Piracy

[Mercutio01]

It am not sure what you mean by statist. I am neither sure what you mean by subsidized art but I think that your further arguments could be seen as an insult to the classics and the historic geniuses of art that we have the joy to experience still today.
Show me a work of free market than has surpassed ancient greek tragedy. Show me how the free market surpasses the development, the artistic progress achieved by the renaissance masters.

Hate to tell you, but Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci existed in a free market. They were commissioned by people to make art and then were paid for the completed object. They weren't paid by the government, they didn't receive salaries, etc. They were paid for each work.

In fact the very REASON Michelangelo even painted the Sistine Chapel was because of the free market. He was competing with Raphael and other contemporaries. He was trying to outdo them. They weren't "managed" by the state. Their works were bidded on and they competed in a free market. Indeed, that market was probably freer than the world market today.

 

[xechnao]

Hate to tell you, but Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci existed in a free market. They were commissioned by people to make art and then were paid for the completed object. They weren't paid by the government, they didn't receive salaries, etc. They were paid for each work.

In fact the very REASON Michelangelo even painted the Sistine Chapel was because of the free market. He was competing with Raphael and other contemporaries. He was trying to outdo them. They weren't "managed" by the state. Their works were bidded on and they competed in a free market. Indeed, that market was probably freer than the world market today.

If you consider the catholic church or the power of the de medici as a free market I could see everything as a free market. I am not sure what you have in mind when you say a free market and a non free market.

 

[Campbell]

Here's my issue with a state-based solution: it accounts for the producer of content, but not those who add value to the products that contain that content.

Fictional Example
Let's say a publisher likes Mercutio's poetry enough to want to publish a compilation of his work. Mercutio is a poet and doesn't know how to compose a compilation, so the publisher assigns an editor to compile some of Mercutio's work in a form that works for poetry books. To help transition from one poem to the next the publisher hires a freelancer to work with Mercutio to write some copy to help introduce the poems in the compilation. Now that the project is coming along nicely, an art director at the publisher works with Mercutio to create art orders that complement Mercutio's poems and help the reader gain a feel for each poem. At the same time, a graphic designer is brought on to create a look and feel that is consistent with the content. After some basic layout work is started, and artwork starts coming back the graphic designer(s), art director, and typesetter(s) work to bring the book's layout and typography together. Once the book is typeset it gets proofed, and the graphic designer(s) consult the color books for the printer they're using and do any color correction work that needs to be done. Finally, the book is sent in digital form to the printer who prints and binds the book after they get approval for their proofs.

The final book that people hold in their hands or look at on screen is the result of lots of people who worked very hard to add value to it and they all deserve to get compensated for the value they added. When you remove these people from the process you're often left with solid content that doesn't captivate an audience. Should the state also hire these people?

 

[resistor]

Further, recall that copyright is created in the first place to increase the public good (by encouraging the production of original art). But as it stands the great length of copyright term is harmful to the public good because art is "lock up" for a century and cannot be recycled back into the creative mix. Don't we all enjoy a good Ravenloft campaign? Do you think Ravenloft would have been written if Dracula had still be under copyright to someone? Probably not, as the licensing negotiations would have made what was supposed to be a one-off adventure module just not worth it. We (the gaming public) are better off with Ravenloft, the re-mix of gothic novels and D&D adventuring, than without. And copyright would probably have killed it.

A very good post overall. I'd just like to throw in one example to reinforce this point:

My grandparents saw Snow White in theatres on one of their first dates. Because of the repeated extension of copyright since then, MY children (or grandchildren, if it gets extended again) will be dating before it becomes public property.

Something that has been part of my family for three generations isn't a product anymore. It's part of my cultural heritage, just like Shakespeare, and all the other classic authors.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Okay, your DVD player undoubtedly has a chip in it specifically designed to decode DVD movies. If you play a DVD on your computer, a program is likely accomplishing the exact same task. Why is the work of the electrical engineer who designed the chip worth more than the work of the software engineer who wrote the program?

