Bush Appoints Anti-Piracy Czar

U.S. tariffs on China imports 2%. Fact, China tariffs on U.S. imports 20%,and more. So the why would they buy our products that cost more than they do for us, at there slave wages.

Exactly!

Does the industry pull in 250 billion dollars yearly?

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The U.S. has the mentality that a loss is they didn't make as much as last year. Capitalism is the only idea based on pure greed. That is what is truly messing up this world more and more. If they make so many billion dollars one year, they expect to make that much or more next year. Don't you get it... they're not losing anything. They're just not recieving as much. Seriously why should they be complaining. Why do we have to suffer just because they want so many millions to buy their house or fancy mercedes?

So they can be replaced by "Tax and Spend" Democrats?

It appears that party affiliation has little to do with the desire of elected officials to Tax and Spend.

You know, I have thought about this many times, but it's people who put the importance on the money. If people wanted granite, then all of this would be targeted at granite and the big bad rock quarries.

If we became a cashless society, then the hot commodity would be sugar, flour, etc. People who produced that would be the 'Microsoft' of the time. Of course, this is all just history since that has already happened.

Don't get me wrong. I do agree with you, but it's people that have to change....not the commodity.

Pure Greed

The U.S. has the mentality that a loss is they didn't make as much as last year. Capitalism is the only idea based on pure greed. That is what is truly messing up this world more and more. If they make so many billion dollars one year, they expect to make that much or more next year. Don't you get it... they're not losing anything. They're just not recieving as much. Seriously why should they be complaining. Why do we have to suffer just because they want so many millions to buy their house or fancy mercedes?

because they enjoy using us as slaves? imagine how many are willing to work their ass off just to watch some crappy movies! i'm against hard labors for something that cost nothing to produce. yet they go on and on about billions when most people don't even a see a million in their lifetime in their bank account!!! so wtf should we the people give a hoot?

here's a joke for ya, I want the rich to be richer so they will bring us better movies! buhahahahaa! yea right!
America was found on slavery and now use third world country as cheap as labor as a result! It is so immoral and messed up...

And so it goes...

Yet more pandering to corporate interests.

What's a real problem is "taxpayer theft" by the government.

- Dan

Taxpaying is a scam, many will not live pass 65, now 67? they keep raising it so it only benefits those who live longest! screw this ponze scheme. I will work little or not work at all so I won't have to pay much into this evil scheme.
i know the rich are getting richer and I'm only working to make a living! it is not fair. it is milking off my hard labors, it is immoral...

isn't the consumption taxes aka sales taxes more then enough to cover everything??? that's capitalism for you! it's not a free market, it's private market owned by individual who are fooling the world to think it's free when it's not...

said by anon7007:

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reply to wweboy
Don't you just love how Bush thinks we are the policemen of this world.

Time to wake up Bush, America does not rule this world. Countries have every right to make their own laws, and we have no right sticking our noses in it.

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what a bunch of arrogants running this country? i guess they will continue to be this way as long as no one is objecting to it? actually they have no right to be asses from the time the election was stolen, they did what benefits them most and could careless about the people of america. we're more poor then ever! but goddamn bush just keep laughing his pants off us and even the world. yea, we're must be a bunch of idiots who are easily swayed by his so called "read my lips" everytime he say something, I smell a lie, a big lie that only fools the majority who are clueless still.

btw, nukular! buahahahaaha! he the first American person that can't even pronounce any word right! wtf did he come from? china? laos? cambodia? green land? what planet was he from? an ET?

reply to BosstonesOwn
and speeding cant be illegal if cops do it right

if they are in a hurry, they have that right~ are you that clueless???

didnt know they had a position in china

reply to Phil
Re: I hope he's as effective as the anti-drug czar

Not that I agree with piracy, but do you really think that lost revenue figure is accurate? Some wouldnt use Photoshop or any other high priced app if they had to actually pay for it. Just my .02

only 2cents??? sorry bud i'll just toss it in the trashcan. money imho is pretty worthless if itdoesnt have any use!
fyi, piracy is not stealing it is the right ofthe people do as they please with stuff they bought. it's called pirating because it cost us nothing and benefits everyone! why? we no longer have to pay for thing that are so outrageously priced! so you will work like a dog to afford the things that only the rich can afford!

