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Trebuchet

Banned

From: Florida

Registered: 2004-04-26

Posts: 419

Re: Everyday morality - Filesharing?

When Fannie Mae needs money to give to homebuyers, they bundle a bunch of mortgages together, then chop the bundle into lots of small bonds purchaseable by the average investor, because only a tiny percentage of private investors could handle the financial burden of an entire mortgage at once.

The information economy has the *opposite* problem: the marginal cost of any one program is too low to make worthwhile. I suggest running the process in reverse. Instead of charging some fixed amount per song or album, if I were running Sony Music or something, I'd bundle piles of songs together - say, all rock and roll - and charge a monthly fee, say $9.99, for the right to download that music from a company website. As much music as they want, whenever they want. Give them a card that gets them discounts to concerts and band-related merchandise for bands with a Sony Music label. People will legally download the music for a fair market value, for the most part. Part of the problem with music piracy is that people feel ripped off paying $15-20 for a $.50 CD. They wouldn't mind if Sony lets them download as much or as little as possible, and the bandwidth would be cheap or free (How free? Imagine if Sony is smart, and offers free or reduced price music subscription to people who mirror a certain number of music files for them. Considering how many people *upload* those pirated music files, there's potential).

That would work for music, or ebooks, or movies, because content providing companies have a wide variety of products to sell and can efficiently bundle them. For software and such, though, it wouldn't work, something else would have to be thought up.

Cobra Commander

Member

From: The outskirts of Detroit.

Registered: 2002-04-09

Posts: 3,039

Re: Everyday morality - Filesharing?

That would work for music, or ebooks, or movies, because content providing companies have a wide variety of products to sell and can efficiently bundle them. For software and such, though, it wouldn't work, something else would have to be thought up.

Inspired by the open source movement, the idea has been floated within various software companies of making the software itself free, but charging for support much as various Linux distributions currently do. If you as a private user want Photoshop, 3DS Max, Autodesk Inventor etc. you just download it from a company site or buy it packaged for essentially the cost of materials and shipping. If you're a business and need to teach your staff to use one, say Inventor, then you pay for training, you pay for system integration general support and whatever else you think you need. Meanwhile Joe Sixpack figures it out himself and is then tied to a particular software package because it's what he knows.

The profit margin is smaller but so is the cost of distribution. If such an arrangement were followed to its logical conclusion and made completely open source development costs would drop as well, a code-savvy user gets sick of a bug and fixes it, then let's the fix out into the world. The software company could even offer some sort of incentives for people or business who do this. For the most part "new" software isn't being written, just incremental improvements to existing packages which requires much less development. If someone develops something new and useful they may chose to take a different route with it, but in most cases the era of big new things in software is closing.

With a few notable exceptions to arise, I'm sure.

On a more general note, these developments will cut much of the fat out of these various industries. Useless overhead will quickly become glaringly clear.

If nothing else, I look forward to seeing what the gun-control people propose to do when metal fabbers become fairly common. 

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Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.

Trebuchet

Banned

From: Florida

Registered: 2004-04-26

Posts: 419

Re: Everyday morality - Filesharing?

I look forward to the first Open Source Pistol. 

Edit: But law enforcement is going to be pretty unhappy about it.

falkor

Member

From: Surrey

Registered: 2004-08-21

Posts: 112

Re: Everyday morality - Filesharing?

<span style='font-size:17pt;line-height:100%'>Illegal filesharers pay thousands of pounds in compensation :</span> 4:3:2005

> 23 settlements from all over the UK

> Filesharers pay up to £4,500 in settlement

> BPI announces another 31 cases across 8 different P2P networks

UK record companies’ trade association the BPI (British Phonographic Industry) today announced that 23 UK internet users have agreed to pay thousands of pounds in compensation for distributing music illegally via peer-to-peer networks on the internet.

The BPI said it will also bring 31 new cases against filesharers from across the UK as it steps up its campaign against illegal filesharing. And in a broadening of the campaign the new actions will span eight different filesharing networks. Further cases will follow.

BPI Chairman Peter Jamieson said, “Unauthorised filesharing is against the law. It effectively steals the livelihood of musicians and the record companies who invest in them. We will not hesitate to protect the rights of our members and the artists they represent.”

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor said, “We are determined to find people who illegally distribute music, whichever peer-to-peer network they use, and to make them compensate the artists and labels they are stealing from.

“These settlements show we can and we will enforce the law. No one should be in any doubt that we will continue to do so.”

Illegal filesharers discover the cost of “free music”

The 23 settlements announced today arise out of the 26 cases announced by the BPI in October 2004. Three cases are still in negotiation and legal action may follow.

The settlements include internet users from all over the UK – 17 men and six women. The average settlement is more than £2,000 – more than a month’s salary for the average UK worker. Two illegal filesharers are paying more than £4,000 each to settle their cases.

BPI General Counsel Geoff Taylor explained, “We have no desire to drag people through the courts. So we have attempted to reach fair settlements where we can.

“We hope people will now begin to get the message that the best way to avoid the risk of legal action and paying substantial compensation is to stop illegal filesharing and to buy music online, safely and legally, instead.”

http://www.bpi.co.uk/news/legal/news_co … 01.shtml]> full story here < what now for free downloading sites?   

Commodore

Member

From: Upstate NY, USA

Registered: 2004-07-25

Posts: 1,021

Re: Everyday morality - Filesharing?

I have nothing against downloading something that the industy itself broadcasts for free. Its perfectly legal to record stuff off the airwaves, and to the best of my knowledge its legal to rebroadcast it to anyone in particular.

That is all P2P is. Its the 21st century equivilent of a DJ at a block party.

The trouble with the music industry in particular is that it doesn't offer anything that isn't already out there (via radio, MTV, ect.) for free. Unlike movies, which though they can be recorded, the quality really can't match your average DVD. Perhapes if the music industry switched to multi-channel audio, the same would be true for them.

Which is not to say I don't support compensating the artists. I like the iTunes model, and if I had wads of money would probably make extensive use of it. But in the mean time I'll just listen to the radio.

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"Yes, I was going to give this astronaut selection my best shot, I was determined when the NASA proctologist looked up my ass, he would see pipes so dazzling he would ask the nurse to get his sunglasses."
---Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane