meambobo, i just reading your long strident appeal in favour of the status qou. you dont want to live in a world where video games that cost a few million dollars to make, dont get made, because the entrepeneurs who might invest in making them arent guaranteed a return because they cant artificially maintain the price of their final product.
Well, so what.
You imagine a scenario where in this curernt IP world theres a Big Video Game that will cost a couple of million dollars to produce, in computer hardware and software engineer labour cost, that with it being an IP world an all, the game can still find hundreds of thousands of customers willing to pay 50$ apop over the counter in the traditional buy from shop or online store a physical copy of your game for your console business Model.
What if i told you I can think of ways of making a money from investing in the creation of the product, where ceteris parabis the only thing different is that its a non-IP world. There are business models where R&D in consumer products can pay off, and the money extracted from the willing consumers in a voluntary fashion without the use of intellectual monopoly privaledge (IMP is now going to be my pet name for IP, a fightback if you will)
perhaps its worth your while asking what a counter-example to your position look like, even in just a sketched out form. what would have to be demonstrated in order for you to concede…
Actually, this is not techdirt’s primary business model. Their actual specialization is getting the experts to customers who needed it most. As far as I know, they earn very large rents for their work. The client base of techdirt is mostly corporations or business. They could be advising some of the biggest name in technology, banking, and other sectors.
Clients flock to techdirt because they knew that techdirt is a reputable source for in-your-face no agenda opinion. The kind of opinion that can’t be baised to make somebody feel good. For them, they want techdirt to tell them straight up if techdirt think if their business model really sucks or if they’re pissing off customers.
The syndication of infinte goods(in this case, contents written by techdirt bloggers) double as advertisement for their consulting business.
This is not a kind of reputation you would see overnight. It takes years.
Kiba, you’ve kind of proved my point. Someone raised 1000 dollars… another person failed to raise 40k. No offense, but you’re a CS student still in school. 50 bucks for two weeks of your time is worth it. Gears 2, which was developed cheaper than most any blockbuster game in recent memory, cost a bit more than $10 million. And they (Epic) had already developed and owned the graphic engine. If groups have problems raising 40k, how will they raise 10 million?
I am happy for you, and hope that you get a good job and suppliment your income with your side programming. I would warn you, however, that most any software company will make you sign an agreement that anything you program in your free time is their property. Most of the time you can tell them you’ll only sign it if they change the wording to say that they only get to take software you develop in the same industry. But if you work for a game company like EA, and they find out you sell game code on the side, you’re screwed. Just a friendly warning. Anyway, you may be happy with this, and perhaps people will someday pay you hundreds of dollars for software. This cannot support a person… life is too expensive. Your code is not pirated.. because there’s better code to be taken. Not to say you’re not skilled or anything, but if you could take your game, or the new madden, which would you steal? Obviously the large, well-known, expansive game.
So i’ll ask again, how has anything you’ve pointed out done anything but reinforce my assertion that no IP = no games/code development outside hobbyists (which is what I would consider you, despite the fact that you get paid). Dog food? huh?
I dont give a damn about IP, I care that the person who created the code/book/art/music is justly compensated. If there is a way without IP, I’m all for it. The onus, I believe, is on you to demonstrate that the above scenario where people would willingly pay for software they can legally* get for free (*legally because there is no IP law) is possible. Some would pay, as I pay for my music because I want to support the artists I like. Most would not, making it most likely economically unfeasible to create the code/book/art/music.
No my response is please provide such example, while still maintaining the ability to produce at somewhat close to the same level as we currently do. I’m open to changing my mind, I just cannot fathom how this could work without IP. Especially for books.
I’m just asking for a bit more clarification- I would think that Gears 2 was developed because of the success of Gears 1- and even if Epic didn’t have the sole rights to the graphic engine- it would still sell just as well even if other companies were able to create a game with the same graphics engine. Lets say Mario was not solely owned by Nintendo and any company could make a game and slap mario’s face on it. I still think most people will end up buying Nintendo-made Mario game due to their quality.
Could you just paint me a scenario of what you think would happen if someone invested a lot of money into making a video game in a non-ip world? What do you think would happen to the industry if IP laws were to be eliminated tomorrow? I just want to get a better understanding of the argument.
so if i found you an example of a publisher that makes money selling hardback books for $$$ and at the same time offers the contents of those books available with no fee downloadable so that anyone with a computer can read it and or print it off onto their own paper. this would serve to act as a counter example on the book front ? would it or wouldnt it?
