Summations Only

Why should "Hollywood" be considered the only legitimate means by which movies get made?

But that hardly requires the existence of trivial technology patents meant to give lawyers busywork. You've ignored the point that if Google's solution is better, they'll use it regardless of whether they need to use it as a patent workaround; if Google's solution is worse, the fact that they're forced to use it as a patent workaround makes the consumer of those devices worse off.So there's no benefit at all. You can't increase competition by erecting patent barriers to entry. That's exactly backwards. You increase competition by making it easier, not harder, for companies to enter a business. No, exactly wrong. The potential profits in the smartphone market is why Google bothered doing something difficult. The patent situation simply made it more difficult, without providing any market benefit.By your logic, since mountain climbers do it for the challenge, we can increase the number of mountain climbers who make Everest attempts by planting land mines all along the approach. It's completely backwards. Barriers to entry result in less, not more, competition. Google isn't in it for the challenge, they're in it for the money. A patent on touchscreens (or on a "slide to unlock" UI element) makes it less, not more likely that Google will attempt to enter that business segment. No, you've not explained it. You've just asserted it. You've asserted, in fact, something fundamentally false about the PTO. If you're wondering if I think you're a liar, now, the answer is "yes", based on your conduct in the other thread.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Which is not what this is about. This is about whether or not no one will pay for content when it is freely available. Not if less people will pay for it. According to you (at lesst at first), no one would pay for content if it was available for free. It seems that now you've shifted it to that less people will pay for it. Well yeah, because they can now sample it. And if they don't think it's worth their money, they won't spend their money on it. This doesn't mean however that they won't spend any money at all on content. And so far, the facts from reality show that people are willing to pay for content, even if it is available for free, so long as they think it worth paying for. Like the example I gave with the Iron Maiden show. I downloaded the CD, but you know what, I felt like supporting them, so I also bought it, I also went to every concert by them ever since, that was in my country, or reasonably close by in neighbouring countries (I live close to the border of Belgium and Germany). Might not fit your "economy 101", but that's the reality of things. I could, but they are all in Dutch, so I don't know if they'd be any use to you. Anyway, here's one report. Chapter 2.2 would be relevant here. In fact, the entire report is rather interesting. Don't quote mine me please. My point was that even if there was no copyright law, cinemas would still pay for the movies they'd show, because if they didn't there wouldn't be any movies for them to show. Making your point moot.

No, in point of fact the contention was that in a world of unrestrained privacy, copyright holders would make zero revenue:

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If you think about Lethal Weapon 18 being released into that world and being available for free with no legal consequences why would anyone pay for a copy?

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They'd also go because it would be really cheap because without copyright protection, the cinemas don,t need to pay MGM royalties.

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So MGM get nothing for their work.

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The obvious problem you have with this argument is that if MGM's output could be legally copied and easily distributed for free, they would sell only one copy and everyone would get it for nothing.

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I realize those aren't your words, but you jumped into a discussion I was having with Tangle, and his position is that piracy is inversely proportional to the profits of copyright holders. But piracy is unrestrained in Asia, and yet both Western and Asian filmmakers are able to recoup their investments provided that the movies attract an audience. (There is, of course, no hope for the people who make shitty movies.) No, they're not. Tracks from both iTunes and Amazon are freely copyable, yet there's no evidence that the music industry is on the precipice of ruin. And the reason is because people want to patronize the artists they enjoy.

It's not even clear that less people do pay for it. I think more people are now paying for music than ever before, because it's easier to buy music than it has ever been. But, for some reason, outfits like the RIAA and MPAA believe that people should be punished for choosing to patronize the artists they enjoy.

Well, the numbers from that Dutch report I linked say that less people do pay for it. But again, I think this is because people are now more aware of what they are willing to pay for, whereas in the past, you kinda had to pay for a CD or DVD, even if it turned out that it was utter garbage afterwards. You couldn't walk back into the store and go "Uhm yeah, that cd I bought of generic boy-band number 4? Yeah, that really sucked balls, so I'd like a refund". Now, you can sample the music, and if you think it's worth your money, you'll buy the CD (or concert tickets, or whatever). If you think it's utter schlock however...

Don't be rediculous. This is about whether *enough* people will pay for the content so that people will continue to produce it.In a world without copyright law, mass and near instant access plus good content, of course they won't pay for it.There are lots of examples like Iron Maiden, but Iron Maiden got globally famous by the traditional music industry who paid them advances and promoted their events and music and made a profit by selling their protecting material. They are already a known brand.In a future world of no copyright plus digital distribution, small independent artists can self-publish and will attract an audience, some of whom will feel the desire to pay them something and some of them will make a living from sales and performances. It might even be a better business model than the old - i certainly hope so. Those artists can do it now and they are - there's nothing stopping them and i think it's great.But I'll keep saying this until you get it. it can't and won't work for MGM and all similar companies. It may work for small, independant artists that have low to zero costs of production but you'll never see a blockbuster movie that needs ten of million of dollars invested up front again - because there's no way to get your money back. You're not getting it at all. The movie industry depends on a flow of income. It goes:Theatrical release (ie cinemas)
Premium TV (ie pay to view)
Satelite and cable
DVD
Rental
Terestrial broadcast
Then re-releases, special editions and follow-upAt each point they get income. The income pays the initial advance - which can be hundreds of millions but is typically $20m. When they make the movie they have no idea whether it's actually going to pay back.If the studios can't guarantee that income because as soon as they release their blockbuster it's available to everyone globally in hi-def for nothing, no investor is going to invest. You'd have to be a raving idiot to put your money up.And as for video games - apart from paying for playing a game on line, that industry would die overnight as every kid in world piled in. (Playing online only, is the equivalent of copyright protection, as everyone that wants to play it has to pay for it.)

