I'm a left of center guy, but this kind of thinking is a very ugly slippery slope. Its not that anyone should always expect to pay for things that are beneficial, its the fact that people who very recently WORKED to create the very thing you are benefiting from should be PAID for their work.
If everyone followed your logic, we wouldn't have 12 Years A Slave. The props cost money. The costumes cost money. The cameras cost money. The cameramen's families eat fucking food, which costs money. Please, go out and find for me a quality movie that was made by unpaid volunteers. I haven't found one yet.
"Its not that anyone should always expect to pay for things that are beneficial, its the fact that people who very recently WORKED to create the very thing you are benefiting from should be PAID for their work."
Why did the camera, props, lighting and other workers contribute to the movie, if they weren't getting paid? How could they afford to?
In reality, of course, only the movie companies, some writers and a few big stars rely on percentages - the rest work for wages or get up-front money.
So your argument comes down to the special case where A puts out a recorded work, counting on royalties to pay for it, then B makes unauthorized copies - then A suffers, in some sense, a loss of the hypothetical revenue.
But wait, did B agree to pay? If there was no contract between A and B, then the supposed moral/ethical case for making B pay is reduced to "because the legislators said so". And if tomorrow the legislators grant a private monopoly on air to Monsanto, then by your reasoning we all suddenly become thieves.
There is a natural-rights case for copyright, but it extends only to the actual creators, and covers basically only correct attribution (as per some European laws [1]).
Those wages and up-front monies likely come from capital investments. It's usually financed through producers or production houses with the expectation that the investment will be made back with profit from the box office and all of the residual royalties of video, TV, online streaming, etc. Making a movie or music record, at least at the small scale, is probably not that different than a software startup.
While B didn't agree to pay, B wanted to watch the works, (and C and D and and and) If B and C and D don't pay, then next time A won't make anything, and everyone loses.
Except A haven't stopped making things in spite of B's and C's and D's refusal to pay, because Z pays.
Plus, from the get go, if there was a price tag attached to it, C and D wouldn't consume, only B and Z. So the loss is only of B's copy. C and D convinced X that A's product is good and X pays, offsetting B and more value is generated because more people watched the movie.
I used to believe this was only theoretical and the both sides didn't offset; but piracy has not killed industries so...
By this rationale, if you had a way to sneak into concerts without buying a ticket, would you do so? If so, what percentage of the time? 100%? 50%? How would you decide?
Is the experience the same whether I pay or not? How better or worse?
What's the price of the show, not in dollars, but in work I do for the rest of society?
Do the artists aggregate to my life?
How much does it cost them to be there performing?
If the wouldn't do it, would someone else?
Basically I think your example gets a bit overcomplicated because the current market is heavily distorted by giant recording companies. It is an area that is almost fringe economics because it involves feelings and quasi-irrational judgment of value. Should you ask me if I would steal a computer (not for necessity) or if I would sneak into the bus instead of walking I'd ask mostly the same questions, but the thinking process of the decision maker would be a lot more rational and, therefore, adherent to the models that shape our economy.
I did not say nor did I imply at any moment that I pirate anything; not only pirates think about piracy.
Comparing pirates to common thieves is a fallacy since it attributes the feelings we have toward common thieves to people who can't see the ones they might be hurting, and so can't empathize with them.
Someone who downloads a pirated copy of a work is not similar to someone who mugs someone or lifts a wallet on the street because it requires a lot more to visualize the one's from who you are stealing.
That being said I would like you to retract your statement about me, not because I'm not a pirate or a thief, but because you offended me.
P.S.: This is a place for the discussion of ideas, not for personal attacks. Come up with an argument and I'd be happy to debate the issue with you. Insult me and you will be breaking (again) the two first guidelines for comments on HN
Did you know walking is the leading cause of taxi cab unemployment? You should really consider the ugly nature of walking next time you decide not to cab it up. Taxis cost money, and their kids eat food.
The difference between taking a taxi and walking are significant. For your analogy to work you must alter it in one of two ways:
1. You hijack the taxi and demand the driver take you to your destination for free. This creates an equivalent or better experience for the consumer at zero or near-zero cost.
2. Instead of clicking a button and watching 12 Years a Slave, you get a crudely animated version pieced together by drawings crowdsourced from 1st grade students around the nation, and voiced entirely by Gilbert Gottfried.
The reason I think my analogy applies is because "pirating" costs cameramen nothing. You can measure their net worth before and after I pirate a movie and it will be the same. The same is not true of bumming a taxi ride.
