In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Mark Kent
<mark.kent@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 29 Aug 2007 10:36:24 +0100
<o9rfq4-8ic.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
>> Verily I say unto thee, that Oldtech spake thusly:
>>
>>> Courtney Love on miniscule royalties for the Band:
>>> http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/
>>
>> Haven't read that in a while. It is an excellent and most revealing article.
>>
>
> Indeed it is, although she(?) falls for the "piracy" is copyright
> violation nonsense.
>
I'm frankly not sure what to think of the situation.
Data I have (it's extremely meager) suggest that there
are a fair number of -- for lack of a better term --
unauthorized duplicators in Peru and China, selling discs
well below what the distributors would sell them in the
United States. What costs $19.99 or thereabouts in the
US would sell for $1.00 or less in Peru, apparently,
if I read the story correctly.
Assuming the CIA World Factbook is accurate and the data
applicable, the US has a GDP of about $44K/cap. Peru has
$6.6K. Therefore, one might expect a theoretical market
price of $3.00, using a very very naive model, in Peru.
But there are many questions in my mind regarding all this.
For its part China is $7.7K/cap, leading to a theoretical
price of $3.50.
http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/piracy2003.pdf
suggests that two out of five discs worldwide are
unauthorized duplicates, badly damaging legitimate sales.
The report uses phrases such as "pirate copies" and
"legitimate music", which suggests that their editing is a
little uneven. Jazz in particular was highly rebellious
in its day, and a lot of contemporary hip-hop rails against
"the man". The Iraq war (if one can call it that) has
also inspired a fair amount of that old Vietnam-era genre,
the war protest song. Parodies, of course, run rampant
in a number of venues.
The report also claims that such unauthorized sales are
managed by crime syndicates. An interesting claim, that;
presumably they also see a nice additional chunk of revenue
for financing various nefarious activities.
Of course such can be construed as outright theft from the
distributors of said music. The problem is that one has
to ask the question as to what is the fair market value of
the music, and by extension videos, software, and gameware.
Blank discs cost nowhere near that much in bulk.
A last word on "bootlegging", an entirely different
problem. I've already mentioned "unauthorized
duplication", which in the digital world is a perfect copy
(or, more accurately, a perfect copy of an already-damaged
sample; all of the distortions are front-loaded).
A bootleg is of course an unauthorized recording made at
a scene, typically a concert, and then distributed. It is
far from clear how many unauthorized disc sales are from
bootlegging, how much from unauthorized duplication of
a legitimately bought product, and how much from unauthorized
duplication of stolen data.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Linux. Because it's there and it works.
Windows. It's there, but does it work?
--
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