Don't Make Me Steal
dontmakemesteal.com
dontmakemesteal.com
The creators of this campaign decided that "Purchase should not exceed the cinema price." Really? What if we did that for, say, organic bread. "I won't buy organic bread unless it's x3 or less than the cost of the generic white bread. If it is more expensive, I'm entitled to steal it."
Sorry folks, you're entitled to not buy it, not to steal it.
The problem with comparing content piracy with theft of physical objects is that the latter are scare and the former is not. I'm not trying to justify content piracy, I'm just saying that you-wouldn't-download-a-car analogies are invalid.
The fact that nobody would set up such a system is evidence that your analogy is unproductive, not that your argument is strong.
I'm going to assert that the optimal pricing strategy for these goods is one of per-customer price discrimination, where the price is the highest one the customer can afford and at which the customer still values the content more than the opportunity cost foregone by exchanging money for it.
I would expect this to give an exponential distribution of prices: a few with a very high price, more with somewhat lower, and so on until a very long tail with a very low price (e.g. in the $0.0001 range).
This should give maximum profit to the seller of the content, and simultaneously maximize value for consumers of the content, because all consumers who want to view the product and can afford it get to watch it.
Of course, it assumes a market where arbitrage is impossible, and consumers don't revolt at getting different prices (which they will perceive to be "unfair").
So instead, we have a market with an arbitrary cut-off point for the lowest price segment. That leaves large numbers of marginal people who could get value from the content, but not so much value that they can afford to pay this particular cut-off point, or they can get other things which they perceive to give better value.
At the other end of the spectrum, at the highest price discrimination segments (fan packs, "ultimate" bundles etc.), the people with the most money are probably not being charged enough.
In effect, people who can afford to pay a high price are getting off light, while people who can't afford the lowest price are being excluded completely. Meanwhile, the seller of the content is not making as much money as they could.
Some would say that this is an unfair situation for everybody, except for the richest people.
There are alternative models of paying for content. For example, there could be a combination of a content usage monitoring system, a progressive tax collection mechanism, and redistribution to producers in proportion to how much is consumed.
But above all, I think it's important to get away from the idea that these goods are like physical goods, and getting them for very cheap or free is "stealing". It's intellectually dishonest.
I think we can do this all day.
Unfortunately the writer of Forrest Gump didn't get paid because the movie made a loss, Stan Lee didn't get paid for Spiderman because the company that made it sold it their distribution arm for $1. Peter Jackson and various actors didn't get paid properly for LotR because the studio can keep the accounts secret.
If I'm stealing a movie that by definition means I'm not buying that movie.
Thanks for the downvotes though.
EXACTLY. Yes, downloading a movie isn't exactly stealing, but it's still taking something without permission and it should be frowned upon just as much as stealing is. If a person pirates a movie they're taking something without reimbursing the rights owner with what they want. People aren't judged for stealing because it costs the store owner money, they're judged because it's immoral! When someone steals a DVD from walmart nobody says "Whoa, you stole $9.99 worth of product! You should be ashamed!" they say "You stole something you weren't allowed, you should be ashamed". Why online does it suddenly become about the cost?
it doesn't matter how ridiculous their demands are, if Disney want $100,000 per copy of their latest film, that's their choice, if you disagree then don't buy it that doesn't mean you should just take it.
The whole idea behind this website is self entitlement, nobody is entitled to someone else's creation and the idea that this website is doing the content creators a favour is laughable. If someone creates content (or someone owns the rights to created content) it should be their choice how people consume and acquire it, whether that's free, $9.99 or $100,000, that's their choice and we should abide by it. Pay what they want or don't have it.
I'm not sure it's as simple as that. One could always ask: "Why is it immoral to steal?" and the answer usually revolves around how stealing deprives the owner of something he had a legitimate claim to, etc. etc. That's how our moral intuitions have evolved over thousands of years.
The fact that this age-old intuition no longer seems to apply online is exactly why piracy creates a moral conundrum. You can't resolve the conundrum by fiat. Copyright infringement is a different crime from stealing, and rightly so, because piracy has different moral and economic implications than stealing has.
