File-Sharing: Has it affected the RPG industry?

[The Sigil]

Well, if we think about the idea - and I am using 'idea' in this case to represent the developed work, the content of the hypothetical book in question - in terms of "capital", then it does not have value from intrinsic materials, but it does have value due to the work done by the author, the value of the author's time.

I think part of the problem is that we have more concepts than we have words to describe them.

For the sake of clarity, let me try to put forth the different concepts I am trying to work with here...

1.) A "raw idea" = some abstract concept (e.g., the concept of "boy meets girl")
2.) A "transcribed idea" = the language/graphical representation of a "raw idea" (e.g., the phrase "boy meets girl")
3.) A "processed idea" = the electronic file, book, painting, or similar "container" that contains the transcribed idea (e.g., the piece of paper upon which the phrase "boy meets girl" resides and the ink used to make the characters) - note that I'm staying away from the term "work" because using that word can confuse the "container" sense of the word "work" with the "effort" sense of the word.

Copyright law requires that we have a "processed idea" before it can be copyrighted. Even if you create and memorize a song or story (turning a "raw idea" into a "transcribed idea" by assigning language/musical representations to it), and sing it/tell it on the streets so everyone knows about it, until you have made a recording, put it to sheet music, written it down, etc. it cannot be copyrighted under law!

Thus, it takes TWO steps to go from "raw idea" to "copyrightable material" and each of those steps adds value to the work. The effort/work undertaken to move from "raw idea" to "transcribed idea" is the first point of "value-addedness" - as others have pointed out, you're not just paying for the three seconds it takes to figure out that your idea is represented by the phrase "boy meets girl" but you're also paying for the education and training required to learn the language. Obviously, this is an extremely simple example, but we can of course extrapolate to the training and education and experience required to visualize a picture, conceive a novel, etc. But I think keeping things extremely simple is a good thing for the moment.

The second point of "value-addedness" is the cost of placing this "processed idea" into a container - in the above example, it is the cost of the training and/or experience involved in learning how to write/paint/play music to place the "processed idea" into the container, as well as the cost of the container itself. To continue our example above, it is a percentage of the cost that you incurred learning how to write legibly, as well as the cost of a sheet of paper and the ink required to write the phrase "boy meets girl" - i.e., getting from point 2 above to point 3.

I suppose we could try to separate out the ability to write from the paper written upon, but since writing of necessity requires paper, I think it's good to keep that cost together in the first instance. More generally, the ability to transfer things to a certain medium is no good without the medium itself and vice versa; the two are intrinsically linked in terms of producing a copyrightable work.

Thus, we have two phases involved in moving from "raw idea" to "processed idea" - the first phase is 100% intellectual, while the second phase is, in many ways, 100% physical (as once the words in question are assigned to a work, the process of scribing those words to a medium is trivial and can be done by machines - witness, for instance, the printing press, which does the work involved in getting from Step 2 to Step 3).

It should be noted that "copying" of a work is simply moving from Step 2 to Step 3 multiple times (usually using someone else's "processed idea" as the basis for your own "transcribed idea").

In times past, the greater expense was involved in carrying out the transition from a "transcribed idea" to a "processed idea" - while lots of people could think thoughts and tell stories and sing songs, the ability to write was rare, and paper and ink were not plentiful and thus expensive. The advent of the printing press somewhat mitigated the expense of hiring a someone trained in the skill of writing, and of course, the cost of paper and ink has been falling for quite some time now. A similar journey could be traced for movie cameras and film, audio recording equipment, etc. Basically, for quite some time, moving from Step 2 to Step 3 required a great deal of expense because finding someone with the right training - or purchasing the right equipment - was not a trivial task.

However, starting at about the turn of the 20th century (i.e,. 1900), the ability to write began to be a fundamental part of the curriculum in public schools. Suddenly, those with the ability to write were not nearly as rare as they once were. In the 1940's and 1950's, many people began learning to type, which of course increases the rate at which ideas can be "packaged into containers." Furthermore, it could be argued that since most people gained the ability to write and/or type in the publicly-funded school system, that these skills have in fact already been "paid for" - i.e., I can no longer demand that someone pay "a percentage of the cost I incurred gaining the knowledge and experience of how to write things down" since I incurred no cost (or what cost was incurred was paid for by the public).

