Wow... This p'd me off... (Seller's 'miracle of an invention')

[lilshawn]

EVERYBODY HOLD ON!



I'M SENDING IN MORE TRAINS!

CHOOO CHOOO!!!

[ark_ader]

By the way, proceeds from the book help pay for this website.

So this site is probably $99.96 for every 3 years including Domain & SMF (free).

Advertisements and book - $99.96 = profit$.

Not bad at all Saint! 

--cream-filled twinkie--. You missed the word "help." People like you make me wonder sometimes why I bother. The server is $1100 or so a year.

Jeepers! Who is hosting you?

[CheffoJeffo]

Uh, ark ... have a look at the dedicated server pricing, which starts at over $2K. 

[ark_ader]

Uh, ark ... have a look at the dedicated server pricing, which starts at over $2K. 

Yes pricey. 

[DaveMMR]

My friend, who makes close to $90K/yr. with no kids, wife, mortgage, etc., pretty much pirated every single XBox 360 game out there - and BluRays as well.  He brags about it all the time, but he's not aware that everyone's calling him a "cheapskate ---uvula---" behind his back. 

Here's my stance and I'll leave it alone: If you pirate, don't brag about it.  Because one day you're going to meet that one person who is affected by piracy (e.g. musicians, authors, film crew, Saint), and they're going to make you look like a dick.

[emphatic]

shitcock

Time to update the swear-filter me thinks.

Is your avatar of a guy smoking pot?

Mine is.

[clok]

Trailer Park boys to the rescue... sad thing is they are almost a carbon copy of my life in the 80's.. and beyond..     Didi you check him out in HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN    pretty funny too.

[clok]

damn trailer Prk boys derailed me.

Piracy is pretty simple to me. If it has value Key word here,  and people charge for it and I take it for free when I DONT OWN IT I probely did something wrong. Most people use the exscuse they would never have bought it, so having it and enjoying it doesnt effect the original person.. if it had no value to you why did you take it? It had VALUE to you or you would not have bothered. So I guess that should mean you felt it was worth less than they wanted... the solution to that (before digtial media) was pretty cut and dried. I want a steak, place A charges $30, i think its to much, I DONT EAT IT!!!!  thats how its been done for years, I didnt like the price I didnt buy it. wait a sec... digtial media has no "substance" its not the orginal, if i just take it, nobody will not get one becuase i have that copy, nobody will lose money as there is no value to it.

good thing Drug companies, inventors dont think that.. THOUGHTS/ IDEAS have no substance, so in this "free if there is nobody being deprived" world they should just research and use that brilliant mind to solve problems for free..  making Music or movies takes time, skill (well... not so much in some movies and music) things that have nothing you hold in your hand have been giving value since long before digital... the only thing Digital has done as made it excedingly simple to "STEAL" value with pretty much zero risk. poeple have been selling stuff that has no "solid" value for a long time. Rental on equipment, babysitting, consulting.

I think the easy way to look at it. YOUR TIME, if you work all day shoveling cow dung and the end of the day they say THANKS and you figured you where going to get paid you would be mad.  Poeple how make musci/movies/games all want to get paid at the end of the day too. 

[Vigo]

Most people use the exscuse they would never have bought it, so having it and enjoying it doesnt effect the original person.. if it had no value to you why did you take it? It had VALUE to you or you would not have bothered. So I guess that should mean you felt it was worth less than they wanted... the solution to that (before digtial media) was pretty cut and dried. I want a steak, place A charges $30, i think its to much, I DONT EAT IT!!!!  thats how its been done for years, I didnt like the price I didnt buy it. wait a sec... digtial media has no "substance" its not the orginal, if i just take it, nobody will not get one becuase i have that copy, nobody will lose money as there is no value to it.