If John the shop owner wants to sell bread for $10/loaf and you take it for free, that's immoral because it was his bread and he wanted $10 for it. If Tony the musician wants $10 for an mp3 copy of his latest single and you take it for free, that's immoral because it's his and he wants $10 for it.
Whether or not you deprive the person of money is a side issue, the idea of ownership matters more, to me at least. If I own something through purchase, creation or inheritance it's still mine and you have no right to take it, whether or not it deprives me of it, it's still immoral.
summary: my content, my terms.
The grim rhetorical reality of this argument is that most of the people on the pro-piracy side of the argument will go you a step further. "$2.00!", they'd say. "Why, everybody knows it should only cost you $1.00 to bake a loaf of bread."
If I have the same pattern of bits on my hard drive that a movie studio has on theirs, the movie studio has lost $0.00.
That's the fundamental difference between piracy and theft. If you want to assert that we, as a society, have made an agreement to limit people's freedom to configure their bits as they see fit in order to encourage content creation, that's fine. But make that argument, don't try to conflate configuring my hard drive in a specific way with depriving you of an object you own.
Movie studios are in the business of providing a service. The studios have given their time and money in order to produce a motion picture. They are entitled to recompense from people in exchange for performances.
Think of a film as a performance caught in time. The actors, directors, grips, etc. were all fronted money by the studios for their performances. In doing so, the studio has assumed all of the risk for putting on the performance. Therefore, when you copy a movie you are essentially sneaking into a concert without a ticket. You are stealing services.
Sneaking into a concert without a ticket is trespassing.
Taxis say "I will drive you across town if you promise to pay".
Movie studios say "I will show you this performance if you promise to pay".
The promise is implicit in the act of watching/riding. You don't get in a taxi and explicitly say "I will pay you to drive me around". No, you get in a taxi and say "Take me over there". The promise of payment is implicit.
Bob is in the business of making blickits. Bob has given his time and money in order to produce blickits in the street. Bob is entitled to recompense from people for them seeing his blickits.
Really? "Entitled"? You want to have that generalization around? Everything from blickit=crazy rant to blickit=fart? This seems like the opposite of a clear foundation for morality or legality with known and known good implications.
Movies do shoot on location, and people do watch when movies are shooting in their area, and the studio doesn't charge for that.
Now, if Bob were to either record his performance and sell it on the street or build a box around himself and charged people to enter to see him blickit, the situation becomes analogous. You're trying to essentially paint me as saying that a baker can force you to buy a loaf of bread by shoving it in your hands. I'm not.
He has lost something of value only if he was going to sell that loaf of bread to a paying customer. How can you be sure that anyone was going to buy it? If no-one bought it before the end of the day then it would just be waste anyway, right?
Here in the UK we have a chain of sandwich stores called Pret, at the end of the day they give their food away to the homeless - so by stealing something even if it was due to be given away, you're harming someone.
Sure, but do you not see the parallel with copyright here? You are assuming a priori that the baker has a right to dispose of his goods as he sees fit, and that taking that right from him is a bad thing even if the disposal would have made him no profit anyway. I see no ethical problem with such a position, but you can apply much the same argument to intellectual property as to the physical kind.
The entire concept of property is an artificial convention, which most societies have decided is beneficial and therefore worthy of respect/legal protection. But physical property is no more "natural" an idea than intellectual property. Both are just social agreements that we choose to value.
As a relevant aside, many societies/cultures throughout history have chosen not to recognise the concept of personal property and instead to hold that everything belongs to the group. In most cases, this has not worked very well on a large scale, which is perhaps why most modern societies have collectively taken the other view.
Personally, I sit somewhere in between. I consider piracy immoral but not as bad as actual theft.
On the other hand, if movies were plain files on my computer and as accessible as, say, the anime available on bittorrent, I would be happy to pay a small amount to obtain it initially. Maybe even a monthly fee for getting new stuff. But only if it were in an open standard format with no DRM.
