Why I Pirate - An Open Letter To Content Creators | Hacker News Reader

Why I Pirate - An Open Letter To Content Creators

insightcommunity.com

129 pointszotz139 comments

The computer geek in me agrees with this guy, but the business major in me just laughed. Not because of his arguments -- they are sound, in my opinion -- but because of his attitude. I fail to see how this 'petulant child' attitude that we geeks like to adopt re: DRM does us any good. Yes, shit be expensive, yo. But taking an uncompromising attitude, especially when we are nothing more than a vocal minority... it's like we want the larger world to not take geeks seriously.

And World of Goo for $20? Please. It's so easy to find games at a discount that buying software online at full price is borderline idiotic. WOG, like many games (esp. indie titles), is regularly discounted through the myriad different channels it is sold in. (Humble Indie Bundle is one.) All you need is patience. On another note: World of Goo is not worth $20? Really?

There seems to be this growing attitude of petulant, childish snobbery among us geeks. "We're ADD, broke, impatient, and really, really lazy, and because we're your customers you do what we say or we pirate your shit." That's the vibe I got from Why I Pirate, and it's a vibe that smells like extortion. Giving the media companies a taste of their own medicine, perhaps? I can see the suits reading this little piece and instantly binning it. You catch more flies with honey, not vinegar.

I really like YC's stance on Hollywood (re: funding more startups that attack hollywood directly)... we all agree that Big Content needs to die, and they're putting money down to help. Writing longwinded, rambling TL;DR diatribes (hint: the 20,000 character limit is there for a REASON) does not.

Remember that we're nothing more than a vocal minority. Act as such.

I'm not convinced that we are a vocal minority when it comes to piracy. I think that many, many people act in the way described in his post. And that more do so every day.

True, at least geeks generally have specific qualms with the content industries like DRM etc and most of us believe that there needs to be some sustainable way of financing these works.

For most people the attitude is closer to "I can get it for free so I'll take it shrug"

Geeks tend to have more philosophical differences with things like DRM.

But real people get annoyed with them the first time it hits them (like UBISofts DRM servers going down, or realising they can't take their Kindle books to a different book reader).

I think we have philosophical differences partly because we can see the potential impact on all users somewhat ahead of time.

It's quite hard to convince people that it really is important to maintain some ability to control their own computing devices even if they have no intention of directly doing so themselves.

I often think that climate scientists must have similar problems.

The non-geeks -- at least, the ones that can afford Netflix, Hulu, etc -- are satisfied. iTunes/Spotify/Grooveshark has most-to-all of the music they want, Hulu and Netflix cover the video stuff... there doesn't seem to be as much piracy coming from the mainstream crowd now that more convenient options are available.

The same could be said with gamers, though they are a little more prone to piracy. What's with the author's Steam hatred? Do people still do that? (Soooo 2005, guys) What is there to hate about Steam when nearly every other media platform is worse? Steam is leaps and bounds better than the competition, AND it supports indie devs fairly, AND its got some pretty cool features, AND everyone still gets paid.

Yes we geeks want unprotected super duper high quality downloads that we can transcode to 80,000,000 devices in a billion different formats. We want these things because we're nerds. Most people aren't nerds, and they don't care. Ours is a quixotic fight with unreasonable (at this time) demands, and totally undeserving of the relentless sense of entitlement we seem to feel towards it.

We're forgetting that, in the end, this is all about entertainment. Not poverty, not starvation, not joblessness. Just entertainment -- diversions, mostly. There's a million ways to entertain oneself, and most of them don't involve Big Content.

http://i39.tinypic.com/15n7sj6.jpg

We don't matter.

Think about the pricing of HDMI cables. You and I both know you can pick them up on Amazon for $7. But Best Buy charges $50. There is no real difference.

Why doesn't Best Buy charge $10 or something like that? They are literally ripping people off.

Let's say that the cost to Best Buy is $5. If they charge $10, they make $5 each. If they sell it for $50, they make $45 each.

Obviously a lot of people will just order it online. But when you are making 9x the profit for each one, you can lose 80% of the people and still come out ahead.

So they can make albums cost $2 and hopefully capture 100% of all people, or they continue charge $10 and lose some people. Again, as long as they're not losing 80% of people, they are coming out ahead. And I'm not convinced that at $2 you would get 100% of people.

Well said, in that light you could even view the content providers as altruistic by relying on those with the money to pay higher prices while those without resort to piracy and get it for free.

"on Amazon for $7"

Or on Monoprice for $1 ;)

I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, but if we don't matter to content creators, I'm baffled as to why they spend so much time bitching about us.

Well said -- although I think that there is a "market" for this kind of diatribe. Obviously HN sent it up its list, so you know that Reddit loves it.

There's a fringe element like myself that doesn't really care about free downloading but that also doesn't care for Big Content and the way that they have such a disproportionate influence on law enforcement, culture, and politics.

At the least, it's good that some folks get a reminder that all the Chicken Little tactics of Big Content don't match up with their market performance. It's good because it's a reminder that when they see a Chris Dodd getting cosy with some politicians or bills... that's a bad thing and they should vote against it/them.

I don't disagree with his desires, however, these points make him appear as an avaricious 10 year old who deserves anything he wants.

>Now, I don't care when, where or how you release it. If I want it, I'll get it.

I really like the new 911 Turbo S Cabriolet, but I know Porsche has a huge markup on it and I'm only willing to pay for the cost of materials. So, I'll just go to a Porsche factory, steal the car and place a pile of cash in it's place totaling the cost of materials. That's essentially what you're doing when you pirate music, software, movies, etc... You're not "stealing" it because the original copy is there. Well, I'm offsetting the cost of materials and they still have all of the original designs, manufacturing processes, etc... that they worked on. I don't think the hours they put in to design and manufacture the car is worth it's price. Same goes for that movie you downloaded. You clearly don't think the time the actors, directors, technicians, editors, etc... put in was worth the price of the final outcome.

Obviously it's not something that you could get away with as easily as downloading files, but do you see my point?

Try doing the same thing with a consulting company. If I get their advice and dislike it, does that mean I don't have to pay them? Better yet, what if I really like what they have to say but I still think it's too expensive? "I'm only going to implement half of what you told us, so we'll only pay you 50% of your fee."

> Try doing the same thing with a consulting company. If I get their advice and dislike it, does that mean I don't have to pay them? Better yet, what if I really like what they have to say but I still think it's too expensive? "I'm only going to implement half of what you told us, so we'll only pay you 50% of your fee."

As a consultant, I can't tell you how many times I've heard the, "Hmm, yeah, you did great work. How about I pay you 75% of what we agreed to?" You typically only see it out of folks who have a very myopic view of the world--those that are sure everybody else is out to screw them. I hate getting those clients. It's a sour relationship from start to finish.

I can imagine there are plenty of those types out there, but I was trying to make an analogy of people claiming to pirate because they only like 2 songs off of a 14 track CD. (as in only using 50% of your consulting work, so I'll only pay you 50% of your total)

Well my point is that I think the people that attempt to take the moral high ground on pirating are similar to the folks that do that to consultants. Almost every one of these rants I've read comes off as somebody convinced that there are people in suits smoking cigars that are trying to screw every last one of us.

This is just one point though, taken out of context.

There are many others dealing with restrictive use & ease of use. What if you paid full price for that Porsche, but then all of a sudden, you drive into another country and the engine fails because it was designed to just because you are in another country and some other Porsche dealer owns the exclusive rights to that country?

I take his overall argument to be about consumer rights & ease of use. Yes, content providers don't have to make things easy for us, but we can subvert their system until they realize the mistake they're making. All the legislation in the world isn't going to make piracy go away.

Things like this already happen.

If you own a Nissan GT-R and bring it to Japan, it's capped at a top speed of 111mph. Using GPS, the car knows if you're at a racetrack, and then the speed limiter is bumped (or removed, I forget).

Also, if you "own" a Ferrari FXX you truly have no say over it. You're essentially paying to drive it. Ferrari holds onto the car for you and you can only drive it at approved race tracks.

The difference that lets the air out of your analogies is that there's no marginal cost to the producer of a digital good when somebody pirates. Since the pirate provides the bandwidth and storage himself, the creator loses nothing through the pirate's consumption.

I agree that the "why I pirate" guy is an entitled asshole. But he has a valid critique: the people who control content distribution often act like entitled assholes as well. His basic point is that because power has shifted, he can get away with it now and they can't. With a subsidiary point being that he's not a tightwad: he's glad to spend money on digital content as long as they make it easy.

Whatever his (substantial) moral failings, I think his message to content creators is basically accurate: if they want to be in the business of selling content, they're going to have to pay attention to what customers want. That's good advice for anybody starting a business, and especially good advice for people who want to survive a giant upheaval. Their old model is failing; finding a new model requires unlearning much of what they know and starting fresh.

>there's no marginal cost to the producer of a digital good when somebody pirates.

The factory loses nothing either if I'm giving them money for some parts that they happened to buy. I don't feel the time they spent manufacturing these materials is worth anything, just like how this guy thinks the time a movie studio spent editing their films or audio isn't worth anything.

When the movie studio filmed a bunch of scenes, the raw film is useless alone until it was edited. Likewise, the parts are useless until they were machined and assembled together.

Both have overhead in the processes. One may be more than the other, but the underlying principle is the same.

Right, but in both your examples there is still a physical good.

As your parent noted, digital goods are free to duplicate. If you want your argument to hold, you need to require that the film studios never allow their IP to end up digital.

(and that is quite backwards.)