For this comparison to be effective you have to measure their net worth, inclusive of their time available to earn an income (which has value), prior to making the movie. If they "spend" that time on being a cameraman in order to earn income and the movie studio has to pay less because free loaders keep watching the movies without paying, you have cost them money.
A cameraman's salary is paid by the movie's budget, which is effectively a loan against the projected future earnings of a film.
Sure the cameraman already got paid for the film you just pirated, but if said film doesn't earn enough then the studio will decide to make fewer films or go bankrupt, either of which could cost the cameraman their job and significantly reduce future earning potential.
But if the movie wasn't worth any money to said person in the first place, then maybe it isn't such a big loss. Maybe some just do not value cinema entertainment very much even though they may watch a movie.
Absolutely. Certainly the hypothetical cameraman has no inherent right to be paid to do whatever they want to do, I only assert that the so-called utopian pirate market is incapable of sustaining cinema without drastic changes to the business.
Not to say those changes aren't currently necessary, only that if everyone chose to pirate rather than pay then all of Hollywood would likely just shut down rather than keep throwing $100+m AAA blockbusters into a financial abyss.
Hollywood shutting down would not be a huge loss to the world. Movies of cultural value could still be funded and then be made available to the public.
That's a highly debatable point. People's definitions of cultural value differ wildly, and the sort of violence and humor that many people find entertaining would be difficult to justify seeking public funding for.
If only one person thinks that way, and pirates a movie, your statement holds true.
If 1,000 people think that way, it probably still holds true.
Extending this, however, you reach an obvious tipping point, where a critical mass of people pirate the movie and the production costs are not recouped (and the cameraman is out of work and his children starve in the street).
It's the logical conclusion of your line of thinking. What if everybody believed pirating the movies they want to watch will not affect the cameramen. What if nobody paid for the movies they're watching? Obviously, high-budget movies would no longer be possible, and we'd all be reduced to watching shoe-string-budget art house shlock (I know, I know... Primer).
Obviously, that is not sustainable. So what makes you special? Why should you not pay for the movie you're watching, while other people should foot the bill?
> 1. You hijack the taxi and demand the driver take you to your destination for free. This creates an equivalent or better experience for the consumer at zero or near-zero cost.
For completeness, this is true only if the consumer prefers the taxi ride over walking and considers it to be a better experience.
> 2. Instead of clicking a button and watching 12 Years a Slave, you get a crudely animated version pieced together by drawings crowdsourced from 1st grade students around the nation, and voiced entirely by Gilbert Gottfried.
I often wonder what would happen if the de facto standard in an industry were to disappear overnight. If taxis disappeared, would more people find ways to participate in carpool/rideshare systems?
If we stopped making new movies, would people learn to appreciate older classical films they'd never considered before? Surely there have already been more movies produced than a person could consume in a single lifetime, though it's debatable whether or not most of them are worth viewing at all.
Movies are still a new enough medium that there quality is still improving, so current movies tend to be better then those from a decade ago, and (likely) worse then those a decade from now.
Once the medium platues (or long enough after to build up a supply), then this would work.
By better than, I hope you were referring to the image quality and special effects. In terms of filming techniques and the actual content of the movies, I do not think films made decades ago are categorically worse than films made today.
The argument being that art is intensely connected to the time in which it is created, and the function of art in the context of the progression of humanity requires that artists constantly make new art for the current generation.
It's not like people are making professional-grade movies now in the free time, as they are now driving around cities with their own cars. Likewise, not everyone is trained to make movies as most adults are already trained to drive cars.
Sure, and infinite other people screw the driver. Oh, I suppose some people will pay the posted fare for their ride. As long as it doesn't have to be us, right?
I understand the reasoning, but I believe it is flawed for two reasons:
First, you're confusing the cost of distribution with the total cost of creating media. While digitization has driven down distribution costs, it doesn't affect the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that a typical movie costs to produce. Just because you can download a movie from a server to your laptop for free, does the cost suddenly cost nothing to produce? Of course not.
Second, the scenario we're discussing does not reflect traditional free markets. Conventionally, a seller offers a product or service, and if the seller and a buyer agree on a price, there's an exchange. Basic supply and demand.
Technology now allows buyers to set the price of certain services to zero against the wishes of the seller, and the seller is powerless to stop the transaction. Clearly, this is not a conventional free market scenario, and we may need new principles.
quandrangle didn't say don't pay anyone. They said just because something is good, doesn't mean we have to pay every time we consume it. There are other conceivable ways of funding these things. Like crowd-funding, micropayments, whatever. If everyone followed quadrangle's logic, people who wanted to produce movies would find another way to fund them.
