No, you don't. You have to assume that more than 0% of the people pirating it would've bought it if it were not available for free. I know people who used to buy stuff, and then they discovered piracy and now they don't buy anymore. They're part of that "people who would've bought if piracy wasn't an option" group.

(Gah. I can't believe you were modded "5 Insightful". Sometimes I hate Slashdot.)

So, the solution you're proposing to studios is "give everything away for free!!" Yeah, that sounds like a great solution. Seriously, does anyone on Slashdot think about the needs and desires of the studios, or are all "solutions" really just kneejerk strategies which result in consumers getting as much stuff as possible while paying nothing?

> "the US box office doesn't seem to be suffering too much as it is about to record its best year ever."
Source? (I remember the last time I saw that claim on Slashdot, and discovered it was wrong.)

Yeah, I think you've understood the plot of Battlfield 4 perfectly.

"Battlefield 4's single-player Campaign takes place in 2020, six years after the events of its predecessor. Tensions between Russia and the United States have been running at a record high. On top of this, China is also on the brink of war, as Admiral Chang, the main antagonist, plans to overthrow China's current government. If he succeeds, Chang will have full support from the Russians, bringing China to the brink of war with the United States." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_4#Setting_and_characters

> "It's a populist screed about how America is going to help the first influential person with "dreams of democracy" make a coup d'etat against the government of China."

Really? That's not what the wikipedia page says --

"Battlefield 4's single-player Campaign takes place in 2020, six years after the events of its predecessor. Tensions between Russia and the United States have beem running at a record high. On top of this, China is also on the brink of war, as Admiral Chang, the main antagonist, plans to overthrow China's current government. If he succeeds, Chang will have full support from the Russians, bringing China to the brink of war with the United States... the player hears their commanding officer, Captain Garrison, talking over the phone about the intel: that Admiral Chang is planning a military coup d'état, and if he succeeds, he will gain full Russian support, confirming an earlier report from an asset in China.[10][11][25] Tombstone returns to the USS Valkyrie, an amphibious assault carrier en route to China's eastern coast.[25] On board, Garrison informs them of the assassination of Chinese presidential candidate Jin Jié; and how Chang convinced the Chinese that the United States was responsible." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_4#Setting_and_characters

Uh, I'm pretty sure you haven't made any effort to understand the plot of Battlefield 4.

Yeah, I heard about the Amazon-Disney takeaway. That isn't what caused the decline, which began in the exact year the Napster came along.

I know I can always count on BoingBoing to give a dumb opinion about cpoyright and DRM. Cory Doctorow has always been a huge advocate for giving media away. Of course, there's some major flaws in Doctorow's philosophy. For one thing: Doctorow is a book author and he makes a lot of money from the BoingBoing blog. Most people want to read books in their printed form (not pirated off the internet). It's not hard to figure out that, in the context of a public that prefers printed books, that book authors would be less threatened by piracy than creators of other digital media (for example, software ONLY runs on computers, there isn't a "printed" form that people think is superior; similarly with music: nobody really wants those flat pieces of plastic called CDs, they want their music on the computer or media player).

Source: "Slashdot: In a new Rasmussen poll, 75% of American adults would rather read a book in traditional print format than in an ebook format. Only 15% prefer the ebook format (the other 10% are undecided)." http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/07/21/1143210/poll-shows-that-75-prefer-printed-books-to-ebooks

Ergo, Doctorow is going to have less to lose by transitioning to the "give everything away" model. Plus, he gets lots of popularity based on his opinions (which translates to lots of extra sales). But what works for one author doesn't necessarily work for an industry. As far as his co-ownership of the BoingBoing blog - well, blogs make money by creating streams of information and getting ad-revenue. They have virtually nothing to lose by promoting the "free for all" because users have to keep coming back to their site over and over for the latest stuff - which means ad revenue. I'd like to see how happy Doctorow would be if every single person who visited BoingBoing used an ad-blocker and then he and his friends would have to foot the bill for their heavy bandwidth usage.

> "The music and movie industries are in decline simply because they won't provide content their customers want in the form their customers want it."

Sounds like a lot of feel-good pirate nonsense. The music industry started selling DRM-free music years ago. It continues to decline. I think it's time to all admit to yourselves that *some* people will pay for stuff and some people are going to try to avoid spending money on music and movies so they can by expensive clothes, iPhones, expensive laptops, and other physical stuff. I actually have a couple friends who are pirates and they say stuff like "Why do you pay for stuff you can get for free (via piracy)?" Translation: You're stupid if you pay for digital stuff because everything digital can be stolen off the internet.