I don't think that the WORK is less valuable, just the resulting product. The thing about hardware vs software is that if you pay a guy in a factory X dollars to build a piece of hardware, and Y dollars on the raw materials to build the item, then it costs Z(which is the total of X and Y) dollars to make a second item exactly the same.

On the other hand, that device had to be researched by someone, that research and design is certainly worthwhile. Without it, there would be no hardware. Someone had to write the software that makes the hardware work, that work is worthwhile and should be rewarded.

But what I'm saying is that the resulting hardware only has a value of Z, not Z plus whatever it cost to code the software that goes with it. Because the software can be duplicated infinite times for free. Nor do you add the hardware design costs to the resulting item either. You don't need to redesign it each time you produce one.

When you produce an item like this, you hope to make enough profit to recoup the costs of design and code and still make more profit. However, I disagree with the philosophy that says that the resulting object has a value equal to all the design costs and programming costs. It doesn't.

I agree with some other people here who say that the solution to the problem is to reduce the time dramatically that Copyright can be held. I'd support something akin to 5 or 10 years. Companies would be able to produce a product, make profit for a couple of years then make something new.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

One author who explained this really well was Steven Grant. On his regular column on Comic Book Resources, while being a critic of the RIAA and MPAA, he also points why creative people get royalties.

I'm gonna quote the relevant block, since I think people need to understand this as much as possible.

Meanwhile a friend who took part in the recent Writers Strike mentioned how his friends, with "normal" jobs, questioned by writers (and, by extension, all creative types) have the audacity to think they should be paid "more than once" for their work. This is all part of the same mentality, the idea that whatever you do your employer gets to make the money off it because it's his risk and he's paying you, and you knew that going in.

Well, there's an easy enough answer to that one: if you believe that you're an idiot.

Creative freelancers are their own employers. Like anyone else the deals we make during our active earning years are the deals we live off the rest of our lives. "Normal" jobs have retiree health benefits, pension plans, etc. We get none of that, unless we belong to a strong union with the muscle to provide health care, and that's pretty much only the WGA and only if you've worked in film or television a sufficient amount. But more and more people at "normal" jobs are retiring only to find their health plan has been cancelled or whatever their pensions were invested in have gone belly up, and suddenly they find themselves staring down crippling medical bills or working as an 80 year old greeter at Sam's Club to make ends meet. Most of us don't want to be greeters at Sam's Club so we try to set up arrangements to keep money coming in, especially on things we created. Because that's how it's done these days in this field; things like royalties for exploitations of works -- even if those exploitations didn't exist at the time the work was done -- are now an established element, certainly of the comics business, and of the book business for a considerably longer period. It's our version of a pension plan, as subject to a publisher's ability to profitably exploit a property as any employer pension plan. It has been the usual policy of comics companies to not include old deals/creators in new payment programs, but there's absolutely no good reason why the Siegels & Shusters shouldn't get, at minimum, the same creator compensation deal that the creator of, oh, Spoiler gets.

In the Siegel estate's case, they weren't trying to get anything they're not entitled to under the law, as Larson's opinion makes evident.

Look at it this way: money is how we measure value in our society. With media properties, it's often difficult to determine value up front, and if value were determined up front there would be almost nothing put into production in any medium, because full payment of possible value would be almost prohibitive. Look at the money machine STAR WARS turned into; nobody guessed that in advance, which is why it had no notable stars (except for Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing, and neither were exactly the king of Hollywood at the time) and a relatively low production budget. If George Lucas had known what revenues the property would eventually generate and had asked for all those up front, it never would have gotten made because no one could have afforded to meet the price.