So if you work harder at stealing something than the previous owner did at making it, it's not wrong? That actually meshes pretty well with the popularity of heist movies. :)
If Tony the musician wants $10 for an mp3 copy of his latest single and you take it for free, that's immoral because it's his and he wants $10 for it.
I don't think most pirates would disagree, properly defined. It's just that if Tony gives Uhuru an mp3 copy of his latest single for $10, and then Uhuru makes her own copies and sends them to her best friends, the pirate would say that the copies Uhuru made were hers, and she wanted to share them for free.
[edit: subject object agreement]
Contrast the easy-going attitudes exhibited towards major IP rights holders ("it doesn't matter if I copy this movie...") toward the furor incited when a company is found using modified GPL code, but they didn't release the source modifications. The exact same infraction is occurring in both directions. Yet, in the first scenario, the "companies had it coming" and the media is "too expensive." In the second scenario, "each offender must be punished severely in order to prevent widespread neglect of the GPL."
Sometimes, the tone of each post says more than the post itself.
taking ? Or copying?
Something? Or some representation?
A problem with these discussions is that people use common words as if everyone had the same understanding of their meaning and application.
If I download a movie, I'm not taking that movie. And what I end up with is not a thing; if I then move it over to another drive, no thing has moved, yet the movie can be watched.
Now, in the end, this action it may or may not be wrong or immoral or whatever, but arguments based on physical notions of "take", "thing", "own" are putting the cart before the horse.
taking doesn't have to be negative and it's not a word associated with either side of the discussion, it's just a word. I can take $10 from my mum to pay for dinner, or take a magazine from a shop (after paying for it), it's just the opposite of give. You can take with permission, that's why I stated take without.
But pirates insist that they can "take" without depriving the owner of anything. That's copying, which is a different kind of taking. It gets even more complicated if somebody first purchases a legitimate copy of a song or a movie, and then produces more copies to share with other people. You run the fallacy of equivocation when you use the word "taking" in both senses.
Please don't focus on the word "take", instead the actual argument :|
(a) It is a well-established norm in any modern society that it's immoral to take (move) something without permission.
(b) It is not well-established -- or at least, pirates would like to say that it's controversial -- that it's immoral to take (copy) something without permission.
(c) It's even less well-established that it's immoral to take (purchase) something with permission and then crack the DRM or produce further copies to share with other people.
Nobody disagrees with you about (a). But you're extrapolating that view to (b) and (c), and that part of the argument seems to hinge upon an equivocation of the different senses of "take".
Content producers have a shaky argument because they want to use the "moving" sense of the word "take" to argue that (b) is immoral, while using something like the "copying" sense of the word "take" to argue that (c) is immoral. (If ownership of the movie was actually moved when you purchased it, it's none of their business what you do with the DVD you now own!) Don't make the same mistake of equivocation. This is not an argument that piracy is OK. I'm just trying to point out that there are good and bad ways to argue against piracy.
If I don't know what your words are supposed to mean, then I don't know what your argument is supposed to be.
I would counter that it isn't necessarily always morally wrong to steal. Suppose I need some medicine to survive and I have neither the money for it nor the ability to get the money legally. I would argue that since I will die if I don't get the medicine, it's then morally acceptable to either steal the money necessary to purchase it or to outright steal the medicine itself, provided doing so doesn't have the foreseeable consequence of putting the victim of my theft into a similar life-or-death situation.
Would you agree that in this one situation, theft can be morally justified? If not, then say there were 10, 100, or 1000 people in need of the medicine; is it OK to steal to get it then? If not, is there a particular N such that it's OK to steal to save N people? It's just not that simple, and saying "stealing is immoral" doesn't cut it (IMO) as an argument against piracy, even if you buy the argument that piracy == stealing.
"....in developing countries, especially Africa, counterfeit products were commonly available to treat life-threatening conditions such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/Aids, it said."
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/Counterfeit_drugs_polar...
(Not a great article, there are better ones available to go into the issue further. But it does illustrate the point somewhat.)
