Quote:
Originally Posted by kad032000
To me, it sounded like it was what you believed will happen, not what you believed could happen. Your belief is your position. I believe otherwise, and that is my position.
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Then you missed the much earlier post where I said "maybe I'm just being pessimistic."
Quote:
Originally Posted by kad032000
If you are truly only saying that something could happen, then there is no point in discussing it further. Anything could happen.
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I'm stated I either *believe* it could happen or that I'm *worried* it could happen. Both warrant discussion as to the likelyhood of the scenario and why or why not it might happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kad032000
A = original ebook sales
B = original pbook sales
C = original effect of piracy
D = original total sales
=>
A + B - C = D
x = additional ebook sales
x1 = lost pbook sales
y = additional effect of piracy
z = total effect of piracy
You start with
x1 = -x
(C+y) = z
=>
(A+x) + (B-x) - (C + y) = D - z
You conclude
(D - z) < D
Problem? For z > 0, you must assume at least one of either C or y is > 0. To know that at least one of either C or Y is > 0, you would have to know z > 0. It's circular.
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No, your math is wrong. It's D - y, not D - z, otherwise you're subtracting C twice. I assume that (D - y) < D. You're already including the -C in the D. Nice try, though.
But more importantly, I'm saying that piracy C is a function of A, not B. I'm also assuming that as A increases in the future, it's primarily coming at the expense of B; people switch from pbook to ebook, rather than having a lot of newer pbook or ebook readers entering the system. Thus, C *must* increase, even if it's constant; frankly I expect that C will increase even more with a rising A because more of the B people (as I argued before) will have problems with ebook prices and DRM than the A people do now. So you can't avoid the fact that D will decrease as a result.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kad032000
It sounds to me like you believe piracy will harm sales because of a scenario that could happen. Whereas I believe piracy will not harm sales because of similar situations in other industries. Which is the stronger position?
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Neither is a stronger position. I believe piracy will harm sales because of a self-consistent theory; you believe piracy won't harm sales because you don't see supporting data in other industries. I say your data in other industries is neither complete nor relevant; you say my theory is unsupported because there's no data at all. Either one of us could be correct! It's most exciting, isn't it? But likely whatever happens neither one of us will know who was right, because there are a dozen other unknowns that aren't even listed in the equation that we can speculate on after the fact endlessly. (If only they'd done this; it was because they also did that, etc.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kad032000
Semantics. I am posting with the explicit reason to show anyone reading that there is more reason to believe in my position than in your position.
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Well good luck with that but we're going around in circles here.