Ethics and Legality of Copyright and Online Distribution

If we take EA's financial report to be the norm (haven't looked at any other company, but looking at the handful of indie financial reports, too, the fractions are pretty similar), the order of expenses go 1) distribution, 2) development, and 3) marketing. Marketing is a distant, distant third, though. Distribution, though, yeah that's just a bit more than development, so we can say it's about a 44-34-22 split or so. Also, if you look at the distribution cost break down, the costs are mostly for physical production and shipping rather than licensing. I believe on average, the likes of Steam and the Apple app store take about 30% of your revenue from downloads, too, because running a server farm, while much cheaper than it used to be, is still not particularly cheap.

Cutting out the middleman is a nice idea, but is it really the government's responsibility to set up this kind of pricy infrastructure?

Look at the world map guys. And then look at how many nations are producing blockbuster movies, games, DVD serials and such. I know it's a rapidly competitive market, but exactly how many nations in the world are importing?

Again, my argument stance is on the price: imagine one PS 3 game costs as much as a furniture when work times are 10 hours. There's no f***ing incentive there for me. I'd be pragmatic and buy something physical instead. Imagine one legal, prim proper import of a movie would cost more than 20 tickets. I'd rather join the minutes long queue than to miss the movie in its Now Showing period

There's a need for cheaper and free counterparts of things, and that never changes. Can you seriously hope to expect things would satisfy both sides (producers and consumers) just because of some law changes overnight? While enforcing profit is lawyer friendly, it not only denies the incentive of importing further, but it also endangers the need to make a title more popular by making the product more cumbersome in itself

Why would I rather import then? I'd just go buy the movies as low as the price of a bowl of lunch. Answer: there's no f***ing incentive. If there are discounts for loyal customers, or even special offers, I'd be happy to Archive Binge with my wallet ready, in USD. Otherwise, I don't expect this to be a healthy practice, particularly when your national debt is that high up

edited 16th May '12 4:02:05 PM by Cassie

ch00b: In my opinion, governments goal should be to make the optimal society. It is no less government's obligation to create an optimized system that creates and distributes content as described above than it is to create laws that otherwise incentivize said creation. In the "natural" state, there is no copyright law.

This isn't a direct response to anyone, but this article about how 38 Studios is failing to pay state debt popped up on my news feed and surprised me since I didn't know any games were publicly funded. It's an interesting look at the ramifications of failure despite pretty good sales, though.

Also, they have started paying the state, but still interesting to look at.

You need to shorten those URL's.

first article

second article

Kingdoms of Amalur? I never heard that game before in my life. What's it about? But this is not the topic for that. And from the articles, it seems like this is unrelevant news

It's relevant in that Tomu, and several other tropers, occasionally push for socialized entertainment and distribution. You can see this exactly one post above mine.

I think I'm the only one here who seriously pushes for it. Flyboy used to, but he's gone now.

This and that are two entirely different things though.

edited 21st May '12 6:51:28 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Wait, are thirty eight studios going into debt or is it just one studio?

Wow you never heard of Kingdoms of Amalur, it was all over the gaming media a few months ago. Granted if you don't follow gaming media that's understandable. It was no Skyrim but it was still pretty big.

Granted the studio 38 story shouldn't even be story, it's be blown out of proportion for no reason.

It's obviously not the same as what you propose, but I think this is the necessary first step of shifting the investor from private to public, and it's interesting to see what kind of issues are popping up—both good and bad.

The ones that sticks out to me most is just how much the state had to invest into this endeavor (scalability thing I keep pointing out) and what might be going through the Rhode Island taxpayers' minds knowing they might have to make up for $112 million (social thing I keep pointing out)

I do not endorse this particular system, and I reject any attempt to show the failure of my ideas from the failure of a system that does not accurately reflect my suggested course of action!

Honestly, if the state owns the IP, they'll probably end up selling it back to the private sector at a loss.

how does your system get around having to spend $127 million on individual products?

I don't have an exacting model in place, so I can't really answer that question in a blanket statement. The underlying point of the concept is that if dollar per dollar, instead of spending umpteen billion on marketing, store stocking, and the other things that are only necessary due to copyright protectionalism, we just didn't spend that money, there'd be a surplus.