Please explain how crowd-funding a movie even makes sense? There are plenty of movies with actors I love that are terrible. Have you seen RED (or worse, RED 2)? For the same reason your boss doesn't pay you for the month you haven't worked yet, you shouldn't expect people to produce movies without any reliable way of getting paid.
And you're talking about a very new funding model. I'm not saying there are necessarily lots of examples of great movies already produced with this model. I'm saying they could easily be. A good number of projects have raised millions on kickstarter [1], including two movies [2, 3].
There's no reason the movie industry couldn't move to a pre-funding model. Or some other model nobody has thought of yet.
Their model already exists and they have moved to it - movie theaters and netflix. The movie industry is nice an healthy, they make more money each year then the previous. The reason they fight against piracy is simple - they want more money. If there's a chance to get more money, why not try? In reality, piracy is negligible and is not worth the policing effort. More importantly, eliminating piracy altogether will not convert all pirates to movie goers. That's absurd! A pirate is a person who will either steal a movie or not watch it. Either way they are not paying for it. Only a small percentage of pirates will switch to paying customers in a perfect scenario. So in reality, the industry will enjoy a negligible profit increase - that's all. Considering their current ever increasing profits from year to year, the industry is booming. They only reason they are chasing after pirates is because they are driven by they greed and incorrect perception of 'opportunity cost'. They see a huge chunk of potential pie because they imagine that once they are able to police movie watching completely, then every pirate will be paying them royalties. This is of course far from the truth. Greedy and dimwitted they persist to believe that illusion. I wonder what positive effects move piracy has on the industry that the industry is benefiting from but are not aware of? Perhaps free word of mouth advertising on an enormous scale? I think more people pirate movies than pay which means that a immense audience is functioning as free word of mouth advertisers. What impact would eliminating this group have on the industry? Worth to think about.
But there are lots of crowdfunding successes for videogames, even though they present the same problem that you don't know in advance how good it will be. So I don't think the situation is hopeless.
Another idea which I think has promise is payment by social conventions. Tipping culture in the US is like this: you are not legally required to pay waitstaff, but everyone does because they would be considered assholes if they didn't. People joke that it's ridiculous that rock bands and web cartoonists make most of their money selling t-shirts, but actually if we are aiming for social pressure t-shirts are the ideal currency---everyone you interact with in your daily life can see that you bought one. So if we got a convention going that "if you regularly read a webcomic you oughta buy the t-shirt", then it would be easy to ostracize the people who violate it.
I guess you're unaware of independent films. 12 Years a Slave would absolutely be made, regardless of a non-blockbuster budget. There are always going to be people trying to make art or assist in doing so, without the intention of making an absurd amount of money. Why do these actors even need millions for a movie? Its an absurd amount that is more than necessary.
That is a different argument. Why do actors "need" millions? Because the movie makes millions. Perhaps the problem is the cost of the individual ticket is too high?
While there are some good independent films, many aren't very good. Generally (at least to me) a high quality hollywood blockbuster is more entertaining (and more polished) than a low budget film. I'd be fairly disappointed if we lost the blockbusters and only had low budget amateur films left.
The problem is digital isn't "real". For example, imagine I create a product called a "pet rock". Let's say this product is simply... a rock. Anyone who has access to outside can basically make their own copy. Is it their fault for "copying" without paying? Or is it my fault for making a product that is extremely easy to copy?
U.S. IP law is so outdated and in need of major reforms.
The alternative is to ask people to fund the movie in advance. Either in forms of a mandatory fee (like in Germany where each household has to pay ~20 Euro for public television) or in some other way. Since digital copies are free, their price should be close to zero.
I never said that people who make movies shouldn't be paid. The point is simple: however we figure out funding movie creation, doing so by making sure nobody ever benefits without paying is definitely the wrong approach.
If a movie looks good, ill go to see it. That's how Hollywood makes money. Unfortunately the majority of blockbusters are trash. That's what projects like this are for.
If they're worth spending the effort of creating an application like this, then they're worth something. And yet this offers nothing for that something.
Except you're being scammed by Hollywood. I had numerous friends who went to school for film and went elsewhere due to finding out that the purpose behind it is to turn a profit, not to create something of worth. Every blockbuster movie contains the same boilerplate concept, the masses are too hypnotized to realize their money is being drained.
If it's trash then wouldn't it make sense to just not watch it at all? Why is it that we somehow 'deserve' to watch a film at whatever price we think is reasonable, when the whole thing is optional anyway?
I don't have HBO so I don't watch Game of Thrones. It's not like my life suffers immensely because I can't consume it. There are plenty of other forms of culture and entertainment in the world that I use to occupy my time.
