[karajorma]

Edit: They're trying to make the argument that the person buying second-hand "had no right to the product".

Yes but that still has very little to do with piracy. In Piracy no one has any right to even use the product.

It's like you're assuming embezzlement and grand theft auto are the same crime because they both involve taking something that isn't yours. It's a ridiculously over-simplified argument and it does nothing to help.

[Aardwolf]

Bleh...

I dislike anti-piracy because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with information after they've given them access to it.

I dislike this because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with goods after they've given them the goods.

And because you all should think the same way I do, it's got plenty to do with piracy

Clearly I have given up on trying to win the argument through reason

[Nuke]

i kinda think this is more about hard merchandise and the right to resale than intellectual property rights because of the substantially higher cost of the medium than the content. compare the cost of an ebook with a printed copy for example.

the publisher is clearly screwing the customer by gouging one group of people based on where they live, and practically giving it away to another group of people based on where they live. though you might say that the first world markets makes the less lucrative 3rd world markets possible. the reseller is only turning a profit from the publisher's asshattery. so the publisher is guilty for creating the re-import market in the first place by creating a large price differential. they could easily produce lower quality domestic copies similar to those sold overseas for the poor. like sell the low end copies at community colleges ant tech schools, while selling the high end copies to university students, you can actually broaden your market in this way. its like how some people prefer hard cover books despite the cost, while peasants can get by with paperbacks.

if the the publisher is creating ways for other people to make money then perhaps they need to rethink their marketing strategy to make such exploits impossible or at least much less lucrative. it would likely cost less than paying their legal department and throwing money at politicians to get the law changed and might actually increase their profits.

[The E]

I think this is yet another example of a company trying desperately to turn the clock back to an era before the Internet came in and kicked over their sand castles. Not by doing the sensible thing of trying to alter their business model to suit the needs of a changed world, but rather by crying about it in front of a judge in the hopes that he'll put the bad genie back into the bottle.

[Aardwolf]

if the the publisher is creating ways for other people to make money then perhaps they need to rethink their marketing strategy to make such exploits impossible or at least much less lucrative. it would likely cost less than paying their legal department and throwing money at politicians to get the law changed and might actually increase their profits.

The reseller making money doesn't hurt the publisher.

[Herra Tohtori]

If it were possible to fabricate arbitrary amount of copies from a single physical product and re-distribute them with no charge, THEN it would have analogies to piracy.*

As it is, however, it's simply the physical product changing ownership.


As far as I'm concerned, there should be no limitations to what people can do with what they own when they don't need it any more. Even if the product is a license for use of software, it should be transferable to another person as long as the original buyer no longer uses the product (since they have sold their license).


If the makers of these goods want them to not be re-sold, they should either:

-make sure that either their value to the original buyer doesn't diminish with time, OR

-make sure that people would prefer a new copy rather than used one.


To me it sounds like they're making the textbooks in too high print and pressing quality, making the textbooks last longer than their probable time of use is. The problem could be solved by making the text books so flimsy and crappy that they simply cannot be used after some pre-determined time. Of course, the first buyer should be aware of this before buying the book in the first place, but other than that I don't see any obvious legal requirement for books to be so long-lasting that they CAN be traded forward.

I can think of several solutions that could be used to make the value and usefulness of the book fall sharply after some time. They could make the press quality so flimsy that the book simply falls apart after being handled for some years.

They could use paper treated with acidic chemicals (like what most newspapers are printed on) that gets progressively yellower, more fragile, and eventually crumbles to dust when handled after prolonged time.

They could use ink that reacts with light and fades away (like the ink they use on most receipts). Or they could just make its composition time-sensitive - I'm sure there are chemicals that could remain stable for some years, then basically decompose and the ink's pigment could become faded.


Apart from this being a really crap thing to do, if they really wanted to do this I don't see why they couldn't. Unless there's some common law or legislation that dictates how long a product must remain useful...


If they really try to say you can't freely re-sell a thing you own, they're full of ****.


The undercutting line is just bull****. In free market economy, people can freely choose the price they ask for a product, even if that means they're not really making a profit from it. The goal of people that are re-selling their textbooks is to cut their losses and maximize the profit they can recover from their investment on them. Obviously, assuming they learned from the book means the investment is going to pay off at some point in the future when they get to apply those skills and knowledge in their field of work, but even so re-selling the book is economically more profitable than not re-selling them.