The issue of the morality of "theft" becomes decidedly grey when lives are on the line, but using this argument doesn't help us tease out the pros and cons of the original argument - the morality of flouting copyright on movies. Using the example of medicine is an edge case where piracy/stealing/copyright infringement is concerned.
But even within the logic of your analogy, you're confusing a moral argument with an argument centered around practical necessity. You could argue that stealing a life saving medicine is necessary, as you would die without it. But that still doesn't make the act of stealing it a moral one, even considering most people would sympathize and likely agree with your actions.
Post-scarcity is funny that way.
No seriously - we are not post-movie-scarcity because making a blockbuster costs a vast amount of money - and much of that is people's salaries, people not unlike you - and it's a risky business (e.g. Kevin Costner might be involved) and if that cost is not recouped... Well the industry is going to go only for safe bets (sequels/remakes).
It's like another thread on here at the moment, about it taking 5 minutes to upload a favicon. Sure, but that's not how much time it takes to get from scratch to actual deliverable.
They're making the point that legal movie distribution channels are worse products - by those criteria - than piracy. Put another way, there are other reasons for choosing to pirate a movie besides not wanting to pay for it. It's unrealistic to demand all of the things this manifesto does, but actually the sum of their demands doesn't seem like a bad ideal to aim for.
I imagine if this "manifesto" were a blog post by a Silicon Valley celebrity, and it began "There's a huge opportunity being missed..." rather than "I will keep stealing your stuff until...", but had otherwise identical content, this thread would have a lot less discussion of the immorality of piracy and a lot more of how startups could disrupt existing distribution methods.
It's deliberate.
That and they provide no reasoning as to their points. They want the purchase price to not exceed the cinema price. But cinema price is dependent upon the area and theater, so it's not so easy to peg purchase to cinema.
That and why should the purchase price be pegged to the cinema price? A visit to the cinema is a one time event. A purchase entitles you to unlimited viewing. That's worth more to me.
Why should TV shows be 1/3 the price of movies? Most TV shows exceed the length of a film many times over. Yet we're supposed to pay less for more content?
They also want to dictate how movies are distributed. They want access to every movie ever made. Nothing gives you that except piracy. The cost for Netflix to do such a thing would be astronomical. And for that, these benevolent individuals are willing to bestow upon the providers of these services 3 movie tickets, or (by their other claims) the price of 3 films. Why? You have instant access to every movie ever made. Watching over 3 movies in a month using this service diminishes the price you are paying per movie. Watching a movie a day makes your movie watching habits cost 1/10 of a film using the service.
That and their filtering suggestions are stupid. Why should a third party service let you sort by IMDb ID? Why should they care what a movie's IMDb ID is?
This isn't a plea to studios to get them to change their "evil ways", it's a way for over-entitled douches to feel good about ripping people off.
If any of these were real concerns of pirates, movies out in theaters wouldn't be pirated.
If any of these were real concerns of pirates, movies out in theaters wouldn't be pirated.
Consider that "pirates" may not be a single uniform demographic.
They do not provide reasons. I posited several valid questions as to why would they want or demand those things. Because they do not provide reasons. They just make random demands and expect people to nod along and say "Yes, I agree."
I suspect their motives because they give no evidence or reason for their position.
Anything that can be asserted out of hand can be dismissed out of hand.
No, that's not a "good society". That is a sick and corrupt society.
If you look back over my comment history, you will see that I have argued the other side of this issue too. That is because it is a hard problem that doesn't fit well with the moral intuitions that we developed for other kinds of property.
To make matters worse, US copyright laws are way more strict than most people's moral intuitions of what intellectual property should be like. Even if you think the author should have some right to the content they produced, few people think creative works should be locked up until 75 years after the author's death. I have downloaded books illegally from authors that died in the 70s and I feel no moral qualms about it.
To illustrate, I bought a bluray movie a few years ago, and put the digital copy on my computer. And since I had just purchased a new video mp3 player, I thought it would be cool to play the movie on there. It even worked great, that is until I accidentally deleted the movie from that device. Too bad the DRM on the digital copy would not let me make another. This was a legally purchased copy that was more restrictive than any pirated version.
