201: A Nation of Pirates
- Thread starter Vert
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cry me a river, bub; this "cost to brazilian society" crap is the lamest excuse I ever heard; which cost you're talking about? it will cost anyway!!! and cost a lot!!! see, if you buy an original game, you pay way too high taxes, taxes that goes directly to the corruption wallets!! so you live in brazil, so you know, food here isn't cheap, bub!! at the contrary, we pay 51% of taxes over the original price!! 51%!!! and where this money go? to the huge castle (I'm not exagerating, it is a real castle!!) that the senate's president made to his family, for example!!no place in the world have taxes that high!!! only here... we have taxes even for manufactured products... WTF!! the Brazilian society already lost!! or we pay taxes just to make our governants richer, or we copy the software or buy em and make bandits richer. Either way you're giving money to the thieves!! so why not use piracy, since its cheaper????Vert said:
the bad point in all this, is that the game creators don't get paid for their work, im a programmer too i know how this is bad, however, the big game industry could make some sort of arrangement to blow up all those damn taxes, but they don't do anything, they even care to give us a good online support! just look at microsoft that offer us a Live service which we can't use because we don't have an american adress, and worse, don't let us use our credit cards to buy things, because, even them being international CC, the damn service asks us for an american adress!!!! so we have to buy the point cards, which are taxed, and use a false adress to play on the live!!!!!!
and more: sorry to burst YOUR bubble, but our "nation of pirates", download games that AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN people copy and put it for download!!! I'll repeat: the most important trackers for P2P are from europe, russia and USA!!!! things on internet are so free as here in sao paulo! by the way, 90% form the sellers in the "25th march" street download games from american FTPs!!
my point is: call brazil as a nation of pirates is innacurate, since you see that who gives us the games for us to sell are the countries where the games have fair prices!
the R4 cartrige, used on the NDS to play downloaded roms, for example, is now being updated by a japanese guy, since the original group (which is chinese, if im not wrong) who made it stopped updating it.
nintendo and co. forgive me, but i ll use piracy until i get fair prices! I don't give a damn to the "cost to brazilian society" excuse. you have lots of money and hates piracy? so lucky you! unfortunately, not everyone have this luck!!
I'm going to keep this one short and sweet.Kalandar said:
Of course there is a lot of corruption in Brazil and undoubtedly a significant amount of money we pay to the government ends up in corruption. However, that amount is insignificant (and I really mean that!) when compared to the amount of money that is used for things like education, health, security, INSS... just think about it. Just how much money can possibly 'end with thieves'? 5%? 10%?
Lets take the 10% figure. 10% of 38% of the GDP equals 57 billion dollars. 57 BILLIONS dollars. Do you honestly think that people are stealing that much money every year? Seems far, far too much.
And even if we assume that 10% of taxes are misappropriated, that still means that 90% of the rest is used for legal reasons, even if not efficient or good reasons. If your not happy how money is spent, well tough, we elected the government, that's how democracy works. So arguing 'I don't pay taxes because of corruption' seems wrong to me.
And aren't being slightly hypocritical? I mean, for a guy who is so against corruption, you certainly don't seem to mind creating it, because rest assured, a much higher percentage of the money you spend on a pirated good will end in the hands of a corrupt policeman or fiscal auditor.
Your second argument, that we pay far too high taxes is something I agree with. However, is the best way to fight this by buying pirated games/hardware? Surely creating civil movements, supporting/voting for politicians who favor lower taxes, would be a better, nay, the democratic way to go? I can't help think that your just rationalizing with this argument...
Your argument against Microsoft Live support was incomprehensible to me, so I'm going to skip it.
So what if the people seeding files are from other countries? A single pirate gang here in Brazil can download a single file and then burn it to 500 DVDs and then sell them. Its impossible to tell such things from simply looking at torrent files and the like, which is why in my article (make sure to read it again, please), I present statistics and estimates from real sources, that indicate that piracy is the dominant form of buying games in Brazil. If you look for similar estimates for the US or Europe, you'll find them to be much, much lower in comparison. And that's why I call Brazil a Nation of Pirates. I thought that was absolutely clear in my article, but apparently not, I guess.
