Piracy vs Bookstores

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

If two vendors are competing for your business, and you award the contract to Vendor A, Vendor B lost the sale. Boeing vs. Airbus... Boeing lost the tanker contract to Airbus. This isn't a nebulous concept invented by the RIAA.

Maybe there are two different concepts described here by the same words. It seems obvious that the RIAA usage is not the usage you are referring to.

[Taylor514ce]

Read my post upstream where I discuss how the concept of a lost sale does and does not apply to downloading e-books.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Redcard

Now, I agree wholeheartedly that piracy is wrong. I agree that not compensating an author for something they wish compensation for is wrong. But I won't go so far as to agree that the concept of the lost sale exists, especially in something as transient as a computer file. It's still wrong, mind you, but the concept of the "lost sale by piracy" is just an invention to allow unreasonable damage figures to come into play.

I really must disagree. If a criminal, who would have otherwise bought the book, steals it (excuse me - "copyright infringes" it) instead; then that is clearly a lost sale. The author will not receive the income for that sale - it is indeed a lost sale.

Of course, if the criminal would not have bought the book, it isn't a lost sale.

[Halk]

The reason for the distinction between stealing and copyright infringement is simple, I think I even mentioned it in the first post in the thread, or certainly early on.

If I steal your apple, then I have an apple, and you don't.
If I steal a copy of the book you wrote then I have a copy of the book you wrote, and you still have the original.

It's clearly not the same thing.

But that of course doesn't mean it's justified in any way.

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really must disagree. If a criminal, who would have otherwise bought the book, steals it (excuse me - "copyright infringes" it) instead; then that is clearly a lost sale. The author will not receive the income for that sale - it is indeed a lost sale.

Of course, if the criminal would not have bought the book, it isn't a lost sale.

What about the following scenario which I heard from various people - anecdotal but considering the negligible size of the e-book market, by and large most evidence is anecdotal - someone has no clue a book/author exists, however it finds a darknet version and likes it, maybe another darknet version of the next book from the same author. The third book though is coming soon out and since that person really likes the author, he/she buys it in hardcover or whatever 1st edition is, or maybe digital if offered. Who wins, who loses? Which sales are lost, which are gained?


I do not claim the answers are easy either way, but to me all these issues are quite tricky and they are not going away.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

If two vendors are competing for your business, and you award the contract to Vendor A, Vendor B lost the sale. Boeing vs. Airbus... Boeing lost the tanker contract to Airbus. This isn't a nebulous concept invented by the RIAA.

No, Boeing did not lose the sell, they just did not gain the sell. Saying that they lost the sell because someone else out competed them for it is like saying I lost a dollar just because you found it and I didn't. I did not lose it, I just did not gain it. I realize this is semantics and we live in the age of the misnomer but I would like for words to have a real meaning, not just something made up to make people feel sorry for someone else.

I do not agree with piracy nor stealing but that has nothing to do with the meanings of these words. And yes I agree that many people have been "sold a bill of goods" about the term and accept the illusion of a "lost sell" as factual, but it is not a fact. It is a misrepresentation of facts, specifically for the "loser's" (word use sarcastically) gain of sympathy and if enough people accept the illusion as fact, it will eventually become, at least, a pseudo fact - somewhat like the pseudo fact, accepted by the general populace once, that the world was flat. That, acceptance, however, will not change the true facts.

[Redcard]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really must disagree. If a criminal, who would have otherwise bought the book, steals it (excuse me - "copyright infringes" it) instead; then that is clearly a lost sale. The author will not receive the income for that sale - it is indeed a lost sale.

Of course, if the criminal would not have bought the book, it isn't a lost sale.

Yes, that's true. But it's not a lost sale simply because someone downloaded it on a black market site. It's a sale that never happened. Only in this digital market do we have the concept that someone can illegally obtain something and someone else can treat it like it was a sale that would happen.

Let's go back to the Boeing and Airbus scenario.

Boeing did not "Lose" the sale. They lost the contract to someone who made a better offer. In the RIAA/electronic world, the response Boeing would have is to sue the air force for every plane that Airbus makes that Boeing could have made because they went with a method that Boeing didn't like. That's a crazy concept, and shouldn't change simply because we are dealing with files instead of airplanes.

So again, the concept of the lost sale is a misnomer. It's incorrect. Boeing didn't "lose" the sale. They never made the sale to begin with! They lost the oppurtunity to make the sale, yes, because a competitor out bid them. THey really really wanted that sale and they're going to stomp and cry about it, but the difference between what they and the RIAA are doing is that the RIAA is putting the "lost sales" in their "damages" category, which can technically be a loss on their taxes.. and what Boeing is doing is just going to have to involve not selling tankers to the government. So they don't get big bonuses and they don't get to spend money on other things.

