[QUOTE=retina;292577]Okay. I've never seen Saturday Night Live.[/QUOTE]

Here is part of it: [url]http://www.myvideo.de/watch/127096/Star_Trek_TOS_William_Shatner_SNL_Get_A_Life[/url]

[QUOTE=rogue;292580]Here is part of it: [url]http://www.myvideo.de/watch/127096/Star_Trek_TOS_William_Shatner_SNL_Get_A_Life[/url][/QUOTE]Thanks for the thought, but I've no flash player here.

[size=1][color=gray]And before anyone suggests anything, yes I do know how to install flash if I ever decide to sell my soul to the devil.[/color][/size]

[QUOTE=retina;292576]This article is interesting but I think it misses an important point.

Company A hires staff and spends, say, 10000 man years to make The-Best-Damn-OS-Ever (TM) and proceeds to sell it. However, Joe Average buys one copy and posts it on the intertubes for free. So now what? Company A receives insufficient compensation for all the time and money spent to create T.B.D.O.S.E (TM) and goes bankrupt. So the argument here is, without any sort of legal protection, companies like A will just not bother to create stuff because there is no positive reward for doing so. The article gives the example of a carved marble work, which by its nature is difficult to make a duplicate, but the article fails to mention about a digital work, with which it is trivial to make millions of duplicates. Why would company A bother to make T.B.D.O.S.E (TM) at all if they can only ever sell one copy to Joe average?[/QUOTE]As long as Company A spends at least a little bit on advertising, and can prove it's the original maker, many people are honest enough to buy it straight from them. Have you ever heard of the Humble Bundle?

[QUOTE=Dubslow;292592]As long as Company A spends at least a little bit on advertising, and can prove it's the original maker, many people are honest enough to buy it straight from them. Have you ever heard of the Humble Bundle?[/QUOTE]Good, so now we come to the point of: does it require artificial scarcity to achieve the goal of getting people to "be honest" and pay? Or would/does artificial scarcity harm future sales by "forcing" people to pirate? If I am company A and release T.B.D.O.S.E (TM) to the public am I best to just make it free to copy/download and have a donate button? Or am I best to put in DRM and registration and make it scarce and only sell DVDs and force people to sign contracts and etc. etc. etc.? And by "best" I mean make the most money, it is a company after all and its purpose is to make money.

[QUOTE=retina;292595]Good, so now we come to the point of: does it require artificial scarcity to achieve the goal of getting people to "be honest" and pay? Or would/does artificial scarcity harm future sales by "forcing" people to pirate? If I am company A and release T.B.D.O.S.E (TM) to the public am I best to just make it free to copy/download and have a donate button? Or am I best to put in DRM and registration and make it scarce and only sell DVDs and force people to sign contracts and etc. etc. etc.? And by "best" I mean make the most money, it is a company after all and its purpose is to make money.[/QUOTE]

I hate to be cynical, but most pirates wouldn't donate, even if they use the software every day and love it. Those that would donate would be angry with those that don't donate, which is no different than today's situation.

I would like to see a "try and buy" option. D/l the software, give it a spin for a period of time. If I don't like it, I have to delete it, otherwise I have to pay for it or live with ads or decreased functionality. For music, the song could "self-destruct" after the first play, unless you hit "buy" while it is playing. For movies/TV programs, I think there are enough resources for people to access before they buy, such as trailers, IMDb, youtube, etc. For example, if something is on youtube (free, but low quality), why would someone need to pirate in order to make the choice on buying it? I just don't buy most of the arguments made by pirates.

Retina's link deals with this issue: try-and-buy would be effective if the try part was not made to be actively deceptive. How many movie trailers have all the good parts of the movie, packed into 60 seconds instead of 90 minutes?

[QUOTE=retina;292576]This article is interesting but I think it misses an important point.