Ok, then what about a DVD? You could say the same thing of a car vs movie by giving them the $.1 for the DVD itself, not the content on it.

Regardless, it doesn't matter whether it's a physical good or digital. Both physical goods and digital goods require time and money to make. When you buy a Porsche, you're not just buying the materials. You're paying for the engineering of those materials. Just because the format of the final product isn't a physical good in terms of online piracy doesn't mean there was no effort put into it.

I'm not sure I follow you.

A DVD would still be (inefficient) digital distribution. Why would I pay for that either (in the, "Why would I buy that?" sense, not the "Why wouldn't I steal that?" sense)?

The difference with a factory is that they would have invested labor building the physical car you took.

If you're looking for an analogy to cars, it's that your friend bought a Porsche you liked, so built a copy of it.

Also, your assumption that the guy thinks movie editor time isn't worth something is false. Despite my lack of monetary compensation, I appreciate the time you took to write your post, and the much larger amount of time YCombinator took to build this site.

>these points make him appear as an avaricious 10 year old who deserves anything he wants.

Pretty much exactly what I was thinking. I give him credit for his honesty, but holy cow man.

Starting off with the car rental analogy was strange. If he wanted to prove his point, he should have said "every time I need a rental car I steal one".

But after starting off with "I called the rental company to voice my displeasure" (paraphrased), he then goes on to describe completely different behavior for online property where he just steals it instead of calling and complaining.

To me this comes off as the ranting of a lunatic who can't see how his own argument fails the sniff test right off the bat.

There is simply no reason to steal this stuff anymore. All the music you want is $10 a month. All the movies are $8 a month. Both are available on just about any device you own. It's not the year 2000 anymore.

All that said, I have no love for how these industries are lobbing to impose more draconian laws to combat a problem that is already illegal. Their IP is protected without new laws. They should work with the tools they have.

> Starting off with the car rental analogy was strange.

The car rental content was speaking to a different issue than his media consumption content. This was his reasoning for speaking publicly about it not his reason for downloading instead of buying. He had a bad experience with a car rental company and rather than just silently taking his business elsewhere he called the company and complained. That action made him realize that instead of just silently downloading content for free he should speak up to content creators as well.

> All the music you want is $10 a month. All the movies are $8 a month.

This isn't exactly true. Some movies are available for $8 a month, with restrictions, staggered releases, device restrictions (hulu), etc. Spotify, Pandora and the like let you have access to music on demand but it's still not available everywhere and they still have limited catalogs. Not nearly as bad as the movie/tv catalogs but still limited.

$18/mo may not give you all music & movies, but it will give you more than 720 hours' worth of material worth watching/hearing.

I don't disagree that for many people these services provide plenty of content worth watching/hearing. I stream in excess of 200 hours of pandora per month. We use Netflix for kids movies/shows quite a bit and my wife gets the few shows she's interested in from Hulu including some older shows. For my in laws they love the Roku I bought them and their ability to get older content. They maintain a DirecTV package because they can't get most of the newer content they are interested in at all. I personally find Hulu and Netflix to be extremely lacking. I'd be more than happy to pay more for a better selection of content but it's simply not available. The amount of worthwhile content being available is entirely dependent on your personal preferences.

I think technical people largely over state the value and amount of content that is available via these services and really that's all I wanted to draw attention to.

Let's say that there are many wealthy buyers who can easily afford to buy a Porsche. However, Porsche sets up a dozen dealerships in remote corners of the desert, each separated by miles of dirt road. Each dealership has a couple of models, but does not readily publish what you'll find at each dealership. If you manage to find the dealership carrying the Porsche you want, you have to use Western Union to wire transfer money to the company before you can take possession of the car. Finally, if the dealership you bought the car from goes out of business or loses their contract with Porsche, your car disappears overnight without notice.

I can't afford to buy a Porsche, but I am both willing and able to buy content. However, I often spend 15-20 minutes looking at the various online outlets for a particular movie or television show, credit card in hand, and find that Amazon (or Ebay if it's out of print) is my only option. I know Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon Instant would love to sell me that media - it's the content owners who prevent me from giving them money.

So then finish your analogy. If that was the status of the Porsche market, would you then feel justified in stealing one and leaving the money?

The massive trouble I have with your point is that until you have consumed an entertainment product you have no idea whether it's a Porshe or a Skoda. I can't take a movie for a test drive. I can't take an album for a test drive. They'll give me clips which they've picked, but they're picking them to paint the thing in the best possible light. You can't even rely on other people's judgement because taste is taste.

I reached my breaking point after buying albums that were dross with a one or two decent songs. I think it was JJ72 or Bush. And with movies after seeing that James Bond film with the guy with all the diamonds in his face. I paid for that?

So no, I don't really see your point at all. It's actually that he's grown up and said enough is enough, I want to stop buying a Skoda while you're telling me its a Porshe. If I get something for free and it's a Porshe I'll be buying more of your damn fine stuff sir. Maybe I'll get a Skoda but I won't feel ripped off as I already have a Porshe from you sitting over there. I'll just feel disappointed.

If an artist puts out a CD, making a good-faith effort, you haven't been "wronged" if you don't like it, any more than you're "wronged" if you go on a first date and don't click with the person. That's life. You're not guaranteed to be entertained. That guarantee is not possible for anyone to make. Even the movie Titanic was a massive hit, yet is considered a schlock fest by many. You can't please everyone, so it's not really fair to penalize someone for not doing so.

Hell, the song you like today, you may hate next month. The song you hate today, you might love ten years from now when they lyrics are suddenly relevant to your life somehow.

And okay, a CD might suck. But it was probably the best they could muster. Creativity's like that. There's probably not some "fantastic Bush tracks" hiding on a server that they held back for some reason.

It's not like if Porsche intentionally, and deceptively, put a Skoda drivetrain in a Cayenne to increase the profit margin at the customer's expense.

Bollocks. Absolute nonsense. Every movie is the next summer blockbuster. Every band is the hottest thing since X. Just look at the very selectively picked quotes they put on the adverts and the back of the DVD sleeves.

They are intentionally, and deceptively, putting a Skoda drivetrain into a Cayenne.

And then getting pissed off when you try and test-drive it.

"Every band is the hottest thing since X"

Yeah, I don't listen to shite music that gets marketed that way, let alone 'Bush'. Do you actually let movie blurbs guide your viewing? Or buy music because of hype? Really?

Lucky Charms aren't actually magically delicious, either.

This analogy really doesn't work at all. The factory does lose money on factory time and employee wages. The music company doesn't lose that time when a song is pirated. This is the same old argument of copying vs. theft.

What this guy (the OP) is doing is showing the straight economics of the situation, morals removed. It's a realistic viewpoint because for most people, morals go out the window when they cant see the face of who they wrong. And thats even assuming they see file-sharing as "wrong" to begin with.

Like it or not, this guy is accurately describing the current landscape as a whole. This is what content production companies have to deal with.

>The factory does lose money on factory time and employee wages.

Fair enough, but I can just as easily say I refuse to pay for the design of it, however, I will pay for materials and manufacturing costs.

You present a valid point, but it's covered in the article by this statement:

>This is exactly what the internet did: it took control away from you and gave it to me. If you don't like it, then sit in your basement and create your content for your love of the craft instead of for profit. But if you want to sell it to me, you're doing it my way.

Like it or not, the internet has changed the world (including sales of digital stuff) forever. That is a fact that can not be changed or ignored.

If you are not in content creation (like Porsche), then the stuff you make and sell is not yet affected by the internet, so it doesn't really apply to you (yet).

Whatever the legitimacy of the OP arguments he sounds like a real creep!

I get that he's trying to make a hard nosed, here's how it is in the real world. But he comes off a variation of an abuser who believes his victim leaves him no choice to abuse.

I would hazard a guess that most file "pirates" are not like him. They either don't think much about the consequences to others of there actions or if they do they feel at least a little bad,just not enough to stop doing it.

I think at core his argument is that he doesn't want to pay for the content he consumes. He justifies it on the grounds that the prices are too high. This a nonsensical assertion supported by the flimsy justification that the marginal cost of a digital good is so low. Well the total costs of production remain quite high,especially considering the cost of marketing.

I remain amazed at the anti big content additudes found on HN given that the tech industry is just as dependent on legal enforcement of intellectual property protections as hollywood is. (Think trademark,patent and copyright) IP law is just as important to open source software.

The problem is that digital goods without articily created scarcity and property like "properties"'will suffer a major free rider problem.

Would any of the coders here be cool with others appropriating their work without compensation or choice in the matter?

I've seen people get quite huffy in these parts for lifting a stupid graphic graphic from a website.

For any VC types here: how would you feel if your companies had deal with heavy appropriation of the the product you put up money for? I'm really asking!

I think at core his argument is that he doesn't want to pay for the content he consumes. He justifies it on the grounds that the prices are too high.

Well, no. At least, that's not the central theme of his essay. I can sort of see why you might get that impression if you read only the middle and neither the beginning or the end, but the author is very clear about what he is saying and you would have to ignore all of that to label him as "a real creep."

So, here is the overall picture of the essay, since you may have missed it. He is saying, "look, I am a pirate -- I'm not going to try to justify that or discuss it; we'll just take it here as a given: I am going to pirate stuff. Now, it just so happens, like many pirates, I actually buy a lot of entertainment, paying a lot of money for games and television and movies. So let's ask a different question: how can you get access to my money?"