Enjoy things that are free! why try toenjoy thing sthat cost you and arm and a leg which cost them next to nothing toproduce???

we will never die just like piracy will never die!

we hate paying for antying in life expecisally useless movies that are just meant to make money and not to entertain you. adsf;klajsdf

don tou agree???

said by cob_:

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I'd probably buy more music if the quality was better.

MP3 rips typically sound 5x better than iTunes or Napster tracks.

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aren't money better spent on clothing, food, and rent???
what the hell areyou saying??? did you cave in to their pressure???? wtf are you talking about???
I'm clueless!!! and bewildered!!!

if there going to a call i have no problem, but when i see a border patrol, customs agent, cop speeding in a person vehicle for no reason, wheres the cluelessness in that

said by fishie:

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You know, I have thought about this many times, but it's people who put the importance on the money. If people wanted granite, then all of this would be targeted at granite and the big bad rock quarries.

If we became a cashless society, then the hot commodity would be sugar, flour, etc. People who produced that would be the 'Microsoft' of the time. Of course, this is all just history since that has already happened.

Don't get me wrong. I do agree with you, but it's people that have to change....not the commodity.

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war against piracy is war against the people freedom to choose! it's forcing people to buy stuff that they can't even afford to pay because it so outrageously priced.
things that are easily produced such as games, movies, music should be given out for free or next to nothing. the idea behind htis is for all to enjoy it even if their short of pocket change!
if they think they can just take a person flip them upside down and get all the savings for no good reason, they can go to hell because god this not tolerate this kind of bs.

They are.

The games that are easy to make are essentially worthless and are given away for free or at extremely low prices! Hurray!

The ones that are worth playing cost an incredible amount of money to make.

Make your own games if you think they are easy to make. Plenty of good games out there that you can try to emulate so you don't even have to come up with a good idea...

How about this? I'll stop pirating Revenge of
The Sith and Paint Shop Pro...when our government
stop ILLEGALLY taking over foreign countries at the
cost of $Billions.

Deal?

Are you arguing against paying for intellectual property? I don't wholly understand what you're trying to convey.

All these figures company toss out are over inflated. Why.. Well they assume Jo SMo who steals a copy of photopshopped.. priced at about 900 Dollars. Well if he gives it to ten of his friends... Said company assumes thats 9000 dollars of lost revenue. The reality this is bullshit. MAYBE JUST MAYBE 1 out of 500 people would actually have bought this program for the cost. Most people dont have 900 dollars for a single application. SHould piracy be eradicated (theoretically), people would stop using those expensive programs, and find a bunch of cheaper ones to do the job. Its the truth. So back to earth, if 500 people pirated a 900 dollar program, being fair, lets assume those lost 2 customers or 1800 Dollars. Figure that on a scale of o 100,000 people 900 x 200 (2 out of 500) and you got a lost revenue of $180,000 for 100,000 people pirating it. See how the real numbers add... Now lets start worrying about real social issues and stop enriching people that got plenty of money, and time on their hands.. The little guys been fucked enough.

That is all it is. Greed. They could make a central site where people could go to download music but they won't. Why you ask? Profit margin. They wouldn't be able to sell CDs at the high mark up anymore.

What also gets me is that M$ makes such a big deal about people stealing their OS here but in China they don't care cuz it grows brand loyalty. Ok so stealing is only bad in the US?

said by "Orwell1984":

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It would be nice if just one time someone would attempt to explain why "piracy" is wrong

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Simple. The greedy for-profit companies want to control the spread of "culture" in modern society completely, without allowing any public dissemmenation of same. They want the eventual outcome to be that it is literally illegal "to share" anything.

