Quote:
Originally Posted by Rob Lister
The analogy applies to the availability of the products. The real issue here is the price point for individual morality, or the perception thereof.
How much am I [and all others] willing to pay to keep my virtue and NOT download a torrent of some ebook? Call it John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath. I can get it legit from B&N $12.99 or I can get it free from a dozen torrents. Same book, minor typos notwithstanding.
At one end of the bell curve, that price point is a million bucks; some would never stoop that low. At the other end, it's 'not one red cent'; some never pay for anything.
The most money is made at the peak of the curve. For music, it's a buck.
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Sorry, I wasn't completely reading into the original post that this was about piracy. Sure there's an optimal point, but I don't believe we've hit it. Right now copyright is sorting itself out and how it deals with the new technologies. There will always be copying. There has always been copying. People photocopying entire textbooks for courses, people copying music tapes for friends, people burning DVDs for others.
For the Grapes of Wrath, I'd do what I'm doing for a lot of books these days and that's using the good old paper library. $18 for Hemingway's
The Sun Also Rises isn't going to happen for me. So I'll borrow the paper book at the library. Nobody reads the classics anyway so it's almost always available. Besides, my Kindle isn't going to like going in and out of the cold and show this winter anyway. -30C outside to +20C inside. Add in some condensation problems. Forget it. The e-reader isn't going on my bus rides this winter.
I still don't agree with the music analogy though. For some it might work, but for me, single tracks aren't the way I listen to music. I like albums, I like the flow between songs, and I like understanding more about an artist than the one the teasers on the air play.