Here's one way, he says, to revoke your access to his money: sell him a crappy product. It's not unlike my behavior at cyclist shops in the Netherlands. An obscure piece of trivia: there are three bike valves in common usage, the American/Schrader/car valve, the French/Presta/unscrew valve, and the English/Woods-Dunlop valve. The Dutch prefer by 90% or so the Woods valve, but I have been sold twice air pumps from various cycling shops which simply do not work on Woods valves, and either time I was told that I could not be reimbursed because I had to take the pump out of the packing material to use it. (In fact, both times I found out that neither bike shop knew the name of the Woods-Dunlop valve despite the fact that it's absurdly popular.) Guess who is never getting my business again? The people who sold me stuff that does not work.

In fact, as you might imagine has occurred with me, he is now so paranoid about being sold content which sucks that he will no longer put down money until he knows that it doesn't suck -- just like I won't buy a bike pump unless I can see that I can manually switch the airflow to the smaller nozzle. If I can't demand a refund then I'm going to demand that I know the quality that I'm buying.

On the other hand, he says, one way to really get his money is by convenience. When he sees albums from bands he liked, he buys those. If he pirates a good game he usually buys the sequel, and will even opt to pay a little extra to bundle it with the original game.

IP law is just as important to open source software.

It actually tends to get in the way. There are all sorts of different licenses, many of which are not compatible -- GNU code can use but can't be used by BSD code, Eclipse can neither use nor be used by GNU -- and the biggest problem is that software freedom is not given automatically.

Would any of the coders here be cool with others appropriating their work without compensation or choice in the matter?

I assure you, all of the people here who work on websites would be happy if you visited their website, even though that requires your computer to copy all of their images and client-side code.

We might get mad if you try to reappropriate our content, especially for profit. This is also conceded by the original poster, who says, "The main reason I don't feel bad is because, like I detailed above, I know I'm buying content. Another important reason I don't feel bad is because I'm not profiting. I'm not taking your content and trying to resell it as though I'm a legitimate vendor."

The problem is that digital goods without articily created scarcity and property like "properties"'will suffer a major free rider problem.

No, they won't. The fact that people will download you for free will be perfectly balanced by the fact that downloads are absurdly cheap operations. It's like complaining that, "if we don't make it really hard to get a glass of water at our restaurant, then everybody will just order water and nobody will ever buy drinks." If you start to think that way, when getting someone a glass of water is of absolutely negligible cost, then you will alienate your customers for no good reason. That's what the MAFIAA has been doing: it's dirt-cheap for them to produce digital copies, but they think like you are describing, and insist on trying to create an artificial economy of scarcity. All it creates is resentment. A good restaurant starts you off with a glass of water and refills it whenever your waiter/waitress notices that your cup seems to be a bit empty -- then you go, "wow, this is great service, I'll come back here again."

Same thing with digital content. Because I can get The Daily Show in the Netherlands via TheDailyShow.com, I am really interested in any work that Comedy Central does, and I even own a copy of their book, America (The Book). I have no idea how else they're going to get a revenue stream out of my viewership there, but I imagine they'll find something worthwhile.

In a restaurant, the cost of providing you with a warm comfortable place to sit, and someone to bring you glasses of water (the cost of the water itself being deminimus), is covered by the expensive meal you pay for.

Since all unprotected digital goods are approximately as cheap to copy as one another regardless of production cost, all digital goods count as 'glasses of water' in your analogy.

This implies that the cost of producing unprotected digital goods in general can only be covered by selling some non-digital good or service in conjunction with it.

MMO's are digital goods without this problem as is Facebook. Also, many restaurants barely break even on their food and make most of their money selling dramatically overpriced drinks. If you order a ten 99c cheeseburger's from McDonald's they make less money than if you order one 1.50$ soda, yet when you focus on the average customer you sell enough soda for McDonald's to become a multi billion dollar company.

http://adage.com/article/news/double-cheeseburgers-working-t...

No they aren't - they both keep important parts of their software protected and sell an adjunct service.

The MMO server software is heavily protected, and you pay for access to the data center where they run it. MMOs are therefore both protected and funded by the selling of an adjunt service.

Facebook's client software is free but the server software is also heavily protected, and the operation is paid for by selling advertising, also an adjunct service.

The server side software on most MMO's is a tiny fraction of the overall code. People have reversed engendered World of Warcraft and some people play on private servers. However, in both WOW's and Facebook's case it's the hosting of all that data that's valuable not just the code.

Which comes back to my main point, there are DRM free ways to make piracy irrelevant. If someone was trying to sell a nuclear submarine by walking door to door in a trailer-park people would have no problem suggesting they were an idiot. Yet, for some reason people get all up in arms when someone suggests selling prepackaged media is a poor decision.

How is your point any different to the point I made in the comment you first replied to? Am I missing something?

When you said:

This implies that the cost of producing unprotected digital goods in general can only be covered by selling some non-digital good or service in conjunction with it.

My impression was you did not agree with this point and where simply bringing it up as a topic of conversation.

Clearly many individuals and companies do make a lot of money selling content. I simply feel that what's needed to keep that model working in the long term is more costly than the value of content it protects.

I don't like it, but I don't disagree with it.

I was bringing it up as a topic of conversation, mostly in the hope that someone would argue against it convincingly, because if such an argument can be made, I'd like to hear it.

I'm not sure where you get the "this implies" aspect of your conclusion from. There might be some sort of "common sense" logic here, but the only ways I can really read it are either boring or wrong.

So you might be saying, "content authors will find it more profitable to sell T-shirts and posters and hardcopy books than trying to sell a required subscription for viewing their content archives." That is true for some cases, like webcomics, but it is not true in other cases, like the machinima series Red vs Blue where you can "sponsor" Rooster Teeth for a set of services which are primarily digital -- or for people who download the MS Paint Adventures music off of BandCamp. You might object that at some level there is a "non-digital good" called "authenticity" which is being sold in the latter two cases, which might be true, but it makes the claim much less interesting, because people sending their money to someone they like is precisely the original author's point, and it opens up all sorts of business models, like aggregation (SomethingAwful requires a small payment for forum memberships and it has worked very well for them; GitHub sells private repositories and that works very well for them too). In fact it's very hard for me to see what business models you'd be excluding, if you took that approach.

I don't see why you need to open with an insult.

By your analogy, all copyable digital goods are like water, regardless of what they cost to produce initially, because the cost of copying is close to zero. If I'm wrong, please explain.

In your second paragraph are you suggesting that digital goods will be supported by donations?

Github doesn't sell digital goods. They operate a service.

(1) I didn't need to and I'm not sure that it was in fact an insult.

(2) Well, the first thing is that I don't know what "all copyable digital goods are like water" means. Perhaps in context you mean "all copyable digital goods should be offered for very cheap prices." I'm not sure I agree with that. Either way I'm not sure that it implies, by itself, that "the cost of producing unprotected digital goods in general can only be covered by selling some non-digital good or service in conjunction with it."

(3) No. In my second paragraph I am explicating the two ways that I see to understand your original statement: the narrow way ("people will not pay for bits period") which is wrong, and the broad way ("people can always be viewed as paying for something other than the bits, like the service to access the bits or the authenticity of getting the bits from some official retailer") which I think doesn't really rule out any particular payments for any particular practices. I have no idea what exactly you're trying to "rule out".

This is all complicated by the fact that as far as I can tell, these are apparently beliefs which you are trying to ascribe to me. That misunderstands the point of my analogy, which is that there is no "free rider" problem generated particular to digital goods sans artificial scarcity. A "free rider" problem occurs when nobody wants to pay to maintain a service. The point of the water analogy is twofold: first, it is to show the absurdity of worrying about free-riders when there is little to no maintenance cost. Second, it is to show how trying to punish those so-called "free riders" is just going to alienate people who might otherwise like you.

(4) That's why I didn't say that they sold digital goods. o_O.

The cost of digital goods isn't in the copying or "maintenance" as you say, it's in the initial production.

Copyable digital goods are special because unlike the majority of physical goods, they are templates that can be used to make virtually free copies of themselves.

The first copy still needs to be paid for somehow, as do improvements.

A free rider problem exists if the unwillingness of people to buy copies because they can easily avoid paying, results in these first copies not being produced.

Your analogy doesn't counter this at all. You are simply suggesting that some digital goods can be financed and given away for free because they enhance the value of a service or non-digital good that provides revenue to the creator. I don't dispute that this is a valid option for certain kinds of good.

I do agree with you that trying to 'punish' customers or potential customers is a mistake, even if they are free riding on your business model, but I think that's a separate issue.

Let me get this structure right, so that I can be sure that I understand you, before you go on. (I'm a little perplexed because if the first copies weren't produced, that would obviate the willingness of people to buy copies in the first place.) You're saying, I think, that some art may never be: and this is because the artist is not convinced that they can make it profitable, and this is because they see their audience as too far predisposed to pirating their content to actually pay for it.

If that's right, then it's true that I'm not really handling that problem with my original analogy -- I wouldn't even really classify this as a "free rider" problem per se.

One question which I'd like to ask up-front is whether this is really a problem. I'm not so sure. If you think about it, it requires a really peculiar set of circumstances. One particular problem is that if you didn't have piracy, that doesn't mean that the pirates would be your customers. So you are very restricted in price range: you have to be unable to amortize the costs of the project normally, but you have to be so addictive that pirates would be your customers and you could amortize the costs of the project if piracy weren't a factor. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that the more I think about it, the harder it is to come up with a clear example that I can use to think through to find a solution. (Maybe I'm peculiar, but that's the way I think about problems: I call particular instances to mind and throw lots of ideas against them hoping one of them sticks as a solution. I'm having trouble seeing a particular instance which wouldn't already be solved by, say, Kickstarter or the BBC.)

