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- Feb 1, 2006
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Re: The economy would be better if more people respected copyright law. Agree/disagr
I'm not touching this poll.
From a strictly economic perspective, I simply don't see how obeying copyright laws would improve the economy. I will admit it: I infringe copyrights. A lot. But the thing is, I also spend the majority of my disposable income-- when I have any-- on intellectual property. I see movies in the theaters. I buy books, and unlike a number of other supposed IP supporters, I buy my books new so that my purchases actually support the publishers. I've gone back and purchased legal copies of materials I've already downloaded.
The thing is, piracy is not theft. It does not work even remotely like theft. When a person steals a physical item, the person they stole it from is out the price they paid for it; they are directly harmed in a fashion that they can directly account for. When a person illegally downloads a copyrighted intellectual property, the person who owns that IP is out nothing; they have lost money if and only if the person who downloaded it would have purchased it otherwise, and they still have that IP available for sale. Piracy isn't theft, it is the distribution of counterfeit goods. However much those counterfeit goods hurt the bottom lines of the companies that produce legitimate products, those counterfeit goods are still real economic goods that are still beneficial to society. And when those counterfeit goods drive sales of genuine goods, as has been alleged with supporting evidence, then they are actually enhancing the value of those intellectual properties.
Obviously, the people who create culture and information need to get paid. I'm the last person who's going to argue otherwise because this is my livelihood we're talking about. But increasingly draconian penalties and control measures are not the solution; these things hurt our customers and they hurt us in the long run. The only way we're going to survive this is by finding ways to make our money despite the piracy, and the companies that are going to be the most successful are going to be the ones that learn to make their money because of the piracy-- the companies that find a way to make free online distribution work for them rather than against them.
I'm not touching this poll.
From a strictly economic perspective, I simply don't see how obeying copyright laws would improve the economy. I will admit it: I infringe copyrights. A lot. But the thing is, I also spend the majority of my disposable income-- when I have any-- on intellectual property. I see movies in the theaters. I buy books, and unlike a number of other supposed IP supporters, I buy my books new so that my purchases actually support the publishers. I've gone back and purchased legal copies of materials I've already downloaded.
The thing is, piracy is not theft. It does not work even remotely like theft. When a person steals a physical item, the person they stole it from is out the price they paid for it; they are directly harmed in a fashion that they can directly account for. When a person illegally downloads a copyrighted intellectual property, the person who owns that IP is out nothing; they have lost money if and only if the person who downloaded it would have purchased it otherwise, and they still have that IP available for sale. Piracy isn't theft, it is the distribution of counterfeit goods. However much those counterfeit goods hurt the bottom lines of the companies that produce legitimate products, those counterfeit goods are still real economic goods that are still beneficial to society. And when those counterfeit goods drive sales of genuine goods, as has been alleged with supporting evidence, then they are actually enhancing the value of those intellectual properties.
Obviously, the people who create culture and information need to get paid. I'm the last person who's going to argue otherwise because this is my livelihood we're talking about. But increasingly draconian penalties and control measures are not the solution; these things hurt our customers and they hurt us in the long run. The only way we're going to survive this is by finding ways to make our money despite the piracy, and the companies that are going to be the most successful are going to be the ones that learn to make their money because of the piracy-- the companies that find a way to make free online distribution work for them rather than against them.