" Thanks for this enlightening and entirely necessary thread. "Thanks for that enlightening and entirely necessary post :-)
A mistaken conception of ownership
Also, I am going to briefly veer off topic because you said something so ahistorical and patently ludicrous that I have to address it. (And if you disagree, start a new thread. This thread is about media and intellectual property.)
The market was not free prior to the recession. The market was heavily manipulated. Banks overleveraged themselves several orders of magnitude beyond their capital base, mainly on the notion that the U.S. Federal government had an informal "too big to fail" policy when it came to banks and big corporations. That informal policy, which policymakers vocally claimed did not exist for years, came into effect with TARP and the rest of the bailouts. Just because George W. Bush and his administration used the rhetotic of free markets and the rhetoric of deregulation, the truth is, under Bush the American federal government grew exponentially, as did the regulatory apparatus of the financial regulatory bodies. To call this a failure of a free market is ahistorical, the market hasn't been free for decades (and if you're opposed to bimetalism, than it goes back even further).
Back to the matter at hand though....
" @RsistncE: Publishers and developers have fallen by the wayside long before this recession. Remember Black Isle? Remember the Dreamcast? Any idea why PSP attach rates are lower than that of the DS? Piracy. "Just have to add to that, DS has probably the WORST rate of piracy of all them, exceeding that of the PSP, yet, games still sell exceptionally well. That may b a case of the demographics, but I doubt that this would be the only or major factor.
@Suicrat said:
" @oldschool: No, I wasn't accusing you of sophistry. I'm sorry I used that word so carelessly. And whether or not a company is put in peril by downloading something you didn't pay for (THIS is the economic relationship I'm referring to when I describe an "objective" zero sum.) doesn't change the fact that payment is the value a publisher expects in return for the use of its intellectual property. "I agree that a publisher should always get a return for its product if used, the current model isn't working and they need to find a new, better model. I am not going to be presumptive enough to say I have the answer, but I am sure there are bright minds out there who could. Changes in the market will force change on them if they fail to manage and direct that change themselves.
I never said the markets were free of government regulation before that, I just said that clearly that regulation wasn't very effective because large corporations (the banks in this case) were running amok.
This is the thing I probably need to clarify most urgently though. It should be noted that the majority of my vitriol is not reserved for the ordinary pirate consumer, but the facilitator of piracy who attempts to profit (or even cover the costs of their piracy) from the act. A person who downloads torrents of games is not committing as egregious an act as the person who hosts the ad-filled websites from which pirated media is distributed. If they were simply sharing the music, movies, and games they purchased "out of the goodness of their heart" or however you wish to describe it, they would absorb the costs of making this "service" available, instead of recouping their costs via advertising.
And the regulation was not ineffective. Its effect was banks treating their capital base, their depositors, and the marketplace irresponsibly. That was the effect. It may not have been the intended effect, but saying the banks ran amok despite the regulation is incongruous with history.
It was ineffective. If you do a simple acid test ratio on many of these banks you'll notice they were super low. The government COULD have stepped in to stop the banks from creating liabilities WITH liabilities but they didn't because they weren't concerned about it, even though every economist on the planet has been crying foul of the way the housing market was financed in the US for the better part of a decade. They warned that this would happen and it did.
The housing bubble was created by the federal reserve as a means of stimulating the economy to offset the economic destruction wrought by the bursting of the internet bubble. Governments induced this, they didn't allow it to happen, they caused it to happen. But like I said, we should discuss the matter of the recession in another thread.
How were the housing bubbles CREATED?. Greenspan himself said he didn't identify the housing bubble until late 2005, possibly early 2006. This is then US Federal Reserve Board Chairman saying he didn't even know it was happening until 2006, yet you're telling me the Federal Reserve created it?
Housing bubbles are a natural, rapid, rise in the valuation of real properties until it get's to a point where those values make the real properties unattainable. They happen naturally and have happened all over the world. The job of economists working for governments is to identify bubbles and deal with them if necessary. The US housing bubble was identified LONG ago but the US government didn't do anything about it and now it's come back and bit them in the ass as was predicted.