Well, thanks. It's interesting to think about in any case. I guess I'd just end on a hopeful note: hopefully the production costs for art steadily drop down as well, as more and more technology becomes cheaper. There will be human-professional costs that cannot go down because people have got to eat, but they just don't seem like the most significant costs in producing art -- at the very least, bands haven't stopped living off of live shows yet, and theaters can still cover their actors and set staff with simple ticketing. I will also make the hopeful comment that people really do care about authenticity enough to support artists. That's why fashion design can still be lucrative even though there's a huge industry dedicated to knock-offs.

I assume you're pretending to be perplexed for effect here as it's standard economics to recognize that people will not produce goods if they don't anticipate making a profit.

Kickstarter is an interesting counterexample - basically get sufficient people to pay up front before production begins. Of course that may not work for everything, but then nor does any system.

The BBC? You mean impose a mandatory annual license fee on computer users and then give it to a state owned software company to produce digital goods for us?

(1) I don't have "effects" really; I don't have some delusion that someone other than you is reading this. I am perplexed because you defined a problem as, "if the unwillingness of people to buy copies because they can easily avoid paying, results in these first copies not being produced". That phrasing perplexes me quite legitimately because you have literally said that the problem is "if you won't buy something which does not exist because you can easily avoid paying for it." So I was very cautious to reread the problem in words much closer to what you're now saying -- "that people will not produce goods if they don't anticipate making a profit" -- in an effort to parse the sentence.

(3) No, I mean the British Broadcasting Corporation. You know, those guys who make Doctor Who. They are not funded by a mandatory annual license fee on computer users, and I would not describe them as a state owned software company. Nonetheless, when they produce a new episode of Doctor Who, it rapidly appears on BitTorrent networks.

What point were you trying to make by mentioning the BBC? I though you were suggesting it as a model for overcoming the free rider problem.

> When he sees albums from bands he liked, he buys those.

There's a wrinkle here, though. He talks about downloading three albums from an artist he never heard of before, and finding that he liked them. Then when he sees a fourth album on Amazon, he buys it. But he never went back and bought the three albums he had downloaded.

To me, that's where he crosses the line. I'm willing to accept the general idea that he ought to be able to preview content for free. But if he likes it, and it's for sale, he's on his honor to go back and buy what he likes.

And not just because it's the right thing to do; failing to do this is also stupid, by the author's own criteria. Look at it from the point of view of the artist: there's a customer out there who likes four of his albums but who has only paid for one. So the artist is only getting one-fourth of the economic feedback he should be getting to create more content. In other words, in his haste to make sure he doesn't reward content distributors who do things he doesn't like, this author is missing opportunities to reward content creators who do things he likes.

What you say makes sense, but I think it misses the point. This whole post reminds me of another article that was posted on HN a couple weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3633985.

The question is not whether what the OP is doing is right or wrong. Like he said, it's a fact. You can call him whatever you want, this is not going to solve the problem. What you want to do is to be pragmatic: "ok, so that's how some of the pirates think. How can I make sure to sell them my stuff".

As for your last point, that's one way to look at it. Another way is: maybe we'll come to a point where artists will get a higher percentage of each album sale, since there won't be as much overhead in distribution, packaging, etc.. So one out of four will be more than enough for them to keep producing.

> The question is not whether what the OP is doing is right or wrong.

I agree; I did mention the word "right", but I then went on to say that that wasn't the real point.

> maybe we'll come to a point where artists will get a higher percentage of each album sale

First of all, if artists are selling direct over the Internet, why do they need to sell "albums"? Why not just sell songs? Or better yet, why not sell "content" in whatever form the customers actually want to buy it?

But if anything like this happens, then the effect will be to reduce the prices of content to the point where the economic "signal" sent to the author or artist by a single purchase is about the same as it is now.

Anyway, my point is that the OP went to all this trouble to write a long blog post trying to explain how "content creators" could get him to spend more money; but he never seems to realize that a better way of communicating that information is already available to him: actually spending the money on things that are worth it to him.

In general I think that I agree with what you're saying. The only point I'd like to make is that he does repeatedly say that he does spend the money on the things that are worth it. He wrote this with the objective of telling content creators directly instead of assuming that they'll just figure it out. If the money backs what he's saying, all the better.

> The only point I'd like to make is that he does repeatedly say that he does spend the money on the things that are worth it.

Yes, he does, and I agree with his general point. I'm only pointing out that his definition of "worth it" appears to me to be somewhat inconsistent. If the fourth album by that artist he mentions was "worth it" because he liked the other three, why weren't the other three "worth it" as well, once he knew he liked them? The fact that he already had them for free is irrelevant; by his own admission, he could have gotten the fourth album for free as well, but he chose not to. I don't see why the same logic that drove that choice wouldn't also drive him to go back and pay for the other three after seeing their quality.

> He wrote this with the objective of telling content creators directly instead of assuming that they'll just figure it out.

This brings up another key point: the distinction between "content creators" and "content distributors". Much of what he says really applies to distributors--the media companies--rather than creators--the actual artists. The main conclusion an actual creator might draw from his post is that he should look for a better distribution channel than the big media companies. I would agree with that; in fact I've written about it myself:

http://blog.peterdonis.com/opinions/internet-blackout-day.ht...

If one could guarantee that the money paid were a "reward to content creators" I suppose I could agree with you. I find that description quite problematic because there is very little transparency in these sorts of processes.

I find another aspect of your approach somewhat problematic, too, because you seem to view "economic feedback" as somehow distinct from "creating an interested customer who will buy from you." I might agree that you might be able to support people more by buying things at no advantage to yourself, but if the author really wanted to do something of that nature, I suppose he would just send the band money directly. Most bands don't ask for that sort of financial support, though, and don't provide any way to send it to them. Trying to hack an existing system to do such things would be so much less productive than doing it yourself manually.

Don't get me wrong, there are still usage cases to buy the old albums. People who liked Firefly bought many DVDs to donate to libraries and give as Christmas presents. But your objection sounds pretty contorted to me because they now have a customer who they didn't have before. Having a customer is all that there really is to economic stimulus; you don't make your next album based on how many buyers you used to have, but on how many buyers you think you will have today. Vanilla Ice can tell you all about this. ^_^

> If one could guarantee that the money paid were a "reward to content creators" I suppose I could agree with you. I find that description quite problematic because there is very little transparency in these sorts of processes.

I agree, and I should have made that point clearer. There is a critical distinction between content creators and content distributors. See my response to saber3004.

> This a nonsensical assertion supported by the flimsy justification that the marginal cost of a digital good is so low. Well the total costs of production remain quite high,especially considering the cost of marketing.

That could be true but doesn't seem to be. (Though it is possible that due to piracy some capital-intensive virtual/intellectual good are not being made at all.) Note the sort of post scriptum he added at the end:

> Year after year I'm told online file-sharing is decimating sales, everyone is losing money, we have to do something to stop it. I'm not going to try and convince you you're wrong, but I do have a question: [...] If online file-sharing is killing these industries, why would they keep producing more content?

> I've seen people get quite huffy in these parts for lifting a stupid graphic graphic from a website.

I think that's also a consequence of copyright enforcement: "I can't copy anything but when I made something people just copy it?!" sort of thinking. And many people are fine with their work being appropriated without compensation (with credit which is also strictly enforced in the illicit copying world), look at all that GPLv2-, or MIT-, or BSD-licensed software.

I, for one, don't want movies, music or any other content creation to die. I would like to see the obsolete middle men die off though. They have no reason to be there and seem to be really awful people (going by what they do to stars and real content makers).

The problem with these arguments is they boil down to "I will never pay more than $x for product type y" when these prices should really be dictated by the market itself.

If you're unwilling to pay more than $6 for a book, how can you support niche works that may take great time and difficulty to produce?

I agree however that when it's far easier and faster to get a product from a torrent website than it is to buy due to the number of hoops that you have to go through then the distributor has a problem.

An example of this is netflix who use silverlight DRM on all of their streams so I cannot play them on my Linux HTPC. This is of course despite the fact that people ripping their streams is not the problem, I'm sure all of their content is available at better quality on torrent websites. All this does is put barriers up to potential customers.

In many ways it seems like going into a shop and finding some goods that you want to buy but that the checkout line is an hour long and they only cash in certain denominations and you need 2 forms of ID to make a purchase. So many people just end up shop lifting out of exasperation.

    > An example of this is netflix who use silverlight
    > DRM on all of their streams so I cannot play them
    > on my Linux HTPC.

Just thought I'd thank you for this bit of info. I'd been considering subscribing to Netflix for a while. Glad I found out it won't work on my computer before giving them any money.

I guess I'll have to see if I can find some other way to get access to films and TV shows via the Internet. Wish me luck.

Good luck, but I think you'll have limited success if your looking for something legal that will work on Linux.

It seems that it is the rights holders who are insisting that everybody who distributes their stuff online must use the silverlight DRM rather than the service providers themselves who I'm sure full well realise how pointless it is.

In the UK we have a service called "LoveFilm" which is similar to netflix, they used to allow streaming of all their content using Flash which wasn't ideal but it worked.

However recently they were forced by the studios to switch to silverlight, they sent an email around to all of their Linux users apologizing but saying that it was basically out of their hands.

Luckily I have spare Windows XP licenses to use on my HTPC because I'd really hate to have to pay Microsoft £150 for another copy of Windows 7 just for the privilege of running their (now deprecated) plugin.