If they had their way completely, they could charge you a tax for humming a tune that you heard on the radio, because they held a copyright on the official recording - even though, once you listened to it, you formed an abstract "recording" of what you heard in your head - at least enough to hum it back to yourself. Have you therefore committed copyright infringement, or "piracy" in doing so? Quick, we need to institute "brain licensing" for everyone! Tax every person that has a brain, because the human brain is nothing more than a device designed to facilitate "mental copyright infringement", and clearly the losses that these companies are suffering at the hands of brain-owners need to be compensated for!

said by "AthlGrond":

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The nickle and dime is the revenue that the software companies might have made in sales if their wares were priced to the level that would please the P2P pirates.

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You mean, the "fair market value" of their products - the actual value at which it becomes worthwhile to purchase a legitimate copy, rather than just an illegal duplicate.

The real reason that these companies are "losing money due to piracy", is because they refuse to acknowlege that simple economic fact, and lower their prices to make them competitive in a true free market economy (*).

The problem is compounded by the fact that companies have allowed themselves to become deluded by the rules of the US's restricted market economies, and the whisperings of the supply-side cartel proponents, such as the RIAA/MPAA/etc. But the tables have turned, and the internet allows anyone, anywhere, to become a mfg/distributor of information-based goods, for nearly zero incremental cost. In that model, economies based on "false scarcity" cannot exist, and the walls will come tumbling down, eventually.

(*) A truely free market does not ban piracy, but rather, forces it to compete with legitmate goods on an even footing.

said by "broadbander":

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A few of the problems with intellectual property...

A) Art is not product (within the confines of a capital/mercantile system)
I've done this before here ...
Products have demand
Art sometimes has demand
If demand for a "product" ceases, the product will cease to be made.

Subset (a): If people stopped paying for art, I personally would continue to produce it.

If art ceases to be in demand, it will continue to be made

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Ah! Very good points - but you seem to ignore the flip-side of that position. The demand for "Art" (creative works, distributed as information), often *increases* with increased exposure. It's called a "network effect". This is precisely why MS *allowed* widespread piracy of Win3.x back in the day, to gain market share (by any means possible), and why record-company execs continue the fine tradition of "payola" to radio stations - causing them to play certain specific song (recently-released on CD, coincidentally), at a frequency far beyond the percentage that the song's actual listener popularity might suggest. The reason, of course, is to drive the sales of those CDs, by forcibly exposing the "art" to as many people as possible, thus expanding the market.

Just think - P2P networks do the same thing - for free! But the reason that P2P networks are "evil" in the eyes of the record companies, is that they will *never* be able to totally control that market-distribution channel, as their current retail CD cartel is essentially able to. If they allowed that technology to legitimize itself, then they would be *forced* to adapt, and to change their business plans and approach, to more fairly compete on an open and free market for demand of their "goods". They don't like that, because it would cause the walls of their exclusive cartel-like control fiefdom to break down, and their profit margins reduced, and the overall costs of those "goods" would become lower - *exactly* the benefits that a true free-market economy are suppsed to benefit the public.

So it could be said that P2P networks enable a true free-market, and that record companies are vehemently opposed to the existance of any sort of true free-market, because that would imply them losing absolute control.

Even though, if they learned how to adapt and to utilize those P2P networks for their own legitimate, legal, for-profit distribution of their works, that they could save a large amount of money regarding distribution and promotion costs. Good content promotes itself - through sharing, and legitimate "fair use" of that content.

So, while one person paying for a work, and another person copying that work without paying, doesn't necessarily "cost" the company that extra profit that they could have made, had their sold their work to both - what it does do, is *increase and expand the market itself*, for potential future sales. (This is the "I listened to this artist for the first time off of a P2P network, and I like them, and now I'm going to buy all of their CDs!" effect. And in many cases, it is in fact true.)

