"never will understand why people will pay so much money on a single player game"
Why do you limit this comment to single player games? Multiplayer games don't get off the hook here either.
I didn't mean to let multiplayer games off the hook, just that I understand why people pay for multiplayer games - the "prestige" of being seen at the top of the leaderboards.
Not that I could ever see myself spending *that much* on any game; I'm happy to drop $5 or $10 on a game that I enjoy, but sending the rest to my mortgage means I got to pay it off in 10 years instead of 35.
@That One Guy: And maybe that's the rub. I wonder how many of these games would rake in so much money if kids were taught how to budget, and why living on credit is so bad, in school? (Never mind the rest of the economy...)
Re: Re: Re: Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
I pretty much agree with everything you are saying, and 100% agree that "appealing to empathy rather than guilt/shame/fear is definitely the way to go, here".
Empathy isn't quite enough, though. I live in Australia, and it sucked to have to pay an extra 20% or even more compared to the US because of legacy deals with entrenched local importers who add exactly zero value in the age of the internet. And we were one of the lucky countries that tended to receive content at all! There are any number of stories out there of a public hungry for music (films, books, etc) with exactly zero legal options, and piracy is the only way that people could get access to the content - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125608/, also the anime fan-sub movements, unlicensed translations of books, etc, etc.
And that's the whole point of articles like this one. Why is the legacy industry spending so much time and money trying to work on the empathy bit, and nothing else... when they could spend some time on providing their potential customers with the opportunity to buy, and then they probably won't even need the "education" campaigns!
I still remember the day that I saw that a free game was #1 top grossing in the Google store. I never will understand why people will pay so much money on a single player game... I mean $5 will either get you one or more full games that you can play through to completion, or a single-use tool that may or may not let you pass the current level... and by the way, the next level is even harder.
That this campaign is better than previous attempts is mostly just pointing out how low the bar has been set.
Even this campaign fails at the first intellectual step - there is no way to link the situations being described to piracy. Elvis didn't get into barbiturates because people were downloading his songs (well, I'm pretty sure, anyway). Pirates had nothing to do with Marvin Gaye's home life.
Unless the underlying message is "If you knew what went into it, you'd run away screaming and never touch it, let alone download so much distilled depression that your preferred listening device will die of sadness", I'm not sure what the reason not to pirate is here?
Assuming: that you agree with the message that piracy should stop, think anything will, and would write it plain enough to annoy your fanboys.
That's a strange assumption. Even if I were to agree with each part of your assumption individually and collectively, there's no particularly strong reason to believe that stopping piracy is or should be the highest priority. What hurts artists more? Piracy, or industry accounting and one-sided contracts? Piracy which gains the artist fans and followers, or publishers who don't promote the artist and doom them to obscurity?
You really ought to write numbered bullet points of your boiler-plate and just refer to them, save much time.
Not a terrible idea, but it takes a surprising amount of time up-front to do it well.
You are locked in last century mindset that music can, should, or will be "free as in beer".
When have any of the TechDirt authors ever said this? Well, other than "can" (amongst various demonstrations that money can be made from free, but also that free is not the only business model).
I could just as easily say (with an equal amount of proof) that you are locked in the last-century mindset that ideas, art and creativity can, should and must be owned and controlled.
Brandis has commissioned a cost-benefit analysis into an 18-month inquiry, producing a report that contains this:
4.1 The ALRC recommends the introduction of a fair use exception into Australian copyright law. This chapter briefly explains what fair use is, and makes the case for enacting fair use in Australia. It sets out some of the important arguments for and against introducing this exception.
It sets out some of the important arguments for and against introducing this exception? Sounds like a cost-benefit analysis was baked right in... which means that to answer my own question, the only reason why you would ever commission another analysis is that you didn't like the first answer and you want a different answer on the second go.
Given all that - the expectation that we should be able to use any toner with any printer is just wishful thinking.
I'm sure everyone would agree with that, but it's a strawman argument - nobody has that expectation.
The point of this discussion is that people expect that Xerox official toner should work in Xerox printers, which isn't the case and is resulting in printers being disabled.
Seems to me that a factory reset and installation of approved toner would solve the problem if you had it. I get that this lock in is in some ways 'unfair'.
So... you can either pay a Xerox technician to come and fix your printer, or you can pay Xerox for more official toner - that hopefully won't disable your printer this time - and lose all of your printer settings and have to spend time reconfiguring it. I can't imagine why people would think this is 'unfair'.
But in my opinion you should only expect to use a 6605 toner from Xerox in their machines. As a repair tech I don't want to have to face off with a customer who chose to cheap out on toner, has issues and now expects me to fix the damage at the cost of my time and parts.