" @oldschool: You're right, the onus is on publishers, and I think they actually are trying new things. Digital distribution, micropayments, pay-for-play are all alternative revenue models the companies are choosing. However they're trying to climb a waterfall if we take a casual attitude from other people profiting from their endeavours.This is the thing I probably need to clarify most urgently though. It should be noted that the majority of my vitriol is not reserved for the ordinary pirate consumer, but the facilitator of piracy who attempts to profit (or even cover the costs of their piracy) from the act. A person who downloads torrents of games is not committing as egregious an act as the person who hosts the ad-filled websites from which pirated media is distributed. If they were simply sharing the music, movies, and games they purchased "out of the goodness of their heart" or however you wish to describe it, they would absorb the costs of making this "service" available, instead of recouping their costs via advertising. "On that we do agree. I don't go out of my way to get pirated games. In fact I have just one, that was given to me. It is Oblivion. I barely played the PC copy he gave and I am still looking for a reasonably priced 360 GOTY version. I will get it. I agree that altruism would require your loss for love and getting money from advertising to cover expenses is s a slippery slope to profit.
Publishers need to harness the community. Most people don't like profit motivated piracy. I myself have on more than one ocassion reported stuff to Nintendo. They need to tap into this without alienating the 'regular' gamer. As for people just passing stuff toeach other, or selling unwanted games, they should be left alone. It is agggressive attacks and restrictions on these consumers that will only push them out of gaming or into more sophisticated ways around it.
Trying to claim ownership of a physical item I purchased will never be helpful.
And regardless of what Greenspan said he was aware of in 2005 or 2006, the fact of the matter is the world's most renowned economists were calling on the federal reserve to cut interest rates to induce lending. In 2001, Paul Krugman was calling for the creation of a housing bubble via manipulation of the money supply. And it happened, rates were cut precipitously prior to 9/11, and cut further afterward. By 2007, banks had the notion that it didn't matter how risky their investments were, they believed that they could continue to profit by continuing to borrow at ever-decreasing rates. That all culminated in the fall of 2008, when 1.4 trillion dollars was given to the banks: more corporate welfare, and more money-supply manipulation, and a further weakening of the people's purchasing power.
If you seriously believe piracy isn't doing damage to the industry then you need to take a look around you bud. Sure, it's not the sole purpose for everythint that is happening, but it's certainly doing a large amount of damage to smaller and larger publishers and developers. Just look at the indies, it's practically crippling them, Stardock for example who's employees had to rush in to work on their day off to sort out server problems so that 100,000 pirates could play the game online versus 10,000 legitimate purchasers, you're telling me that's not wrong for a second?
Besides, there is no 'moral' view on ownership, you either own something legally, or you don't own it, just because you havn't bought something you feel entitled to doesnt give you the right to steal it, and certainly not to pretend that doing so doesn't damage the industry. Being unable to play a game legitimately because of heavy handed, draconian DRM however I might just support the use of cracks or hacks in order to get around it, I don't like DRM anymore than the net guy, but it's wholly necessary to keep people from cracking the game before the shelf release.
Piracy does not bring down the cost of media at all, but I also disagree it raises it significantly (at least in the short term) all it does primarily is damage smaller houses like 2D Boy, Stardock and the like, and prevents PC gamers from getting more and better quality games (Just look at how many studios have release low-budget shoddy PC ports, or no ports at all citing piracy as the reason as well as the economy) the most recent example being NHL 10, which is not getting any form of PC release at all, mostly citing the decline in the sports PC market and the economy, but you can be damned sure 10,000 sales equals at least as many pirated copies, are you telling me that is fair, right, or heck forget morals even market balancing? How does that even work, if stealing product kept the price down new PC releases would still be £29.99 instead over the past few years they have risen to £34.99 or even £39.99.
Companies invest large amounts of money and time in these products, and most of them don't even see the light of day, can you blame people for wanting a decent return on their investment, and i'm not talking about Guitar Hero or Call of Duty here, or World of Warcraft who i'm sure would barely notice the hit if millions of people pirated the games, i'm talking about everyone underneath them, everyone from 2D Boy, to Blitz, to 2K Games, everyone is struggling at the moment, you can throw around the words self-regulating and self-organizing all you want, the bottom line is there is absolutely no way on this earth i'm going to accept the idea that piracy does not hurt the industry, nor the idea that publishers should invest even more money than they already do just to sate your greed, nor that they should abandon protecting their copyrights and risk losing them. Yes sure, a bunch of corperations are evil, money grubbing, blah blah blah blah blah, that track was old even in the 80s, there are equally as many who support their customers and geniunely care for them, and guess what, those people are struggling due to consumer greed even more than the giants. Atlus, 2D Boy, Stardock, countless other small or indie develoers/publishers, I mean shit, Atlus don't even have the money to publish games in Europe! We have to wait for the potential money-bringers to get picked up and published by Square-Enix, if it wasn't for their money-grubbing efforts to make a quick buck, I wouldn't be able to play things like Persona 4. And yet, I still don't feel magically entitled to steal it, funny that.
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