Finally, you don't give a damm that by buying (NOT downloading, which is somewhat different, but also has costs) a pirated good, you'll be raising corruption (which you hate so much), violence, generating less jobs and increasing the taxes payed by poorer people? All of which I can argue are a consequence of you buying a pirated good and are some of the costs to society I mentioned. Even if you don't buy it, just download it, you still are helping generate less jobs in society and are increasing taxes on poorer people.
I don't think I'll be able to change your opinion, but please take the time to reflect a little about what I've written. At the very least, you should try to admit to yourself that buying/downloading pirated goods, you are imposing costs to other people. After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch, even making digital copies of a good has it costs).
I hadn't noticed that there was an ongoing discussion resulting from this post, and thus had not even read this detailed response to which I am responding. Nor, alas, I did I see the next "I'm taking my toys and going home" post which, apparently, I earned by summarizing points made in the original article in a manner the author of the original article didn't like. Anyone can take their toys and go home at any time, based on any excuse - but in real academic discourse, of course, doing so generally means one lacks the ability to carry their argument forth in any other manner and has essentially chosen to tuck tail and go hide under a table.
Incidentally, I will claim a certain self-criticism right here; given that I also hold a graduate degree in economics from a school which has been at the center of many not-so-successful events in recent years (the University of Chicago), I'm as much poking holes in my own academic background as in yours. My degree in academics is not at a doctoral level, so you could say my "real" field isn't being targeted by my broad criticisms. Still, when I say that academic economics has really stepped on its own dick in terms of actually predicting how economic systems behave (which is unquestionably true, and not very indicative of a genuine "science"), I'm criticizing my own academic training in addition to the field overall.
If you'd like to dip into the literature of real-world econometric analysis of tech industry model transitions, I would suggest Christenson's "The Innovator's Dilemma" as a good starting point.
I am sure it's possible to construct systemic configurations that echo your supposed "fact." I'm equally sure that they are exceptions that prove the rule; the equivalent of building regression models by overtraining data sets. I suspect that your entire misunderstanding of the real-life economic questions of zero-marginal-cost distribution systems springs from this central fallacy.
And before you accuse of missing the point, I'm not saying that the production model is perfect or doesn't rip off the artists or anything like that; I'm saying that ALL else equal, more piracy means less money to the artists.
Rather, you've simply become uncomfortable because I disagree with the CONCLUSIONS of your line of reasoning - and turned that around as if it was somehow a failure of honesty on my part. No, it's not misrepresenting anything - I think the core line of argument you take in your article is WRONG. I've stated where I think you have gone off-track. I've cited what "facts" you claim that are anything but, and I've highlighted the areas where you are lacking in apparently academic familiarity, in suggesting more accurate alternative perspectives.
None of this is "misrepresenting" anything you've written. It's simply saying I find you argument to be wrong. If you can't handle someone saying "you're wrong, and here's why" - then are you really an "academic" at all? In the academic world I call home, we disagree all the time - that doesn't mean someone is "lying" or is inherently evil. It's called "academic discourse."
Beyond that, I do think you've drank the Kool Aid of "self-optimizing rational economic consumers" a bit too much to have anything of substance to say about actual, biological human beings engaging in actual, everyday commerce. Those neutered, theoretical "economic agents" might be ok for articles intended for the JOE, but in terms of actually discussing the kinds of things that real companies - and human beings - do in their daily economic lives, those oversimplified, bizarrely self-righteous models are worse than irrelevant. I'd say they've proven to be absolutely pernicious, in terms of being willfully and widely mis-applied to real-world economic systems as if they were viable representations thereof.
In short, I suspect you find yourself trapped in an intellectual corner where your academic training leads you to state "facts" that you were taught on the basis of overly simplistic economic models - models which have embedded in them a host of known-false assumptions, implicitly interrelated variables, and an entire penumbra of normative expectations of how "things are supposed to be." Note that none of these things are to be expected in a real "science" - which is what economics claims to be, correct?
A real science looks at reality and tries to model it, in order to understand it, predict it, and perhaps shape it. A pundit says how things "should" be, and writes arguments designed solely to support that a priori expectation. Note that there's little overlap between the two. As an example of punditry, your article is both representative and relatively effective; as a statement of academic investigation or scientific "analysis," it's broken 9 ways to Sunday.