This is the generic medicine argument.
People would like to be able to use third-party toner that is designed for their specific printer. If Xerox wanted to be awesome about it, they could release detailed specifications for the requirements for the toner for each of its printers, but let customers know that they'll be on the hook for any repairs from using third-party toner, and that there are no guarantees of quality when using third-party toner.
Then let the market decide - if some brand of third-party toner is cheaper and has a reputation of just as good quality and not breaking the printer, then Xerox has incentive to try to do better. Crappy third-party knockoffs won't get repeat business after people have to pay to get their printers fixed.
Thanks for your perspective, and I get that having to deal with other peoples' senses of entitlement sucks, but historically it has never been best business practice to tell your customers that they're using your product wrong. Put the business first and continue to be mediocre, or put the customer first and be awesome - that is (a vastly oversimplified version of) the choice in front of every business.
Oh, Samsung? That's not an ink display, the OLED display is full of tiny organisms that have been training for years to read and write 90% of the living languages on the planet (and seven of the dead ones).
This! This is great advice for nearly anyone. It's still possible to be screwed by expensive consumer toner, but it's not hard to shop around for a brand that prints things affordably. YMMV whether it's better to print color at home or elsewhere.
My partner is currently studying her masters, and we print more than a thousand pages a year, much of it double-sided. Toner is the only thing keeping that even vaguely feasible. Not to mention printing faster and quieter than inkjets.
Question: Wouldn't my purchase of the dish give me some limited right of ownership of that specific plate of food?
Answer: Apparently, this situation goes back to a German court judgment from 2013, which widened copyright law to include the applied arts too. As a result, the threshold for copyrightability was lowered considerably, with the practical consequence that it was easier for chefs to sue those who posted photographs of their creations without permission.
The end result is a billion-dollar program with the accuracy of a coin flip.
Actually, the coin flip idea is provably better than the current situation. True random screening would be a significant improvement over inaccurate profiling.
This is of course assuming that the screening itself is worthwhile. YMMV.
On the post: Appeals Court: Yes, The FTC Can Go After Companies That Got Hacked Over Their Weak Security Practices
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: 200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association's Violence/Gaming Study
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not all Games
I didn't mean to let multiplayer games off the hook, just that I understand why people pay for multiplayer games - the "prestige" of being seen at the top of the leaderboards.
Not that I could ever see myself spending *that much* on any game; I'm happy to drop $5 or $10 on a game that I enjoy, but sending the rest to my mortgage means I got to pay it off in 10 years instead of 35.
@That One Guy: And maybe that's the rub. I wonder how many of these games would rake in so much money if kids were taught how to budget, and why living on credit is so bad, in school? (Never mind the rest of the economy...)
On the post: Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating
Re: Copyright has only become further reaching with time to benefit legacy players at the cost of the people.
14 years copyright on registration, plus an optional one-off 14 year renewal within the last 5 years, seems like a good place to start (discussion).
b) have any ideas how to implement them in the current political clime?
No :-(
On the post: Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating
Re: Re: Re: Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Empathy isn't quite enough, though. I live in Australia, and it sucked to have to pay an extra 20% or even more compared to the US because of legacy deals with entrenched local importers who add exactly zero value in the age of the internet. And we were one of the lucky countries that tended to receive content at all! There are any number of stories out there of a public hungry for music (films, books, etc) with exactly zero legal options, and piracy is the only way that people could get access to the content - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125608/, also the anime fan-sub movements, unlicensed translations of books, etc, etc.
And that's the whole point of articles like this one. Why is the legacy industry spending so much time and money trying to work on the empathy bit, and nothing else... when they could spend some time on providing their potential customers with the opportunity to buy, and then they probably won't even need the "education" campaigns!
On the post: 200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association's Violence/Gaming Study
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not all Games
On the post: Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating
Re: Melodramatic Step in the Right Direction
Even this campaign fails at the first intellectual step - there is no way to link the situations being described to piracy. Elvis didn't get into barbiturates because people were downloading his songs (well, I'm pretty sure, anyway). Pirates had nothing to do with Marvin Gaye's home life.
Unless the underlying message is "If you knew what went into it, you'd run away screaming and never touch it, let alone download so much distilled depression that your preferred listening device will die of sadness", I'm not sure what the reason not to pirate is here?
On the post: 200-Plus Scholars Speak Out Against American Psychological Association's Violence/Gaming Study
Re: Re: Not all Games
Candy crush? I realise the title is a bit misleading.
On the post: Recording Industry Thinks Famous Dead Musicians And Their Personal Struggles Will Get People To Stop Pirating
You know what will get pirates to respect the law?