Now, the exacting specifics of how you gather revenue, and how you distribute said revenue, is a different question altogether. But one example of one gaming company being 127 million in the whole is not indicative of the conceptual system that I'm proposing.

but if money was not spent on advertising, how would Joe Random know about the not-quite-hottest-but-probably-somewhat-relevant-to-his-interests piece of media? Joe Random's a busy guy with his 9-6 job and two kids! Even if there's a central repository, he just wants to space out and enjoy his free time instead of spending it trawling for something to do.

Also, sure, you can ignore the random cases, but then I don't know what the first step to your system is. If not a state giving out a loan for entertainment-stimulus reasons, then what? I mean in general, I don't know how one can insist that a theory works when the practical attempts that brush its edges don't line up at all or open up a whole, unforeseen can of worms.

It's completely different. If you build your product assuming that the private sector's payments will cover your payments, your expenditures will be entirely different than if you build your product in such a fashion that you're compensated for certain specific expenditures, and then given a specific bonus if your product is in the top X downloads on a central server or something. In short, this company did not expect a public model' and thus did not operate accordingly.

Also: advertising is a ridiculous waste of money. If Pepsi and Coca Cola both cut their advertising expenditures in half, they wouldn't see much drop in sales, but they'd save money on ads. But if only one of them does so, then the one that cuts their ad revenue loses out. Huzzah Prisoner's Dilemma.

Private advertising's purpose isn't to get you informed about a product, it's to make you want to buy the product. You can still have informational advertising-that is, advertising that actually has value because it distributes information about existing products.

The difference between giving private companies loans by the government and what I'm proposing is the difference between a voucher health care system and medicare.

edited 22nd May '12 9:30:07 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

If Pepsi and Coca Cola cut their advertising, they wouldn't see a drop in sales because they're already established companies with established products with established demand. Like I said, my case was for the not-hottest-thing—it isn't necessarily ubiquitously sold in stores and isn't necessarily being spread by mainstream word of mouth.

Like Kingdoms of Amalur. Who would've even cared about this game if you didn't get free DLC in Mass Effect for playing the demo? Where do you think the budget for the demo came from in the first place?

edited 22nd May '12 10:02:09 AM by ch00beh

What are you even arguing?

Obviously, consumers need to have access to information about products. So you need some kind of centralized database that's searchable. And there will always be websites that tout the virtues of various releases. In the internet, quality spreads itself. If works are accessible to the public, they will find them, and if they're any good, they will use them.

edited 22nd May '12 10:05:13 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

That advertising isn't the all-evil, waste of money that you are trying to make it out to be.

A lot is wasted, sure, but it still has its uses and some cost still needs to be made.

Also, I don't believe the average consumer has the time/energy to do in depth research every time they want to have fun.

edited 22nd May '12 10:08:16 AM by ch00beh

There is such a thing as informational advertising, and yes, it can be a good thing. However, in the Information Age, it is quite frequently redundant, because instead of spending money on ad space, you can instead host trailers and the like in places where people go to to find what's hot.

The idea is that you don't want content to compete with, say, product advertising.

And I'm not talking about in depth research. But people read sites like kotaku to gather information about games. Blogs. Mother !@#$ing You Tube. The bottom line is, you go to the information because you want it, rather than the information goes to you because some content provider insists that you have it.

And, moreover, it's not like TV would be abolished. The central database is about removing copyright protectionism, not prohibiting a "Here, we're going to set up programming for you, you don't have to do any work" system (though I acknowledge that traditional TV would probably be less profitable at that point).

edited 22nd May '12 10:11:21 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

Relevant to the topic.◊

A person can simultaneously hold "It's okay or even enviable to break the law" while believing "causing harm to others is bad."

Obviously, I consider digital piracy to have very little harm (it depends on a case by case basis, but the minimum harm is zero, for when the individual would not have enjoyed the work in the absence of piracy, whereas the maximum harm is a lost sale), but I'm sure the rappers think that it's significantly damaging.

I'm not sure about rappers but, according to Mick Jagger, musicians/bands don't really make profits from record sales. They profit from live performances.

This article explains how things work, and why album sales don't bring money to musicians.

edited 22nd May '12 10:31:23 AM by ThatHuman

I really really hate those sorts of accounting techniques.

<Starts an accounting course a week from today!>