And no one would buy used goods at the price of originals.

As for an enterprise working by facilitating sales of used goods en masse, or a company buying used goods from people and then re-selling them at slightly higher price (but still less than the price of new goods), I can't see anything wrong with it. If people are willing to use a middleman used goods dealership agency to exchange some potential economical gains for convenience, it's between them and the used goods dealership agency.

The original manufacturer of goods shouldn't really have a say how their goods are used after they relinquish their ownership on them. Copying or re-fabrication (intellectual property, copyright or patent infringement) is not the same as transferring ownership of a product in a private transaction.

There are analogies to how the media industry is going after freedom of information to safeguard their profits instead of adapting to the changing world. However, while copyright as an idea is essentially just and right (although I do not approve of the way media industry is approaching the issue), this trade limitation thing is in no way defensible in a free market economy without being a massive hypocritical hoax.


What this is really about is trying to limit freedom of personal trading rights, when it threatens the profits of original manufacturers. Instead of allowing them to dictate legislation to preserve their profits, the Supreme Court should just tell them that they need to change their business model to adapt to the situation. I have, in this post, listed a few ways they could potentially do this.


Ugh I have spoken.



*When private citizens gain the ability to fabricate complicated statues, parts, machinery, even electronics, things will get really hairy really fast.

For example let's say you have machinery that can scan a product, refabricate identically functional parts, and you could then assemble a new version of original product.

So you buy one physical copy of some product - let's say a design item, glass dishes or table utensils, or perhaps a rare collector item, decorational or functional. This kind of thing would be relatively easy to refabricate as long as you had the raw materials - and many materials are cheap as **** and you can buy them quite easily. Then it's just a matter of scanning the product and waiting for a new one to pop out of refabricator.

Then you can hand out copies of it to your friends or family, as gifts or just because you can.

Theoretically it doesn't need to be limited to single-part items either - you could just as well refabricate much more complex things part by part and then re-assemble them... or, in the distant future, simply let the machine assemble a fully functioning copy of the original. Of course I expect identifiers to appear on electronic hardware that make it impossible to use copies or "children" of one product at the same time... but mechanical devices would work just fine!

Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!

[FlamingCobra]

Bleh...

I dislike anti-piracy because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with information after they've given them access to it.

I dislike this because it reeks of entitlement... to arbitrary pricing, greater than the value the market actually puts on the product... and the expectation that they can control what people do with goods after they've given them the goods.

And because you all should think the same way I do, it's got plenty to do with piracy

Clearly I have given up on trying to win the argument through reason

Can we have a like button?

[The Dagger]

If some random guy can make a profit buying a book overseas and then selling it, a big publisher like Wiley can surely do better. If they really want to solve this matter as true capitalists, they would flood the market with cheaper books they would have bought at lower prices due to their scale advantages. They would make some honest money in the process too.
Instead they want to get paid whatever they feel like. Well... they shouldn't.
And this is why I love and hate capitalism. If everyone played by the rules it should work fine, but everyone is to busy bypassing the system.

Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!

I like your example, but I'm sure that if I could print a car, Volkswagen could do it too and at a lower price. Big scale industrial production IS most cost-effective for most products. That allows them to offer you the same thing you could do at a lower cost and make a benefit out of it.

[MP-Ryan]

Herra, while your post is a little in the TL;DR category for me right now, the image at the end is absolutely hilarious.

[Nuke]

*When private citizens gain the ability to fabricate complicated statues, parts, machinery, even electronics, things will get really hairy really fast.

For example let's say you have machinery that can scan a product, refabricate identically functional parts, and you could then assemble a new version of original product.

So you buy one physical copy of some product - let's say a design item, glass dishes or table utensils, or perhaps a rare collector item, decorational or functional. This kind of thing would be relatively easy to refabricate as long as you had the raw materials - and many materials are cheap as **** and you can buy them quite easily. Then it's just a matter of scanning the product and waiting for a new one to pop out of refabricator.

Then you can hand out copies of it to your friends or family, as gifts or just because you can.

Theoretically it doesn't need to be limited to single-part items either - you could just as well refabricate much more complex things part by part and then re-assemble them... or, in the distant future, simply let the machine assemble a fully functioning copy of the original. Of course I expect identifiers to appear on electronic hardware that make it impossible to use copies or "children" of one product at the same time... but mechanical devices would work just fine!

Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!
-snip-

this is already happening to a degree. home fabrication is booming right now. 3d printers, laser cutters and other cnc machines (like mills, lathes, and laser sintering machines that 3d print in metal) are coming down in price drastically because of the open source hardware movement. some people are producing metal castings based on 3d printed positive molds. home pcb manufacture is also booming. some people have even taken to making their own semiconductors (and before now you needed a multi-billion dollar fab to do that). not that you need them, you could just buy an fpga for a few bucks and roll your own cpu with it. home fabrication of open source cars is sure to follow.

[Mongoose]

I always loved that media campaign by the MPAA.  Who the **** wouldn't download a copy of a car if there was a physical way to do so?

[An4ximandros]

Love that.

Just need a feeew more years of 3D printing tech evolution... come ooooon

[el_magnifico]

*When private citizens gain the ability to fabricate complicated statues, parts, machinery, even electronics, things will get really hairy really fast.

For example let's say you have machinery that can scan a product, refabricate identically functional parts, and you could then assemble a new version of original product.

So you buy one physical copy of some product - let's say a design item, glass dishes or table utensils, or perhaps a rare collector item, decorational or functional. This kind of thing would be relatively easy to refabricate as long as you had the raw materials - and many materials are cheap as **** and you can buy them quite easily. Then it's just a matter of scanning the product and waiting for a new one to pop out of refabricator.

Then you can hand out copies of it to your friends or family, as gifts or just because you can.

Theoretically it doesn't need to be limited to single-part items either - you could just as well refabricate much more complex things part by part and then re-assemble them... or, in the distant future, simply let the machine assemble a fully functioning copy of the original. Of course I expect identifiers to appear on electronic hardware that make it impossible to use copies or "children" of one product at the same time... but mechanical devices would work just fine!

Hell, with enough arbitrary refabrication capacity you could download a car and print it!
-snip-

this is already happening to a degree. home fabrication is booming right now. 3d printers, laser cutters and other cnc machines (like mills, lathes, and laser sintering machines that 3d print in metal) are coming down in price drastically because of the open source hardware movement. some people are producing metal castings based on 3d printed positive molds. home pcb manufacture is also booming. some people have even taken to making their own semiconductors (and before now you needed a multi-billion dollar fab to do that). not that you need them, you could just buy an fpga for a few bucks and roll your own cpu with it. home fabrication of open source cars is sure to follow.

Isn't that what is called post-scarcity economy? The thing that would end up killing capitalism?

And isn't it the problem that without the research big companies usually do then it wouldn't be possible to have anything to copy? And how could that be solved?

Am I asking too much questions?

[An4ximandros]

Communism is inevitable comrades!

I for one welcome the post-scarcity economy.

[Thaeris]

Isn't that what is called post-scarcity economy? The thing that would end up killing capitalism?

And isn't it the problem that without the research big companies usually do then it wouldn't be possible to have anything to copy? And how could that be solved?

Am I asking too much questions?

I think your second point is more often than not used as an argument against small, localized industry, which ranges from single entrepreneurs to various other small companies. I also think it's just as much a valid argument as it is an invalid argument. Greater freedom to access both information and education, with expanding access to manufacturing capacity should ideally bring more competition, development, and diversity into the market rather than the opposite. So while the corporations have the capital to push research along, and the infrastructure to bring the fruits of that research into market, individuals who now have similar prowess due to new technology have the potential to, in the future, turn the corporate model on its head. That is, if the world can somehow become a more free and just place.

And this case of finding a niche to make money in the market is a great example (as E already noted) of surpressing alternate forms of commerce. I'm not sure of what else to tack onto that.

[Nuke]

its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone. you still have to pay for the materials, though the designs are totally free and made available to anyone who wants them, and you are allowed to derive other things from it and sell those. so its not quite the same as free open source software, where supply is near infinite due to cheap data transfer. problems like sourcing parts, assembly and manufacture all require money to solve, and so your still producing and selling goods. you just aren't hiding any trade secrets from your competition. someone else can turn around and create a competing product without the duplicated effort of parallel r&d. businesses are therefore liberated from needing to hold on to what they have and success instead hinges on innovation.

there are industries that revolve around huge r&d budgets. like aerospace, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, energy, etc. and those will not be easily replaced by open source equivalents, though society in general would benefit greatly if they were. established industries that aren't really dependent on cutting edge technologies on the other hand will be the first to be replaced by the open source production model. assuming said model turns out to be more successful than the established model.

of course this is kind of on a tangent away from the original topic. if the company's business model fails to work as a result to changes in society, then its the business's responsibility to look at what they are doing wrong and fix it. its not the government's job make free enterprise more free to the company with the most money.