So in media the initial payment isn't the total payment (though it sometimes ends up that way), it's the down payment. Publishers and producers don't "buy" properties so much as place their bets; they secure the cooperation of talent. "Value" isn't determined in advance, but as it accrues, and as the established value of a property increases, so does the amount paid to those who generate it, according to whatever contract is in place. There is the common belief, for whatever reason, that the publisher/producer is the one taking the risk and therefore the rightful end point of all profits. But by choosing to work with them, and the operations they represent, we take a risk too. We are risking that they will make the right decisions along the way to public release, that they will be able to intelligently and fully exploit the property for the fullest short-and-long term profitability. And you know what? More often than not, they don't, even though that's their job. It's only not our risk if we're not getting paid more as the property is more successfully exploited.

Because that's the game.

Your job doesn't work like that? Don't come crying to me about it. Why doesn't it work like that? Why don't you insist on profit sharing? Many companies do profit share; others, while they claim all rights to technologies or other profit streams developed by their employees, also provide additional payments for "the same work." Ever heard of Christmas bonuses? Incentive bonuses? Law firms frequently pay bonuses to lawyers who bring large accounts in, or win large payoff cases. Some companies pay royalties to employees whose ideas continue to generate revenues for the company, for as long as the ideas generate revenue. Nothing in the freelance setup is unheard of in "normal" jobs.

There's a line in an old Bob Dylan song that goes

"And you ask why I don't live here?

Man, how come you don't move?"

Well? How come? Because there's a Sam's Club right around the corner...

This is one I just need to reply to. I know the author isn't going to actually read this reply, but I think that the ideas behind it need to be replied to. So, here it goes:

I work in the IT industry. I am currently contracted to a large, multinational IT company. I don't even work for them, I work for an employment agency because the company doesn't want to have to pay everyone working for them health benefits, pension and the like. So, I get none of these. I keep working there because there is a chance that if I keep working for them, I will be hired on as a real employee and get those benefits. Even if I don't get hired on, I can use the experience I get here to find another job in the field.

So, I don't have a pension. I have no way to pay for my life after I retire yet. I'm 30, I still feel there is time to either start contributing to my own retirement fund or to find a job that does provide these benefits.

So, you are asking my WHY my job doesn't work like yours? Because none of them do. Or, I should correct that, VERY few of them do. I don't seem to have the same self-centered sense of entitlement you do over the situation, mind you. I work every day for the wage I receive. I don't consider whether something I do today is going to make the company millions of dollars. It might. Then again, I might not do anything valuable and be a drain on the companies funds. That's the way most people live their lives.

Even if I had profit sharing or such things, I only get paid the extra while I'm with the company. It doesn't pay me after I leave.

I am aware that it is common in your industry to be paid for your work forever. Let me get this off my chest now. That's just plain crap. No one gets paid for their work forever except for you. I know you are thinking, "But the companies we work for are going to be paid forever for my work, why aren't I?". And I agree with you, they should not be paid forever for your work either.

There is a system here that runs the booking system for a major airline. The programmers who designed the system do not currently get paid for their work. It is still in use and it makes the airline millions. They got paid for their work. They do, however, get paid to write new software for the company. As it should be. Your industry should work the same.

Your industry should either pay you for one time work in a big enough number to be worth the full value of the work or they should hire you on long term with all of the benefits that most companies offer.

And here's the kicker. Their rights to profit off of your work should only last 10 years at most. After that time, it should enter the public domain. This should encourage both you and them to come up with new ideas to profit off of rather than resting on the old ones.

If you want to be the one profiting off your own work, then you need to be the one who leads the project. Start making deals with the backers to fund you in exchange for 150% or 200% of the money back and the rest goes to you. Be the one in charge if you want to make the millions off your movie. If you don't want to be the one who takes care of all of that, hire someone else to be your employee who does. Otherwise, stop bitching and accept that you'll get a one time fee for your work. You've had it too good for too long. I understand that it is hard when someone takes away something in order to make you equal to everyone else. It'll be hard for a while. You'll survive. The rest of us do.