Don't forget making it all the way to the register, money in hand, only to be told that because you are of a certain nationality that "they don't serve your kind here"(1).

(1) I used to think that analogy was ridiculous hyperbole. I'm less sure every day.

Well, on this site of the ocean(I'm French, but living in the Netherlands), we wish we'd have a service such as Netflix in the first place ...

And, to be honest, your use case, while totally valid, does not apply, I think, to the general consumer.

> The problem with these arguments is they boil down to "I will never pay more than $x for product type y" when these prices should really be dictated by the market itself.

I kind of like the complete view that the OP provides. Copyright infringement is a very real market force in this system. It is empirically the case that the OP will not pay more than $x and that price seems to be surprisingly close to what I 'feel' is right. I wonder how many others agree with these numbers. This price is dictated by the market when the relatively low risk of legal action is factored into the equation.

What he seems to be arguing is that publishers should be less concerned with rectifying this market force via legal means and more concerned with rectifying it via improving the services offered.

The fact that people are willing to pirate instead of purchasing $x for product type y is the market speaking.

Given that the fundamental premise is DRM is flawed from a technological point of view, it's at best a polite request.

Governments can pass laws trying to prohibit it, but it's like trying to pass laws prohibiting cars driving faster than 55 MPH. If people fundamentally don't agree with the law, passing the law even if you can buy a few senators isn't going to help. It just promotes a greater disrespect for the law.

But clearly, there are a lot of people in the marketing still paying $x. If there weren't, the music industry would be out of business.

The pirates are actually inflating the prices. If piracy weren't an option, there would be a group of people who would pay $3 but not $4, and some that would pay $5 but not $10. The industry would figure out where they could get the most profit with the standard profit * volume equation. The price would settle lower on the spectrum.

Instead, all of the price sensitive people have turned to piracy. So again, going to profit * volume, you find the sweet spot among the people who are less price sensitive. Clearly the albums end up being more expensive. Why compete for the people who want to pay $3 if they probably will just continue to pirate? You are cannablizing your sales among less price sensitive customers.

>>>The problem with these arguments is they boil down to "I will never pay more than $x for product type y" when these prices should really be dictated by the market itself.

Wait a minute. He is the market! And so are millions just like him.

Buyers only make up 1/2 of the market, only this guy only speaks for a sliver of that segment (as evidenced by prices being what they are).

Interesting article, and there's a lot to think about here for people involved in media creation (like me).

Two minor but related points, however:

1) It's important to realise that when you say "here's how you get me to give you money: do X, Y and Z thing and sell at price P", you are in fact offering the content industries a choice.

You are not saying "if you don't, no-one will buy your product." You're saying "If you don't, people like me won't buy your product - so do you want to make movies/books/games for people like me?"

Speaking as a content creator in both text and video, one of the major aspects I consider when planning a project is the target audience, and how much money they feel comfortable spending. An audience that is willing to spend a lot of money (say, partner-level accountants) is, all else being equal, a lot more likely to get the green light than an audience that isn't (free culture anarchists).

That means if you're not willing to pay much money for a product, and no-one else like you is either, stuff that's of interest to you is less likely to get made. Making a product for an audience that might love it, but won't pay, is a rookie mistake, and most producers learn from it the first time and don't do it again.

So if you want stuff that speaks to you, features characters like you in sympathetic roles, and talks about how you experience the world, being willing to spend more money on it actively increases the chances it'll get made.

(Why do you think there are so many "family-friendly" movies made every year? Because that's a demographic that buys.)

2) When you say "A DVD / game / book should cost X", you either a:

a) are able to describe in detail the target audience, including demographic information, likely points of contact and awareness routes, and of course size, purchasing budget and likely penetration for the media product in question, and also produce a line-item budget for creating the entire piece of work, including marketing budget, professional fees, and so on, that an expert in the field would find plausible,

b) Are talking out of your arse.

Media pricing is more complicated than "Well, I'm only willing to pay $5 for a game, so game developers should just make them cheaper." or even "Well, paperback books cost $7 and most of that must be printing and distribution costs."

> Well, I'm only willing to pay $5 for a game, so game developers should just make them cheaper.

No, it's not very complicated. You are better off letting the demand-offer forces of the market work, with elastic prices just like for the humble bundle or steam sales. A fixed-price is like a big car: you won't satisfy everyone. People have a fairly good idea of how much they have in their pockets and how much they CAN spend on stuff. As a content creator, your goal should be to maximize your audience, therefore making available to the maximum of people. That should push prices down, not up. So, if most people value "games" at 5$, that's your market price. You have to live with it, and no elaborate strategy is going to change anything about it.

Marketing to the mainstream is a strategy, but it's not the only strategy or necessarily the most successful.

Targetting niches and charging higher prices can work well too - I know more than a few people making reasonably good money off doing so.

You use the phrase "most people" there. A content creator doesn't care what "most people" will pay for a hypothetical generic product - he or she cares what the audience for his potential product will pay for that product. And that number can be wildly higher or lower depending on the audience and the product.

Agree mainstream is only A strategy, but look at all other markets-products-businesses: you won't find many examples where an industry has had tremendous growth while still keeping its price away from the mainstream.

Every business that wants to grow can do so by reaching to more clients. Cars became popular when they became cheap enough to buy (Ford T). Computers became popular not because the Apple II was great and expensive, but when the C64 was cheap enough everyone could buy it. I could go on for hours, it's something you find in every industry.

Of course, Ferrari, Louis Vuiton, Hermes, all those brands appeal to only a niche of customers. And they are still very profitable. But they won't grow much.

Games are not particularly price-elastic. You can drop the price of a $70 game to $30 and not see a significant increase in sales. That's why they're priced the way they are.

Time-limited bargains like the Humble Bundle and Steam sales work spectacularly well, however.

> You can drop the price of a $70 game to $30 and not see a significant increase in sales

That's because that's still way beyond what most people are willing to pay to play games. You do not reach the threshold at 30 $ where you maximize your audience. It's like saying, "This sports car was 2 million dollars, I am selling it half price and still nobody buys it".

That's precisely why the humble bundle and the steam sales work well. Because they offer you games at a price most people WANT to pay.

Two counterpoints:

A retail game is considered a failure if it sells less than 1m units at $50-70 but the Humble Indie Bundle sold only 450,000 units at an average of just under $6. Clearly there is a market for full-priced games.

Both Steam sales and the Humble Bundle are vehicles for games that have already sold at a higher price and the sales curve is tailing off.

Long read but good work.

I think this is more of an open letter to content publishers; content creators haven't had any trouble solving the problems that you explained.

Content has been moving copyleft (or at the very least, to more liberal licensing) every day because of the competitive advantages in emerging markets, but where copyright still holds a strong presence, the debate will not center around the consumer's point of view (unfortunately).

It is better to frame this debate around "content creators" and whether they are truly benefiting from the artificial scarcity which supports Hollywood's business model. And thus it is important to mention that this is not the content creators doing, but the backwards thinking of very powerful copyright holders, who pass very little of their economic benefits to artists compared to other mediums.

The economic benefit they provide to content creators is the financing to be able to create the content in the first place and also hooking them up with marketing etc.

It's just part of capitalism, if you have money you can use it to make more money from others who don't.

How would this be different to say a venture capitalist or indeed any other sort of investor?

If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it in the first place?

> The economic benefit they provide to content creators is the financing to be able to create the content in the first place

Music, video games, application/software development are all areas where this is completely false -- very minimal financing is required for any of this and we already see a growing, open media landscape as a result of it. You seem to forget the capitalistic tendency for market potential to dictate the cost of services as well.

That is to say, Hollywood movie budgets are extremely over-inflated because of the monopolistic business models that guarantee them capital they do not require to finance the creation of content in the first place. Actors, directors and writers do not require millions of dollars to write or produce this content anymore. A market for its production -- or at the very least a social imperative -- would exist regardless of this artificial establishment.

Walk through this with me:

* it costs nothing to distribute the content anymore (in stark contrast with even a decade ago)

* it costs very little to create most content, and where it does costs a lot, it's mostly because of copyright's existence

* it costs nothing to market the content anymore. Social media is in a dominating role.

Copyright depended on all of these factors being completely opposite. It depended on some cost for creation, or more broadly, some quantifiable scarcity. It depended on a publisher -- an intermediary -- to connect the consumer with the creator. It eventually depended on advertising and extremely competitive marketing as well.

The realities of 21st century communication and technology simply are not compatible. Financing the production of works by selling the right to copy it is absurd in this economic climate. It made sense when publishing was a capital-intensive and narrow industry, but it now forms the basis by which many people communicate today.

Instead, works should be financed by the public interest in its creation. Nobody has to pay more than they want for their "copy" of the "intellectual property", the artist is subsidized as much as they transparently request, and perhaps an arbiter is compensated under contract.

Regardless, it is unenforceable and ultimately counter-productive to support copyright, just about anything could be better.

I think it can still cost a great deal to produce content , let's take video games as an example. GTA 4 cost approx $100 million to develop, even the much more modest "angry birds" cost around $100,000. Even equipment for recording and editing music to a high standard doesn't come cheap and the amount I have seen professional video/photography people pay for cameras alone is staggering.

This is not the kind of money most people have lying around, it has to come from somewhere.

Distribution is cheaper for sure, but you still have to factor in costs for bandwidth so it's not quite free although you may get some mileage from using a P2P system for some of the distribution. You also (in the case of software at least) need some sort of support infrastructure in place for when people have problems with your product. This means contracting out to a call centre or at least hiring someone to answer the emails.

