Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Quote: Original post by kindfluffysteve

wrong, the most wealthy per capita western nations are more to the left of the wests centrists.

And the USA is the ranked fourth in the world on this standard. Not too shabby for a right wing country (it's even fourth if you include the East).

the USA should by rights be the first if its system is the best and with regards to its position as an empire.

Quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Of course any current game developer would not want this as most of them earn roughly twice the average per capita income of an American worker. BTW, World Bank says the average American has the third best purchasing power (fourth in raw income) of the natives of any country in 2004.

it is unforunately meaningless. this is why these debates go on for years. economic statistic mean absolutely nothing practically.

they can tell you what is going on today, and what possibly will happen, but there is no trends depicted in such stats.

The US applies a policy of debt for growth. This is slightly different from what you say but the suggestion might be that its quite high position is unstable. And it should be higher as i say in the previous post for being a global empire.

Just think about what you are saying here, buddy:

"Since some people steal from an industry, let's steal money from everybody, including those who did no wrong and give it to that industry.

Would you apply this principle to real estate? Clothing?

How about letting capitalism work! Punish those who steal, and make industry develop its own safegaurds and methods of catching criminals. Let's not get into a socialist dream land here. It is the lack of government intervention that has rocketed the internet forward, with individuals innovating in pursuit of profits. Lets let those same individuals develop the tools to protect those profits, instead of forcing the taxpayer to bail them out.

Quote: Original post by Obscure
Unlike you I actually know something about government grants. I am working with developers who have managed to find some (very small) grants, and the form filling and red tape makes publisher pitching look like a walk in the park.

Your argument is flawed. Government grants are difficult to get because the companies that apply for grants aren't meant to be government funded. They have to prove to the government that they deserve to be an exception to that rule. But a company that is meant to be government funded will not find it as difficult to get a government grant.

Quote: Original post by ForeverStarlight
This idea will not work because it does not actually solve the problem, and adds greater complexity.It is also, in my opinion, based on a flawed concept.

What you are saying, is because so many people are stealing, we should find a way to legalize it. That is just like having a "snack" tax, because so many people shoplift snack food. Sure, they wouldn't be "stealing" the snaks anymore, but is the problem truley solved?

Argument from unstated premises.

Clearly, if the "problem" is theft, then that problem has been solved. Equally clearly, if the "problem" is staff not getting reimbursed for their work, then that problem has been solved.

On the other hand, if the "problem" is that people get something when they don't "deserve" it, then that problem has not been solved. But neither has that problem been solved by a purely capitalistic system: in every economic system there are people who get what they don't deserve, and people who don't get what they do.

Quote:
First of all, there will still be those people that will pirate just because it is simpler. Why download a huge game, when your friend already downloaded it, and can burn it onto a cd for you. In fact, there may be more people justifying pirating because it is "free" anyways.

Non sequitar. Under the proposed system it would be impossible, by definition, to make an unauthorised copy of a game. Therefore "piracy" would be logically impossible.

Quote:
On the same note, not everyone has acess to a high speed internet connection, and even many of those who do will not want to spend hours downloading a game. And this is only the begining of the introduced complexities.

Non sequitar. Those who do not wish to spend hours downloading a game are not compelled to do so.

Quote:
Obviously there must be a way to identify a person, or else the same person can download the same game multiple times and the cost of the game would be charged the general public multiple times. Also you would have to guard against multiple accounts for the same person. I also doubt very much that "mom" will want to spend the time and effort filling out forms, and downloading a game for her son. In the current system, she goes into gamestop, ask for the game, pays and it is done.

Argument from invalid premises. You assume, for some reason, that everyone gets charged for each individual game that is downloaded. That would be foolish. The game tax would fund games development, not games distribution.

Quote:
It would also ruin giving PC games as gifts. . . you can't wrap a download.

So what? Maybe you can't wrap a download, but you can wrap a CD/DVD that you've burned a game onto. More important is the fact that you wouldn't typically give a game as a gift, because they're free. It would be like giving somebody a pebble for Christmas.

Quote:
And this says nothing about the cost of actually downloading a game, and maintaining stable servers that could handle such a large load.

An individual act of downloading is virtually free.

Quote:
It is important to remember that even though we are living in the "technology age" people in general are not really that tech savy. I mean, how many people still have trouble programming their VCR? :D

Non sequitar. The people maintaining the stable servers will be technologically savy. The people downloading games will not need to be more savy than they need to be to play games at the moment.

Quote:
One final thing I wanted to say here: I for one do not buy that many games, music, or movies. If you look at my collection, it is fairly small, and most of it were gifts! I am sure I am not the only one like this, and I don't realy think a system that forces me to pay the same as the guy down the street who has the lates computer system and all the lastests game, with that high tech stereo system and 50 CD changer with the hundreds of CDs to match. . . These extremes do exists, and so what you want is for me to support this other guy's expensive entertainment habits.

You imply that the "game tax" will pay for this guy's computer and stereo system and cd changer. Since that is quite obviously not the point of the "game tax", I wonder what your point is.

A tax is used to pay for what actually costs money. In physical terms, 50 CDs are dirt cheap. The tax wouldn't even necessarily pay for those -- to get games for free you'd use a free download server. The tax would fund the development process, and whether a game is played by 10 people or a million people, its development costs are virtually the same. Obviously, more users means more bugs detected which means more maintainance work. And MMORPGs obviously cost money to run after development.

Whether or not a game tax should fund the development, distribution and (in the case of single-server online games) administration of a game, or just the development of a game is probably still an open case.

I would recommend the latter: the fundamental inequity is that the cost of development is included in the price of distribution. This means that distribution companies are not subject to unbiased market forces on the basis of their distribution services alone. If that dependency is removed, then I suspect that people will vote with their wallet to drastically reduce the power of the distribution industry.