Yawn. Anther anti-DRM rant on Slashdot. The summary is boring and looks like Slashdot just randomly picked a comment from any article on piracy from within the past 15 years and reposted it. The article itself isn't even all that well thought out. Honestly, it looks kind-of amateurish. It talks about how revenues went up after DRM was removed. Of course, it ignores the fact that music has always had a giant analog hole, so there's an easy way to bypass any DRM.

It'd be nice if these articles were a little less narrow minded, a little less circle-jerkish, and would, at least, acknowledge the fact that piracy has been a huge problem for the industry. Looking at the industry's decline in revenue, I can't say that Jack Valenti's statement about the Boston Strangler looks all that silly anymore. See this graph to understand what I'm talking about (and this graph is a few years old, I'm sure it looks even worse than this, now): http://static2.businessinsider.com/image/4d5ea2acccd1d54e7c030000/music-industry.jpg

I wish feminism was restricted to "women==people" (or "women=people"). Saying it is a "radical notion" seems rather hyperbolic. (Case in point: lookup the death rates for men, women, and children on the Titianic. Even back in the early 1900s, women and children were far more likely to live than men were because women and children were given priority access to the life boats. I guess when threatened with death, you save your "possessions" rather than people. [/sarcasm].) http://optional.is/required/2012/04/25/titanic-visualized/

My point being: this notion that popular society thinks women aren't persons is silly hyperbole.

I was with you, but the twitter link you provided doesn't show any examples of trying to get people fired from their jobs. At worst, I saw one guy say that he would use it as a hiring blacklist.

I detected a flaw in your idea: "If enough users launch it". There's virtually no benefit for anyone to install this app except to make a very tiny contribution to undermining Facebook's algorithm (while eating up your wireless data), and most people don't really care enough about that to do the work. Your idea seems like a clever way to undermine Facebooks algorithms, but it won't actually be used widely enough to make a dent in the system, which means it's gives people false hope that you this thing can be undermined. Personally, I'm actually less bothered by the fact that Facebook can infer income based on web-browsing habits, and I'm more bothered by the fact that it can be patented. It makes me want to destroy the patent system, because if stuff like this can be patented, our patent system is broken.

Oh, is that the analogy we're using now? Remind me again when musicians "held a gun to their fans heads and demanded money". Oh right - copyright works the same way that the entire merchandise market works: if you want something you pay for it, if you don't want it you don't pay (and you don't get the stuff). Saying that musicians held a gun to people's heads and demanded money is about as ridiculous as saying every single store holds a gun to your head and demands money (because they won't give you their merchandise for free). I don't know what universe people live in where "they won't give me their stuff for free = they hold a gun to my head and demand money". It's a retarded analogy and it's meant to elicit sympathy for pirates (or, to continue the analogy, shoplifters).

They were at $90 five months ago. (Not sure why you're modded as "informative" when you're inaccurate.) https://coinbase.com/charts

I heard an interview with him, and it's worth pointing out that just because you have gene(s) that predispose you to something doesn't mean it's a random roll of the dice whether you get it or not. There's an interaction between genes and environment (it's not a simple "is it nature or nurture?"). In his case, the psychopathic tendencies only come out if you have a bad childhood. In other words, if two children have bad childhoods, the one with the bad genes will end up being truly bad, but the one with the good genes ends up without the psychopathic tendencies. But, if both children have good nurturing childhoods, your genes don't matter so much.

I always hated that quote because it presumes so much. From a backward-looking perspective (i.e. the winners), perhaps things did follow that progression. But, the reality of the situation tends to follow a progression more like:

(Step 1) They ignore you. (90% chance you fail after this step, 10% chance you progress to step 2)
(Step 2) They laugh at you. (90% chance you fail after this step, 10% chance you progress to step 3)
(Step 3) They fight you. (90% chance you fail after this step, 10% chance you progress to step 4)
(Step 4) You win. (Congruatulations, you're part of the 0.1%)

I'm sure there are plenty of "free energy" device creators who use that original quote to build-up their confidence that their device is going to revolutionize the world. (Not that I'm comparing solar to "free energy", I'm just pointing out the deficiencies of that quote.)