TFA makes the flawed assumption that the gamer's individual interests align with the industry's. The industry has an interest in making you buy as many copies as they can and they have an interest in obsolescence.

I assume you've never found a pre-1982 penny.

5% > nothing

You're not reading very closely.The author of your NYTimes article assumes that a publisher backed out-- saying "apparently the publisher changed its mind." The author offers no support for this claim whatsoever and is clearly speculating.

The boingboing link clearly states that the copyright holder (the Orwell estate) and the company that published the ebook ("A publisher specializing in bringing public domain books into print") are different entities. The publisher did not have the right to publish the book because it is not in the public domain and it did not seek the rights from the Orwell estate.

Part of what made the Boston Tea Party as powerful as it was is the destruction of property-- the valuable tea. The crux of the RIAA's problems is that mp3s have no inherent value. Sure, perhaps nothing has inherent value, but at least with tea there is the issue of a limit on supply. There is a replacement cost. Were such a thing possible, we could dump all of the mp3s we wanted into the ocean and the RIAA wouldn't bat an eye because those mp3s are limitlessly reproduceable at, functionally, zero cost.

Digitization and the move away from physical media, while often increasing the availability of niche products, has largely been a systematic approach to disempowering the consumer. Your mp3 has no resale value. You cannot always legally transfer your license to another person, even for free. You cannot undertake fair use because to do so would be to violate the DMCA. Scarcity [of the mp3 itself], storage, and manufacturing costs [not music/movie production costs] no longer contribute to pricing and the medium itself no longer retains any value.
Boycotts become less effective (though, perhaps slightly) because retailers don't have to worry about storage costs as inventory piles up or ordering more or less mp3s. The cost of storing a given mp3 is fixed and minimal, no matter how many people purchase it. The retailer doesn't incur more costs until it must use bandwidth to provide it to you.

I realize that this response ignores the spirit of your allusion to the Boston Tea Party as a spirited and dramatic protest, but I feel like the failings of the comparison are worth exploring because they illuminate some of the issues at play.

No, that's an o'moran. Seriously... it was a reference to this because of BrainstormOC's use of "YOU'RE" in capital letters. Oh well.

moran

On a related note, it appears that NBC Universal has acquired slashdot and *giggles uncontrollably before the punchline* installed Jimmy Fallon as head writer/editor. I mean... seriously, folks...

The problem with this line of argument is that you already pay sales tax when you purchase a license to use software (delivered on physical media) and the copyright system has continued to function, in its own quixotic way.

That aside, I have no qualms with your argument that there should be a real need for an increase in taxation.

Not if he can find someone willing to buy it for more than $3.00 or if he melts that 1982 penny down to sell the copper.

If you look at this from the point of view of NY State, however, the real question is more likely to be "why are the sales of these downloads not taxed like the sales of everything else?" or "why are we forgoing this revenue stream that is entirely consistent with our philosophy of taxation simply because our outdated tax codes do not account for new media?" From that perspective, one could even argue that the fact that such downloads have gone so long without being taxed is a product of mismanagement.

As for the distinction between "use tax" and "sales tax," I see what you're saying: what you call it has no real effect on your wallet. But the difference does have a practical implication insofar as changes regarding sales taxes are about changing your legal obligations (creating a new tax on iTunes downloads) but, at this point, changes regarding use taxes are more likely to be about enforcing your pre-existing obligations (forcing Amazon to collect NY taxes because they darn well know you're not likely to actually pay them even though you're already legally obligated to). Implicit in this is the fact that for a state to charge use tax, the item in question must first be subject to sales tax.

Certainly, this particular distinction will make the proposal no more desirable to you. In fact, gleaning what one might about your economic politics from the posts above, the distinction would probably make the change LESS desirable: because this is about sales tax, it is about changing your legal responsibilities rather than simply holding you to those that already exist.

I don't understand how your "question" does anything other than restate exactly what I said. Digital downloads of movies and music are NOT taxable in the state of NY. So, if a NY company with servers in NY sells an mp3 to a customer in NY, that customer does NOT pay taxes. So, it does not matter whether iTunes is located in NY or in CA, NY cannot collect taxes. What NY has done with Amazon is to force Amazon to collect the use tax that NY residents have not been properly reporting/paying. (Use tax is what you pay your state for buying something from another state without paying taxes on it for the purpose of using it within your state. It is generally equal to what the sales tax would have been if you had purchased the item in your state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_tax) In the case of the iTunes example from the article, NY is trying to change the reach of the sales tax to keep up with modern media. Will they collect a use tax on interstate sales of these media if they create this sales tax? Certainly, but that doesn't mean that the issues aren't distinct.

That's absurdly misrepresenting the law. States can't tax something simply FOR crossing state lines. That doesn't mean that they can't tax the sales of things produced in other places. If this were the case, nothing would ever be taxed as everything you use was made in China and, more likely than not, was not imported directly to your state.

If people would RTFA, they would see that this is NOT the same as what has been going on regarding Amazon and other e-tailers to collect NY state tax. That tax is "use tax" that you as a private citizen are required to pay regardless of whether the retailer collects it. This article is about charging for digital downloads. It is about the medium. With exceptions, current tax codes only require the payment of tax for tangible goods. iTunes downloads fall outside the scope of the definition of "tangible goods." See: http://www.tax.state.ny.us/pdf/publications/multi/pub20_1007.pdf

This may be true, but my comment was about the validity of the analogy to information published in a traditional phone book, the . The fact that reverse directories existed does not invalidate that argument on its face. The lawyer COULD have and perhaps SHOULD have analogized to a reverse phone directory rather than a "phone book." Granted, this has little to do with the legal issues here, but it IS a problem with the analogy, even if my comment did get modded down.