Piracy can have a major positive impact on a product. Think about Adobe Photoshop for a second. A commercial program that for years was wildly pirated, yet now it is common lingo with anybody computer literate. Adobe seemed to do very little about people pirating their software for many years, as long as commercial users paid for the program. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry who pirated the program back in the 90's as kid exclusively uses Photoshop (and subsequently premiere, illustrator, indesign, etc.) Now if Adobe was efficient at stopping piracy from day 1, nobody would have dared pay the $1000 price tag the program used to cost, the program would not be nearly successful, the kids who grew up using photoshop were inspired enough to go in to graphic design and use this program with their own business. Because of photoshop and the rampant piracy, there are graphic designers everywhere. It's no coincidence.

Of course this is not a justification of piracy, but rather pointing out the nature of the climate today. Just because an item has value doesn't set price. The cost and value are separate and do not dictate each other. Piracy is inevitable, and can actually be a powerful tool if harnessed. You cannot think of digital media in the same sense as a $30 steak. You have only the one steak, but you have a potentially infinite number of photoshops out there.

I think the easy way to look at it. YOUR TIME, if you work all day shoveling cow dung and the end of the day they say THANKS and you figured you where going to get paid you would be mad.  Poeple how make musci/movies/games all want to get paid at the end of the day too.  

I can only wish that any of the crappy short films I made were good enough to be pirated. Right now, it fits in that "shoveled cow dung that nobody wants to pay for" category. For all the artists that don't get paid for their work, welcome to the world of being an artist. Van Gogh and countless other artists had the same problem; it's nothing new to the 21st century.

[emphatic]

I've heard a pretty good argument against downloading games, music, etc a while back I didn't consider before:

MAME for example gives you literary thousands of games to play, so if you only play these you have less time to consume other media. The same goes for everything that we can easily get from the Internet and all of the YouTube clips etc.

I only play games in my cabinet (360 arcade ports), but I still feel I haven't had the time I feel that I need to put into each game to feel it's worth having. If I had just downloaded the games, I'd feel even less satisfied with each game.

I know that I over-consume stuff like TV shows and movies, which leaves very little time to play games, create music etc. This is a real downer for me, and I'm pretty much pro-download.

[DaveMMR]

Piracy can have a major positive impact on a product. Think about Adobe Photoshop for a second. A commercial program that for years was wildly pirated, yet now it is common lingo with anybody computer literate. Adobe seemed to do very little about people pirating their software for many years, as long as commercial users paid for the program. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry who pirated the program back in the 90's as kid exclusively uses Photoshop (and subsequently premiere, illustrator, indesign, etc.) Now if Adobe was efficient at stopping piracy from day 1, nobody would have dared pay the $1000 price tag the program used to cost, the program would not be nearly successful, the kids who grew up using photoshop were inspired enough to go in to graphic design and use this program with their own business. Because of photoshop and the rampant piracy, there are graphic designers everywhere. It's no coincidence.

That is a valid point - Photoshop would not be as popular today if it weren't for piracy.  But it is interesting to add that Adobe is actively FIGHTING the use of the word "Photoshop" to mean digital editing of photos lest it becomes genericized and exploited by competitors and legal protection of said trademark lost (Aspirin, Dumpster, Thermos, Zipper and Yo-Yo were all trademarked at one time).  So it is quite possible that an Adobe CEO may have a different opinion on its popularity.  To him/her, not only was their software pirated by non-professionals, but their brand name is actually being threatened.

For all the artists that don't get paid for their work, welcome to the world of being an artist. Van Gogh and countless other artists had the same problem; it's nothing new to the 21st century.

Actually it is, if you're talking about music.  Yes, people were taping songs off the radio or dubbing their friend's cassettes, but record sales were relatively healthy until the dawn of the 21st century (when Napster was at its peak).  Nowadays, artists get paid by just selling their songs directly to the fans.  But even when they do something unique, like offer an entire album for whatever you want to pay - down to a penny (Radiohead's "In Rainbows") - people still stole it.  

