[EatingPie]

Yikes two huge replies.

Originally Posted by ggareau

It's not inherently wrong. No word is. However I know quite a few people who would find it disrespectful or offensive to be called that. I know a few who don't. Given the choice, I avoid grenade words (even though it's nowhere near as bad as the n-word).

I think the reason I asked is because the N-word is a racial slur. The I word isn't. Or at least isn't in my area.

Wow. Talk about a slippery slope. Here's the thing - it is physically impossible to stop piracy. I'm not saying "you can't stop all pirates," I'm saying that it is impossible to keep people from aquiring digital goods if they want to. DRM cannot work. Literally, cannot. The analogy is a jail cell - if you can see the lock, and someone needs to give you the key (because you need to open it), you can make a copy of the key and unlock the cell at will. Not to mention all of the analog ways of copying - I can sit at my computer and type out a book, and once it's on the net it's on the net.

So that's why there's no point to fighting piracy. You cannot possibly win. It's not so much that you can't catch them all - it's that you can't catch more than 1% of 1%. For all the press the RIAA has gotten, what proportion of people have been sued vs people who have downloaded music? Not to mention that once I have something without DRM I can spread it physically by CD/SD card and nobody is going to be able to track me down. Hell, unless I'm profiting from it, nobody is going to want to track me down.

Piracy and DRM are separate issues. Your attacks on DRM assume it's the only possible "solution." That's analogous to saying the death penalty doesn't work, so we shouldn't try to stop murder.

And no, that's not a slippery slope either. It's an analogy, just like in my previous post.

I stand by my previous question. You can't stop murder, pedophilia, theft. You cannot possibly win. How is that different than what you're saying? It certainly is not clear to me here. Again, the crime is separate from the deterrent.

Now to your slippery slope. A thief steals - a physical good. You can't argue that it's the same to steal a CD as it is to steal a bunch of MP3s because when you steal the CD, a piece of the supply is lost. That CD has been paid for (overhead-wise) by manufacturing, and that is money lost. With the MP3s, no supply is lost. No overhead is spent. No manufacturing costs incurred. The only way that you can argue that taking the MP3s is theft of any sort is by guessing at how many of the people who got the MP3s would have paid for the CD if the pirated version wasn't an option. And that's all it will ever be. A guess. You can say 100% or 0% and each are equally valid. There is no direct harm whatsoever. Indirect? Maybe, maybe not - some people who wouldn't have bought that band's music will in the future now that they've been able to listen to it. Some that would have bought it now won't. Will it even out? Nobody knows (or can know).

That's theft. I'm not going to entertain your pedophile or murder charges because we both know that comparing something that causes no direct harm to something that causes direct harm to at least one and indirect harm to hundreds of others is absurd.

Again, I made an analogy, not a slippery slope (this leads to that, which leads to that, which leads to that).

By US laws, to copy a work without permission is theft. There is not a physical item involved in the case of digital works, but it is, by law, theft none the less.

Theft, murder, pedophilia all cause harm, but different kinds of harm. Similarly, the theft of music, or books, or any other digital works also caues harm. It causes yet another kind of harm, financial harm -- more similar to that of theft than murder or pedophilia, obviously -- but harm no less.

You may not want to address these, but they serve the analogy in terms of all being crimes, all causing harms, all having potential solutions with varying degrees of success, all having legal repercussions. Just like digital piracy.

I'm a freelance writer and graphic designer. I do some animation work as well. I obviously would like to make money off of my work, but at the same time I know that my stuff will eventually get onto the internet without any manner of copy protection no matter what I do. I also know that some people will avoid my work if I do put strong DRM on it, while removing my DRM isn't going necessarily guarantee less sales. It's a race between me and the pirates (if I don't just use creative commons, which I will). While I can try to delay the pirates getting my material, I will lose customers while treating my customers as criminals (let's face it, DRM is treating your customers as criminals). And make no mistake, the pirates will inevitably win anyway.

I'm in a similar boat. But, again, DRM is not the only solution. And DRM being wrong does not mean we should suddenly say piracy is not wrong.

As I see it, we live in a new world - a new economy - where your work needs to compete with a free version of itself. Whether that's by value-added stuff (poster print in a physical book), just by pricing your work inexpensively enough that it's not worth the trouble to get it for free (see: DRM-free iTunes), or creating secondary revenue streams based on your work (merchandise, advertising, etc), you need to give the customer a reasonable, legal option. They need to feel your price is fair. Sure, some people will still pirate stuff. Let it go. Move on. Build a relationship with your own customers and forget about the hypothetical theoretical money you might possibly have been making if only those nasty pirates weren't a thorn in your side. You've lost before you begin.

All of these are great solutions to piracy. I thought you said there was no point in fighting piracy.

-Pie