One reason I'm critical of the anti-copyright movement is the arguments that it's only big companies that will be pulled down if we destroy it or turn back the clock. Wrong, I believe it's the little guys who will suffer the most. A lot of the guys arguing against copyright work for tech companies that can exploit the properties better if the laws were reduced, like YouTube and other sites, and a lot of the guys sharing music, videos, and games are just being selfish and self-centered.

And this is where you are wrong. The entire industry is in need of a large kick in the pants. Technology changes culture not the other way around. Right now the movie and music industry are attempting to change culture in a counter direction to the direction technology is pushing. They will lose. But they have a lot of money, so the fight will go on for some time.

The way technology works now encourages information to be free. I can easily post a movie to the internet, have it in thousands of people's hands within hours and have it decentralized so that not a single one of us is the "linchpin" to removing it from the internet. Information is too easy to get and too difficult to remove.

We can rail against this change all we want, but it's coming. The more people who know how to use it, the more prevalent it becomes. Right now, we deal with it by criminalizing the act and trying to punish each and every person who does it. The problem is, when that is 90% of the population, how do you justify it?

I don't view it as the people trading things on the internet as being selfish and self-centered. They just know how to use technology and feel that it is only useful when you use it to its logical conclusion. I actually feel it's the opposite. People who create art of any kind, be it music, movies, television, paintings, or whatever, should be looking to enrich the lives of the human race rather than becoming millionaires. That was the original purpose of art. When did it become about money?

I'm not saying the people who make these things don't deserve to eat and have a roof over their head. Of course they do. I'm saying that with the change in technology comes a change in the way you think about getting paid for your work. Musicians might need to make 100% of their money for live shows, television appearances, or other avenues. People who make movies might need to make 100% of their profit from the "experience" of seeing a movie in a theater or off of toys or games based on their movies.

I don't have all the answers. I don't know exactly how certain things will make profit. Someone smarter than me is going to have to come up with a completely different model for these sort of things. But to simply point at those sharing media on the internet and call them selfish and self-centered is being short sighted. People want to enrich themselves. They want to read a story, hear a song, or watch a movie as part of their personal growth. The same reason that the people wrote or filmed these things in the first place.

I think both the big companies AND the little guy will end up hurting in the crash to come. But I think those with more to lose will be hit harder.

If we're not careful, we'll end up setting things back for creators 500 years, while the big corporations just get bigger and we all get paid less and lose labor rights we've tried to get for decades. Or we'll end up with a system where the Internet is locked down and there will be no expectation of privacy anywhere, you'll have a fully identifiable unit to access the Internet and the government can see all attempts to infringe.

I think things need to be set back for creators 500 years. That's about when they were treated like the rest of us. Well, scratch that, I think they need to be set FORWARD 50 years with real, forward thinking.

As I see the future, it will be a period where people make movies to gross 100 million in the box office, 50 million off of toys and other products due to the movie, and simply don't care what happens after that. People either go see the movie in theaters, buy games or other physical products based around the movie or they simply aren't a factor. Even if all of those people have seen the movie for free by downloading off the internet.

The movies that wouldn't have made enough money in theaters to break even would stop being made. There will be some sacrifices. These things will likely end up being direct to internet releases for free that will instead attempt to capitalize off of the semi-popularity of their work with advertising, toys, games, and the like. It's being done today in small amounts and I see it being done much more in the future. People will make things for free and use the popularity to make money rather than the product itself.

As far as tangible vs. intangible, that's a cultural thing. Keep in mind primitive indigenous peoples like the Native Americans didn't have concepts of land, while some African tribes had no concept of time measurement like we did. The arguments over sematics about intellectual property just seem to me to be attempts to try to bring about change in the existing culture. And that's not always successful.

No, but the thing that almost always changes cultures is technology. It has nearly a 100% effectiveness rate in changing culture when it was adapted.

The other thing is necessity. Native Americans didn't have any concepts of property because there wasn't enough people to fight over it or any necessity to do so. When you have too many people, you get disputes, you need to come up with ways to resolve them. Thus, land titles and the like.