And not only that, if you look at their concept of Lost Sales as used by the RIAA, you'll notice that for each infringing "song" they find, they multiply that by a few hundred because they assume you'll share it with everyone. Then they multiply THAT by a court allowed "damages multiplier." So even _IF_ the concept of lost sales existed, it's certainly not mitigated by the "wouldn't buy it anyway" factor.

It'd be different if a lost sale existed, and we could actually track the market to the point where we would know if someone was going to buy something really and truly and didn't because of a free product.. but , we don't have that granularity on customers, and multiplying damages by a thousand fold or more certainly don't seem to show any interest in being realistic towards those numbers anyway. It's just a cash grab.

[Halk]

This is now degenerated to pedantry.

[slayda]

Originally Posted by Halk

This is now degenerated to pedantry.

Spoken like a true pedant.

[Halk]

Originally Posted by slayda

Spoken like a true pedant.

I wouldn't have made the grammatical mistake if I was :P

Seriously though. This is now achieving nothing. What's the argument about now? The definition of "lost sale", while all sides entirely accept what the other sides mean.

[sealbeater]

Originally Posted by Taylor514ce

Were you in the market for a Mercedes? Did you test drive one? Engage in the sales process but ultimately decide to go with another vehicle because Mercedes failed one of your buying criteria? Then yes, Mercedes lost the sale to a competitor.

If you were never in the market, or just engaged in wishful daydreaming, there never was a sale to be made. Similarly, if a bored teenaged hacker wannabe is browsing torrents and opportunistically downloads some books in passing, there never was a sale to be made. This action doesn't constitute a lost sale. If I shop Sony Connect for a particular book, compare it's price on Amazon for the Kindle Edition, get irritated at the irrational price disparity, and so actively seek out a stolen copy on the internet, then that's a "lost sale" and I'm a thief. Similarly, if I choose not to buy it all, because the price is just too high, that's a lost sale.

I think it's a pretty basic concept, folks.

Well, I agree with everything except the "thief" part. I agree with that definition of a lost sale, as in I was interested, intended to purchase but for some reason didn't.

As for the thief part, I just want to reiterate that they never seem to charge anyone with any stealing related charge, just copyright infringement.

[Lemurion]

I don't know why some people have issues with the concept of a "lost sale."

Here's an example from when I used to manage a bookstore, and we often had what we called a "lost sale." Someone would come in to buy a book, let's say the latest Tom Clancy thriller, and not find it on the shelf. (Let's say because one of the clerks hadn't put the latest order out and it was sitting in the stockroom). So this customer turns around and goes down to our competitor at the other end of the mall and buys it there.

That's a lost sale.

Sometimes people do pirate things they would have bought. Sometimes people pirate things they would not otherwise have bought. When considering losses due to piracy it's important to try to find some way of distinguishing the two groups.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by sealbeater

Well, I agree with everything except the "thief" part. I agree with that definition of a lost sale, as in I was interested, intended to purchase but for some reason didn't.

As for the thief part, I just want to reiterate that they never seem to charge anyone with any stealing related charge, just copyright infringement.

Yea, and when someone steals all your personal information you can charge them with Identity copyright infringement. After all you still know who you are.

Dale

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I really must disagree. If a criminal, who would have otherwise bought the book, steals it (excuse me - "copyright infringes" it) instead; then that is clearly a lost sale. The author will not receive the income for that sale - it is indeed a lost sale.

Of course, if the criminal would not have bought the book, it isn't a lost sale.

Ok, this is an interesting point. If you have 10,000 p-books on the shelf and someone breaks into the store and steals them, then you can deduct this "loss" against your revenues as an expense. Of course, it would be the value that the "retailer" paid for the books, not what the retail value of them was.

So, if a software company like MS estimates that 100,000 copies of office were made in 2007, do they get to deduct the "cost" of those as an expense? If so, how do you determine the cost? The cost to duplicate the CD is under $1. The R&D cost per copy is generally determined by actual costs divided by units sold. I wonder if they can take an expense in this case?

Interesting... no, I am not an accountant or a tax lawyer.

BOb

[sealbeater]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Yea, and when someone steals all your personal information you can charge them with Identity copyright infringement. After all you still know who you are.

Dale

Ok, I can't deny it. That was a good comeback.