Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
I think you see conspiracy where there is none.
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It's not conspiracy. It's "capitalism".
Not convinced? Suppose you buy a standard red-book CD, COTS. Over the years it gets scratched up.. no longer plays correctly. Why can't you just exchange your damaged copy for a new one, paying only the 17 cent cost of material? Capitalism. They already have the right to charge you full retail price (secured by an artificial manipulation of pure capitalism called "copyright"), and they can charge you multiple times over, so where's the business interest in being fair? As soon as a CEO tries to be fair to consumers, he's sackable for not working in the shareholders interest.
Publishers are quite happy to make the willful conformist consumers pay multiple times for the same content. They are so confident and cavalier in their powerful lobby that they do not even bother to mitigate consumer loss. E.g. to justify laws blocking backup copies, they could offer replacements at cost - but they don't see the need. The lobby is strong enough that it's simply acceptable to re-charge consumers for the same content they've already paid for. DRM is designed to accommodate this. If an expat lives in multiple regions, why wouldn't publishers want to charge them in each region? It's not a conspiracy, it's capitalism. It's the bottom line.