. . . and, no, that's not a "misrepresentation" of anything. It's a point-by-point refutation of the numerous flawed assumptions on which the entire conceptual framework of your article's main thrust is based. If you choose not to respond to those refutations, and instead find it less intimidating to cry "misrepresentation" and go home, so be it. Let it be said that your decision to do so might be somewhat viable as a face-saving gesture, but it's surely not something that adheres to the general standards of academic dialog.
Fausty (MBA, University of Chicago - finance | PhD, pending, Systems Science)
The article is interesting - both in what is says, and in how it says it. Given that I was not informed prior to reading it that the author is an academic economist by trade, my own initial response to the article was to see it as a perfect representative of some fallacies about digital distribution that are repeated endlessly in many media channels. Now, knowing the academic background of the author, I can place it even more accurately in context of the limitations of academic economics.Vert said:
Speaking of sophistry, pointing out that microeconomics has modeled systems where marginal cost is "close to zero" is a bit slippery when we're, in fact, talking about marginal cost of exactly zero, not "close to." Unless I've missed a broad literature in the theoretical economics field on zero-marginal-cost systems in my own reading, such literature is essentially absent. We of course allow for "arbitrarily small" units of measure in thinking about the calculus; that doesn't generalize to a finding that zero and "close to zero" result in identical systemic behaviors.
No, the textbooks do NOT have models for zero marginal cost cases - and if you know of textbooks that do, by all means please feel free to cite them by name. Without doubt, there will be such models in the textbooks of tomorrow - these "zero marginal cost" systems are too important to ignore. However, as your own basic misunderstandings of the most fundamental elements of such models well illustrate, academic economics has a long way to go before such models are widely studied and taught.
Misapplication of a claim of "ad hominem" attack. As I didn't know of your academic background, I couldn't, by definition, be engaging in such a rhetorical tactic. However, even if I did know that in advance, I would not be enjoined from making any criticisms of academic economics whatsoever, simply because it might "make you look bad" given your own academic training. Indeed, it's actually rather relevant that your academic field has racked up such a series of spectacular failures, as a "science," in recent years - in terms of your overall academic credibility. Sorry, that's how the (academic) game works - as you well know. Skinnerian behaviorists aren't much in favor nowadays, either: they were proven wrong, and as a result the whiff of failure clings to them to this day.
Incidentally, I will claim a certain self-criticism right here; given that I also hold a graduate degree in economics from a school which has been at the center of many not-so-successful events in recent years (the University of Chicago), I'm as much poking holes in my own academic background as in yours. My degree in academics is not at a doctoral level, so you could say my "real" field isn't being targeted by my broad criticisms. Still, when I say that academic economics has really stepped on its own dick in terms of actually predicting how economic systems behave (which is unquestionably true, and not very indicative of a genuine "science"), I'm criticizing my own academic training in addition to the field overall.
No, I would have referred to mapping DYNAMICALLY to the demand curve if I was specifically referencing price discrimination - which I didn't do, since I wasn't referencing that. Price discrimination is a fertile field, and a complex one - I don't claim to be current on the finer details. For that reason, I'd not cite such as a "solution" to a problem - at least, not without highlighting explicitly my own limitations in the area of research.
Actually, you've just fallen into one of the utterly laughable traps of academic economics - conflating idealized/theoretical systems with real-world economic interactions. This is where my own training - and post-graduate experience - allows me to state an obvious fact: industries in transition often retain legacy business models long after blank-slate analyses suggest they should have been overtaken by more efficient competitors. This is a result of the may "frictions" of real-life economic behavior, as well as the realities of human beings as biological, emotional critters - not idealized economic agents. Finally, you ignore the information asymmetries that underlie so much of these "abnormal" systemic behaviors - i.e. Ackerloff and Yellen's work, for which they were awarded the Nobel. I'm sure you are familiar with it.
If you'd like to dip into the literature of real-world econometric analysis of tech industry model transitions, I would suggest Christenson's "The Innovator's Dilemma" as a good starting point.
This isn't even a common fallacy of academic economics; it is just an example of sloppy thinking. There is no "fact" that states that "piracy does take money from the artists," and indeed there's ample econometric research data suggesting exactly the opposite. Even staying within formal models, stating this as "fact" really suggests you have no broad-based awareness of the complexity of multi-variable systems.