Jeering is easy. We've all got jeering down pat. You jeer at ALL methods industry tries.
Actually, we only jeer at the stupid things the industry tries, but I can see how you might make the mistake you just did.
So you need to make some positive statements of what will work.
https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=business+model
Assuming: that you agree with the message that piracy should stop, think anything will, and would write it plain enough to annoy your fanboys.
That's a strange assumption. Even if I were to agree with each part of your assumption individually and collectively, there's no particularly strong reason to believe that stopping piracy is or should be the highest priority. What hurts artists more? Piracy, or industry accounting and one-sided contracts? Piracy which gains the artist fans and followers, or publishers who don't promote the artist and doom them to obscurity?
You really ought to write numbered bullet points of your boiler-plate and just refer to them, save much time.
Not a terrible idea, but it takes a surprising amount of time up-front to do it well.
You are locked in last century mindset that music can, should, or will be "free as in beer".
When have any of the TechDirt authors ever said this? Well, other than "can" (amongst various demonstrations that money can be made from free, but also that free is not the only business model).
I could just as easily say (with an equal amount of proof) that you are locked in the last-century mindset that ideas, art and creativity can, should and must be owned and controlled.
On the post: Will Australian Government Use Cost-Benefit Analysis To Kill Off Fair Use Proposal Once And For All?
Why is this even necessary?
(http://www.alrc.gov.au/publications/4-case-fair-use/summary)
It sets out some of the important arguments for and against introducing this exception? Sounds like a cost-benefit analysis was baked right in... which means that to answer my own question, the only reason why you would ever commission another analysis is that you didn't like the first answer and you want a different answer on the second go.
On the post: Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges... For The Customers
Re: So which models actually affected- just 2??
I'm sure everyone would agree with that, but it's a strawman argument - nobody has that expectation.
The point of this discussion is that people expect that Xerox official toner should work in Xerox printers, which isn't the case and is resulting in printers being disabled.
So... you can either pay a Xerox technician to come and fix your printer, or you can pay Xerox for more official toner - that hopefully won't disable your printer this time - and lose all of your printer settings and have to spend time reconfiguring it. I can't imagine why people would think this is 'unfair'.
This is the generic medicine argument.
People would like to be able to use third-party toner that is designed for their specific printer. If Xerox wanted to be awesome about it, they could release detailed specifications for the requirements for the toner for each of its printers, but let customers know that they'll be on the hook for any repairs from using third-party toner, and that there are no guarantees of quality when using third-party toner.
Then let the market decide - if some brand of third-party toner is cheaper and has a reputation of just as good quality and not breaking the printer, then Xerox has incentive to try to do better. Crappy third-party knockoffs won't get repeat business after people have to pay to get their printers fixed.
Thanks for your perspective, and I get that having to deal with other peoples' senses of entitlement sucks, but historically it has never been best business practice to tell your customers that they're using your product wrong. Put the business first and continue to be mediocre, or put the customer first and be awesome - that is (a vastly oversimplified version of) the choice in front of every business.
On the post: Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges... For The Customers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That's what makes it an Organic LED display!
On the post: Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges... For The Customers
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges... For The Customers
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
:-)
On the post: Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges... For The Customers
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: Your Toner Is No Good Here: Region-Coding Ink Cartridges... For The Customers
Re: I'll find a way
My partner is currently studying her masters, and we print more than a thousand pages a year, much of it double-sided. Toner is the only thing keeping that even vaguely feasible. Not to mention printing faster and quieter than inkjets.
On the post: India's Attorney-General: Privacy 'Not A Fundamental Right'
the "fool-proof scheme."
On the post: Court Lets Malibu Media Move Forward With Discovery In Copyright Case, But Blocks 'Speculative Invoicing'
Re: Re: Response to: Dreddsnik on Aug 19th, 2015 @ 2:44pm
On the post: Germany Says Taking Photos Of Food Infringes The Chef's Copyright
Re:
Wouldn't my purchase of the dish give me some limited right of ownership of that specific plate of food?
Answer:
Apparently, this situation goes back to a German court judgment from 2013, which widened copyright law to include the applied arts too. As a result, the threshold for copyrightability was lowered considerably, with the practical consequence that it was easier for chefs to sue those who posted photographs of their creations without permission.
No
On the post: Germany Says Taking Photos Of Food Infringes The Chef's Copyright
Re: Re:
On the post: Feds Still Shrugging People Onto Terrorist Watchlists Based On Hunches
Not as accurate
Actually, the coin flip idea is provably better than the current situation. True random screening would be a significant improvement over inaccurate profiling.
This is of course assuming that the screening itself is worthwhile. YMMV.
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