layoffs?

[justanobody]

True, but you cannot attribute it all to piracy. Hell TVs now will record stuff for you to watch when you want and VCRs still exist to record it yet again if you want without ever having to buy it. The problem is print media is dying and the cost of digital media that should be much lower is costing the same or in some cases even more and the public isn't putting up with it!

DVDs cost pennies to make but a movie costs so mcuha t initial release it is silly. Places want to make their costs back with the first few copies of something sold. There is where the problem in the whole bit comes from. It isn't like people have only started needing copy shops recently so it is a new technology that hasn't had drops in prices for decades, but the prices are still getting raised. This drives people to copy at home. Either legally or otherwise.

I stopped buying books of all kinds because of stupid pricing on them, and just don't read much anymore unless it is something online, even the news"paper" as it were from the various free news sites aroudn the world.

So piracy cannot be blamed for it all, unless the homeless can be blamed for the real estate companies fallout just because they aren't buying homes.

You want to do better business, then you need to have something worth people wanting and a price they are willing to pay. If they are taking their "business" elsewhere they you need to change your business model to regain them.

Kinkos as the example given not wanting to print even things that say "WotC grants permission to print this for personal use" is shooting themselves in their own foot. If they don't want to print thing, then they are the only ones responsible for losing money and not having people use their printing/copy service.

Like a gas station that recently went out of business for the fear of conterfeit money because he stopped accepting cash. Who does he have to blame but himself?

So it isn't just a single factor, and the one often looked at is the wrong one to be focusing on.

Like if people don't rush to buy the new DDM replacement minis will it be the consumer fault that they didn't follow the company, or just that the product and/or service might suck? I guess it would be the fault of the people that can make their own minis in this free-market economy that allows for competition. ~shrugs~

So look at the total picture, rather than just one pixel of it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True, but you cannot attribute it all to piracy.

I don't think anyone is asserting that. However, there is ample documentation that sales declines around piracy hotbeds are more pronounced than in other geographic areas.

DVDs cost pennies to make but a movie costs so mcuha t initial release it is silly.

Yes, the actual process of pressing a CD or DVD is cheap, pennies, as you correctly point out.

But those costs don't include the costs of recompense to the IP's creators, or the various technicians who got that IP into its consumable format, the artist who designed the jacket art, or the marketing department's efforts in making the public aware of the product.

And after all of that, someone has to take that cheap DVD and load it (and its buddies) onto trucks; off of the trucks and into the stores; stores which must be climate controlled, guarded and otherwise maintained... Each step adds some costs which goes into the final price, each of which is also only a few pennies here or there, but those pennies add up.

Don't get me wrong, the sales of mp3s and other electronic formats are the future- that much is clear. They eliminate many (not all) of the steps in the commercial production of IP that add costs, and are convenient to boot. But even they can't compete with free or discounted stolen IP.

Places want to make their costs back with the first few copies of something sold. There is where the problem in the whole bit comes from.

That depends upon what IP you're talking about and where you get it. Best Buy, for instance, commonly discounts CDs the first week or so after their release in order to boost sales and foot traffic. The hotter the album, the more likely it is to generate subsequent sales.

OTOH, movie theaters don't make money on the early weeks of a theatrical release. During the first weeks of release, studios get as much as 90% of the ticket sales, while the theater subsists on its sales of food & drinks. The longer the release continues, that % drops, and the theaters actually start making money from ticket sales. (That, BTW, is why I hate the growing practice of artificially shortening theatrical releases with a second release following a few months down the road- the agreement resets.)

I stopped buying books of all kinds because of stupid pricing on them, and just don't read much anymore unless it is something online, even the news"paper" as it were from the various free news sites aroudn the world.

Paper is expensive. There is increasing regulation on the use and disposal of the chemicals used to make and color it (according to the EPA, the paper industry is the #2 polluter after petrochemical companies).

In large amounts, its heavy, which means shipping it to market is expensive as well.

So look at the total picture, rather than just one pixel of it.

I'm a big picture kind of guy.

At any rate, before a Mod steps in, we should probably disengage from this tangent- IP piracy and its effects really doesn't have much to do with the original thread.

 

[Delta]

It is called jealousy!

"Understand" can mean "to accept sympathetically". I am not sympathetic to people who haven't yet reached the highest levels of success being jealous of CEOs.

There is no rule that says businessman are not also creative. In fact, anyone who has ever worked for a good manager or leader knows that top positions can drive massive positive change in an organization. Strategic vision is not necessarily the domain of line-level employees but it does drive corporate success.

Sometimes it is the lower levels of a company that drive stagnation and failure such as paying excess union employees to sit around and do nothing all day.

This is corporate political propaganda.

 

[Delta]

...his results ran counter to the vast majority of past studies, citing University of Texas at Dallas Professor Stan J. Liebowitz's study published in 2006 in University of Chicago’s Journal of Law and Economics. (FWIW, UC is is pretty much the pinnacle of academic work on the interactions between law and economics in the USA.)

Of course, folks should also know that the "Chicago School" of economic thought has been very highly politicized for decades, and a lot of folks think that's exactly what drove us into the current economic trouble:

Chicago school (economics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

 

[xechnao]

Regarding piracy on digital media I doubt they will ever manage to win an aggressive war against piracy. It costs a lot and it has no drastic massive results, I think.

Two reasonable solutions I see. Either digital distribution will officialy settle to the point where you will be allowed to have everything and anything without even legal problems. And people will still buy stuff though as they are doing allready if not even more due to psychological reasons. They will buy what product will be successfuly advertized and made as a highly regarded one to privately own. It could be due to physical value (a book) or time value (subsription to the source) or service value (subscription to a service). This model is the one Wotc is following.