I am sure it's possible to construct systemic configurations that echo your supposed "fact." I'm equally sure that they are exceptions that prove the rule; the equivalent of building regression models by overtraining data sets. I suspect that your entire misunderstanding of the real-life economic questions of zero-marginal-cost distribution systems springs from this central fallacy.
And before you accuse of missing the point, I'm not saying that the production model is perfect or doesn't rip off the artists or anything like that; I'm saying that ALL else equal, more piracy means less money to the artists.
Ah, I take it then that you have "concluded" that there is no such thing as market power, and that the question of monopoly/oligopoly power dynamics is of no relevance whatsoever? Because that's the only way - apart from willed ignorance - that you could ignore such an obvious point: real-life economic systems aren't the perfect, friction-free, efficient-market versions that (we) study in classical economics. They have all sorts of twists and turns, nonlinerities and unexpected kinks created by power grabs that as often or not manifest from outside the realm of economics entirely.
Giving away all goods would be the most effective way of "stopping violence" resulting from criminal involvement in economic systems. It's not very practical - nor is the question of criminal violence at all relevant to this discussion. Thanks for bringing it up, but when one resorts to the rhetorical version of saying "what about the CHILDREN," it suggests the actual areas of contested dialog have already been lost. Such is the case here, I suspect.
I find it somewhat disappointing that you take this cowardly "you misrepresented my reasoning" line of argument when, in your detailed responses to my post, not ONCE did you claim I "misrepresented" anything you said - nor did you point to any specific examples, quote any such putative "misrepresentations," etc.
Rather, you've simply become uncomfortable because I disagree with the CONCLUSIONS of your line of reasoning - and turned that around as if it was somehow a failure of honesty on my part. No, it's not misrepresenting anything - I think the core line of argument you take in your article is WRONG. I've stated where I think you have gone off-track. I've cited what "facts" you claim that are anything but, and I've highlighted the areas where you are lacking in apparently academic familiarity, in suggesting more accurate alternative perspectives.
None of this is "misrepresenting" anything you've written. It's simply saying I find you argument to be wrong. If you can't handle someone saying "you're wrong, and here's why" - then are you really an "academic" at all? In the academic world I call home, we disagree all the time - that doesn't mean someone is "lying" or is inherently evil. It's called "academic discourse."
Not to poke a hole in such a righteous rant, but you've constructed an obvious, straw-man false dichotomy here - one I neither suggested myself, nor will I accept now. There's no either/or when it comes to "morality" and "self-interest." In fact, suggesting there is such a duality is rather, well, bizarre and small-minded. Human beings do things for their own self-interest all the time that are morally flawed; it's hardly an exceptional case.
Beyond that, I do think you've drank the Kool Aid of "self-optimizing rational economic consumers" a bit too much to have anything of substance to say about actual, biological human beings engaging in actual, everyday commerce. Those neutered, theoretical "economic agents" might be ok for articles intended for the JOE, but in terms of actually discussing the kinds of things that real companies - and human beings - do in their daily economic lives, those oversimplified, bizarrely self-righteous models are worse than irrelevant. I'd say they've proven to be absolutely pernicious, in terms of being willfully and widely mis-applied to real-world economic systems as if they were viable representations thereof.
In short, I suspect you find yourself trapped in an intellectual corner where your academic training leads you to state "facts" that you were taught on the basis of overly simplistic economic models - models which have embedded in them a host of known-false assumptions, implicitly interrelated variables, and an entire penumbra of normative expectations of how "things are supposed to be." Note that none of these things are to be expected in a real "science" - which is what economics claims to be, correct?
A real science looks at reality and tries to model it, in order to understand it, predict it, and perhaps shape it. A pundit says how things "should" be, and writes arguments designed solely to support that a priori expectation. Note that there's little overlap between the two. As an example of punditry, your article is both representative and relatively effective; as a statement of academic investigation or scientific "analysis," it's broken 9 ways to Sunday.
. . . and, no, that's not a "misrepresentation" of anything. It's a point-by-point refutation of the numerous flawed assumptions on which the entire conceptual framework of your article's main thrust is based. If you choose not to respond to those refutations, and instead find it less intimidating to cry "misrepresentation" and go home, so be it. Let it be said that your decision to do so might be somewhat viable as a face-saving gesture, but it's surely not something that adheres to the general standards of academic dialog.