And of course, in the past 20 years, we have seen a boom in the availability of personal computers, which means that some editorial skills - such as spell checking - are now much less in demand than they once were, as we have machines doing things for us. And since computer files are now considered an acceptable "container" for housing copyrightable material, as the cost of computers continues to drop, the cost of the container itself continues to drop. Computers and their capabilities have wreaked similar havoc on the music industry - no longer is a huge studio with an enormous mixing board required to produce a high-fidelity recording; a quiet studio and a relatively inexpensive computer and mixing board can be used, with the computer handling much of the dirty work. Films, with their extensive use of digital cameras and computerized effects, are starting to work their way in that direction as well, though the shift has not yet been as pronounced because a film usually requires more components - scenery, costumes, multiple actors, etc. than a book or a music recording.

However, the upshot of all of this is that public education and inexpensive computers have lowered the cost of Step 2 to Step 3 *dramatically* - in fact, they've brought it close to zero EXCEPT for the time required to do what is in essence "Data Entry" - i.e., taking the set of words used to convey a raw idea and putting them to paper/word processing file/music file/etc.

However, large media conglomerates were born in the era when moving from Step 2 to Step 3 was still expensive... they cannot effectively do Step 1 to Step 2 because that is not something that can be mass-produced. The media conglomerates are now frustrated that going from Step 2 to Step 3 is much easier and in fact, the barriers to entry are so low that they are really not needed any more. And while they WERE needed when cost barriers to entry were still high (allowing the cost of moving a work from Step 2 to Step 3 to be shared among many), they are now obsolete.

Which brings me full circle to my point. While for many centuries, the cost of moving from Step 2 to Step 3 was the biggest part of creating a copyrightable work, that is no longer the case. Now, it is MUCH harder to find someone who can do an eloquent/quality job of using language/music/other media to convey a "raw idea" (i.e., transition from Step 1 to Step 2) than it is to move from Step 2 to Step 3. Because moving from Step 1 to Step 2 is a purely intellectual and creative process, it CANNOT be automated. Now, the greater value is in moving from Step 1 to Step 2, because the skills and expense moving from Step 2 to Step 3 are very low.

Thus, while in the past, the value of a copyrightable work was made mostly of the "physical work" required to place it into a medium, the advent of computers means that today, the value of a copyrightable work is made mostly of the "intellectual work" required to assign language/other representation to the work; the physical work and physical media involved now contribute little added value once the effort of moving from Step 1 to Step 2 is complete.

That was a long, boring discussion, but I needed to see it to clarify my own thoughts.

But not strictly in the act of transferring the product from existing as an electronic file to paper. Hang on, we're about to agree more in a moment.

There is some little added value in transferring from electronic file to paper - the cost of the paper, ink, and a percentage of the cost of the printer used. The cost of labor of course, is essentially zero, as the labor involved is simply pressing the "print" button plus a minute or two of binding time (plus a fraction of the cost of binding machinery). In fact, it could be argued that there is MORE added value in transferring a paper book to an electronic file as I would wager even at minimum wage it "costs" more to scan a book (even with a quick scanner, I would wager it takes at least fifteen seconds per page to properly prepare and scan a page, either by cutting a book into its constituent pages for feeding through a scanner or by laying the book flat on the scanner bed, hitting scan, picking the book up and moving it to pick up the next page, hitting scan, turning the page and repositioning it, hitting scan... etc.).. plus a fractional cost of the computer, electricity, hard drive, and scanner... thus the "labor cost" involved could be argued to make going from paper to electronic MORE valuable than going from electronic to paper!

So the electronic version of your product has value, value which can be enhanced by the medium but is not totally dependant on the medium.

Again, the electronic version of the product has value, but IMO, the majority of the value comes from the fractional expense of education and training plus the labor required in moving from Step 1 to Step 2 (i.e., figuring out what words to use to express the idea) as opposed to the material it's carried on (let's be honest, the fractional percentage of a hard drive required to store an e-file plus bandwidth charges are neglible).

Are we back to an idea as just a cool thought? If Thomas Jefferson ran a fire-producing business, then if someone came in and lit his taper it would be a theft of services.

Yes, idea is back to just a "cool thought" here (the "raw idea" spoken of above). An interesting point about Jefferson - though I suppose another analogy might be, "if my neighbor is hosting a party in his back yard, and I get out and groove to the DJ's music in my back yard, should I expect a bill from the DJ for theft of services?"

