Re: [Full-disclosure] when did piracy/theft become expression of freedom

["Zach C." <fxchip@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 27, 2012 4:07 PM, <Valdis.Kletnieks@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:06:28 GMT, Michael Schmidt said:
> > You want to be very careful with that line of thought. You are taking
the
> > creator the rightful owners profits, which they are entitled to if it
is a
> > product they created to be sold.
>
> You might want to go read "Courtney Love Does The Math", and then ask
yourself
> the following:
>
> 1) You can make a case that if you copy an album intead of buying it,
you're
> depriving somebody of profits.  But what if it's an album that you would
*not*
> have bought at full price anyhow?  Or one that you bought used (see
"first sale
> principle")?

If you buy an album used, the seller generally loses possession of it, you
gain possession of it at a reduced cost, and the original purchase still
gave the original seller and producer value. Value has still been
exchanged, assuming no literal theft was involved to make the whole thing
criminal anyway. If you make a copy, you're pretty much creating (or, if
you prefer, *re*-creating) value out of basically nothing using source
material, but nothing of value goes back to the original creator of what
was copied.

Besides that, I do not trust customers to make their own price up for
everything they buy because (a) they may be honest but not know how to
properly appraise a piece of work or (b) they will try to shaft you. It's
literally like blindly trusting user input. Before you bring up Humble,
Radiohead, et al: just because it can and has been done a few times doesn't
mean it's viable or as lucrative as it should be. (Humble even STILL had
pirates, IIRC!)

>
> 2) Who gets those profits, the artist, the label, or the RIAA?  Are you
> stealing profits from the artist, or are you stealing them from somebody
else
> who was attemting to steal them from the artist?

All of the above; while the companies' creative accounting is almost
criminally bullshit, the artist *still* gets a cut and even a profit if
they do well enough. As a nasty little bonus, any profit taken from those
companies will never, ever be seen by the artist regardless. There is a
100% better chance of an artist receiving money via a record company
getting paid for the artist's work than a record company *not* getting paid
from the artist's work. It's gotta come from somewhere. So if you're
screwing them and they're screwing the artist, you just wind up making them
screw the artist that much harder.

>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
> Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
> Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/

_______________________________________________
Full-Disclosure - We believe in it.
Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html
Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/