Quote from: James J Skach;281271Apparently, there is.

Again, there is a moral or ethical difference.  I'm not disputing that.  But functionally, once the material is available for free, it doesn't ultimately matter who put it out there.  In that regard, it would appear that free product drives sales to some degree.  And there may be an element in there of who provides it that influences the willingness of people to download it.  I don't think it is a particularly strong element, however.

Quote from: StormBringer;281275Again, there is a moral or ethical difference.  I'm not disputing that.  But functionally, once the material is available for free, it doesn't ultimately matter who put it out there.  In that regard, it would appear that free product drives sales to some degree.  And there may be an element in there of who provides it that influences the willingness of people to download it.  I don't think it is a particularly strong element, however.

I put the link in the other thread and I'll put it here too. In Introducing the Baen Free Library by Eric Flint, the thought process behind creating the free library is detailed including the arguement for doing so. While it goes against my feelings about IP piracy, it does present a compelling arguement on a financial basis for providing free content as advertising when you take piracy into account.

I will continue to quibble on the moral and ethic problems with piracy, however.

Quote from: StormBringer;281275Again, there is a moral or ethical difference.  I'm not disputing that.  But functionally, once the material is available for free, it doesn't ultimately matter who put it out there.  In that regard, it would appear that free product drives sales to some degree.  And there may be an element in there of who provides it that influences the willingness of people to download it.  I don't think it is a particularly strong element, however.

I was being overly obtuse, and for this I apologize.

You see, those clips were already available - hence the line from the MP's to the effect that "you've been ripping us off for years."

But now, they come along and make them available, and suddenly the sales skyrocket? You see, I could argue that the availability had absolutely nothing to do with the increase in sales as those things were already available...

I mean, I could go so far as to suggest that legally releasing it was the difference maker in increasing sales by whatever amount - thus showing that legally releasing it is still the way to go...

I wouldn't - I think in this case it's about marketing and a thousand other things. Which is why I think Pundit is full of it, as is his custom.

Quote from: Technomancer;281237That's not the point.  Whether or not putting up books/videos/whatever for free increases sales, that decision should be up to the creator or the copyright holder

Well, that's a moral/ethical assertion, which is different from the economic question.  

This is one piece of evidence that runs counter to the idea that "Having all the material available for free causes a drop in sales".  It is not conclusive, though.  i.e. Just because Monty Python sees a 23,000 percent increase in sales doesn't mean that anyone else would necessarily see an increase in sales.  

Still, one argument in favor of the current legal copyright protections is the lessening of financial gain to the creator that would be caused by material being freely available.  This is a data point contrary to that.

Quote from: jhkim;281280Well, that's a moral/ethical assertion, which is different from the economic question.  

This is one piece of evidence that runs counter to the idea that "Having all the material available for free causes a drop in sales".  It is not conclusive, though.  i.e. Just because Monty Python sees a 23,000 percent increase in sales doesn't mean that anyone else would necessarily see an increase in sales.  

Still, one argument in favor of the current legal copyright protections is the lessening of financial gain to the creator that would be caused by material being freely available.  This is a data point contrary to that.

QuoteFor 3 years you YouTubers have been ripping us off, taking tens of thousands of our videos and putting them on YouTube. Now the tables are turned. It's time for us to take matters into our own hands.

No...really...it's not. It's called Marketing.

Ya know, after reading the Baen thing, I being to wonder how long it will be a story that someone does this and how long it will be until that gets you absolutely no press whatsoever, thereby lessening the impact and the cross-subsidy.

Quote from: StormBringer;281263It seems to me that the argument against 'piracy', however, always revolved around this whole idea that if people don't have to pay for it, they won't, and the company in question will go out of business.

That is not the discussion people are having here since the very point is that marketing != piracy. The term piracy has no place in Pundit's original post as no one is committing piracy. He is, in a feat of sloppy reasoning, equating the IP holder's rights with free access to IP material. One is related to but not exclusive of the other. So, for example, I can choose to put every book I have written on the net for free download. This is my choice. This is the choice the MP folks made. It has NOTHING to do with piracy.