I agree that profit is always best expressed in personal desire - if profit were only monetary, no one would spend money. That being said, there is a reason money is used in economic calculation and indirect exchange. I would consider monetary income resulting directly from unlicensed use of a copyrighted to be commercial and subject to having a portion of it being forcefully rewarded to a copyright holder.
In your example, the uploader could do whatever he pleased with it without being sued (so long as he didn’t post a link to his for profit website or similar on the video); however, commercial sites wouldn’t be able to redistribute it without paying some of their revenue to the copyright holder (which could be determined by the number of hits the video recieves in proportion to others). This is similar to when someone uploads an NBC program, and YouTube subsequently takes it down. Under my approach, it could take it down, leave it up and pay the legally required amount, or license the material on whatever terms the parties agreed to.
Here is a more difficult example. Let’s say I use Macromedia DreamWeaver to make a number of non-profit websites. Then I put on my resume “experienced with Macromedia DreamWeaver”. I subsequently get a job. This may be a case where a suit is valid. The copyright holder would have to prove that some portion of revenue he is currently earning is due explicitly to his past, unlicensed experience with DreamWeaver, rather than his licensed use or training received at the company. This may be a much harder case to make, and I believe copyright holders would usually avoid it. They would much more prefer to go after torrent sites, commercial bootlegging operations, and the like. These would yeild higher entitlement %'s of revenue, in addition to a greater revenue pot, as well as being targeted as the copyright holder’s most direct competition otherwise.
I would agree with the contractual approach as long as it held 3rd parties accountable for obstruction of justice or accessory charges if they refused to divulge the source of an unlicensed IP. I feel the entitlement system would be a “freer” and more “anti-IP” approach than contracts.
Because it doesn’t prove anything…yet. Would you based your opinion on failures of relatively few unknown entrepeneurs?
I actually know a few that were actually successful. One guy got paid to work on an pretty cool RTS game(actually comparable to Command and Conquer in term of complexity) for a few month. A guy managed to get money so he can test his game on a new graphic card. Another got constant donation every month from users who were grateful for all of his contribution to indie game development. (His reputation is on a whole nother level and begging for donations I don’t see as particularly high potential earning)
You have to understand my reason for my commitment to this experiment:
Ask yourself why commercial indie game developers exist anyway? Why these little fishes exist in the first place? They don’t have very large budget or resource for that matter and yet they managed to sell. Their game may be proprietary, but they have an audience despite budget limitation and the lack of fancy 3D graphics.
Ask yourself why large corporations funds the development of KDE, the Linux kernel, and others. Ask why some webcomic artists managed to live entirely off donations? Sell swags?
There were also so many successful example of musicans and other people doing these things in other field so I thought I could replicate these experiments in gaming as well and see if I can make enough living.
I am no indie developer. I am just a FOSS developer. If I can reach the market that indies crater to and uses my business model in place of their, than I could make enough money.
Dog food as in “do you practice what do you preach?”. It is a metaphor.
You may be right that people prefer the Nintendo game, but would people pay Nintendo $50 for the game they made, or a different source $5 for the same good?
My position remain the same. If people want to make restrictive contracts in their goods, let them do so. However it wouldn’t extend to parties who didn’t enter into a contract with them.
Sure, i’ll clarify. Gears 2 was developed bc of the financial success of gears 1. In a non-ip world what i believe would happen is thus: Epic investes 10+ million to make gears 2. It is pirated/leaked and stolen by almost everyone who has interest in it. Epic earns a small fraction of what they did, because they sell far far far fewer copies. Epic never developes another game because the second it hits the market, it is stolen and pirated by everyone because it is fully legal to download the game off bittorrent with no compensation to Epic. Small projects such as kiba speaks of, and philanthropic/hobbyist projects such as linux would happen, but the large projects/industry would cease to exist.
Linux isn’t some hobbyist project coded by some programmer in their parent’s basement. It is developed by professionals hired from corporations like IBM.
I would say that so long as the author is being paid , this could be an example. I’m assuming you’re going to pull out an ebook that is available free as the example, but there are few enough of those, and they are free with the author’s consent. Show me a publisher who pays the author for each downloaded copy, and i’ll really be taken aback.
Show empirical evidence that providing the entire book, unedited, for free increased the rate of book purchase. Kind of hard to prove a direct connection.
why would he need to be paid for each downloaded copy. you are just projecting your persoinal preference for how conducts his business out on the world.