What is piracy?

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by maxiart

Wait, in the end are you supporting what Giggleton said, or not? I am not being facetious, I really got a bit lost.

I don't really care if its an ebook or a pbook. If I think a friend will like a book, I will lend it to him, sell it to him, or give it to him as a gift, just like I would with any other good under the sun.

Whenever you do anything, you should probably think about what would happen if everyone did it. For instance some people think it's ok to piss in the street, but if we all did that, can you imagine? I suggest urinating in the flora instead. Cities would probably be able to cut back on their fertilizer purchasing if we all did that.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Would taking a used bookstore's entire stock without paying and then sending the cover price of each book directly to the author be considered stealing, or good moral practice?

Stealing. Even if we forget about the crime against the store owner.

While some of those books are the product of one man or woman, most were a group project. What about the agent who came up with the thesis and sold the author on it? What about the editor who re-wrote the book? What about the cover art designer? The person who created the charts? The photographers who created the center insert material I find in most non-fiction? It would be stealing from every member, save one, of the village that created the book.

It's true that some members of the village get paid a lot more than others. But it's more fair than if some central government was to give all compensation to the author. Serious research-based non-fiction, which does require a village, would die.

[Fluribus]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Please define serious.

All economic systems are failures if they allow a single individual to starve.

WIP

Any and all possible economic systems will allow multiple individuals to starve. To have any successful Utopia requires infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness, and infinite power. In other words, only God could set up Utopia.

Humans who attempt to set up Utopia will either be frauds who are in it for the power, thus bringing tyranny, or true-believers who will become increasingly tyrannical as their wondrous vision fails to be achieved. How many more millions do we need the Utopians to kill?

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

I suggest urinating in the flora instead. Cities would probably be able to cut back on their fertilizer purchasing if we all did that.

You are probably correct, but only because some of the plants would die.

According to this heavily footnoted Wikipedia article, you should first be diluting it with eight parts water for each part liquid human waste. Now there's something you won't find in Encyclopaedia Britannica!

[maxiart]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Whenever you do anything, you should probably think about what would happen if everyone did it. For instance some people think it's ok to piss in the street, but if we all did that, can you imagine? I suggest urinating in the flora instead. Cities would probably be able to cut back on their fertilizer purchasing if we all did that.

Sorry, but I don't base myself around what anyone else does or does not do. And I don't see anything at all wrong with selling used things. Some people even depend on them, being unable or unwilling to afford full prices.

Come to think of it, it is perfectly legal in my country, too.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

Stealing. Even if we forget about the crime against the store owner.

While some of those books are the product of one man or woman, most were a group project.

What about the store owner's crime of not compensating the author for the sale of the authors work? Or shall we to continue to believe that simply because the book is carved from a tree that it is somehow immune to piracy? The book has not been copied? What is a book?

We have changed our definition of the book in the past and we are about to do so again. To its core, a pure idea...

It might be a bit difficult to determine compensation between creators of a single work but I think that could be worked out.

Originally Posted by SteveEisenberg

You are probably correct, but only because some of the plants would die.

According to this heavily footnoted Wikipedia article, you should first be diluting it with eight parts water for each part liquid human waste. Now there's something you won't find in Encyclopaedia Britannica!

Interesting, fresh urine makes the best fertilizer. My city urine vision involves everyone picking their special spot/plant that they are able to fertilize. That way no plant would get over fertilized. I suppose depending on how much water someone drinks, they might need a few different spots.

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Fluribus

Any and all possible economic systems will allow multiple individuals to starve. To have any successful Utopia requires infinite knowledge, infinite wisdom, infinite goodness, and infinite power. In other words, only God could set up Utopia.

It seems that we have all of those things in abundance already.

[AndrewH]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

What about the store owner's crime of not compensating the author for the sale of the authors work?

A used book store owner has no obligation to the author. Look up the first-sale doctrine you were espousing earlier.

[VaporPunk]

This thread is both brilliant and frightening. Oh, and highly amusing as well. I thank you all!

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

What about the store owner's crime of not compensating the author for the sale of the authors work?

First, many of the most important books, and almost all serious investigative non-fiction, are not the work of an isolated author, but of a group of people whose work, and compensation, is coordinated by a publisher. So you should be substituting the word "publisher" in the above sentence for "author." But you can't, because then your scheme to have a transnational entity pay "authors," based on something like the number of downloads, would be revealed as crony capitalism.*

As for why the used store owner, as opposed to the pirate, is indeed compensating the creator team, whether of a car or a book: I buy the used book, increasing the price of remaining used books of that title and makes the new one more attractive. This allows the publisher to charge more, gradually increasing compensation for the whole village which created the book.

_____________________________________
* This also is my answer to the people who think Giggleton is the next Chairman Mao. A scheme that is going to send more money to Bill O'Reilly, and the people behind him, may be many bad things, but the Cultural Revolution it is not. Maybe I myself once posted in this direction, and, if so, I now see myself to be mistaken.

[Freeshadow]

Gig i won't do an encyclopedia for you!
I already pointed out your mistake in assuming economics deals only with flow of value whereas you ignore said values determination.
So let's rewind in a small example back to that: you insist constantly that artistic goods don't have enough value to be paid for them:
In this you ignore the value of time invested in research and creation of said work. 1st proof of your complete ignorance how apprise goods.
2nd are factors derived from levels of comfort from the consumers which an economic analysis would also take into consideration:
In physical books this might ve hardcovers where people agreedv to pay more for a more presentable product and earlier access because they value their personal joy of having it ASAP high enough. Baen does same with eArcs.
People choose! to pay near tripled price for early access. They are free not do so and wait instead.
Value determination would even take factors like prestige growth because of possession of certain goods.
Just juggling with physical production costs is a fraction of the whole process. But sadly enough that's all you do. Therein you show your lack of understanding of what economy is. Go read and learn, before you keep on parroting words which meaning you don't understand.

In the meantime we all still keep waiting for a statement of yours about the free access to your account wn stuff.
Grow a spine and live up to what you preach.

[Sil_liS]

How do you determine the value of a book?
If the price is $1 and 1 million books are sold, is it a million dollar book or is it a 1 dollar book?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Giggleton

Please define facts.

If you are attempting to apply the "Socratic method", you may wish to pause and consider what happened to Socrates as the result of being a pain in the ass.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

How do you determine the value of a book?
If the price is $1 and 1 million books are sold, is it a million dollar book or is it a 1 dollar book?

If you speak about one book in the sense of n° of produced items and you know that
a) by setting the price to 1 you reach the biggest ammount of buyuers because the group potentially willing to pay 1 or more is the biggest and
b) your production and transaction costs (software and hardware needed for creation; costs for retail like server or the percentage retailers like amazon cut from your win; payments for cashing like paypal or cc-card)
c) the calculated value of your worktime spent on writing the book
d) the assumed amount of copies to sell before the market is saturated

If this all calculated doesn’t give you a negative value then 1$ is right. If you end up going negative then you have to recalculate with the amount of buyers willing to pay 1+n$ or higher.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by maxiart

Wait, in the end are you supporting what Giggleton said, or not? I am not being facetious, I really got a bit lost.

I don't really care if its an ebook or a pbook. If I think a friend will like a book, I will lend it to him, sell it to him, or give it to him as a gift, just like I would with any other good under the sun.

The point is that it is obvious OK to lend a book but that possible deprives author of income so obviously it is OK to deprive an author of income. So rge "depriving" argument is not valid for copying an ebook and giving away.