Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
This is easy to address. I didn't talk of families. According to my proposal, you can give copies of the files you purchase to how many people you want, but YOU are (jointly) responsible for the things that happen to your files afterwards. If you start giving a copy of your media to that fishy-looking second cousin of your acquired aunt, you can already start to save for the moment the fines will arrive... The system seems to me to be inherently self-limiting.
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If you can give the files to as many people as you want, then how can you be prosecuted for anything that happens to the file afterwards? obviously you simply need to say that you want everyone to have the file, there has to be a legally defined limit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BoldlyDubious
Ok, I'm game: let's push your "Mary has an ebook" scenario a few steps forward :-)
A total of 50 people received a free copy of the book that Mary originally bought. Of these, 20 were actually considering buying that book, because they read the reviews and talked with other people and they feel that it is the type of book they like. The other 30 don't care much about that book, and never considered buying it, but... it came for free! So they take it all the same. 20 of these 30 end up not reading it; the other 10 read it. All of the 20 people who wanted to buy the book, of course, read it. So 30 people read the book.
20 sales are lost for the book that Mary bought. However, something else happens. Among the 30 people who read the book, 10 think that it was really good, and want to read more from the same author. Over the next 6 month, 3 of them buy one book, and 2 of them two books, by that author. 7 sales are thus made. We are still at -20+7=-13 sales, though. However, one of the two people who liked the original book so much (so: one out of 50 "freeloaders") becomes a real fan of the author, and wants to have everything: so an additional 10 titles get bought. We are now at -13+10=-3 lost sales.
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I think it will go more along the lines of 50 people get the book for free, 30 like it and then ask the person they got it from if they have any more.