But you did hit on the right point - the idea is that of paying for a service. Paying for a "raw idea" is foolish - because no service has been rendered! Paying for the effort required to make that raw idea communicable - now THAT's a service. Paying for the effort required to write down a copy of the words involved? Well, that's getting less and less expensive and therefore less and less valuable (especially once the first copy has been input - copying it is nearly zero cost)... it will never quite get down to zero, since there must always be a fractional payment on the effort required to input the "first copy."

We are bouncing back and forth between an idea as the electronic aspect of a commercial product and an idea as an abstract iota of knowledge or enlightenment.

Yes... which is why I put forth "transcribed ideas" (the electronic aspect of a commercial product) and "raw ideas" (the abstract iota of knowledge) above... as I mentioned, it's hard to have a meaningful discussion when we have more concepts than words to describe them!

Context is also improtant. I spent a lot of time, effort, and money to get my Ph.D., but if someone asks me a question I can answer about astronomy, physics, or something else I have expertise in, then I'll talk their ears off and consider it a full Thomas Jefferson moment, but someone sneaking into a class that I teach is stealing by virtue of taking for free what a number of other people are paying for. Context.

*smiles* an interesting debate. Suppose you have really good loudspeakers and I hang out in the hall, in a public area outside your classroom, and am enlightened by your lecture about the way E=Mc^2 naturally falls out of Maxwell's Equations. Am I stealing your services in that case?

#1-#4 I'm cool with, but I don't think that #6 is correct. There are some monopolies that I think are positive goods. For example, medicine is in some sense a monopoly, as there are strict governmental restrictions as to who can practice medicine. I consider this as a good in that there are then at some checks are to what type of fruit loop can claim to be a medical doctor. I think that the condition of having the police force as a state monopoly is much better than having them a part of competing private forces, and I would wager that the cost is lower as well.

Ah, but medical doctors are not a monopoly... because there is more than one medical doctor - if I don't like Dr. A, I can go to Dr. B instead.

Suppose for a moment that one person - and only one person (call him Dr. C)- was authorized to perform, say, Laser Eye Surgery. Even though there are a lot of doctors around that are competent to perform the surgery, they can't do it because Dr. C has a monopoly. Dr. C decides to charge $10,000,000 for eye surgery. If I want the surgery, I have to pay his price, because nobody else offers it. That's not a good thing.

A monopoly truly is one person holding the exclusive ability to do something. Not a class of people. One person. I'm sure you can see what kind of abuse this might lead to.

To say that exclusive rights to material generated by the worker = a monopoly seems excessive. If one source controls gasoline to an area (the Keewenaw penninsula of the UP of Michigan) that's a bad thing. If only one company can produce a specific sourcebook, I cannot imagine that to be comparable.

The only difference is a matter of degree... more people use and rely upon gasoline than d20 sourcebooks. But suppose, for example, (to use an example that might be close to you as a teacher) one person held the rights to, say, all physics textbooks. You can't even write a physics textbok without infringing upon his copyright monopoly, because it would be a derivative work - after all, the only way you could have gained your PhD in physics is through use of his textbooks (as they are required for all physics courses in college) and thus your work would be a derivative of his. Now let's assume that he jacks the prices on physics textbooks up to $20,000 each... or worse, that he decides (out of spite) to withhold permission for publication at all. How do you teach your class?

As I see it, the author is the one being "taxed" by the limited life of copyright for society's help in enforcing the copyright.

And that's where we break ranks. The author has a reasonable right to be recompensed for his effort; however, there is a finite amount of IP that can be created... if we allow author after author to claim chunk after chunk, soon we will be left in a situation where we have to pay royalties on everything we say, read, hear, etc.

Just a couple of quotes here... emphases mine

From http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2003-09-07-1.html

Since every penny I earn depends on copyright protection, I'm all in favor of reasonable laws to do the job.
...
Copyright is a temporary monopoly granted by the government -- it creates the legal fiction that a piece of writing or composing (or, as technologies were created, a recorded performance) is property and can only be sold by those who have been licensed to do so by the copyright holder.
...
At the same time, a book or song isn't land or even corporate stock. In exchange for the private monopoly of copyright, when it expires the work is then free for anyone to perform or print or record.