I would hazard that many content companies spend quite a lot of money and time marketing their products which includes finding ways to pimp them on social media. If anything you have to do more to stand out now that there is so much noise, this means either spending more money or hiring smarter people to do your marketing (who probably want to get paid).

There are projects like kickstarter which offer an alternative way to finance works, of course it's early days yet so we will have to see how that works out.

The problem with "pay what you want" is that this is probably going to be as close to zero as you feel comfortable going. Even if you wanted to objectively try and pay a fair price , this will be affected by what you see other people paying.

A case in point would be the ardour music production software which is one of the few free software projects to have a full time programmer working on it who was not an employee of some corporate entity. However when you look at the donations he has received I'm surprised he is able to feed himself, bear in mind that this is pro level software which is actively used by enthusiasts and some pros. I think it would be difficult to agree that he is paid anything close to the value of what he produces.

it costs very little to create most content

Simply not true, the true cost is the people's time. A 20-person dev team for 6 months can easily cost north of $1M paid market rates[1], even if they are all using their own equipment and working at home. Double that if you include office space.

That is the elephant in the corner of the room: people working on open source have to have day jobs that pay well enough.

[1] Notforgetting employer's taxes

Yes, almost all significant software is produced by full time programmers. This includes open source which is why some companies will pay programmers full time to hack on projects.

There may be a few people who have the energy to work a 40-60 hour week in a serious job and then come home and put the same level of love into an open source project but these people are a minority.

If I thought I could just quit my job tomorrow and spend my time hacking on some game or open source project without having to find someone to fund me up front (who would subsequently want some plan on how I would return their investment) I would do it in a flash.

RMS "solved" this problem by getting a $1M grant from the MacArthur Foundation, and another $1M from the Takeda Foundation.

Fliers do not diminish the point. RMS worked very hard to earn that $1M, and foundations are in the business of finding fliers worth giving bags of money to. Such "here's a million bucks, go do something interesting" people are rare.

Obvious point is 99.9999% of content creators cannot afford to create for free, and cannot attract gratuitous "free money" sufficient to cover basic food/shelter needs (dependents included). Observing that 0.0001% can serves to irritate, not facilitate, the discussion.

Yes that is exactly my point - there must be a means for content/IP creators to be paid. The OPs point that content creation is cheap or free is absolutely not true, and is unrelated to the cost of distribution.

> If it was such a terrible deal then why would content creators sign up for it in the first place?

For the same reasons a lot of people sign up for terrible deals. E.g.:

* They believe they have no choice, * The dealmaker says: no, it's really a great deal, * They are naive, * They are desperate, * They believe they'll be the 1 in 100 who does better, * The dealmaker promises more than is delivered, * Information asymmetry, * Etc, etc, etc.

It's different than VC investment, and especially different than regular investment, in that publishers control much more of the playing field. Also, to get VC money you generally have to have a reasonable understanding of business. That's definitely not true of writers and musicians, which would make them much easier to take advantage of.

In the traditional case, if you are not willing to pay the producer's price, then you don't buy it. People stole, but it was a lot harder. If the producer's price was not profitable, they changed the price or went out of business.

Now, stealing(1) is easier and the chances of getting caught are slim. I get the feeling we are going to end-up in DRM hell (only works when connected to server streams) to get back to a model where producer / consumer dynamics work again.

I am also not very comfortable with the entitlement or the constant saying that the cost of production of a good has gone down sharply in the digital age. DVD's are cheap and an HD production chain isn't.

(1) my def: action that obtains something that is supposed to be paid for without paying

http://www.tcs.cam.ac.uk/story_type/site_trail_story/intervi... "Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem."

Gabe said it much more succint and he has the money to prove it.

Another overly wordy rationalization of an easily satisfied (and risk free) sense of entitlement.

The author's points can be boiled down to a few sentences:

Roman Polanski and Chris Brown are assholes, so I'm entitled to their content.

Big media companies lie to me which is an offense to my vast intellect so I'm entitled to their content as well.

Basically all content producers are on notice that if they deign to displease his majesty the author all their content becomes free. "I can't believe Bon Iver wore a tweed jacket at the Grammys. Your content is mine now bitch!"

While i agree with most of this, including having an online option, the big thing that stands out for me is this paragraph which basically said "Online pricing does not make sense":

B. Get a handle on your pricing for digital media. Look, we understand why a paperback costs $7. You have to buy paper, glue and ink. It has to be written, edited, printed, shipped and stocked. And each of those people wants to cover their costs and make a profit. But when you write an ebook, and all you have to do is hit 'copy' to make another sale, you have no business charging $7 each. Remember before when I said I'm not downloading to try and stick it to you? In a situation like this, I'm downloading because you're trying to stick it to me.

This is only true for old books, like when you are buying a copy of a technical book from several years ago or something that is now public domain.

For new books the price you pay includes the actually making of the book. Paying the authors, editors and related management. If the material is sourced from elsewhere that isn't public domain then there will be licensing costs. For the first x0,000 sales or more of a book this is a significant part of the price you pay - a much larger portion in relation to distribution costs than many people think.

So if you are using this as a justification for pirating, for instance, a recent book from O'Rielly then your argument is seriously misguided. You are probably right for that kindle edition of Shakespear's plays, but not new works.

Completely agree. Another dimension along which it varies is the genre of the book. A new romance novel does not need as much research or effort put in as many of the academic books (not textbooks). Such books need extra support for the authors and need more effort in editing and peer review. However they are also pirated at the same price - 0.

Also with digital goods, once you purchase them, you get a life long license to download them from the vendor. With the physical goods, it is a one time sale. So in effect with every digital sale, vendors have a much longer liability to provide you the access to content. Maintaining such repositories of content has ongoing costs which must be worked into the price of digital goods.

> Also with digital goods, once you purchase them, you get a life long license to download them from the vendor.

Who says so? I know it's true for O'Reilly, but most music providers, for example, don't work this way. If a vendor doesn't want to take this responsibility, then it can just simply state what access it is willing to provide.

Totally agree. Big thing for me is that I feel there is value to a physical book, I appreciate that effort was spend to ship it to me and i have something to show for it. There is an expense associated with generating a book (regardless of the medium) however its so much easier to revise and re-release an electronic product...i just don't feel that as a consumer, anyone has done a good enough job of justifying why i should pay more for not getting a physical product to feel like I'm getting a good deal.

The issue could simply be that my brain is broken from years of legacy consumer behavior.

People are overestimating what it costs to actually print and ship a book by a huge amount.

Printing is pretty much the most efficient manufacturing process in the world. You make thousands and thousands at a time on a dedicated machine that runs 24/7. You can put hundreds of thousands of them into a container, and ship that container across an ocean for $4,000. Or you can truck it around the country for that price too. And there are plenty of distributors that can drop ship them for you. Or you can just dump a couple containers at an Amazon distribution center and let them handle it all.

I would guess that $1-2 of a $7 paperback is paper, printing, and transport.

Remember, we print free newspapers everyday by the millions. And we flush paper down the toilet. And we wipe our hands with a big piece of paper with printing and texture on them and throw it away without a second thought. Paper is basically the cheapest 'thing' we have in the world today.

I agree that in many cases the costs of producing a printed version of a product vs the digital version is being over estimated. In my case at least the pricing of digital goods is losing authors sales any way. I'm not going to pay $9.99 for an e-book when the same book is available in paperback for $7.99. I see this constantly and books that I would have otherwise tried I simply skip. If we simply say that printing costs and digital distribution costs are very similar due to the efficiencies of our manufacturing and shipping systems I'll accept that argument. Charge me the same price for the digital version then, not more.

> I would guess that $1-2 of a $7 paperback is paper, printing, and transport.

OK. Every digital book in existence should be $1-$2 less than it's paper equivalent. If it's not, that's the content creator trying to rip consumers off.

Use any argument, take any emotional stand you want, but you'll be smacked down again and again by the guy who wrote that post.

Fact: Alcohol prohibition failed.

Fact: The War on Drugs has failed.

Objections against the "pirates" are nothing more than a repeat of that history.

The customer -- and potential customer -- is talking. Start listening!

Prohibition is a non-sequitur analogy. You're not going to get arrested for mere possession of general digital music/videos/books regardless of how acquired.

Yes, a potential customer is talking. He's justifying illegal activity: "if you won't consent to my terms, I'll just take your stuff anyway" - this is not a persuasive argument. I'll justify legal activity: "if you won't consent to my terms, I'll get comparable stuff elsewhere from someone who will" and proceed to get movies via Netflix and music via iTunes with acceptably, if imperfectly, cheap & convenient terms - this is a persuasive argument.

Throw the law out for a minute. Why? Because nobody cares about them. You are making an argument that only people who have some slavish devotion to the law will even care about. The rest of the world will go "Pfft, whatever" either explicitly or implicitly.

As was mentioned up thread, it's kind of like absurdly low speed limits. You can buy all the politicos you want, you can make all the crazy laws you want, but the absolute fact of the matter is you cannot make people at large follow laws they feel to be arbitrary and unfair.

The fact of the matter is this: People will pirate things, and there is fuck all you can do about it. You can try to make moral arguments, legal arguments, ethical arguments - that really changes nothing. Piracy is here to stay.

How do you choose to deal with it?

This is a much more concise and to-the-point rewording of the original post. Well done.

