It Was Never About The Money, Stupid by Rick Falkvinge.

So Activision Make Call of Duty 11 and they are only entitled to the profit from the first pressed copy of that game. The 'original' if you will. After that it should be legal for everyone in the world to copy that original for free because it costs nothing for Activision to duplicate that original. The ideology for that whole argument only works if we go back to living in huts and give musicians pieces of fruit to sing for our entertainment.

Yeah, communist arguments for the win!

"People's nature is to share so we will take Activision's game and share it with others, not givint a damn about what the owner thinks"

Lenin would be proud. And I hope these pirates are sharing with THEIR wealth with others, not only someone else's.

And of course he will give away all the money he has, and his house will become a shelter for homeless.

Because sharing is human nature.

The Witcher 2 appearing on torrent sites proves one thing. Piracy was never about sticking it to the man. Piracy is about getting things for free.

100% agree. In Poland, 10 years ago, games were 30-40% more expensive than now. But NOW piracy in Poland is on highest level in history, even though we have brand new games like Witcher 2 for 25 euros day one.

Because it's easy to steal a game.

The article is completely idiotic. Digital copies require no effort to copy, yes. But they are contingent upon the initial copy being made. Pricing is about profits and repayment on the investment on that original copy. Not about the costs of copying each individual.

Digital media isn't the only industry that works this way.

After reading the article, I've figured an INSANE yet coherent solution to all piracy.
(sidenote: the organic pattern of molecules should be punched in the f*** face for every time it uses the term "bitpattern" to describe a work of art)

Making the second and later copies is "effortless", right ? Assuming this, making the first is EXTREMELY difficult. Not close to infinity, but VERY high.
As such - the PRICE of the first copy should be the only price ever payed. The price would be for EVERY PERSON ON EARTH to have access to this virtual good. Who would have the money to pay this price ? I don't really think any individual would be likely to have the funds to just buy it and then share with everyone... but we already know a way to collect large sums of money from everyone - taxes. This, however, would be an international endeavor, so money should be collected from people across the globe.
Thus - The International Taxation and Art Negotiators (TITAN) would employ people who would appraise the goods that humanity would collectively purchase, in order to avoid being ripped-off by the creators.

Upsides: no DRM, torrenting is encouraged, everyone (rich or poor) has access to everything (in regards to virtual goods), no more need for publishers, developers can feel safer, creators receive (adequately) huge one-time surges of money and are encouraged to create more if they want another one
Downsides: HUGE international tax, along with an enormous team of art critics and aestheticians to keep on payroll

Everybody paying the same amount of money for games in equal share?
Germans and Australians would love it, inhabitants of the USA and several other countries would hate it ;)

Just another cheap goon trying to paint himself as a cultural revolutionary. Worth reading for the baffling analogy to drinking water, but other than that, there's nothing to see here.

The entire argument falls apart by production costs being absolutely minimal.

This is one of the reasons you don't see that big a saving on things like ebooks, because the cost to actually print the damn thing is massively outweighed by all the other costs associated with it.

I didn't really say it should be "equal". Of course - as peculiar as it is in hindsight - the gut instinct when you're supposed to fairly share 5 apples between 5 people is to give one to each. In other words: justice is when everyone gets the same amount.
However - there are many possible splits. Off the top of my head:
* every person pays the same share
* every country pays the same share
* people pay based on income
* countries pay based on GDP / PPP

While the entire idea sounds pretty outlandish, it makes me wonder whether it could actually work from the financial standpoint. Since I can't estimate to save my life, I'd need someone crafty to roughly sum up how much it would take to return the cost of producing an average amount of digital goods in an average year (everything over that is "profit" and I don't want to arbitrarily set it to anything at this point) and divide that by the number of people inhabiting the planet (we'd need an adjustment for people who don't pay taxes but - as I've said - this is supposed to be a rough estimate). If the number isn't TOO extreme... this might be the future, even though getting every fricken country on our planet to agree on something sounds next to impossible.

Additional bonus: people would probably end up more inclined to use those virtual goods - listen to lots of music, watch movies, play games - since they pay for them ANYWAY.
If it wasn't for the fact that most people likely already do so, although through illegal ways, I'd say that this could be a cultural revolution of unprecedented magnitude - suddenly (almost) EVERYONE would have (almost) EVERYTHING.

I had always said that pirates will always find a way to justify what they are doing.

The argument of his falls apart completely in ever aspect.
water analogy is completely wrong.

had to post there under the name demath.
loved your post. in a society composed of good people it would work (federation in ST is something like that. they went even further and bypassed the issue of money completely)

but in our society our motivations are based on making more money. most of us work harder because it can lead to greater income.

if your work is not tied directly towards your profit then you have a situation ala communism. shared effects of work.

and when that happens people more often than not don't give a crap.

You know... In a society of GOOD people ANY system would work.
Not only such insanities as hardcore libertarianism but even anarchy wouldn't cause much of a stir.

I'm well aware of the fact that we don't live in such a world, hence I wanted to see if this idea wouldn't fall apart even IF everything else was perfect. You know - whether the amount of money needed to sustain the system wouldn't escalate to unreasonable heights.
In a world with good people we wouldn't really need DRM, piracy wouldn't exist and the whole problem would be moot, so... I'm just indulging in mental contemplation, as always ;P.

That's consumptionism, a much criticized paradigm that has grown to be quite popular nowadays... Which is sad, since it's not like people can take the damn money to their grave :|.

My idea still involved money and creators weren't ALWAYS payed some arbitrary and gargantuan sums. Hence the "Negotiators" in TITAN - works would be appraised and the creators would be rewarded based on objective (yes, I use this word intentionally) value of their work... Which makes me realize that a lot hinges on those bureaucrats and they could possibly be seen as censors x_x.