From http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200011/0671319744___1.htm

"Now tell me: what's so damned awful about extending copyright to meet the realities of modern life? Customarily I try to listen to both sides before accepting a campaign donation—but this seemed so open and shut, so straightforward . . ."

"Senator, that bill is a short-term boon, to some artists—and a long-term disaster for all artists, on Earth and off."
...
"What is this disaster you speak of?" he asked.

"The worst psychic trauma the race has yet suffered."
...
"The racial memory of our species has been getting longer since Lascaux. The biggest single improvement came with the invention of writing: our memory-span went from a few generations to as many as the Bible has been around. But it took a massive effort to sustain a memory that long: it was difficult to hand-copy manuscripts faster than barbarians, plagues, or other natural disasters could destroy them. The obvious solution was the printing press: to make and disseminate so many copies of a manuscript or art work that some would survive any catastrophe.

"But with the printing press a new idea was born. Art was suddenly mass-marketable, and there was money in it. Writers decided that they should own the right to copy their work. The notion of copyright was waiting to be born.
...
"Don't you see what perpetual copyright implies? It is perpetual racial memory! That bill will give the human race an elephant's memory. Have you ever seen a cheerful elephant?"
...
"There are eighty-eight notes. One hundred and seventy-six, if your ear is good enough to pick out quarter tones. Add in rests and so forth, different time signatures. Pick a figure for maximum number of notes a melody can contain. I do not know the figure for the maximum possible number of melodies—too many variables—but I am sure it is quite high.

"I am certain that it is not infinity.
...
"We can create new art forms," he said.

"People have been trying to create new art forms for a long time, sir. Almost all fell by the wayside. People just didn't like them."

"We'll learn to like them. Damn it, we'll have to."

"...The ultimate bottleneck is this: that we have only five senses with which to apprehend art, and that is a finite number."
...
"But that's not what I'm afraid of, Senator. The theoretical heat-death of artistic expression is something we may never really approach in fact. Long before that point, the game will collapse."

"Artists have been deluding themselves for centuries with the notion that they create. In fact they do nothing of the sort. They discover. Inherent in the nature of reality are a number of combinations of musical tones that will be perceived as pleasing by a human central nervous system. For millennia we have been discovering them, implicit in the universe—and telling ourselves that we `created' them. To create implies infinite possibility, to discover implies finite possibility. As a species I think we will react poorly to having our noses rubbed in the fact that we are discoverers and not creators."
...
"But art is long, not infinite. `The Magic goes away.' One day we will use it up—unless we can learn to recycle it like any other finite resource. ... We need selective voluntary amnesia if Discoverers of Art are to continue to work without psychic damage. Fact should be remembered—but dreams?" She shivered. ". . . Dreams should be forgotten when we wake. Or one day we will find ourselves unable to sleep. Given eight billion artists with effective working lifetimes in excess of a century, we can no longer allow individuals to own their discoveries in perpetuity. We must do it the way the human race did it for a million years—by forgetting, and rediscovering. Because one day the infinite number of monkeys will have nothing else to write except the complete works of Shakespeare. And they would probably rather not know that when it happens."

I highly recommend the Spider Robinson piece, Melancholy Elephants, BTW. I had to excise massive chunks for brevity, but to catch the full impact, it is necessary to read the piece.

--The Sigil

 

[Dr. Harry]

I think part of the problem is that we have more concepts than we have words to describe them.

Precise language vs. "yer jes usin jargon!", or "if it didn't need technical terms to describe technical concepts it wouldn't be complex enough to warrent discussing."

That was a long, boring discussion, but I needed to see it to clarify my own thoughts.

Actually, I thought that was a concise summation of a lot of germane material. I hope this makes future discussions more compact. Thank you for your work.

(I am going to skip some really good material as, while valuable to the discussion, it is long. Any point I do not specifically address in the post of yours that I am responding to should be interpreted to mean that I agree with/ recognize the value of the excised post.

[/QUOTE]
Yes, idea is back to just a "cool thought" here (the "raw idea" spoken of above). An interesting point about Jefferson - though I suppose another analogy might be, "if my neighbor is hosting a party in his back yard, and I get out and groove to the DJ's music in my back yard, should I expect a bill from the DJ for theft of services?"
[/QUOTE]

That is an interesting idea, and I can make what I think are valid arguments for either side. Perhaps someone will pick this part of your post to expound on, and then I might disagree with them.