It's dealt with as I noted: others will arise who will agree to most consumers' terms. Netflix & iTunes make video & music so easy to get at such low cost, with walls just high enough that jumping 'em costs more than complying, that most consumers will in fact consent to payment & limitations. Why pirate? there's more to view/hear for a couple hundred bucks a year than I can possibly get thru.

Methinks the real point of the issue is that there is a subculture which is he11-bent on illegal/immoral behavior, and which will go to great lengths to both indulge and justify it. Make albums & movies $0.25 each, available on demand, and they'll still look for a way to watch/listen without paying. No? do you seriously think the author would be satisfied if someone just gave him a shoebox containing all commercial music & movies outright, no strings attached? or would you expect him to nonetheless find something to pursue, contrary to rules, to exercise his intellect & creativity & efforts on?

  >Netflix & iTunes make video & music so easy to get at such low cost, with walls just high enough that jumping 'em costs more than complying,

The problem is when they alter the deal - pray they do not alter it further. Netflix is nice and all, but as a recent TheOatmeal strip suggests, it's not for everything. A great deal of their content still requires disc rental due to studios stuck in last century.

And then their library took a huge hit when Starz pulled out.

As for iTunes, their price is still too high for me. $10 for an album? Pass. And the less said about their (still DRM-encumbered) video offerings, the better.

I'd much rather see a model much like the now defunct AllOfMP3 had - you pay per filesize, at a flat rate, - pick any format you want.

  >Methinks the real point of the issue is that there is a subculture which is he11-bent on illegal/immoral behavior

But are you willing to assume that the lion's share of, say, The Pirate Bay's users are that subculture? I'm not going to deny that a cracker culture exists - but they're kind of a minority. Most people would rather get their content at a non insulting price with non insulting terms.

  >do you seriously think the author would be satisfied if someone just gave him a shoebox containing all commercial music & movies outright, no strings attached? or would you expect him to nonetheless find something to pursue, contrary to rules, to exercise his intellect & creativity & efforts on?

Keep in mind that it is human nature to strike back at someone who wrongs you in some percieved way. If you shit on someone long enough, eventually they'll start doing things, even against their own best interest, just to spite you.

I'd wager the MafiAA and like organizations occupy that point in a lot of people's minds.

there must be a time when you can walk into a farmer's field, and rip anything and still claim that the product given by god and belong to all human being.

when the farmer complains, you can get away with this: you should grow things in your backyard!

i still have no idea why people want these things so badly. Will they die without these movies and musics?

As a farmer, if I stopped providing easy access to the food I grow, I fully expect that people would start to steal my crop. What keeps my crop in the ground until I harvest it is a mutual respect with the customer. I am not certain big media treat their customers with any respect at all.

Over the last decade, I see that both 'sides' in the piracy debate are becoming increasingly radicalized.

This isn't going to end well.

I actually explored some of the possible ends towards the end of my essay "On Copying and Owning," http://drostie.org/on_copying.html . My point there is that the copyright lobby is facing an existential struggle: and if they really want to "win" then everyday folks will also face an existential struggle when fighting against them. In that sense there is actually a surprising amount at stake.

I am not sure that the original post is "radicalized" per se. Piracy is becoming more and more accessible and mainstream, is how I would put it. The original post mentions how Napster changed everything, and I think that, when combined with BitTorrent, that's very true indeed.

Why people pirate? Because what people get from this, be it entertainment, information or whatever is more important to them than to follow a law or whatever could be the reason for not doing so. It's usually not like you need to pirate to survive or are doing anything good to the world if you do.

Usually it all boils down to egoism and I am using that term in a neutral way. Like it is egoism to drink coke, have an iPhone or have sex.

Of course some people have a philosophical view on these things, that morally tries to justify it or even make it a virtue (sharing and resharing information is a good thing to do to me), but this hardly ever is the real, primary reason.

So I didn't want to read his 20K+ characters and jumped to the conclusion

I didn't try to convince you copying is not theft, I didn't try to convince you I'm too poor to buy products and I didn't try to convince you file-sharing is akin to advertising. I just tried to tell it like it is.

Pretty good, and then the reason you pirate?

Didn't Warner Bros. just set a company record for quarterly profits? I'm confused. My guess is that these industries really aren't losing money, but they are losing control. And maybe to them, control is more valuable than profits? I don't know, that's why I'm asking.

So he didn't answer the question (or may be I missed the answer?)

If you'd have read the article, you'd have found out that "Why do you pirate?" is a nonquestion.

Pirating is a fact. So the real question is "Do you want to make a profit off me or not?".

Someone as entitled as this fellow, who thinks he should basically be able to pay whatever he wants without taking into account development costs, market factors, desired profits from the people that actually did the work, etc... will probably never provide you much of a profit.

Disclaimer: Not arguing 'for' DRM or copyright or anything of that nature, just don't like this guy or his flimsy arguments.

But this is the paradox.

Valve increased their revenue x12 (twelvefold) in Team Fortress by going free to play route and letting basically their players pay whatever they want.

All the other previous experiments show that this guy is onto something.

Fuck his entitlement, he is not arguing that he is entitled to anything. Merely that he follows a certain pattern and that there are ways to profit off this pattern.

So it would seem that your argument points towards publishers, who seem to not care about production costs since they show no interest in expanding their market and utilizing these powerful behavioral patterns embedded in all of us.

I certainly could very much identify with what he is saying. I respect IP, I live off my and other peoples IP. But this medieval view of IP has to go away.

Whenever I read a comment like yours I get this feeling that people like you are: A) Either Astroturfing on behalf of content publishers OR B) You are taking a moralistic stance that is completely unrealistic not unlike a grown man chastising another for watching Porn and/or going to a strip club, by preaching about sanctity of love/marriage.

And whenever I read comments like yours, I facepalm. Accusations of astroturfing? Preaching about 'love and marriage' at a strip club? Really? Was there a sale on straw men?

His argument and examples are flimsy, and his sense of entitlement is implicit to the argument because he pirates what he could afford but doesn't feel like paying for. I'm not alone in having pointed out the problems with his argument and the petulant nature of his tone which leads to these conclusions.

I'm only saying that considering the tone of the post, I would never expect to make much money off of this kind of 'potential consumer'. I'm fairly convinced he'll find another excuse to pirate or another demand to make even if I met all of his. He basically admits to pirating 'World of Goo', a DRM free indie game, because 'It is not worth 20 dollars'.

Let me reiterate this a different way - a game that took a team of two indie devs[1] just under a year worth of effort to create, which they released without DRM[2], is not worth the price of a decent dinner to this guy. Nevermind that it will provide several hours of entertainment, it's not worth the price of a few starbucks coffees. But the devs understood that, so they went and had a 'Pay What You Want' sale[3] wherein you could have paid them as little as $0.01. About 17k did. It seems if this guy was allowed to set his own price, he'd be in that demographic, meaning that entire market would have been catered to for a net profit of about $170 dollars.

There are better target demographics than people with his level of entitlement - I won't waste my time. What I learned from their sale is that a periodic sale at a price point around 10 - 25% of standard will result in a lot of sales to people that might not have purchased otherwise. That is who I would try and target.

Also, Valve increased revenue twelvefold with their free to play route because they implemented a system that got people who had already bought the game to continue spending money on it - and the serious fan base already built up around the game ensured that they had people that would. The initial run of people who were willing to pay for the game as it stood was mostly over. They are not really comparable cases, and to try and make such a case apply to all games is a generalization that does not apply.

[1] http://2dboy.com/about.php [2] http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/10/world-of-goo-devs... [3] http://mashable.com/2009/10/20/world-of-goo-huge-success/

Strawmen were indeed cheap.

I'm not apologizing neither myself and even less the author.

However a world where everybody respects IP 100% all the time is either full of virtuous men such as you (if you are not a hypocrite) or an incredibly sad place due to all the repression.

Intellectual endeavors map to property poorly. Fashion industry has learned this lesson long ago.

And "entitlement" is as much a straw man as any other. No matter how correct and virtuous your outlook is. I don't event know what you are advocating, but whatever it is you are not very practical about it.

That is all.

I'm too pragmatic about these things to try and advocate anything for the consumer other than ask that they pay for their games. I'm not asking the FBI to kick down their door. I'm asking consumers to understand exactly what it is they are doing when they pirate. After all, it's not like the internet just generated a random bytestream that happened to be a game they like - a group of developers took years hand crafting that data. Respect that, or don't, but don't claim moral high ground, or even equal footing.

My goal as a game developer is to make games that people will want to play and then make them available to as many people as possible who are willing to pay something reasonable for it as a means of compensating me for my efforts and helping to ensure I might be able to make more games in the future. That is all.

I may have played games you built or not, I may have payed for them or not.

For what its worth I respect and support you and wish that you get fairly compensated by me if I come across your games.

The whole argument is really about publishing industry. Between the industry and consumers, the developer be it indie or corporate is always the one to get the short end.

Keep up the good fight. And build good games.

Godspeed.

I'm kind of sick of all these discussions. Sure, everyone who pirates has some at-least-quasi-principaled (or even, actually principaled) decision or rationale for why they pirate. Everyone seems to have an opinion on content quality, the efficacy of current copyright laws, and most people come to similar conclusions about the companies that control content and the groups of lawyers they employ to 'protect' those assets.

But as I said, I'm kind of sick of these discussions avoiding one central point: Why do you pirate? Because you don't want to pay for it. It's that simple.

> Why do you pirate? Because you don't want to pay for it. It's that simple.

Well, no. I pirate somethings that I have paid for because circumventing copyright protections is illegal in my country (England). I think (but I could be wrong) that circumventing devices is always criminal, whereas pirating is only criminal if done as part of trade.