Here's what I think, both on the thread title and original post:

As for the title, I think that big-scale piracy as in producing cheap ripoffs of media in mass quantities for sale should be - and in many countries is - criminal. The personal "unlimited demo" should be frowned upon but not persecuted like an act of terrorism. IMO, the argument that someone who gets a copy of a game, a song or a movie wouldn't have bought it in the first place is largely valid.

As for the original post, that's a problem of distribution. Take games for example. In Germany, a "big title" game comes at about EUR 35 to 50. In many cases, there is no manual to speak of (or take Lock On or MS Flight Simulator which come with several hundred pages as PDF files), the game is buggy and has a copy control mechanism that makes it incompatible with part of the players' machines. Why would someone pay quite a lot of money for that, when you can get a cracked version off the net that doesn't have the CC problem and you can actually use the money to get ink for your printer? That idiocy gets even more obvious with always stronger keying mechanisms. It would be trivial for the distributor to get rid of SecuROM, SafeDisc or Starforce (thereby cutting back on license payments) and allow unlimited copies to be made and sold. Private reselling is not a problem since the product is useless without a key that still has to be bought. Just have a look at games like the Battlefield series or Thief 3. They don't have a manual to speak of (at least nothing that couldn't be explained in a very short PDF or HTML file) and - in the case of Thief -, cracks have been available since almost before release. What would the vendor lose by selling only the keys and leaving hardcopy distribution to the users after an initial seed?

To take that scheme one step further, retailers could very easily be equipped to sell store-made copies of a game along with a unique key supplied by the distributor, thus making hardcopy seeding even easier and allow sales without the customer needing an internet connection. Now, some will say "if the key verification is done offline, it can be broken". This is so, but it's the same thing with every other CC mechanism so far. So, there should be no loss to sales.

Of course that method will only work for software, but other media like film and music could probably also gain from a more liberal approach.

So, what am I saying? There is no need for a stupid indiscriminate tax scheme. However, there is a need for developers and publishers to get their heads out of their asses and rethink their current strategies. To make this perfectly clear: I think a tax scheme as proposed by the OP would be conflicting with a lot of constitutions. Making products cheaper by modifying the sales chain and (seemingly - remember, we still have copy control by keys) liberating the product would not "de-criminalize" piracy, but would make it a lot harder to justify getting a pirated copy.

Quote: Original post by Mayrel
Your argument is flawed. Government grants are difficult to get because the companies that apply for grants aren't meant to be government funded. They have to prove to the government that they deserve to be an exception to that rule. But a company that is meant to be government funded will not find it as difficult to get a government grant.

Wrong - Both of the above have to go through the same process. One may find it harder to prove they should get a grant but that still doesn't alter the fact that anyone (worthy or not) applying for a grant has to go through a more complex process than someone pitching a publisher. Even those companies who are meant to be getting grants still have to prove that they meet the target criterion.

Quote: Original post by thedevdan
Just think about what you are saying here, buddy:

"Since some people steal from an industry, let's steal money from everybody, including those who did no wrong and give it to that industry.

Would you apply this principle to real estate? Clothing?

probably the vast majority of people have pirated. should we have draconian law written arbitarily by the elite against the majority?

Instead what I'm doing is trying to be pragmatic. The developers and publishers are worried about piracy - i am. Their concerns are valid. It doesnt mean their response is.

people should be wary when you propose outlawing a mass activity. It just seems cold and facist.

Quote: Let's not get into a socialist dream land here. It is the lack of government intervention that has rocketed the internet forward, with individuals innovating in pursuit of profits.

more nonsense. the internet has developed capitalistic hapazardly in regions were there is already a semblance of telecoms network - like britain. But in many of europes developing provinces like estonia and others government intervention in the infrastructure has really enhanced things. The state can provide the direction for others to follow - otherwise you get people randomly pulling in all sorts of directions leading to an inefficient use of resources. this is why socialistic approaches are more efficient in practice - nevermind what the ivory tower economists think as they mathematically masterbate on the blackboard.

I have news for you buddy - libertarianism is dreamland.

Quote: Lets let those same individuals develop the tools to protect those profits, instead of forcing the taxpayer to bail them out.

the proposal I make would be relatively cheap to set up, would be directional and would not require everybody to be expending very significant resources in counter piracy efforts.


how should this sort of approach be set up. I believe it could be piloted perhaps. just relatively small files that dont cost that much in the shops anyway. mp3s. And org like the BBC could set up such a service aimed at i dunno, promoting new musical talent. thus avoiding current rules about licencing.

It could be an interesting pilot. One that i think, if it wasnt rubbished by special interests in the industry - would appear a great and wonderful thing.

Imagine if just one country adopts this rule for all music - (and eventually other content) - the shockwaves it could send through the world would be significant. Ideally the system would work to be what I call Economic Counter Subversion against the Subversion the elite uses to force ultra-capitalism and the destruction of democracy on the masses.

At some points it is amusing to point out despite the properganda clung by some so tightly - the real truth is:
capitalists deal in fantasy, socialists deal in reality.

Quote: Original post by Mayrel
Non sequitar.

Many like these latin words, many don't know what they mean so they are meaningless to those(hence it ruins the argument since the meaning is lost). Some also use them incorrectly (not meaning *this* as such a case). This is just to clarify what it means.

Non sequitur

Quote: Original post by kindfluffysteve
It could be an interesting pilot. One that i think, if it wasnt rubbished by special interests in the industry - would appear a great and wonderful thing.

It's not "special interests" in the industry. It's the current existing industry as a whole.