*smiles* an interesting debate. Suppose you have really good loudspeakers and I hang out in the hall, in a public area outside your classroom, and am enlightened by your lecture about the way E=Mc^2 naturally falls out of Maxwell's Equations. Am I stealing your services in that case?

Another interesting thought. I do not know if the school that I work at would take the position:

A) Thieving Bastiche! You must pay us for that!
B) Oh well, only the little piece of paper at the end has actual value. (Yes, I'm pessimistic enough to think that they might go that way.)

I very much doubt that they would take the position of

C) Come one, come all, this is a public university so this is a public service. Students pay to have the knowledge officially endorsed by the teacher by receiving a grade!

Ah, but medical doctors are not a monopoly... because there is more than one medical doctor - if I don't like Dr. A, I can go to Dr. B instead.

Suppose for a moment that one person - and only one person (call him Dr. C)- was authorized to perform, say, Laser Eye Surgery. Even though there are a lot of doctors around that are competent to perform the surgery, they can't do it because Dr. C has a monopoly. Dr. C decides to charge $10,000,000 for eye surgery. If I want the surgery, I have to pay his price, because nobody else offers it. That's not a good thing.

A monopoly truly is one person holding the exclusive ability to do something. Not a class of people. One person. I'm sure you can see what kind of abuse this might lead to.

Yes, although the are still some counterexamples that are probably to political to discuss, but that still falls to government as a class of people so I guess there really isn't a great qualification that is required. I used this as an example as it is similar (and in fact a good deal harsher) than the situations discussed in this thread. One person with control over who can buy gasoline and at what price is an evil, one person with control over who can print copies of a specific game book, and determine the price for that game book would trivialize the definition of 'evil' if it were applied to this case.

To jump ahead of myself, I see it as a perfectly reasonable "tax" of society on the individual that work goes into the public domain after a certain period of time in exchange for society's help in preserving the creator's (of the 'processed idea') right to the material for a certain period of time.

The only difference is a matter of degree... more people use and rely upon gasoline than d20 sourcebooks.

While I will grant that the primary difference is as a difference of degree, that is an exceptionally important difference, important enough to justify different conclusions.

But suppose, for example, (to use an example that might be close to you as a teacher) one person held the rights to, say, all physics textbooks. You can't even write a physics textbok without infringing upon his copyright monopoly, because it would be a derivative work - after all, the only way you could have gained your PhD in physics is through use of his textbooks (as they are required for all physics courses in college) and thus your work would be a derivative of his. Now let's assume that he jacks the prices on physics textbooks up to $20,000 each... or worse, that he decides (out of spite) to withhold permission for publication at all. How do you teach your class?

That would be a dangerous monopoly, and it would not correspond to copyright as that one person did not create or contract the processed idea in question. There are "processed ideas" (I do not use quotation marks to demean the term "processed idea", but to ensure that the words remain linked together as one term) that are not released to the public, typically related to some corporate or production function in that way, but most of my field has a different outlook. The overwhelming pressure is to publish and thus to release one's professional work immediately into the public domain - as long as proper credit is maintained.

And that's where we break ranks. The author has a reasonable right to be recompensed for his effort; however, there is a finite amount of IP that can be created... if we allow author after author to claim chunk after chunk, soon we will be left in a situation where we have to pay royalties on everything we say, read, hear, etc.

While we might have broken ranks on the basic outlook of where the most fundamental rights lie, we agree here. I think that society is fully justified (and that it is a positive good) in saying that copyrights have a limited life.

I won't comment on the quotes, but it is interesting that a friend of mine changed the name of his fledgling game company from one that shared a word common to Orson Scott Card's web pages due to Card's reputation as someone who strongly protects product identity. (This was OSC's perceived reputation; if that is inaccurate I would like to know.)

Dr. Harry

 

[The Sigil]

I won't comment on the quotes, but it is interesting that a friend of mine changed the name of his fledgling game company from one that shared a word common to Orson Scott Card's web pages due to Card's reputation as someone who strongly protects product identity. (This was OSC's perceived reputation; if that is inaccurate I would like to know.)