Is it? It was you who said: Message 57: Message 65: Message 68: Yet now you say it's about enough people paying. Ok, fine, we agree then that there will always be people willing to pay for content, whether it is freely available or not. Now, as to the issue that "enough" people will pay for it. You contend that there won't be. Ok, great, got any evidence? And I don't mean you talking about "economy 101", I mean actual evidence that if content is available freely, not enough people would pay for it. And we're back to nobody paying again. Must I point you once more to the situation in my country where the content is available freely and easily? Why are you not addressing this? it's very simple, people can get anything they want here for free and very easily, and yet, people still pay for content. What makes you think they won't in the future? Ok, another example, Esmee Denters is a Dutch singer who became famous because she herself placed videos of herself singing on youtube. Only after she got famous did she get picked up by a record company. Free content actually made her career, and people bought her CD, despite all of the material being available online for free. No money was spent by any company to make her famous. In fact, if SOPA had passed, stories like these would become impossible. Why not? They're making their money back now, aren't they? Zwartboek, which is the most expensive Dutch film ever made (at 18 million Euros, equivalent of a hollywood blockbuster over here, in fact if you look at the number of citizens per Euro, it's even more expensive), is considered a box office hit, being the first Dutch film ever to attract 1 million viewers in Dutch cinemas. Again, despite the movie being available for free online! It made even more money in subsequent DVD sales. So no, there is a way to get your money back, and even make a profit, even when the movies are available online for free. I really don't see you bringing in any evidence to support your position. You just keep asserting and asserting it over and over again, never supplying a single shred of evidence that what you say will actually be the case. And for all those examples I point to the same reasoning as for cinemas. If they don't pay the production companies, there won't be any films for them to release. Not paying them would mean they would all go out of business themselves! It is in their best interest to pay the production companies, if only to keep their own companies from going under. But the movies are available in hi-def for nothing, and yet they're still making money. Why do you keep saying things that we can see are not true? The movies are available in hi-def absolutely free, and yet money is still being given to the production companies. Look, I can repeat myself again, but until you show some evidence, I don't think there's a point to it. Please show your assertions to be the case, I tried to give you evidence of mine. (I showed you a person who got famous without any investment, and is now making money for a record company, I showed you that the most expensive movie ever made over here was a total success, and yet, all you do is assert that what I say cannot be the case).

So what? Who says that's the only way to make a good movie? Who says that's the only way to fund a blockbuster? You're not getting it. Who says that the Hollywood of 2012 is the only way to make a movie? Why? What if you invested in the film not because you expected to make a profit, but because you wanted to see the movie?Why does "film as an investment vehicle" have to be the only way to make a movie?

Tangle's point was that if copyright were abolished, that people would still go to the movies because of the big screen social experience, but that no movie theatre would pay any money to MGM.Why would the cinema operator pay for content he can get for free?

Let me refresh your memory. So where is that "abounding evidence" that the copyright holder would "sell no less copies than they would under our system of legally-binding anti-consumer DRM"?

I didn't ignore i, because it is not necessarily true. Determinging that some yet to be developed solution is better than copying an existing design is not trivial. And without the ability to protect their own invention from copying, Google might not be able recoup their investment.Without the incentive offered by the patent system, Google might not even have bothered doing the research in the first place.

Huntard, CrashfrogThe point you are both missing for some reason is that if the no copyright business model works then it'll happen. No-one is forcing anyone to copyright anything. For some things it will work but in my opinion for anything that needs a large pre-investment and a big company that people can't identify with, it mostly won't.What is it you actually think needs to be done? You can make your movie and give it away anytime you want. You can write your book, play or song and free publish it on the internet now.You don't need to make any claims on the past for any of this, so even if you disagree with copyright, why do you care?

If the benefit isn't immediately and profitably obvious, then there's little reason to suspect that the market would be better off.Again, the point that you're ignoring is that you can't increase competition by erecting barriers to entry. That's completely backwards. You're right, for once, because you're finally catching up with what I was telling you in Message 26:

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I think we do benefit as a society when the people who invest in the development of new technologies are granted a limited-time monopoly from which to profit from it.

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Patents benefit society when the innovators who sink enormous costs into development and research are, for a period of time, insulated from competition by those who would simply reverse-engineer their technology and lowball them out of the market. But patents benefit nobody but a small number of entrenched, moneyed interests when they're granted for trivial developments or are issued so broadly that they encompass all possible solutions to a particular problem (as in the case of gene patents, which I hope will soon be invalidated by US courts.)

Nothing needs a "big company that people can't identify with." I think we need to dismantle the DMCA, which makes it illegal to circumvent copy protection even to achieve fair use. I think we need to punish rights holders who opt to punish those who attempt to patronize artists. I think we need to resist efforts by the government, such as SOPA/PIPA, to censor speech and knowledge on the Internet simply to preserve the not-in-any-way-under-threat "rights" of a small number of moneyed interests. I think we need to reclaim the public domain, which was always meant to be the eventual and inevitable destination of all copyrighted works, from corporate control and infinite extension of "limited-time" copyright.