Now, if you wish to discuss the idea of free downloads helping sales, you will get no argument from me. I have been doing that on the big (Free versions of my games on line) and on the small (offering anyone interested free PDFs of the books) for going on 7 years now. I feel it is one of the keystones of my success. However, I still think piracy is wrong.

Quote from: StormBringer;281263Right now, Monty Python has a bunch of clips, and are likely editing more to add for the future.  At some point, if they intend to follow through with their plans, the whole series and the movies will be available.  Perhaps not in whole, and assembling a particular episode may be more hassle than buying the DVDs.

And I think it will benefit them. Does not make piracy right though.

Quote from: StormBringer;281263So again, the argument about the ethics of who makes this material available and by what channel they do so is rather separate from the idea that the availability itself is somehow harmful.  The RIAA/MPAA were making the case that providing the product for free was costing them billions upon billions of dollars.  There is no functional difference between Baen Books or Monty Python providing their products for free and Shifty McPirate uploading stuff onto an ftp site overseas.  Hence, the argument against piracy financially harming record companies or movie studios was likely flawed from the beginning, as there is no evidence for some recent upsurge in morality.

Good...glad you solved that. I wonder if anyone was arguing that? Priacy is still wrong. Why? Because it violates my rights. Because it spits in the face of all the effort I went through as the creator of the work in putting it together just so some slacker can earn some points uploading it to a P2P site (best case) or make money selling copies that he invested little in (printing maybe). The argument, IMO, for financial damages of piracy is a weak one at best. It is one that is also highly arguable since both sides can easily be understood but are difficult to prove.

Quote from: StormBringer;281263Because it is a discussion about ethics/morality.  Certainly a valid discussion to have, but wholly different than piracy, which is always framed in terms of financial harm.

"Always framed" by someone else. My argument is simply one of morals. I think it is wrong. However, as a business man, I account for it in my BP. For some reason, people get confused by that. Also, the idea that I offer my work up for free but then say illegal downloading is wrong. Note: it is not illegal of the copyright holder endorses it. I intend to pursue this with Zombipocalypse and see if my theories hold on free downloads. It should be an interesting experiment.

ETA: This makes it a bit clearer.

Quote from: StormBringer;281275Again, there is a moral or ethical difference.  I'm not disputing that.  But functionally, once the material is available for free, it doesn't ultimately matter who put it out there.  In that regard, it would appear that free product drives sales to some degree.  And there may be an element in there of who provides it that influences the willingness of people to download it.  I don't think it is a particularly strong element, however.

I would argue there is a very real difference between piracy and free downloads. The former has a sitgma or illegal or naughty belief attached to it while the later has a legitimacy, and often, ease of use. I think that is one of the things that James was pointing to as a benefit of legitimate marketable downloads. It is hard to market pirated IP. It is easy to say "Look what great guys we are. Free stuff!" That has worked for as long as there has been money.

Quote from: James J Skach;281281No...really...it's not. It's called Marketing.

Ya know, after reading the Baen thing, I being to wonder how long it will be a story that someone does this and how long it will be until that gets you absolutely no press whatsoever, thereby lessening the impact and the cross-subsidy.

Bingo squared Lucy!

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Quote from: CavScout;281256What is this "your side"? You've simply been called out for misrepreseting something.

It's smart to have samples of your material for people to see before buying, which is what these guys have done. You've tried to insinuate it was something more than it was.

That and confused it with piracy.

This is a bit more than "samples".  Samples is what Amazon does where they let you hear 10 seconds of a 4 minute song. This is entire works being put out for free, and leading people to buy DVDs with the exact same works.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Technomancer;281237That's not the point.  Whether or not putting up books/videos/whatever for free increases sales, that decision should be up to the creator or the copyright holder

I agree, but mainly because that's the current expectation under our existing legal/social paradigm. What I mean is, if you create something and publish it with the expectation that you'll be able to control distribution and monetization, you have a right to expect that society will uphold the rules that were created to encourage you to publish. It's a real case of a social contract that's been made explicit.