*chuckles* It's been over two decades since I was over at Scott's house playing "Babel" on his Atari 5200 with his son Geoffrey... and about 5 years since I last saw Geoffrey himself (he has also gone into writing, interestingly). Of course, living just around the corner from OSC when he moved into Greensboro, NC and spending lots of afternoons playing with his kids, and spending 20-odd years of having families exchange Christmas cards (after we moved to California the following summer), I have probably a rosier view of him personally than most. I have the feeling that I'm not well-qualified to answer that... though I also have the feeling that if any d20 publisher wanted to use a name similar to what he's used, a quick e-mail his way would probably be met with "go ahead and use the word; I won't sue you as long as there's no implication that you're tied to my works." Never hurts to ask and my experience with him is that he's a pretty reasonable guy as far as copyrights go - he doesn't want his stuff diluted, of course, but unless you're looking at "Hatrack River Game Publishers" or "Ender's Game Publishers" or similar as a name, you'd probably be all right. 'Course, as I mentioned, it's been a LONG while since I last spoke with him face-to-face and a lot can change in that time span.

--The Sigil

 

[Umbran]

Gee, all of a sudden I invade privacy and federal computer laws by inserting a tracking method for a product?

Hmmmm, let's see what else does this...

WINDOWS!
Norton Antivirus!
Hundreds of software titles use this system. In order to register/update, etc, it pings a server.

Yep. With the added caveat that the fact that it does so is either in the EULA, or obvious and simply understood. Like you could update your virus definitions or OS or register your software with a company without actually contacting the company in some way?

As in the Matrix - the difference is choice (even if only ona sub-conscious level)

Here's some data to consider...

Here's some other data to consider...

I'm sorry, but your little test is not a particularly solid measure, statistically, of what happens in the genre-market as a whole. Nor does it give a solid idea of how much you would have made if file-copying didn't exist.

Another little tidbit for folks to chew on - the RIAA has said that it has lost revenue to filesharing. But, oddly, the number of records actually passing out the doors of record stores has increased in the past year. It's an odd bit of accounting, described in this article.

The thing is this - pirating software and files is illegal. And we have a perception that this is hurting the industry through lost sales. But the only folks I know of who have tried to prove this sort of thing has been the RIAA, and they're using really screwy bookkeeping to do it. We have a perception that it hurts the industry, but no solid statistical proof.

That's not a good basis upon which to have this sort of conversation, is it?

 

[BASHMAN]

OOP Material

I think it is perfectly okay to swap OOP material. Some of those OD&D modules are nigh impossible to find in a store!

 

[Bendris Noulg]

On the other hand, one can buy an air guitar on ebay, so who knows?

Oh my god!!! It's mint condition!

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I think it is perfectly okay to swap OOP material. Some of those OD&D modules are nigh impossible to find in a store!

Actually, almost all of them are available at RPGNow and SVGames.

 

[woodelf]

I dont' think this is a very storong argument, for a couple of reasons...

First and foremost, I doubt that the majority of Americans even know how long a copyright lasts. If I'm correct, they cannot really be resentful about it, now can they? They can't go seeking revenge for that which they don't recognize as a wrong done unto them. While some activists may think this way, the general public really isn't that knowlegeable or long-sighted on the subject.

I disagree. I suspect that most people "know" how long copyright is to sufficient accuracy to support this argument: it's "forever". I'll bet the average person on the street thinks that copyright lasts until the creator dies, or is perpetual. Neither of which is quite correct, but it feeds into the notion of too-long copyrights. The average person on the street probably also does'nt know that older works are pre-copyright (other than, perhaps, a dim notion that the bible is public domain). The average person also probably has radically wrong notions of what constitutes infringing, and what rights copyright governs. Witness, frex, people on this very messageboard (in this thread even, i think), that see copyright as protecting access to content, rather than duplication of content (and thus the notion that if you've bought it once, you should be able to make copies for yourself).

Next, the logic doesn't hold for new releases. Surely, the original author deserves some length of time in which their work is protected from theft, so that they can make at least some money from it. Any work that is still under what folks would call a copyright of reasonable length shoudl still be reasonably clear of piracy. If what you say is correct, we should see more copyright infringement of older works.

Simply put - folks ticked off at how long copyrights are should not be stealling stuff released this very year. But, oddly, I expect it is the newest stuff that gets stolen.

