world, you can have a young, agile company take business away from the older, bureaucratic company. But the MPAA is like a monopoly. I think that they will be forced to change at some point, but because of their singular role in Hollywood, they'll survive after finally being forced to change.
Sooner or later -- and judging by Chairman Dodd's speech, it'll be later -- the industry will have to move from moralism to pragmatism.
Does anyone else find it ironic that Hollywood is accused of being morally bankrupt while at the same time their focus on morality issues is preventing them from looking for workable business models to deal with "theft"?
The only way you have a system that doesn't encourage profts (not over health, just profits) would be to entirely, completely, and totally socialize the medical field
You're fond of hyperbole, aren't you? You're either exagerating or just plain see things in a completely binary fashion. I'm not saying it would be easy, but isn't it worth a shot to try to at least address some of the problems which arise from treating drug patents like any other product in our capitalist system?
The real problems in the US start and end with a liability system in the US that allows for damage awards so high, that the risks of putting a drug on the market often outweigh any potential for income, and that this liablity risk has to be priced into every pill sold.
I would agree that this is a big part of the problem.
Remember, generic drug companies are playing the safest cards: They get meds after they have been on the market for years, they don't produce generic duds, only hits with low risk. That is how they can price much lower.
Mike certainly and anyone else who has a general understanding of this topic knows this. No one is suggesting that all drugs could be developed (under our current system) and sold for what the generics cost. This would be a straw man argument. My take on the situation is that many people think that the costs of drugs are unnaturally inflated, even for a capitalist system.
You cannot ignore the expensive failures and drugs that "fail during clinical trials" that cost millions with no return possible.
you never seem to consider that perhaps many life saving drugs would not be created (or not created as promptly) without patent protections.
A quick search of TD articles with the "Drugs" tag disproves your statement. But in case your "never" was hyperbole...
Mike does in fact consider the costs and incentives to create new costs. As for the costs, he points out that the costs are often overinflated. For example, much of the research is based on government of university research. Another example is the huge amount of money that goes into marketing. (You don't need marketing to heal people; you need marketing to make money from healing people.) And as for the incentives, another point that Mike makes is that even if you accept the fact that patents are needed to recoup the cost of creating a new drug, this is the wrong system to begin with. The system as it is now encourages profits over health. This is messed up because a country would be far better off (financially, etc) with more of its citizens being healthy rather than the system we have where only lip service is paid to the health benefits.
OK, let me summarize your post. You define theft and copyright, then admit that the two concepts are in fact analogous (which is the point of the thread to which you replied). Then you give an example where the two concepts are different (which incidentally has no effect whatsoever on whether they are analogous).
I see your point. And while I acknowledge that WalMart implements quite a bit of security that isn't apparent to the end customers, I also take at face value the statements in the TD post about how WalMart has a very liberal return policy that accepts items which are clearly from other stores. My point is that even this amount of "accepting" illegal behavior is galaxies away from the actions of the MPAA and other large media companies.
Since they aren't spending hundreds of millions, but are in fact losing hundreds of millions, your point is meaningless.
The music companies represented by the MPAA are losing hundreds of millions of dollars? Citation required, please. (Right, only if you use the same kind of creative accounting used by the MPAA where a download is equated on a one to one basis with a "lost" sale.)
Had the music industry throw up their arms and said "yeah, take it all" they would already be gone, you freeloaders would have emptied them out a long, long time ago.
Oh, I see how it is. Because I disagree with you, I must of course be an illegal downloader. Way to jump to conclusions.
If so, then how do you expect to use these terms interchangeably and still be taken seriously
I didn't think I'd be defening average_joe today, but...if you equate "analogous" to "use these terms interchangeably", you're either being unintentionally obtuse or intentionally misleading.
And how exactly is this relevent to whether the two concepts are analogous? Just because two concepts have "some pretty big differences" doesn't mean they can't also have some key similarities. Many differences != Completely different.
Seems analogous to me. In both cases someone commits an act that interferes with another person's rights.
I agree. Stealing and copyright infringement are analogous. They both do interfere with people's right and that's enough for a valid analogy. But then again, I apparently have a much looser definition of "analogous" than most people. Some people seem to think that unless two things are almost identical, they're not analogous. My take on it is that if there is a key similarity, then they're analogous.
Now, having said this, I am still very much in favor of making the distinction between theft and copyright infringement. They are indeed two different concepts and should be treated differently because of the number of ways they are different. But to deny that they are at least analogous does a disservice to your overall argument.
What's behind this denial anyway? In peoples' minds, are they thinking, "Well, I know that theft and copyright infringment do have some key similarities, but I can't admit that because people like average_joe and The Anti Mike won't understand the nuances, so I'll just pretend that they don't."