What these flawed "piracy costs surveys" really should be taking into account, is "true demand", versus "false demand". False demand is easy, it is the number of copies of the work, in relationg to the number of purchases made of that work. True demand is a bit more difficult to gauge - it involves the number of the legitimate purchases of a work, that were made *because* that purchaser, had previously made a copy of a work without paying. IOW, the "free sample" that eventually led to a future sale. Eliminating piracy totally (if such a thing could ever be done), would also *eliminate these sales*. Thus it would lead to *actual loss of profits*, not just speculative "losses due to piracy".

But cutting off their noses to spite their face, is nothing new to these companies - they originally wanted to ban the VCR as a "piracy device" - even though, eventually, such technology EXPANDED the market for their works, so much so that home-video sales of movie titles eventually generally outgrossed the money made from their theatrical releases.

It's all about true demand, of which the *consumer* is still in control, not the company. The sooner that they learn this, and adapt to that fact, and learn to actually produce products and distribute them *in the ways in which the consumer wants them*, then the sooner that they will be able to legitimate profit from that.

Until then, their "losses due to piracy", are nothing more than lies, because they don't include figures on "losses of profit due to elimination of piracy", leading to fewer future sales.

Another way of saying that, is that a vice-like grip on the market: 1) doesn't preclude potential customers from simply choosing not to purchase the product, and 2) prevents that market from ever being able to expand, due to increased exposure! In effect, "anti-piracy" activities contribute directly to having a smaller market for creative works. Price the legitimate works low enough that customers choose to purchase rather than pirate, and allow "fringe piracy" to increase the market, and one can create both a thriving and expanding legitimate market! Listen well RIAA/MPAA - your very future is at stake here!

said by "noogoo":

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if they didnt wanna buy the album they shouldnt have the album. do you know how many artists out there are going broke because of copyright infringement?

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Do you know how many artists are broke and/or dying (due to not having health insurance, or not being able to afford it), precisely because the record companies are greedy, corporate, cartel-mongers, and NOT due to individual acts of copyright infringement by end-users?
»www.usatoday.com/life/mu ··· ts_x.htm

Fair market value is the price someone is willing to pay for a product.

What you are describing it the price to prevent shoplifting, AKA the "klept market value".

limit compensation so we can "pirate" legally, but then it wouldn't be "pirating".

it would be nice if there was a law that limits how much you can make off of your copyright.

if the copyright law is there to compensate the copyright holder and their next of kin, a couple of million should be enough or at least if they profit the amount of minimum wage x the duration (in hours) of the copyright. time is money right?

now if there was a limit, that would motivate the artists to make more works.

either that or pirate until they sue and use this as a defense.

if they wouldn't have bought it and would have bought another cheaper software instead, then are they stealing from the cheaper software's maker?

if they wouldn't have bought it, they shouldn't be using it.

stop using it or use the trial versions. quit pirating and support the free &// cheaper &//open source software.

and quit softening the figures with your rationalizations.

like the actual poor are really pirating high requirement software on their high-end computers and are dying to get the latest albums on their 50GB mp3 players?

they don't need to pirate to live.

actually by pirating, the rich get richer right?
like some say, they pirate a song and then buy the song. they pirate software then buy software.

if people didn't pirate, they could look for other music and software made by... the poor people or people not getting richer.

now let's take that to an extreme.

months of work and money goes into creating software or music or a movie, and they don't sell a single copy because they "can have the original" and you"'ll just make a copy at my own expense." $1,000,000 goes into making the software, you only pay for your bandwidth. the company loses $1,000,000.

making a copy at your own expense should mean you actually pay to make the original.

another extreme view:

a software is being sold for $1000. another company makes a similar software and sells for $10. everyone pirates the $1000 software. none of the software selling for $10 gets sold.

copyright law makes it like real property.