The Sigil's argument isn't that people steal stuff that has been protected by copyright for too long. It is that, because copyright protects things for too long, people steal everything (including that which has only been protected for a short while).

I severely doubt that the pervasiveness of copyright infringement is based upon such high ideology as this. It's basic greed - everyone likes getting something for nothing.

Not high ideology--unconscious reaction. The claim isn't that people will calmly and rationally violate copyright when the term is long, but that they will "instinctively" seek a way around it when it seems too long--and not only once it has exceeded what they deem a reasonable length. It's a psycho-social thing.

An analogy:around here, they've re-signed school zones for 20mph instead of 15mph. Why? Because they found that more people slow down to less than 20mph when that's the speed limit in a school zone than slow down to less than 20mph (much less <15mph) when the speed limit is 15mph. IOW, by raising the speed limit, they've gotten, on balance, slower traffic flow in the school zones. The more onerous restriction of the slower speed limit leads to a larger portion of the populace either disregarding it completely or only making a half-hearted attempt to comply. The new, higher speed limit leads to greater compliance.

 

[Dr. Harry]

... but unless you're looking at "Hatrack River Game Publishers" or "Ender's Game Publishers" or similar as a name, you'd probably be all right. 'Course, as I mentioned, it's been a LONG while since I last spoke with him face-to-face and a lot can change in that time span.

--The Sigil

Well, the name the friend came up with (independently) was "Hatrack Games", so I'm not saying that OSC wouldn't have a legitimate point, but the quote was interesting in the context of what I had heard about OSC, which I cannot vouch for, and so pile on disclaimer after disclaimer.

 

[woodelf]

We, as a society, are still trying to figure out how to deal with the issue. So, memebers of an industry (like the RIAA), poke around. They get some estimates, and they go to Washington DC...

"We estimate that X songs were copied without a sale. If we had sold all those songs instead we would have made $Y more this year. Therefore, we have lost $Y in sales to this copying. Please pass a bill that will stop us from losing so much money."

However, the "if" in "If we had sold all those.." is a big one. As noted - not all those who copy would have bought if copying were not available. If we could turn back the clock and run the universe without this copying, the companies would get something notably less than $Y more in revenue.

I don't think anyone is saying that no sales are lost to copying. However, equating 1 copy to 1 sale lost is a naive estimate. It is a tool used by industried to over-represent their economic losses.

Another factor that may come into play is the very reputations of the music industry producers themselves. Frex, if a new group came out that i really liked, and they were released on the Sony label, i probably wouldn't buy it. I'm particularly pissed off at Sony right now for their stupid copy protection scheme that makes CDs unplayable in computers--for most of my CD-player-owning life, my only CD player has been a computer, and my primary CD player has always been my computer. But i've almost never ripped CDs i own--didn't even have the capability until a bit over a year ago--and the only time i've copied a few tracks off of them was for putting together a soundtrack for a game campaign. Making legitimate users unable to use your product in legitimate ways is not good copy protection. And the fact that it was so easily circumvented just makes it that much more ridiculous--now the legitimate user can't use the CD without doing something illegal (DMCA: even talking about how to circumvent copy-protection technologies is illegal, much less doing so, regardless of the purpose for which you do so), while the pirate can trivially circumvent the protection anyway. So, if a new band turned up that i really loved, i would choose to do without before i'd buy it--there's always the radio. Or, i might download at least a few tracks (probably not teh whole album, but out of laziness rather than moral imperative). But, even if i think the price is reasonable for the degree to which i like the music, i'm not gonna support some of the big producers--put the identical CD out on a different label, even at a higher price, and i'll buy. Whether it's logical or not.

Then again, i also bought Aqua's first album (the one with Barbie Girl on it) only because of Mattel's lawsuit against them. Sure, i enjoyed the song, but not badly enough to buy an album. Then i heard about the lawsuit. I looked around for the single for a while, but nobody had it. $20 for one song wasn't reasonable. $20 to get one song and thumb my nose at a foolish, hypocritical, frivolous lawsuit, and maybe give the victims of teh lawsuit a little more money, was perfectly reasonable. So i bought the full album. I'm just upset with myself that i never got around to writing Mattel that letter, pointing out that "Barbie Girl" wasn't gonna do any damage to the image of Barbie that Mattel hadn't already done, and all their lawsuit was doing was making the song more popular.