Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Intentionally giving out free tracks for publicity is not the same as having people copy and redistribute your work without your consent.

The bottom line is: if you respect the content creator's wishes, then you just don't pirate their products.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I'm gonna way in on this conversation, after now having read the first 15 pages, browsed the next 5 pages, and skimmed the rest.

I think I understand where azorni is going, and I can see clearly that none of you are grasping the concept he's trying to put forward.

What is a program? Its just one giant number thats n bits long in base 2 (n being the total number of bits that represents the program in question). Theres no cost at all except a negligible electricity cost in duplicating this long number. That cost isn't even necessarily passed along to the original developer!

So what gives this really long number value? Well, in certain contexts, the program it represents may offer some functionality that is desirable. The other contexts being on unsupported platforms. On those platforms, that long number doesn't mean ****.

Bridges provide a desirable function that reduces time or effort in crossing a natural obstacle.

Cars are tangible products that reduce time and effort in transporting things. If you sell a car, you deprive its previous user of the use of that functionality.

Certainly a developer's time and knowledge is worth good money. Also, the fruits of his labor is worth money. However, the real question is whether the fruit of his labor is the code, or the functionality. Granted they are inseparably tied together. That doesn't satisfy the philospher in me though. Maybe somebody can build off this.

By the way, the problem isn't necessarily limited to Software. Consider this post, and the future of recipe makers. With the ability to arbitrarily create any food we want, where will that leave professional chefs and their creations?

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Well, it is quite pleasant to be understood, at last. I particularly like what you said about a software being nothing more after all than a huge number.

According to this point of view, a software is not much of a creation. Rather, it is a discovery. And this has philosophical and economical implications.

This reminds me a debate I had once about mathematics being invented or discovered by human kind. I was supporting the idea that mathematics were discovered. Now that I think about it, to me this explains why I don't have to pay when I use some maths theorem or formula.

I'll try to have a look at your link some day.

Thanks.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Probably right where they are. Even with fancy food printers, people would still want something hand-cooked. Even Star Trek had restaurants despite replicators being everywhere ;)

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Granted, but you're still not embracing the problem, only escaping the heavy thinking by taking tangents away from the problem.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Are we evaluating product values by their material costs now?

That a painting is nothing more than a canvas and some tubes of paints?

How about a TV show? Just the cost of the reel or recording medium that it's on?

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

A painting is indeed nothing more than a canvas and some paint on it. But with a very precise arrangement of the painting.

A random arrangement has very high entropy and worths therefore not much more than the sum of its components.

But a master piece has very low entropy and this is what you pay.

same answer.

Nobody said that marginal cost IS the price of a product. What it does is influencing the dynamic of its evolution.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

I'm asking you.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Entropy?

Take a guess of how much this painting goes for:

http://stylecrave.frsucrave.netdna-c...40mil_msp1.jpg

$10k? more
$100k? more
$1M? more
$10M? more
$100M??

more.

You can stop fabricating theories as you go along now.

Re: What is "piracy" and is it ever justified
 

Selling information is a tricky business. Journalists, for instance, know very well about that.

If you're a journalist and you have a scoop, you must absolutely keep it secret until it is printed and published by the journal you work for.

A scoop is something that might have a colossal value. But as soon as it is unleashed, its value immediately vanishes until it reaches zero. Of course, you might try to create some laws that forbid to give your journal to someone else, or to tell anyone about what you've read in it. But this would be a silly waste of public force resource, and society should not do that. I guess you would agree that a « non redistribution clause » on a paper journal would be absurd.

Information does have value, but only its publication can be converted into price, not its diffusion. Diffusion may still be commercialized, as long as it requires a physical media with non zero marginal cost. This is more or less still the case for journalism, for paper still being better lecture media than electronic screens. But when information can be reduced to its pure form, such as a scoop that basically is an information which stands in one sentence and can therefore be learned by heart and passed orally, only its publication can be monetized.

Nor software, nor any digital entertainment, are much different.