But unlike protections against murder or theft of physical property, I don't think that creators of IP have quite the claim on grounds of natural law. Note, I'm skeptical of "natural law" as a real thing; if pressed I'd just say that it's a matter of principles which are recognized nearly universally and respected in fairly standard ways. With IP, the rules are pretty clearly the creation of particular legislation and treaty and vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; not only that, they're somewhat contingent on the practicality of application given social and technological factors which are subject to change. For example I struggle to locate a strong philosophical basis for the difference between the way that copyright is applied to written texts, sound recordings, and musical scores. Once you publish a piece of music, anyone can perform it without your say-so, although they have to pay you a standard royalty. If you make a music recording and sell it, radio stations can broadcast it without asking you or paying a royalty.

Because IP is a product of man-made law--I might call it "political law" because it's based on mediating and coordinating various interests--I wouldn't have much of a problem with changing it to make free(er) copying legal, if we decided collectively that that would be better for society as a whole. Existing IP would deserve to be grandfathered, but I wouldn't regard creators as having a special moral claim to protection of future works any more than I'd see buggy whip makers as having a special right to sell 100,00 units/year or whatever.

I have no problem with pirating.

The fact is, I would never see a lot of the stuff that I do without pirating. I don't have the money, time, or inclination. If there were no such thing as pirating, I just would not be exposed to the media, period. No loss of profit for anyone there.

If I like it enough, I'll buy it (as far as RPGs go, anyway). Which implies a net gain for whoever it is I'm buying from.

And I'll keep pirating RPGs to glance through until the day comes when I don't have to wade through unwashed sacks of nerdflesh at the FLGS.

Quote from: jeff37923;281260YES!!

This has always been the crux of the piracy matter.

That has been the crux of the theoretical philosophical argument of the "Piracy matter".

On the other hand, the crux of the pragmatic argument regarding piracy is "how do we deal with piracy"? Wherein the answers vary from trying desperately to hold onto your product and brutally attack those who would violate your copyright on the one end, to starting to think of giving stuff out for free as a new paradigm (giving away the main product and selling on the bonus material, rather than giving away peripheral promotional material and trying to sell on the main product).  
Those who supported the former always claimed that doing the latter would be a surefire road to bankruptcy, whereas more and more the evidence is mounting that this is simply not true.  Those who held the policy of "Brutally protecting our copyright with extreme prejudice" have found that at best they do not change anything and at worst suffer a backlash, while those who are figuring out new ways of doing things are experiencing rises in sales.
In the case of the Pythons, a 23000% rise in sales.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;281291This is a bit more than "samples".  Samples is what Amazon does where they let you hear 10 seconds of a 4 minute song. This is entire works being put out for free, and leading people to buy DVDs with the exact same works.

RPGPundit

The problem with this equation is that YouTube distribution doesn't give you the same audio/video quality as DVDs.

If Monty Python were putting up rips of their DVDs on bittorrent, you'd be closer to the mark.

Videos do take up a lot more memory than PDfs, on the other hand.

Quote from: StormBringer;281275Again, there is a moral or ethical difference.  I'm not disputing that.  But functionally, once the material is available for free, it doesn't ultimately matter who put it out there.  In that regard, it would appear that free product drives sales to some degree.  And there may be an element in there of who provides it that influences the willingness of people to download it.  I don't think it is a particularly strong element, however.

Well, to disagree with you slightly, there is one important difference: resisting the proliferation of internet sharing and ending up with the "pirates" of the internet releasing your stuff will mean that your stuff will still inevitably end up out there for free, but if you release it yourself, you can do it as part of a promotional concept (like the Pythons or Baen Books has) that I would assume is much MORE likely to generate increases in sales.

RPGPundit