All Walmart has done is weigh the costs of adding security and being stricter with the bottom line sales numbers. They compare A to B and figure it out. They just combine all of those things (theft, unusable returns, return fraud) as shrinkage.
You say "all" that WalMart did like it's a small thing. It's not. WalMart did a cost/benefit analysis and based their actions on that analysis. They didn't let the emotional response -- "But they're stealing from us!" -- guide their actions.
Now, if the MPAA did that same analysis, taking into account their particular situation, and stuck to the results, they wouldn't be putting so much effort into pushing back the tide. They'd take the truckloads of money being spent on lawyers and Chief Content Protection Officers and spend it on experimenting with new business models that accepted the new reality the Internet has brought.
As you point out, the shrinkage rates are vastly larger with digital content, but that doesn't mean there isn't still money to be made. The problem is that, relatively speaking, the MPAA are trying to implement security "that make the TSA look like pussy cats." And where has that got them? With a long series of pyrric victories, that's where.
So, even though the comparison of copying to stealing is faulty, the point still stands that increased "content protection" hurts both the legitimate customers and the bottom line more than it hurts the "freeloaders and thieves".
Great observation. I don't know if TD has already commented on this, but I'd be very curious to find out more about who's behind this policy at WalMart. Whoever pitched the idea couldn't have had an easy time of it, but they apparently got it implemented. It'd be very interesting to see how they overcame the "But they're stealing from us!" reaction. Maybe some of those Chief Content Protection Officers should talk to WalMart's executive officers.
Well, since the primary purpose of both trademark and warning labels is consumer protection, then if you had to choose which is more important - because of space limitations, for example -- it would obviously be warning labels. The only way that there is any kind of real conflict is if you view trademark as some kind of property instead of a means of protecting the consumer. But no one things that, right?
Liability for losses NOT RECOVERED SHOULD fall on the manufacturer and NOT the casino. BUT the RESPONSIBILITY for the ACTIONS of the Gamblers still falls on them.
Based on the above, it sounds like our thoughts on this topic are close, so why the ad hominem attacks? Have you considered the possibility that the person you're talking to may not actually be "clueless" or "stupid", but there may just be a simple misunderstanding between two people?
If it was simply inserting the coin I can see some gray area, but from a simply moral stand point it is still theft.
Whether the term "theft" applies in either of the cases is irrelevent to the point of whether the slot machine manufacture bears at least some of the responsiblity. The other poster, Jan Breens, may be viewing this in terms of legal liability, but Mike didn't use that term. He just suggested that the manufacturer may be partly "responsible".
One one side, I think that, if you intentionally "trick" a slot machine to give you more of a payout than you know you deserve, you should be punished according to the law. You knew it was wrong, but did it anyway. That's very clear in my mind. But if you had to assign some subjective "responsiblity percentage" to the manufacturer for the overall problem, shouldn't that be something greater than 0? In other words, regardless of whether the manufacturer is legally liable to provide reimbursement, can't you at least say that their programming of the machine was part of the chain of events which directly led to the theft and therefore bears some moral responsibility? Or can a company just put out flawed products and have no responsibility at all?
But none of this implies the manufacture bears any responsibility in the theft that has taken place.
I think it does. But I'm mostly referring to a moral obligation, not necessarilly a legal one. Is the manufacturer legally responsible for, at least in part, the lost money? I don't know, but probably not. But if you just ask the specific question "is the manufacturer partly responsible?", I think the answer is clearly yes. In the hypothetical case of the cashier manufacturer and the real case of the slot machine manufacturer.
the manufacturer should reimburse their customers for all those seriously flawed cash registers
By my reading, you're contradicting yourself. First you say that the manufacturers should reimburse their customers -- which would indicate that they are responsible to some measure -- but then you say that are not "implicated" or have any "liability" -- which would indicate that they are not responsible. So, which is it? Are you making some kind of semantic distinction between "responsible" and "liable"?
Sorry, but your logic is a fail on this one, completely.
I think you're making the mistake of looking at this from purely binary viewpoint. Go back and read the last sentence of Mike's post. He suggested that the software manufacturers should bear "some" responsibility. And to this, I agree. Not all, but some. To use your example, let's say that a cash register manufacturer makes a faulty batch where the cash drawer will not close properly and then open up by itself, perhaps after the cashier has walked away. A "drawer closing glitch". The defect is found after a pattern of lost money is investigated. You're telling me that the situation is so black and white that you wouldn't see the manufacturer bearing at least some of the responsibility for the thefts?
On the post: Is Tethering Stealing Bandwidth?
Now *that's* what I call a mixed metaphor
He uses water on his phone?
