Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
The people who download torrents of illicitly copied books a) do not read most of them, and b) would not pay $15 for a book whether or not they read it. They're not lost sales because a sale has to have the potential to happen in order to be lost. The publishers act like every book in a 2000-book torrent is a "lost sale" and claims that single download "cost" them $30,000. They act like someone who earns $25k a year would go out and spend $30k of that on books at full retail price if they didn't come along with the two or three books that person really wanted to read..
|
Your problem is that you are doing exactly the same thing you accuse the publishers of: Generalizing.
No, not every book (or in general digital copyrighted stuff) which is downloaded is automatically a lost sale.
But *neither* is it the opposite like you make it appear - never a lost sale. The reality is somewhere in between.
When you have the opition to a) pay 10$ for a book and b) download it for free things change fundamentally. Before you had option b) when you paid for a book you were paying for these things:
- the book (well, doh!)
- supporting a favourite author of yours
But once option b) is available the "book" part is suddenly out of the equation. Because you can get that for free. Now all your "get" from actually buying the book is the satisfaction of having supported the author.
But 10$ might not be worth alone for that for you.
There are of cource a fair amount of people who download something which they never would have bought. But there are also people (and I think those are the vast majority) who do so because it is quite simply *cheaper* (and who do not have a big enough loyality to the producer of said digital stuff to buy it instead).
DRM is adding a bit of a new variable for those people. It is, as said, delaying or limiting the spread of stolen digital content. This introduces something new: waiting time. This changes the equation to:
pay money (-)
support producer (+)
get it *now* (+)
vs
get it for free (+)
do not support producer (-)
wait an unknown period of time (-)
The "get it *now*" pushes quite a few people to buy digital stuff. Myself included. I bought myself several games and books which I wouldn't have if I would have be able to get them for free at the same time. And I didn't buy also quite a few games and books which I would have bought if here hasn't been a free version out which I could get without any real delay compared to the "pricey" version.
Now if you excuse me, I think the police just ringed.
Quote:
|
Also, it's "lose" not "loose". You're not really helping your credibility there.
|
Yes, because making a spelling error totally makes an argument invalid. We can continue this conversation in german and I'll point out our grammar mistakes and rating your credability due to them. Deal?
Mind, I always cringe mentally when I hear someone making a basic grammar or spelling error, but rating a persons credibility from it is just plain out stupid. The only thing you can rate is how good that person is in the language. Unless you were talking about grammar and pronunciation of said language he can make as many errors as he wants without hurting his credibility.