 

[JohnRTroy]

So, you are asking my WHY my job doesn't work like yours? Because none of them do. Or, I should correct that, VERY few of them do. I don't seem to have the same self-centered sense of entitlement you do over the situation, mind you. I work every day for the wage I receive. I don't consider whether something I do today is going to make the company millions of dollars. It might. Then again, I might not do anything valuable and be a drain on the companies funds. That's the way most people live their lives.

Even if I had profit sharing or such things, I only get paid the extra while I'm with the company. It doesn't pay me after I leave.

I am aware that it is common in your industry to be paid for your work forever. Let me get this off my chest now. That's just plain crap. No one gets paid for their work forever except for you. I know you are thinking, "But the companies we work for are going to be paid forever for my work, why aren't I?". And I agree with you, they should not be paid forever for your work either.

You completely miss the quote he makes about sales people, lawyers, etc. And I don't think you have a lot of knowledge on the way Hollywood and other writing endeavors work. I'm sure as an IT person you get paid a solid wage for what you do. A lot of writing is fronted by whether or not its a hit.

And I think you seem to think writers are overpaid spoiled brats, they aren't. The people who make it rich screenwriting are very few.

And some software does get royalties--there are people using other people's libraries of code, etc.

There is a system here that runs the booking system for a major airline. The programmers who designed the system do not currently get paid for their work. It is still in use and it makes the airline millions. They got paid for their work. They do, however, get paid to write new software for the company. As it should be. Your industry should work the same.

This analogy is flawed because software is not like prose writing. Software usually needs maintenance over time. Plus, in the world of software, hardware changes, OS changes, etc. By rights, they need constant maintenance over time.

Your industry should either pay you for one time work in a big enough number to be worth the full value of the work or they should hire you on long term with all of the benefits that most companies offer.

And here's the kicker. Their rights to profit off of your work should only last 10 years at most. After that time, it should enter the public domain. This should encourage both you and them to come up with new ideas to profit off of rather than resting on the old ones.

It doesn't work like that because for every success there are 10 failures. Only with success does the money always come in, I thought he made that pretty clear.

You've had it too good for too long. I understand that it is hard when someone takes away something in order to make you equal to everyone else. It'll be hard for a while. You'll survive. The rest of us do.

You're being pretty ignorant here. First of all, Steven Grant is by no means a rich man. Secondly, you seem to be thinking all writers are rich, they are not. The whole royalty thing is a way of compensating for the fact that a lot of writers aren't paid much for their efforts, especially in Hollywood where they can be easilly exploited if they didn't have their own union. In fact, in some ways writers are suffering because the people with the money are starting to take the same attitudes you have and make it seem like the writers are the ones being greedy.

And this is where you are wrong. The entire industry is in need of a large kick in the pants. Technology changes culture not the other way around. Right now the movie and music industry are attempting to change culture in a counter direction to the direction technology is pushing. They will lose. But they have a lot of money, so the fight will go on for some time.

You don't really know that for a fact. I'm a little disturbed by the "techno-worship" I see, that technology changes everything. Yes, well laws do catch up with that. Modern society is filled will laws. We can drive twice the speed limit, for instance, but we don't.

The way technology works now encourages information to be free. I can easily post a movie to the internet, have it in thousands of people's hands within hours and have it decentralized so that not a single one of us is the "linchpin" to removing it from the internet. Information is too easy to get and too difficult to remove.

Yes, but you can also be tracked, your data recorded, etc, and there aren't that many ISPs out there you can use in a single geographical area. Encryption works both ways. I suspect there will be tools to help combat piracy--especially if criminal hackers, the kind who want to steal money from banks, make major successes. I find it interesting that the technophiles always say "there's no way to stop piracy", when people are working on the solution.