[Donkbaca]

Meh, the record company ripped us off for a good two decades because of CD's.  Hey, I know you already bought this album as a casette, and as a record, but you need to buy it AGAIN as a cd, oh and its going to be 3 times as expensive because cd's are so much more expensive.  That's essentially the line they fed us for the 80's and half of the 90's.  Liar, liar, pants on fire!  The focus went from putting together a bunch of good songs to create an album to putting a couple of good songs on a cd, you push the hell out of one or two songs and then you charge someone 15-20 bucks and make them buy the whole cd just for that one song.  When the public found out how cheap it actually was to make cd's, the record company didn't budge.  Held us hostage.  You want to own this one song?  Pay 20 bucks for the whole album sucka!  

I used to feel guilty about downloading music, but now I just don't.  If you like an artist, go see them in concert, they get a bigger cut of their show money than they do record sales anyway. Besides, I work every day for my money.  It would be sweet if someone like, recorded one weeks worth of work from me, and then I could just replay it over and over and get paid for it.  Why should someone like Neil Diamond STILL be making money of a song he recorded 20 years ago?

[emphatic]

Meh, the record company ripped us off for a good two decades because of CD's.  Hey, I know you already bought this album as a casette, and as a record, but you need to buy it AGAIN as a cd, oh and its going to be 3 times as expensive because cd's are so much more expensive.  That's essentially the line they fed us for the 80's and half of the 90's.  Liar, liar, pants on fire!  The focus went from putting together a bunch of good songs to create an album to putting a couple of good songs on a cd, you push the hell out of one or two songs and then you charge someone 15-20 bucks and make them buy the whole cd just for that one song.  When the public found out how cheap it actually was to make cd's, the record company didn't budge.  Held us hostage.  You want to own this one song?  Pay 20 bucks for the whole album sucka!  

I used to feel guilty about downloading music, but now I just don't.  If you like an artist, go see them in concert, they get a bigger cut of their show money than they do record sales anyway. Besides, I work every day for my money.  It would be sweet if someone like, recorded one weeks worth of work from me, and then I could just replay it over and over and get paid for it.  Why should someone like Neil Diamond STILL be making money of a song he recorded 20 years ago?

In Sweden we have special taxes on empty media that goes towards the recording industry, or as I like to call 'em, the mob. They collect on all empty CD-R discs, and now even hdd's etc, but it's STILL illegal to download stuff even though they get paid for media that in many, many cases doesn't even end up containing copyrighted stuff. They fail to understand technology progress when it puts money in their pockets for sure.

[CheffoJeffo]

Meh, the record company ripped us off for a good two decades because of CD's.  Hey, I know you already bought this album as a casette, and as a record, but you need to buy it AGAIN as a cd, oh and its going to be 3 times as expensive because cd's are so much more expensive.

The fact that you failed to recognize the value of the Maxell XL-IIs aside (really, who bought both the album and the cassette   ), your argument for pirating music today is that the record companies held a gun to your head to make you buy CDs 20 years ago (and, really, who was forced to replace their albums and cassettes with CDs  ), when every one of your complaints has not been an issue in quite a while ? 

Besides, I work every day for my money.  It would be sweet if someone like, recorded one weeks worth of work from me, and then I could just replay it over and over and get paid for it.  Why should someone like Neil Diamond STILL be making money of a song he recorded 20 years ago?

Was your work performed as work-for-hire or do you own the end product ?

I still get paid for the use of work I created a decade ago -- because I own the rights to the product. If I did that work for somebody else and received a salary, then I would have no such rights. I didn't, hence I should still get paid while that work has value in the market. Same goes for Neil Diamond.

[Donkbaca]

I am just saying I have no sympathy for the music industry.

You are right, its all about markets.   I buy some stuff, I download some stuff.  I don't feel bad about downloading the stuff I do. I just don't. In fact if I had to PAY for some of the stuff I download, I just wouldn't have it at all.  That's price discrimination and how effiecient markets work.  We all have different price points for different goods.


Then there is the whole argument that copyrights discourage innovation, but I am on the fence about that one.