Content creators are treating their customers like criminals first, sources of money second, and customers third. So yes, "don't make me steal" does have some arbitrary demands, but a lot of what they say just makes good business sense.
It would be like saying "I won't walk outside until the city cleans the streets!" It's a promise a majority of people simply won't, or can't, keep.
What I did say is that suggesting the American populace stop seeing movies if they don't like the treatment is silly. The American populace isn't going to ever stop seeing movies.
It wont happen, and so suggesting that it happen is moot.
I wonder if most pirates are pirates of convenience who will convert into paying customers if there is a convenient way to do so. I do get a little angry at content companies who are a decade behind the times in technology.
Convenience? Now you're getting completely unreasonable. If you can't filter by all metadata you're going to "steal"? Come on...
The filter thing was because yes, some services do not presently allow you to search for all movies that are dubbed in language X. If you are trying to watch something with your kids, it is pretty annoying to have to look for a movie, then go in the language selection, then choose the language of your liking, and then at the end be told it's not available. It's basic UX imo, but if people don't do it right now, it's worth static.
"I have access to the audio in every language that has been produced."
Even the subtitle issue is complicated. Are these fan-made subtitles? Otherwise, again, you're entering a minefield and the chances of something like that ever happening within a unified interface — as requested — are slim.
Something like that would require a fundamental change to how films and especially TV Shows are distributed in other countries. Not to mention the technical issues that will occur due to certain countries getting a slightly modified (whether censored or extended or just modified) version of the original.
You're far more likely to get somewhere if what you're asking is at least somewhat reasonable.
"Outside US we are people too. Here, take our hard-earned money"1)It implies that copyright infringement is stealing. 2)It implies lack of responsibility, as in someone is making you do a certain action. You have a choice.
No streaming movie I've ever purchased has required me to pay for the privilege of doing arithmetic.
or a bunch of redditors/chaners.
Also, I'm sure you can see how those who are copying/stealing/whatever you want to call it might wish to call it copying instead of stealing, as that implies a lesser moral judgment (deservedly imo).
Of course it's not the same to duplicate information as it is to remove a physical item, but both are based on an artificial legal concept of property.
The natural state of things is indeed that I can copy any information coming my way, and copyright artificially restricts my right to do so in the eyes of the law.
Then again, the natural state of things is also that if you have a physical item and I want it, then if I am bigger than you/have a bigger gun than you/have more friends than you, then that item is now my possession and not yours, and theft-related statutes artificially restrict my right to take it in the eyes of the law.
In the end, copyright, like physical property, is an economic tool. Society gives it the force of law to make sure that people don't game the system unfairly. It makes no sense to debate that law, in either letter or spirit, without considering the economic implications of breaking it. Those implications are not zero just because information that already exists can be reproduced with near zero marginal cost and time overhead using modern technology.
In other words, many philosophers do draw a morally relevant distinction between these categories of rights.
What alternatives would you suggest?
"Rent should not exceed 1/3 of the cinema price. Purchase should not exceed the cinema price."
Rent/purchase and cinema are completely different businesses, with different expenses. Going to the cinema doesn't give you a permanent copy. I'm pretty sure movie ticket prices are subsidized by sales of overpriced popcorn, drinks, and snacks. Online sales/rentals might be better compared to brick-and-mortar sales/rentals rather than cinema. Either that or offer a breakdown of how it might be viable for a company to charge those prices.
"I have access to pretty much every movie ever made."
This isn't possible using any other legitimate method that I know of; the only reason pirates can do it is because they don't have to worry about the legal issues, pay for licensing, etc. They just need access to a physical or digital copy which is far easier to do. This will probably be even harder when combined with the pricing demands since it limits how much companies can pay for licensing. If you mean major films/TV shows only, "most" might be a better word, otherwise it sounds like you want them to chase down every indie filmmaker who's put out a movie that a dozen people might be interested in watching.