On the post: Why Chris Dodd Is Doing Everything Wrong With The MPAA
Re:
I personally think what's more likely to happen is that they'll start to become irrelevant and finally change before they disappear completely. Yes, the people who do the hiring all have the same mentality, but "new blood" comes to every organization, albiet at a slow pace. What could happen is that you'll see a succession of MPAA presidents either resigning in frustration or being forced out for not solving that darn piracy problem.
The problem is that the MPAA isn't like a "normal" business. In the normal business world, you can have a young, agile company take business away from the older, bureaucratic company. But the MPAA is like a monopoly. I think that they will be forced to change at some point, but because of their singular role in Hollywood, they'll survive after finally being forced to change.
On the post: Why Chris Dodd Is Doing Everything Wrong With The MPAA
Like rain on your wedding day?
Does anyone else find it ironic that Hollywood is accused of being morally bankrupt while at the same time their focus on morality issues is preventing them from looking for workable business models to deal with "theft"?
On the post: Senators Want Investigation On Massive Increase In Drug Prices... But Will They Really Seek A Solution?
Re: Re: Re:
You're fond of hyperbole, aren't you? You're either exagerating or just plain see things in a completely binary fashion. I'm not saying it would be easy, but isn't it worth a shot to try to at least address some of the problems which arise from treating drug patents like any other product in our capitalist system?
The real problems in the US start and end with a liability system in the US that allows for damage awards so high, that the risks of putting a drug on the market often outweigh any potential for income, and that this liablity risk has to be priced into every pill sold.
I would agree that this is a big part of the problem.
Remember, generic drug companies are playing the safest cards: They get meds after they have been on the market for years, they don't produce generic duds, only hits with low risk. That is how they can price much lower.
Mike certainly and anyone else who has a general understanding of this topic knows this. No one is suggesting that all drugs could be developed (under our current system) and sold for what the generics cost. This would be a straw man argument. My take on the situation is that many people think that the costs of drugs are unnaturally inflated, even for a capitalist system.
You cannot ignore the expensive failures and drugs that "fail during clinical trials" that cost millions with no return possible.
Who exactly is suggesting that you should?
On the post: Senators Want Investigation On Massive Increase In Drug Prices... But Will They Really Seek A Solution?
Re:
A quick search of TD articles with the "Drugs" tag disproves your statement. But in case your "never" was hyperbole...
Mike does in fact consider the costs and incentives to create new costs. As for the costs, he points out that the costs are often overinflated. For example, much of the research is based on government of university research. Another example is the huge amount of money that goes into marketing. (You don't need marketing to heal people; you need marketing to make money from healing people.) And as for the incentives, another point that Mike makes is that even if you accept the fact that patents are needed to recoup the cost of creating a new drug, this is the wrong system to begin with. The system as it is now encourages profits over health. This is messed up because a country would be far better off (financially, etc) with more of its citizens being healthy rather than the system we have where only lip service is paid to the health benefits.
On the post: UK Intelligence Agencies Ask Court To Say They're Immune From Having To Provide Evidence
Re: Re:
- Joseph Marie de Maistre
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Whew!
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I see your point. And while I acknowledge that WalMart implements quite a bit of security that isn't apparent to the end customers, I also take at face value the statements in the TD post about how WalMart has a very liberal return policy that accepts items which are clearly from other stores. My point is that even this amount of "accepting" illegal behavior is galaxies away from the actions of the MPAA and other large media companies.
Since they aren't spending hundreds of millions, but are in fact losing hundreds of millions, your point is meaningless.
The music companies represented by the MPAA are losing hundreds of millions of dollars? Citation required, please. (Right, only if you use the same kind of creative accounting used by the MPAA where a download is equated on a one to one basis with a "lost" sale.)
Had the music industry throw up their arms and said "yeah, take it all" they would already be gone, you freeloaders would have emptied them out a long, long time ago.
Oh, I see how it is. Because I disagree with you, I must of course be an illegal downloader. Way to jump to conclusions.
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Did you reply to the right comment?
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I didn't think I'd be defening average_joe today, but...if you equate "analogous" to "use these terms interchangeably", you're either being unintentionally obtuse or intentionally misleading.
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re: Re: Re:
And how exactly is this relevent to whether the two concepts are analogous? Just because two concepts have "some pretty big differences" doesn't mean they can't also have some key similarities. Many differences != Completely different.
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re: Re:
I agree. Stealing and copyright infringement are analogous. They both do interfere with people's right and that's enough for a valid analogy. But then again, I apparently have a much looser definition of "analogous" than most people. Some people seem to think that unless two things are almost identical, they're not analogous. My take on it is that if there is a key similarity, then they're analogous.