Alternatively hardware and infrastructure manufacturers will sell products self taxed for their applications. For example your internet service at home will come with an extra fee that goes to a bank that pays holders of IP. There will be public centers (such as public libraries) for anyone to be able to access anything but these wont be private -and these centers should still pay IP tax. And so if you want the convinience to have access from home at will you will have to pay privately extra tax.

I am not sure what will be the ending settlement of the two, but publishers and marketing people will certainly be against the second and in favor of the first so it might be a long time before we see it hapening.

 

[xechnao]

It is called jealousy!

"Understand" can mean "to accept sympathetically". I am not sympathetic to people who haven't yet reached the highest levels of success being jealous of CEOs.

You call it jealousy, I call it injustice.

Yes, you're a cynic. Most people try to be honest and assume others will do so as well. This fact allows the dishonest to succeed because honest people aren't constantly suspicious of everyone they meet. Enron had some dishonest people, perhaps including the CEO, but it also had thousands of honest employees who never caught on to the problems.

Unfortunately honesty and power are two different beasts regarding how human teams relate to human groups. The system does not address this or tries to solve it. On the contrary it amplifies it.

 

[Zinegata]

Wow, your brush is a little broad there, no?
Sure, Enron happened, but it's such a memory for everyone because it doesn't happen all the time, not because it's the norm.

The entire credit crisis is, in large part, because of Enron-like practices. Giving out loans to people who can't pay them back is precisely the sort of irresponsibile behavior Enron engaged in - which was to put money in places where you know you can't recover it in an effort to show some illusory profit.

The problem to a large extent is because of bad accounting practices. If you put $100 million dollars in high-risk housing loans for instance, the accountant isn't going to write off that $100 million. They're going to pretend it's still with the company, and it's in fact earning 10%-20% interest ($10M - $20M). The reality is however, most of the time you're ONLY going to get back the interest (the $10M to $20M), and the rest of the money is NOT coming back because you gave the loans to people who never could have afforded it in the first place.

Enron's model was only dissimilar in that they setup shell companies to pretend the losses never happened (rather than pretending that the loans were going to be paid back). Still, the modus operandi is the same: Pretend you're making money by dumping money and losses in places where you can never recover it, but which accounting cannot see.

Truth be told, it's a global economy, and in a global economy production goes where it's cheapest. That's not gouging, that's business. It's been happening forever.

There's a major difference between gouging and irresponsibile profit-taking. Gouging is screwing over customers by making them pay a lot more than a product is worth. That's what oil companies and OPEC is doing. Irresponsible profit-taking is what ENRON did as I described above.

And executive/CEO salaries are out of line in some instances, but if a CEO screws up, people get layed off or the company goes under. If the janitor screws up, the bathroom is gross. HUGE difference. Nowadays if someone makes an accounting error the CEO can even go to jail. Dumb.

If they're taking bonuses when they're not meeting numbers and laying off employees, that pisses me off. You failed, no bonus, just like the rest of us. But in general, I won't begrudge them what they've worked for. And don't understand why anyone would. If you get a job offer with bonuses, it's not like you're going to say "oh no, no bonuses, I'm happier as a wage slave" or anything, why should they?

Don.

During the Second World War, on the eve of D-day, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces wrote a speech, just in case the invasion failed. In the speech, he said that everyone had done their job. If there is going to be any blame to be placed, it was entirely on his shoulder. Yet, the invasion suceeded, and the commander would later end up becoming one of the most popular presidents of the United States.

During the First World War, nearly 20,000 British soldiers died in a single day due to one of the most bungled operations in military history, for no gain in ground. The Supreme Commander of the British forces dined, paid calls, and had a relaxing ride on horseback while his troops died in the thousands in the mud. After the battle, less than half of the bodies of the dead were ever recovered.

CEOs are not military commanders. People don't die because of their decisions. But they affect the lives of people and their families. And when they screw up, they must pay the price. And it is particularly true if the said "leaders" show a casual disregard for the well-being of their employees, and yet they still continue to enrich themselves even though they screwed up.

Just to demonstrate, look at the huge difference between the CEOs of the automobile companies today, and the CEO of Chrysler 20 years ago - Lee Iacocca.

The CEOs of today were quick to beg for money from the government, and yet they still flew to Congress using expensive private jets.

Lee Iacocca by contrast, reduced his salary to $1 per year when Chrysler was about to go bankrupt. And he didn't ask for money from the government. He asked for a loan, and swore he would pay it back. Which he did ahead of schedule.

Again, leaders should be held accountable for the decisions they make. If you don't hold them accountable, there will be more sleezebags like the ENRON executives and less outstanding CEOs like Lee.

 

[DaveMage]

Is Scott Rouse no longer the Brand Manager?

That would be bad news for a revised GSL.

 

[Shemeska]

Lee Iacocca by contrast, reduced his salary to $1 per year when Chrysler was about to go bankrupt. And he didn't ask for money from the government. He asked for a loan, and swore he would pay it back. Which he did ahead of schedule.

Lee Iacocca is just an awesome guy, period. His current charity work towards various areas of medical research is amazing (diabetes mostly, as his late wife was diabetic).

And I'm trying very, very hard to not elaborate on the mention of (big) labor unions as an equal cause of stagnation. Can we please move away from politics before I fall to temptation on that one...

 

[Rel]

And I'm trying very, very hard to not elaborate on the mention of (big) labor unions as an equal cause of stagnation. Can we please move away from politics before I fall to temptation on that one...

Yes, let's avoid the politics, as usual.