On Sat, Jan 28, 2012 at 11:26 PM, <valdis.kletni...@vt.edu> wrote: > On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:02:09 PST, "Zach C." said: > >> If you buy an album used, the seller generally loses possession of it, you >> gain possession of it at a reduced cost, and the original purchase still >> gave the original seller and producer value. > > Note that if I shoplift a CD that sucks and isn't worth the $14.99 sticker > price, I > have deprived the producer of the ability to sell it to somebody else. That's > the crucial point that underlies our social concept of "theft" - if I take it > from > you, you don't have it anymore. > > If I copy an album that isn't worth the sticker price, and which I would not > have purchased at that price, two things of note happen: > > 1) As much as the labels wish it were so, they can't count that as "lost > revenue" because it wouldn't have acccrued to them anyhow, any more than a car > dealership can legitimately call it "lost revenue" if I walk onto their lot, > tell the salescritter they're crazy if they think I'll pay $28K for a given > car, and walk off the lot. (Now, if they want to count the "Damn, we lost the > $4.99 that guy *would* have paid if we charged that instead of $14.99", > they're > welcome to that. :) > > 2) More importantly, they still have the original bits and are free to look > for other suckers who *will* pay $14.99.
the shop can supplement the stolen CD for much less than 14.99, and also manufacturing a cd cost much less. the price not only contains the material value of the given product, but it is an arbitrary number, which was calculated based on the cost of the production(and marketing, and shipping, and etc.) costs of the product, and on the demand and pricing of that kind of product, so basically the market. the difference with the digital goods that there is no material part of the package, so it could seem that there is no theft and no loss of revenue. which could be true, if only those would pirate, who otherwise wouldn't/couldn't buy the product, which imo is not true. -- Ferenc Kovács @Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