"Pricing of TV shows is about 1/3 of movies. I pay for the content, not for bandwidth."
These seem almost contradictory to me. I'm guessing the pricing of TV shows should be 1/3 that of movies because they're 1/3 as long, but if "content" means "length" then the second point doesn't mean very much in most cases. If content is some measure of quality/popularity then there's no reason why TV shows would cost less than movies. (Especially since, from my POV, there are far more good TV shows right now than good movies.)
(edited for formatting and grammar.)
I do ask this both as a jab and as a legitimate curiosity.
I love Photoshop, but Adobe charges more than I think they should be allowed to charge. I'm going to steal it until they lower the price. I promise I'll buy one then.
I love Wolfram-Alpha's database, but Mathematica costs way more than I think they should be allowed to charge. I'm going to steal it until they lower the price. I promise I'll buy one then.
Does this not seam like a ludicrous attitude to you?
"I have access to the audio in every language that has been produced." and "Once I bought a movie, I can watch it in every available language."
This being said, I already follow this. I also don't illegally download media. I just don't watch stuff that's not available in a reasonable way. It seems silly, given that paying $10/month for Netflix gets me access to more content than I could ever possibly watch.
If only it worked on Linux. My Win PC is basically a "Netflix box" these days.
I think the Wii has Netflix streaming that doesn't require a disc or secondary subscription as well. And those can be found in the $200 range.
(I'd suggest the XBox 360 but it requires a $60/year Gold subscription on top of the price of the console.)
I'd consider it a suitable alternative if I didn't have a Windows box laying around.
Movies are delivered adds free.
I agree pirating is morally indefensible. But the reality is consumers will never be swayed by those arguments. Give consumers the product they want, at the price point they would like to pay. That is the only practical solution to this issue, regardless of how loudly the content industries screams about "stealing."
Failure to accept this reality will only lead to piracy continuing if not increasing.
I hope that a store like this exists soon. But given the track record of the studios, it's not likely that they'll become sane anytime soon.
No one cares what you think is the 'right price'. If you don't want to pay, don't buy it.
No amount of whining is an excuse for stealing. Grow up!
"ad free", not "adds free".
Please. I beg you.
Oh c'mon.
Digital Media Consumption ManifestoI closed the page at this point.
Q: How does an aspiring artist bridge the gap between distribution and commerce?
A: We have to be very clever about those things. You have to remember that it's only a few hundred years, if that much, that artists are working with money. Artists never got money. Artists had a patron, either the leader of the state or the duke of Weimar or somewhere, or the church, the pope. Or they had another job. I have another job. I make films. No one tells me what to do. But I make the money in the wine industry. You work another job and get up at five in the morning and write your script.
This idea of Metallica or some rock n' roll singer being rich, that's not necessarily going to happen anymore. Because, as we enter into a new age, maybe art will be free. Maybe the students are right. They should be able to download music and movies. I'm going to be shot for saying this. But who said art has to cost money? And therefore, who says artists have to make money?
In the old days, 200 years ago, if you were a composer, the only way you could make money was to travel with the orchestra and be the conductor, because then you'd be paid as a musician. There was no recording. There were no record royalties. So I would say, "Try to disconnect the idea of cinema with the idea of making a living and money." Because there are ways around it.
http://the99percent.com/articles/6973/Francis-Ford-Coppola-O...
So for him to say, "Oh you can make money other ways, make films for art's sake. Look at me, I'm a wine-maker" is a bit disingenuous.
TPB -> "The Italian Job" + 3 hours = me happy. There is NO legal alternative for me. No, I'm not walking 30 miles to Best Buy to waste $30 on a DVD that won't play in my computer that doesn't have a DVD drive. And I don't consider running Win7 in a VM to be reasonable at all.
Please don't pretend anyone somehow forced you to break the law. You chose to do that yourself.