Let me rephrase that for you: "I've repeated a canned series of non sequiturs, warmed-over "facts," discredited academic fallacies, and logical canards and now I don't want to face the consequences of my sloppy argumentation - so I give up." Insofar as that's what you've actually said, I will concur. As to whether your "time" is too valuable to respond to refutations of badly-flawed arguments you've made, well, that's your call. Most of the time when I hear that excuse, from practitioners and students alike, it's a sure sign someone is in over their head and doesn't have the commitment to dig their way out. So be it.
Fausty (MBA, University of Chicago - finance | PhD, pending, Systems Science)
I think it is unfair to portrait piracy in a Third World country as a "temptation"... I grew up in Mexico City, and back in the 80's and 90's, there was really no other way to get movies and games but through piracy. I believe Brazil is in the same situation right now.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
I think it is unfair to portrait piracy in a Third World country as a "temptation"... I grew up in Mexico City, and back in the 80's and 90's, there was really no other way to get movies and games but through piracy. I believe Brazil is in the same situation right now.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
I think it is unfair to portrait piracy in a Third World country as a "temptation"... I grew up in Mexico City, and back in the 80's and 90's, there was really no other way to get movies and games but through piracy. I believe Brazil is in the same situation right now.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
I think it is unfair to portrait piracy in a Third World country as a "temptation"... I grew up in Mexico City, and back in the 80's and 90's, there was really no other way to get movies and games but through piracy. I believe Brazil is in the same situation right now.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
Even if you were rich and wanted to get a hold of a "legal" copy of a movie or game, it was not that easy: the titles typically get released in these countries months, even a year, after their official release date in the U.S., and then they were nearly impossible to find. And if you happen to find them, though, you would have to pay two or even three times the original U.S. price.
I think the fault of piracy in these countries lies not on the consumer, but on the local governments that slap these ridiculously high tariffs on imported media and on the entertainment industry for not putting more effort in lobbying for a fair trade in these countries.
It's been far too long since you posted this message, and I honestly doubt that you'll be reading this anyway, but you deserve what's coming to you: an unrestricted apology for my unacceptable behavior. I should have never taken the attitude I did with your post, I was completely out of line and you clearly deserved better. For all that, I'm sorry.DrFausty said:
I took so much time in replying because, frankly, I was ashamed at my original post, which became so clear when you presented such a well reasoned, calm and moderate post in reply. That I took so long to answer only compounds this, specially since I had completely forgotten about this post for months, but I hope this apology will suffice.
Finally, I will not debate the merits of your arguments, not because that I agree with you, but simply because I don't have the time or stamina to take them on right now (and I sincerely doubt I will take this up in the future).
I will, however, try to clear things up a little by pointing out one thing: throughout my article, when I say piracy, I mostly refer not to digital piracy, but to smuggled pirate goods and/or piracy done by organized crime. That was the focus of my article and I perhaps should have emphasized this from the start, as the discussion on the forums deviated completely from discussing this sort of piracy into a larger debate, where I hadn't really thought out things and, as such, my reasoning was hasty and poorly done.
So, in short: forgive my previous unacceptable behavior, I apologize unreservedly for treating you in such a rude manner, although I still do not agree with your arguments.
How on Earth was Jesus innocent, it's right down there in the records, he borrowed a loaf and a fish, then made illegal copies for 5,000 people, denying both the local baker and fishmonger huge numbers of potential sales!KyleGamgee said:
Of course, those 5,000 were all poor and hungry and couldn't have bought the food, but that's not the point
I still say we shouldn't let him get away with mass food piracy!
I thought he was supposed to be one of the good guys, too!
EDIT: Damn, didn't see this thread was ancient, I followed a link from a current article! Doh!
So what you are saying is that Jesus Christ himself is the original pirate?SenseOfTumour said:How on Earth was Jesus innocent, it's right down there in the records, he borrowed a loaf and a fish, then made illegal copies for 5,000 people, denying both the local baker and fishmonger huge numbers of potential sales!KyleGamgee said:
Of course, those 5,000 were all poor and hungry and couldn't have bought the food, but that's not the point
I still say we shouldn't let him get away with mass food piracy!
I thought he was supposed to be one of the good guys, too!
EDIT: Damn, didn't see this thread was ancient, I followed a link from a current article! Doh!
God himself condones piracy?
Well, damn.
I guess that new file sharing religion in Sweden has some merit after all.
Who knew.