ALL people are poor multitaskers

FTFY

Current cars can easily maintain 90mph+ on almost the entire length of interstate 10, yet many areas have the speed limit set to 55.

There are several perfectly straight, 4 lane state highways where I live with 45mph average speed limits, and some towns force traffic down to 15mph.

None of this is necessary, it's done simply to increase revenue from speeding tickets.

With automated cars, the arguments they use to justify these ridiculously low limits won't apply, and if my car automatically slowed down anyway, I wouldn't have to worry about getting pegged by speed traps. (thus destroying that revenue stream completely, and removing the motivation for the low limits.)

Now that you're done ranting about the first paragraph, go read the rest of my post.

The discussion is about whether or not 1 pirate == 1 lost sale.

The only connection piracy has to lost sales is that the media wants there to be.

You're a perfect example. You won't pay money to watch it, and will wait until it's available via free channels.
Either way the MPAA is losing profits.

They probably count you as a sale "lost to piracy" even if you never download anything.

I considered that actually.

Thanks to the internet, most people usually decide right after opening night (or sooner, thanks to pre-showings) whether the movie is worth paying to go see.
I came to the rough conclusion that if the movie was that bad, a significant percentage of veiwers will probably just give it a pass or wait till it's available from netflix/$1 rental/borrowing from a friend.

Group B more than most, as rabid fans who are willing to watch a low quality bootleg just to see the movie early are more likely to refuse to pay to see it on principle.

OR THEY COULD OFFICIALLY RELEASE IT ON DVD!!

From the wikipedia page:
Discotek Media announced on March 12, 2012 that they had licensed the home video rights to the series and plans on releasing both the American series, as well as the Japanese series with English subtitles on separate releases

Send me a message(check my profile), I know a Chinese distributor who took the US release audio and mixed it with the official japanese video. He won't sell it, but he will include it with orders for the official Japanese disks.

Do you really believe this?

I'm going to use the anime market in the US as an example here.
After the original japanese release, most anime franchises are not distributed in the US until there is already a large fan base.

How do you have fans for a show that isn't even available? Piracy.
How many of these pirates would have bought the dvd if there were no pirated copies being handed out? ZERO, because they would never have known the product exists.

How many millions of dollars do you think companies like adv, cartoon network, etc made because of the pirate anime market?


At the same time, around 100,000 people have watched a crappy download of the avengers instead of paying to see it in the theater.
Have you ever watched a theater rip? It's painful.

People don't watch camera rips because they would rather save the cost of admission. They watch them because
a) they CAN"T afford the cost of admission,
b) they want to see it before opening night,
c) they downloaded it because they were bored and wanted something to distract them for an hour.

Group A is not a lost sale.(they have no money)
Group B is not a lost sale. (they also saw the movie in the theater)
Group C is not a lost sale. (they would have just turned on the TV instead)

Now, dvd quality rips are another story. There are people who just download the movie instead of buying it.
However, there are also a lot of other groups of people who are labeled "pirates"..

a) People already own the movie but don't feel like ripping and transcoding it by hand ( like my blue ray collection )
b) People who have the dvd but just got a new 1080p mega-tv and think the higher quality is neat.
c) People who live in places where you can't buy the movie.
d) People who contribute screenshots to sites like imdb and tvtropes
e) People who don't have access to TV, but have family with internet and a cheap hard drive. (rural areas, mountain regions)
f) People who work odd hours and can't afford a dvr+digital cable for delayed viewing.

All of these groups are downloads that would not have equated to a sale.

a) already bought it
b) don't think the extra 300 pixels is worth an extra $20
c) don't have an option to buy
d) can't afford to spend $20 on every movie they edit
e) can't buy a show that isn't on disk. (samurai pizza cats)
f) Can't afford the hardware, can't afford to change schedule, can't buy the disks until it's out.

You are misusing the word stealing.

Taking or forcing access to something without permission is trespassing, not theft. ( hence the computer trespass laws )

Stealing is the removal of property without permission.

Making a copy of something is not stealing it, as no property is removed.

Pirating may be wrong or illegal, but it's not stealing.

And no, pirates are not "stealing the profit from the lost sales".

Just because the pirate felt that a movie was worth clicking a mouse button, doesn't mean that it would have been worth $20 if the mouse clicking was not an option.

You missed the gp's point. At what point do you need to see the passwords in a debugging log?

Can you imagine trying to justify "$1200 for custom GIMP Plugin" or "$1200 for Gimp programmer" to the company accountant?

Hold on.

I think you are missing the forest for the trees, so lets take this down a level.

I agree that words are not in and of themselves offensive.
This is a fact, just like a firearm is a tool, words are tools to convey meaning.

However, just like with any other tool, the context is what will define how people will react.

With a gun, context can be "the belt of a police officer", or the hand of some random guy on the street.

However, taken out of context a firearm will make most people nervous. (Why is there a gun on the coffee table?)

The same thing is true with words.

The issue is that an average American/UK citizen who sees or hears the word "Gimp" out of context is NOT going to think about an image editor.

Additionally, as I said elsewhere in this thread, even if the word is used in context it can cause issues with legal liability.
( Whether this is a stupid fact is irrelevant, in both the US and the UK "sexual harassment" is a very flexible definition, and the word GIMP has a sexual meaning available for misinterpretation. )

So PLEASE, stop trying to argue that the default context of the word is not offensive.

Just like Nigger, bitch, or midget, if you yelled it in a crowded area people would assume that you meant the meaning they are familiar with.

If you don't believe me, go perform this test.
1) Go to the local mall on a busy sunday.
2) Stand outside the pet store, facing the window.
3) Exclaim loudly "Wow, that's a nice looking bitch!"
4) Time how long it takes for security to show up, and ask them how many complaints they received.

( Note: if you do this, please post a video. )

Unfortunately, "Nigger" is still used in a very derogatory way in the southern portions of the United States to describe uneducated black people.

Additionally, the word is also used by those same uneducated black people to describe each other.

However, if I were to say "Yo Nigger, throw me a drink!" at a party one night, I can guarantee you I would be defending myself from a major beating within minutes.

What if we just forked the blasted thing and renamed it?

"Shalava image editor" sound good to me, and it would make the russian gimp developers blush.

Here's a funny suggestion.

Since a fairly large chuck of the gimp development team are russian, why don't we produce a fork (with only a name change) and name it to something derogatory in Russian?

No lawyer team in the Usa or UK would bat an eye at a name like "Shalava image editor", but I can guarantee that anyone from eastern Europe would at least comment on it.


Hell, I might just go look into that right now......

This may be true, but it can still cause issues for people.

At a company I worked at the legal team vetoed using this software (despite all of the design team offering to use it to save the company money).

Why did legal say no? The name could "be construed as a sign of a negative work environment for those who may be physically disable or handicapped".
In plain english, the name could be used as lawsuit bait.

So the gimp team can either change the name, or accept that the entire business world will never be willing to pay for support for this software.

Which is really sad, because they could easily be making a hefty profit from training and support for businesses. If the name wasn't a legal liability.