[el_magnifico]

its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone. you still have to pay for the materials, though the designs are totally free and made available to anyone who wants them, and you are allowed to derive other things from it and sell those. so its not quite the same as free open source software, where supply is near infinite due to cheap data transfer.

Yes, but if those materials become so cheap it's laughable, then the analogy holds true.

Here I am wondering if the workers who extract and process those basic materials would then unionize and become the new ruling elite of the world. [/delusional, uninformed rambling]

Anyway, is any actual economist going to jump on the discussion at this point and enlighten us? I'm pretty sure it's not really as simple as I think.

[MP-Ryan]

A fair number of resource extractors are already unionized.  The petroleum and mining sectors are primarily operated by unionized labour in developed nations.

Resources can't become all that cheap - virtually all resources are in finite supply and the costs of getting to the harder-to-get-at stuff increase exponentially rather than in linear fashion, which is why you often only see major novel exploration and extraction techniques when prices rise as a result of speculation on high demand / limited supply.

Petroleum and precious metals are two excellent examples of this.

[Nuke]

its not that open source hardware looks to give away free gadgets to everyone. you still have to pay for the materials, though the designs are totally free and made available to anyone who wants them, and you are allowed to derive other things from it and sell those. so its not quite the same as free open source software, where supply is near infinite due to cheap data transfer.

Yes, but if those materials become so cheap it's laughable, then the analogy holds true.

Here I am wondering if the workers who extract and process those basic materials would then unionize and become the new ruling elite of the world. [/delusional, uninformed rambling]

Anyway, is any actual economist going to jump on the discussion at this point and enlighten us? I'm pretty sure it's not really as simple as I think.

even with foss, supply is technically not infinite, because things like web hosting and throughput are not free, neither is hosting the software or the codebase, etc. i figure it would cost me $4 to download a linux iso, based on what my internet connection costs, what my monthly throughput allotment is and the size of the disc image, and infinitesimal costs of power for running the computer/router/etc that allowed me to complete the download. a lot of people have unlimited transfer and so these costs are significantly lower. plus thats only my cost for using it, the people who rolled that distro had additional costs associated with it, hosting and so on. thats why i refer to intellectual property as a near infinite supply, because if you look at all the numbers, duplication of data is technically not 100% free.

now with hardware the costs are not so infinitesimal. i found that i can order almost any kind of electronics part from china usually for about a $1, often for passive components you get more than one for $1. most general ics its usually a buck each with some exceptions. high end parts are up from there. getting parts from a more reputable supplier is slightly more expensive. i found a place on ebay that sells pcb material dual sided 8x10" for about $5 a sheet. a package of transfer paper cost me $3. my etching supplies cost me about $10 (im not really using professional grade chemicals, im using stuff you can find at a grocery store). so yea, the costs add up. im also only doing through hole construction. if i wanted to use surface mount construction i would need more expensive soldering tools, possibly a reflow oven, better chemicals (probibly using a photo-resist method instead of a toner transfer method, adding developer, tinning agents and solder paste to my inventory), and other things like solder masks and silkscreening supplies. the costs add up. unit price goes down when you build a batch of things.

other oshw areas include 3d printing, laser cutting, and other cnc machines are not cheap. the former needs filament which is right now $50/kg, laser and other cnc machines require stock materials, and all require maintenance, cleaning, replacement parts, tooling, etc. thing is when you buy open source hardware your essentially paying for the cost of the materials and production. where as if you buy a closed source piece of hardware, there are often artificial costs added to the actual production cost ("licensing fees"). oshw merely cuts out the artificial costs.

[Mongoose]

Resources can't become all that cheap - virtually all resources are in finite supply and the costs of getting to the harder-to-get-at stuff increase exponentially rather than in linear fashion, which is why you often only see major novel exploration and extraction techniques when prices rise as a result of speculation on high demand / limited supply.

At some point it'll probably wind up being cost-effective to go back to all our old landfills and dig up all the useful reusable materials that are just lying there.