Now, having said this, I am still very much in favor of making the distinction between theft and copyright infringement. They are indeed two different concepts and should be treated differently because of the number of ways they are different. But to deny that they are at least analogous does a disservice to your overall argument.
What's behind this denial anyway? In peoples' minds, are they thinking, "Well, I know that theft and copyright infringment do have some key similarities, but I can't admit that because people like average_joe and The Anti Mike won't understand the nuances, so I'll just pretend that they don't."
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re: Re:
You say "all" that WalMart did like it's a small thing. It's not. WalMart did a cost/benefit analysis and based their actions on that analysis. They didn't let the emotional response -- "But they're stealing from us!" -- guide their actions.
Now, if the MPAA did that same analysis, taking into account their particular situation, and stuck to the results, they wouldn't be putting so much effort into pushing back the tide. They'd take the truckloads of money being spent on lawyers and Chief Content Protection Officers and spend it on experimenting with new business models that accepted the new reality the Internet has brought.
As you point out, the shrinkage rates are vastly larger with digital content, but that doesn't mean there isn't still money to be made. The problem is that, relatively speaking, the MPAA are trying to implement security "that make the TSA look like pussy cats." And where has that got them? With a long series of pyrric victories, that's where.
On the post: When You Have A 'Chief Content Protection Officer,' You're Doing It Wrong
Re: Re:
Great observation. I don't know if TD has already commented on this, but I'd be very curious to find out more about who's behind this policy at WalMart. Whoever pitched the idea couldn't have had an easy time of it, but they apparently got it implemented. It'd be very interesting to see how they overcame the "But they're stealing from us!" reaction. Maybe some of those Chief Content Protection Officers should talk to WalMart's executive officers.
On the post: Tobacco Companies Using Trademark Claims To Try To Avoid Putting Warning Labels On Cigarrettes & Cigars
Problem solved
On the post: Is Figuring Out A Slot Machine Software Glitch & Making Money From It A Crime?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Based on the above, it sounds like our thoughts on this topic are close, so why the ad hominem attacks? Have you considered the possibility that the person you're talking to may not actually be "clueless" or "stupid", but there may just be a simple misunderstanding between two people?
On the post: Is Figuring Out A Slot Machine Software Glitch & Making Money From It A Crime?
Re: Re: Re:
Whether the term "theft" applies in either of the cases is irrelevent to the point of whether the slot machine manufacture bears at least some of the responsiblity. The other poster, Jan Breens, may be viewing this in terms of legal liability, but Mike didn't use that term. He just suggested that the manufacturer may be partly "responsible".
One one side, I think that, if you intentionally "trick" a slot machine to give you more of a payout than you know you deserve, you should be punished according to the law. You knew it was wrong, but did it anyway. That's very clear in my mind. But if you had to assign some subjective "responsiblity percentage" to the manufacturer for the overall problem, shouldn't that be something greater than 0? In other words, regardless of whether the manufacturer is legally liable to provide reimbursement, can't you at least say that their programming of the machine was part of the chain of events which directly led to the theft and therefore bears some moral responsibility? Or can a company just put out flawed products and have no responsibility at all?
On the post: Is Figuring Out A Slot Machine Software Glitch & Making Money From It A Crime?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think it does. But I'm mostly referring to a moral obligation, not necessarilly a legal one. Is the manufacturer legally responsible for, at least in part, the lost money? I don't know, but probably not. But if you just ask the specific question "is the manufacturer partly responsible?", I think the answer is clearly yes. In the hypothetical case of the cashier manufacturer and the real case of the slot machine manufacturer.
On the post: Is Figuring Out A Slot Machine Software Glitch & Making Money From It A Crime?
Re: Re: Re:
By my reading, you're contradicting yourself. First you say that the manufacturers should reimburse their customers -- which would indicate that they are responsible to some measure -- but then you say that are not "implicated" or have any "liability" -- which would indicate that they are not responsible. So, which is it? Are you making some kind of semantic distinction between "responsible" and "liable"?
On the post: Is Figuring Out A Slot Machine Software Glitch & Making Money From It A Crime?
Re:
I think you're making the mistake of looking at this from purely binary viewpoint. Go back and read the last sentence of Mike's post. He suggested that the software manufacturers should bear "some" responsibility. And to this, I agree. Not all, but some. To use your example, let's say that a cash register manufacturer makes a faulty batch where the cash drawer will not close properly and then open up by itself, perhaps after the cashier has walked away. A "drawer closing glitch". The defect is found after a pattern of lost money is investigated. You're telling me that the situation is so black and white that you wouldn't see the manufacturer bearing at least some of the responsibility for the thefts?
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