2. Netflix has no client or support for Linux. Microsoft won't license the DRM components and Netflix refuses to change.
I never, ever mentioned that I was forced into breaking the law, but thanks for putting those words into my mouth. Make no bones about it. I broke the law because it is more convenient. I would pay for the movies if, as I already stated, I wasn't forced to borrow someone's car to buy a frickin DVD.
Surely, you can understand that "Don't consume the content at all" is as much of a copout as someone saying they were "forced" to steal the content. Both I and the movie industry would benefit from me having easier access to the content that I would happily pay for.
This is partly why I'm hopeful to see what Amazon has in store.
Yes there is. You choose not to use them because they are inconvenient. You are not entitled to dl a copy of the movie instead.
I did NOT come here to justify my actions, piracy or to complain and nothing in my post can be construed as an attempt to do so. I came to point out that watching a movie, legally, in Linux is a complete disaster, to the point that it's not worth the hassle for me. I understand it's breaking the law. I'd rather break the law than go through the nightmare of obtaining the movie legally.
How am I supposed to watch "The Italian Job" legally in Linux? I'm listening, because I would happily pay for it rather than torrent it.
1) your tone and choice of language implied entitlement;
2) if not a defence of piracy, did not add a great deal to the conversation.
So what if watching movies in Linux is a complete disaster for you? If you agree that you are not entitled to be able to do this and do not believe that it justifies piracy, it's not clear why this is any more relevant than the fact you can't play back movies on your toaster.
2. The cost is not the prohibitive factor for me. The hassle, slash near-complete inability to purchase them in Linux is.
3. This article is a discussion of making movies available, legally, with a monetary exchange, if they were made more accessible to a wider audience.
4. Everyone wins by me being able to watch movies legally. Movie associations receive more income, I don't violate the law, and everyone is a tiny bit happier.
Considering that this article is about making movies more accessible for the exchange of money... how exactly are my observations not contributing to the discussion?
Call it entitlement or whatever you want, but as I'm sitting here, I'm kinda bemused by the notion that I'm expected to just not have any access to cost-based media because I'm a Linux user. I know I have no "right" to it, but again, I'm sitting here saying I'm willing to pay, and the industry is ignoring me.
From a purely business perspective, that makes NO sense.
Mainly because it's basis comes down to, "I want a pony, Daddy. And I want it now! And it must pink! And made out of licorice!" And I don't agree with arguments like that because unless you yourself (the person desiring the pony) are the one who's making/building/providing the pony, then you're in the weakest possible position to be making such specific demands. "I'd like a pony too, little Virginia, but I have to figure out how much it costs, I have to go find one, figure out where to keep it, feed it, make sure it stays healthy, etc. And if it's not pink how the fuck do I make it pink? Don't even talk to me about licorice."
Note that I'm not saying that all consumers should conform their desires to whatever the producers feel like producing and providing it under. But I do think it requires give and take on both sides, and the folks on the producer side are much more likely to be constrained by Physical Reality, whereas the consumer role can prance around in Fantasy Land. Wanting convenience is fine. Wanting "fairness" is more problematic, because it's not always clear what is fair when you have to consider things from the provider's position, not just the consumer. And some consumer demands are arbitrary or undefensible. For example, what reasonable basis would one have for demanding that you should not have to pay more money to own a product (a DVD/video) than you would to rent it (watch movie in theatre)? There are arguments for why each should be more expensive than the other, and the "cost plus" model is only part of the consideration. Value-based pricing is also fundamental to economics and market-making. Yes, artificial scarcity can make prices for a thing higher than what it would be otherwise. However, if you're not the one producing the thing in question, you're not in the position to decide whether or how much to turn that dial. As a consumer you can choose not to buy a thing under terms you don't like, but you're not in a position to demand or force a provider to match your ideal terms. You are always free to get off your ass and go make the very thing you want. But if you lack the creativity, energy, intelligence, skills, willpower, etc. to make that thing, then you will absolutely be (at least somewhat) at the mercy of those that do overcome and perform those things in order to provide it. Thus the give and take, and thus a market where price and terms must be reached by compromise on both sides.
Don't make me steal? Don't make me laugh.