We can rail against this change all we want, but it's coming. The more people who know how to use it, the more prevalent it becomes. Right now, we deal with it by criminalizing the act and trying to punish each and every person who does it. The problem is, when that is 90% of the population, how do you justify it?

Well, you could say that about laws on the books.

What I personally thing should happen is that ISPs work with the government to punish infrignement by setting up something similar to speeding tickets. There's a cap on punishment unless you are a blantant violated. Say if they discover you illegally downloaded a book and were caught by the logs and CRC checks. You get charged a $100 to a $500 fine. It's added to your ISP bill--don't pay, get cut off. You can argue against this like a traffic ticket. But just like most traffic tickets, people would pay the tickets and avoid the behavior. If we did this, I think it would stop most piracy since the younger set would get in trouble with their parents, and it wouldn't be see by the masses the same way as a 250,000 suit against an individual world.

People who create art of any kind, be it music, movies, television, paintings, or whatever, should be looking to enrich the lives of the human race rather than becoming millionaires. That was the original purpose of art. When did it become about money?

Oh, c'mon. I am getting a bit sick of the "people should do it for the ART, not the MONEY" meme that keeps coming back. Art from ancient times only lasted because it was popular and respected enough to be preserved.

This seems to be a class warfare thing--it's like the people look at the richest ones, the ones that are the most successful, and think everybody is like that, and that they have it too good. Wrong. Only the top of the class gets that way. J.K. Rowling made her money the old fashioned way. I don't begrudge people who get rewarded for there skills.

Economic realities are a fact of life. If you cut out paying for artists, you just have people who will do it part-time, or do a quick burn then fadeout as they get less free time, or a few poor suckers who do it "for their art" and not getting anywhere in life. In fact, a lot of businessmen have conned many writers into working on stuff for free.

Musicians might need to make 100% of their money for live shows, television appearances, or other avenues. People who make movies might need to make 100% of their profit from the "experience" of seeing a movie in a theater or off of toys or games based on their movies.

That's the easy answer all the opponents to copyright say. Note that the people judging are not usually in the industry and don't usually know enough about it, just make judgments from the outside based on their own perspectives.

Personally I think this cartoon says it best.

AAEC - Political Cartoon by Ted Rall, Universal Press Syndicate - 03/24/2008

But to simply point at those sharing media on the internet and call them selfish and self-centered is being short sighted. People want to enrich themselves. They want to read a story, hear a song, or watch a movie as part of their personal growth. The same reason that the people wrote or filmed these things in the first place.

But then, assuming they feel that way, then there are free alternatives, aren't there? Entertainment on traditional channels is free, with advertisements being the price you'd pay.

Part of the problem is lack of empathy. I know what it's like to create, and I'm sympathetic to people who lost their jobs. I can understand questioning the benefits of copyright. But I think a lot of the people who are actually pirating music, movies, and games are young people without money, who pay a bit of lip service to the copyleft movement as well as think they are "screwing the rich", but they are motivated to get everything they can get without paying for it because they can. Then they use these arguments to justify their actions, without ever understanding the other side.

(And I'm not saying everybody feels this way, but I think the idealists out there are outnumbered by the self-justifiers. The complaints about SPORE on Amazon proved this to me. When people started the protests about the Spore DRM, I noticed that anybody with a contrary opinion on Amazon's message forums were "voted down", so you couldn't read the opposing posts, even if the person started a thread.).

When I mentioned "hundreds of years of precedent", I mentioned stealing, etc. Everything those moral laws taught me tells me it's wrong because it hurts the other person--the owner of the good, the shopkeeper, etc. Apply that to non-tangible goods and I can see taking a copy of something that's taken a lot of time to develop and where there's a lawfully setup way for that person to get compensated, whether it's the writer, artist, programmer (for games), and I can see that its not right to copy that. Saying "it's not theft" just doesn't seem right to me, and I don't think this semantic argument makes much sense.

I think both the big companies AND the little guy will end up hurting in the crash to come. But I think those with more to lose will be hit harder.