Format-shifting is technically illegal, but is set to become legal sometime. I'm not sure how they'll handle the device-circumvention laws.

>It's that simple.

Not always. Not everyone lives in the US with access to amazing services like Netflix, Google Play and iTunes.

Here's some related issues:

- I can download a videogame from a private torrent tracker faster than I can download it from most download services even like steam.

- I usually know what movie I want to watch from the overhyped commercials. Given that I can find and download it, transfer it to my PS3 and watch it faster than I can find it, purchase it, download it, figure out how to play it on my TV via copyright protection which entails either some sort of encryption or inability to copy the file. Basically the pirate way is EASIER, more convenient, and no-risk. God help me if I buy a movie (for a ton of cash mind you) and don't like it. Return? HA!

- My TV is huge, ok I had it for 5 years now, and with all that I don't think 13/person going to the movies + popcorn and BS is worth it. I get the same experience at home, but FASTER and more convenient via piracy. Takeaway: Movies are ridiculously overpriced at this point.

- Using piracy, I am able to play games with ZERO DRM HEADACHES. No CDs in my drive. I don't have to be online to play. I don't have to install security holes into my computer. Piracy is safer than legitimate purchases.

- On the video game note: Video games are now going for 60 bucks!!! That's a commitment. If the game sucks, I'm out 60 f-ing bucks. Oh and downloading a demo takes as much time as pirating the whole damn game, more time actually. Worse are the freaken' sales. I feel like the game was hyped up to me, I want to play it, but in 10 days the price will drop by 20 bucks, ugh dilemma... piracy is easier.

I feel I am feeding a very energetic troll by even commenting again but there is something nagging at me. The points around the pricing of digital goods are mainly related to the particular nature of them: high fixed costs of production and extremely low cost of marginal production. Churlish arguments like the OP's lend emotional creedence to the attempts by business and govt to enforce existing IP law.

I think these attempts are going to succeed. Witness the uptick in aggressive IP enforcement actions: high stakes patent battles, domain seizures, arrests.

This, coupled with improved legal digital delivery methods, are going to make typical pirating actions more like regular crimes. It will still exist but will be the province of actual anti-social criminal types.

Then his arguments will come to be more along the lines of: I pirate because I can get away with it. Like saying, hey, the locks on your car suck so I can take your shit.

So as the car owner (imperfect analogy I know) does he expect you to give up and just leave the keys in the ignition? Instead we will see the vigorous attempts to create locks that are good enough to keep most people out and increased efforts at enforcement to arrest the rest.

The problem with this is that since it is inherently harder to lock a digital product, increased resources are being put towards enforcement.

This is dovetailing with law enforcement actions against hackers. It represents an increase in the power of the govt against citizens, whistle blowers, and activist who actually do care about helping their fellow humans.

> The question isn't whether I'll get your content in the format I want, the question is will you get my money in exchange for it?

Big Content will never get on board with this, but independent content creators are beginning to figure it out (Louis C.K., Jim Gaffigan). As it becomes cheaper and cheaper to self-distribute, more artists will be able to cut out the corporate middle men and make more money while lowering prices.

The real reason anyone pirates is because they can get away with it. I'm sure if there was a digital way to steal a bottle of grey goose from a liquor store a lot more people would pirate grey goose and start making claims that the price is too high and it's too hard to get.

If you would go to jail for downloading Herbie Fully Loaded off of the pirate bay (just as surely as you would if you robbed a liquor store and then composed a blog post on "Why I rob liquor stores.") Piracy would be a moot point and would be confined to the fringes of society that are willing to commit theft.

In conclusion this is like saying it would be faster and easier to roofie a girl at a bar to get laid than it would be to take the time and money to buy her a drink and talk to her.

No, no, no, no, no, no. First off, your analogy should be "if there was a digital way to replicate a bottle of grey goose without doing anything to the bottle at the liquor store", but that notwithstanding:

The things that "content creators" make are things from my culture. They are things taken out of society and ideas that everyone contributes to. (e.g. Disney exploiting the public domain, sampling, etc.)

The fact that "content creators" think they can have a monopoly on pieces of culture (effectively) forever is what's wrong, not these ludicrous analogies to stealing physical things.

Copyright was intended to promote the progress of science and useful arts. Making it impossible to remix, adapt, and contribute to the shared culture by locking everything up in infinitely-long copyright periods is doing the exact opposite of what was intended.

So, are you saying that content creators should not be able to sell their content at all? I would appreciate further explanation on the fact content creators whether it be a movie studio or a software developer are simply taking "your culture" and as such you should be able to reclaim it at no cost?

I do agree with your sentiment that IP law is inherently stifling and increasing futile, i.e. Apple v Android.

However, I fail to see the difference between someone who produces an item for sale in the form of something that can be captured in bits of data vs a more tangible object. Aren't both parties entitled to the ability to monetize(if they so desire) on the time and effort put into creation of their final product?

Copyright is generally interpreted that you can only copyright the part of a work that is original. So if you are granted a copyright for a work that includes unoriginal materials (which is virtually all works) you don't get a copyright on those parts of the work. For example if you write a song that uses familiar public domain motifs, you can get a copyright if you combine them or add to them in novel ways. You don't get a copyright on the pre-existing works.

There seems to be a lot of articles by pirates saying, "I want to pay, but..." and then they proceed to have a long list of excuses why they pirate things.

Let me tell you why I pirate things (and I suspect this is true for most people):

It's not because I can't afford it. I can. But I only have a limited amount of money, and if I spend it on music, I can't spend it on something else.

Pirating content is simply a way for me to save money. I would argue that downloading a torrent is more inconvenient than buying the content off iTunes or Amazon.

And honestly, I don't care too much about the moral implications of downloading. Sure, it might be 'stealing', but it's become socially acceptable, and I know I have a low chance of getting caught anyways.

I only read the in closing, and while I probably am on his side the major point, his closing points are sophomoric. Essentially they are: media is like any other business, if it's doing so badly why are there more numbers of media in volume being released every year, and why do large media houses continue to exist? The answer to the first question is that a huge number of people have entered these markets due to falling barrier to entry so overall volume is up, and answer to the second one is that it takes a long time to kill giant companies. 10 years is not that long.

I consider myself pro-piracy and anti-copyright. Yet, this article still hits a nerve.

First off, and perhaps most unforgivably, the author makes no distinction between content creators and content distributors. All of their arguments seem to be based around creators charging too much--that isn't so! It's the distributors that saddle us with DRM, shitty prices, and ads.

A great example of this is the line:

  "The artists who wake up and realize they can sell me
  their newest physical CD for $20."

That's usually not the artist, unless you buy the album at a show or something! That's Sony! That's BMG! It's those bastards, not the artist!

This misdirected anger does not help their case.

Second, there is far too much of an entitled tone. Statements like

  "You can offer me a pdf file or simply link me to a 
  webpage, but stop ignoring this valuable info. And make 
  sure you have a website that details everything you've  
  released and what you're working on. There's nothing more 
  frustrating than finding a new obscure artist you like 
  who only has a dormant Myspace music page.There's nothing 
  more frustrating than finding a new obscure artist you 
  like who only has a dormant Myspace music page."

and

  "At the very least, I should get a discount on your older 
  stuff for being a current customer."

These do not read well, to put it mildly. When the Man comes around to point out those damn freeloading kids it is exactly these sorts of quotes he points to. Wah wah wah I want a pdf and a web page and a pony--yes, these are all sound business and advertising moves, but asking for it this way is unpalatable.

There is a third issue with the stance taken by the author. Observe:

  "I heard from a friend that Mafia was an enjoyable game. 
  I downloaded it, played it and enjoyed it. Did I 
  immediately go rush out and buy it? No, of course not. 
  But when I heard Mafia II was coming out and it was made 
  by the same company as the first one, I pre-ordered it."

In theory, in a world where developers can make multiple titles, this is a not-entirely-invalid approach. Let the devs prove themselves, then reward them with your future patronage.

The problem--and perhaps the author isn't familiar enough with the industry enough to know this--is that publishers, who are the ones hurt by piracy, are the ones who nowadays make-or-break most studios. When you don't buy the first game, the publisher doesn't see a sale, and so is likely to shutter the studio and give the IP to somebody else.

It's not merely enough to buy the next game--you must also fund the developer so that there can be a next game!

(As an aside, it would seem that maybe this is why piracy seems not to affect indies so much...a lot of them take donations or have pay-as-dev-happens models. It's when studios are held under the power of a publisher that these alternate funding mechanisms seem to fail, and thus studios can't survive to make a reputation when their first game is pirated.)

There's some other good stuff in there, but those are three things the author really needs to get straight in their argument.

It's a bit long, why not just write "I pirate because I can get away with it"? Why the intro about car rentals - did you start joyriding their cars instead of taking your business elsewhere? I highly doubt this. You would not do this because there is a chance you'll get caught and punished.

As one of the people who intrinsically disagree with your stance and so skipped to the Closing section, it appears that your only argument for me is "Piracy is OK because these companies are still profitable"

So if the distributors had rules like 'the scene' and ran paid file sharing sites, we'd all move over there?

I'm buying a 3D printer -- anyone got a Porsche I can borrow for a few weeks?

"A $200 per month entertainment habit that is unequivocally fueled by file-sharing."

"unequivocally," huh?

You really think they don't know all that?

But they are still having lots of profit. Enough to ignore all that it seems.

But very well written nonetheless.

the Internet > $

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