Company A hires staff and spends, say, 10000 man years to make The-Best-Damn-OS-Ever (TM) and proceeds to sell it. However, Joe Average buys one copy and posts it on the intertubes for free. So now what? Company A receives insufficient compensation for all the time and money spent to create T.B.D.O.S.E (TM) and goes bankrupt. So the argument here is, without any sort of legal protection, companies like A will just not bother to create stuff because there is no positive reward for doing so. The article gives the example of a carved marble work, which by its nature is difficult to make a duplicate, but the article fails to mention about a digital work, with which it is trivial to make millions of duplicates. Why would company A bother to make T.B.D.O.S.E (TM) at all if they can only ever sell one copy to Joe average?[/QUOTE]Why does company A need to make an OS anyway?

If BSD, Linux, etc, is good enough (and present evidence strongly suggests that it is good enough for many things) then use it. If it is not good enough, is its deficiency sufficiently expensive that 10K man-years is a lower cost than working around the deficiency? If so, develop it. If not, choose the cheaper option.

[QUOTE=jasonp;292612]Retina's link deals with this issue: try-and-buy would be effective if the try part was not made to be actively deceptive. How many movie trailers have all the good parts of the movie, packed into 60 seconds instead of 90 minutes?[/QUOTE]

I understand the issue with movie trailers, but there are plenty of reviews available. That plus reviews/ratings on IMDB should be enough information to let someone know if they want to watch it.

Actually, upon reflection I also remember wondering why someone in their mid-30s would have such a sophisticated worldview on downloaded music, movies and computer games. It sounds cynical to believe that all such people are wasting their time with such things, when they "should" have families and mortgages and being upstanding citizens to worry about instead. But retina is correct that this is passing judgement when it's not called for. Am I a worse / trivial person for building factoring software in my off-hours instead of volunteering at the local soup kitchen? I worry about all those other things too...

[QUOTE=jasonp;292619]Actually, upon reflection I also remember wondering why someone in their mid-30s would have such a sophisticated worldview on downloaded music, movies and computer games. It sounds cynical to believe that all such people are wasting their time with such things, when they "should" have families and mortgages and being upstanding citizens to worry about instead.[/QUOTE]

Hence my joke.

Note that I do have a wife and kids. It can be a delicate balance between time with them and time on software-related projects.

My tuppence worth. I live in Kabul and you cannot buy regular goods here. At the prices charged in the West, there is no market. Hence no-one thinks twice about "piracy". I lived in Bangladesh before this, and you could only buy ripped DVDs. What am I supposed to do - prime numbers?

I bought several albums by the Rolling Stones in the 60s and 70s, and then I bought the cassettes of the same production in the 70s, and then CD's the same in the 80s. I paid three times for the same good. The Stones are doing OK for themselves in the material world. Bless 'em.

Are people still making enough out of music and films? I think so, no sign of Hollywood giving up the ghost.

You can't ignore internet technology. If you go on Pirate Bay tonight and type in "mission impossible 4" you wont get a DVD rip, and about 1,000 people are downloading screen rips. That's 1,000 compared to a total audience of perhaps 70-100 million who will see the movie, paid. Take in about 5-10 million who are going to buy a pirate copy. Still 60-90 million paying!!!!

Add the 40 pounds or 70 dollars to see these bands live, times 30,000 a performance, thats $2.1 million for a big concert. The big bands do this, because they know you can't replace live performance and this will always be the case.

The future? A rethink over performance. Theatre and live gigs will benefit, studio recordings with marketing will be only for the top bands, and the huge infrastructure that leeches money from the artists will slowly disappear. And that includes the Hollywood machine.

Small players, up and coming acts, edgy and specialist movies will broadcast successfully to the web, and the best will go viral. Simon Cowell will get richer, and new exciting formulae will dominate TV.

Its not such a bad future for the music and film arts. People just have to adapt.

And I will continue to watch and listen to "pirates" whilst I cannot buy the real thing.

But I will move to the UK in the Spring, so I will go back to being law abiding.