I believe your wrong. Let's say most content is commoditized. What I see ending up happening is there will only be a few places to get content, and those that hold the content. So, instead of companies like Sony, etc, getting rich, it might be Google. At the same time, since you've scrapped the system that pays the actual creative types, all of the lower-paid creative types suffer the most.

I think things need to be set back for creators 500 years. That's about when they were treated like the rest of us. Well, scratch that, I think they need to be set FORWARD 50 years with real, forward thinking.

Agreed, but Forward thinking also has to take into account all factors of the business and its economic impact. You need to see all sides, and not just say "out with the old, in with the new", "sucks to be part of old media", etc.

I am not advocating charity, in fact in some cases I think the media should change, and I think certain choices they made regarding technology, such as the newspaper industry, hurt them. (Too many big companies just put their content on-line for free in an effort to get eyeballs instead of profit, creating a free expectation).

But I think a lot of people need to study all sides--study why copyright was made, study economic models and theories, study how the payment systems work in the media, study past historical changes, understand why minority interest groups get power and why sometimes that's okay (somebody up-thread mentioned the US is a Republic--a Republic prevents a tyranny of the majority, which is why we have laws for instance protecting certain unions, laws for the handicapped, laws to protect certain business interests, etc ). Don't be attached to your own opinion without studying all sides, as well as history.

One of the problems is there's no compromise between the camps and something will have to give to make a better future for us.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Irda,
yeah that's my way fo thinking. Corporations = truly evil, because all they care about is *profit*, with absolutely no social responsibility and damn little to stop them. See current crisis as proof.

Now, as another bit to show why copyright etc is all lunatic now...
In a few years time, they'll have DVDs with a capacity of over 1000 gigabytes (seriously). Think about that...you could have 100 HD movies on ONE disc.

Now, why the hell should I have to pay for individual films at say $10 each, or as I@m sure the rat-pukes will try to do, 100 films on 1 disc for $500 or so...
we should be getting 100 films, Of OUR CHOICE, burned to disc, or entire catalogue sof 1 star or studio for $10.

Why? cause they are old, cause the tech means we'll one day be able to have entire collections of all works on one storage unit so why the blazes should we pay for every item except for a few cents (you wanna pay $10,000 for a bloody single DVD?!)...and we, as cosnumers need to stop being lead by the nose and robbed!

It'a a digitla age folks! wake up.
One day you'll be able to take a pciture of any object and a mahcine build it for you..so how the hell cna oyu own "copyrights"?

tell you a better method of artist's payment:

Here in UK, any venue that plays music has to by a license, this license money is paid to artists. Everyone profits.
Same with other art could be done.

You pay your subscription fee, that goes to the artists *Not* corporate ghouls. Bonus for every download so more poopular/good you are, more you earn.
This solves both models of support!

So, for WOTC, you pay them your DDI or whatever subscription fee and should get PDFs of *every* WOTC item. Not too long until books are largely replaced by electronic books, this saves WOTC printing and distribution costs.

We cannot stop priacy, it's impossible, except by draocnian,evil actions that are the antithesis of modern, democratic, decent governance (which is exaclty what the RIAA and their ilk are trying to screw with! Way to go fining grannies for $25,000! Searches without warrants, etc).

non-commericla piracy IS good civil disobedience. Make them all heed our will and give us digital art at prices we agree with.
Digital = not using up finite physical resources.

 

[Aus_Snow]

A work of art != 'information'.

Information should be free, and all that, yo? Good. Great, even. But see above.

 

[JohnRTroy]

An artwork != 'information'.

Information should be free, and all that, yo? Good. Great, even. But see above.

Actually the quote about Information wants to be free is misquoted so often.

Information wants to be free? — Eat Sleep Publish

It was never meant by that author to suggest that all work would be done gratis. In fact, Stewart Brand stated that there would always be tensions between the two factors.