Wow. If you scroll through some of the tech/news sites out there you'll notice that since Megaupload went down, several other sites have suddenly blocked US users or limited their services to remove sharing functionality.

The comments on every one of those stories is 95% in favor of piracy and these websites. It doesn't surprise me at all, but I find it kinda funny that these kids today are just so god damn adamant that taking whatever they want for free should be their right and privilege as internet users, and anyone who tries to stop them is clearly wrong.

It's like the entire internet is made up of spoiled 10 year old kids.

This i09 article points out something that massively raises the stakes on this entire issue.   We're now entering an era where actual tangible objects can be digitized and reproduced.  With an internet userbase already somewhat inclined to think "if it's online, it's mine", what happens when 3-D scanning and printing become the norm?   

The i09 article puts a positive spin on the idea - no more annoying transporting of goods, just re-create them locally from data! - which is true.  That's the aspect of digital media that media companies like right now.   Media producers luv the iPad and iTunes  and the Kindle, etc - the upside of all of them is the ability to deliver their goods to consumers at the speed of light.
   
Nike would luv to sell you shoes the same way, just as much as we'd all love to buy them that way.  Want.  Click.  Shoes!

The downside once again is the potential for piracy.   

Welcome to the next level: 
Hey, that's a cool hat/shoe/Star Wars action figure, I wonder if anyone's scanned that yet... 
*Google*  Yep, of course they have.
*Download*
*Print*
Duude, check out the awesome Star Wars action figure that I just DIDN'T buy.  Lemme send you the file...

I'm suddenly realizing the media piracy issue is just the beginning of a very large wave.

And anyone who read the above and thought, "meh, almost nobody has 3d scanners and printers at home", well, I remember when that was true for computers...

I could actually see it being easier to create piracy-curbing methods that way. "Yeah, you could illegally download that version of the shoe. But you've gotta pay to get the shoe that's made out of this rare material! The Star Wars action figure that you purchase from us is 1% cortosis! Can't get that from the internet!"

Yeah, story copyright is pretty broad, covering structure and character as well as actual words. Sergio Leone also lost a suit over A Fistful of Dollars being a little too homage-y of Yojimbo.

What astonishes me is that Ben Hecht and Alfred Hitchcock didn't get story credit on Mission: Impossible II. When I first saw it, I thought it was brilliant to remake Notorious with action trappings, but apparently Robert Towne thinks that notorious women who fall for spies, get recruited by them to be double-agent lovers of criminal masterminds, question their sincerity yet feed them information at a horse track, and get poisoned but are saved by their spy handler lovers are stock characters.

Well, at least it sets a precedent for my teen sex comedy My Dinner with Andrea.

Well, it's one of those cases where it didn't help that they had tried to buy the rights to Dracula, failed, but made a movie based on it anyways. That just put a big target on their back.

In a similar vein, CBS dropped out of talks with the creators of the current Sherlock Holmes BBC show to do a remake, and have decided to do their own modern day version. Not that the idea was original with the current series (there's the movies set during WW II, and failed TV pilot where Holmes gets thawed out in modern NYC by the female decedent of Watson), but still...

Let's discuss.

http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8 … _ipod.html

Neil Gaiman's view's on piracy.

Granted, there is not a one to one translation between piracy of books and movies and this does not neatly apply to the big movie studios. But I've always thought this was a valid addition to the discussion about internet piracy.

Why I love this man...

I find it astonishing that, faced with a technology that literally eliminates scarcity of goods, our response is to try to re-create artificially the scarcity that existed in order to prop up old business models that are premised on that scarcity.
I have absolutely no understanding of how anyone can think that is reasonable.

I'm not sure those categories make sense. Many things that people need to live are currently sold by people who make a living selling them. Bakers might well argue that bread-machines threaten their livelihood since people can make their own copies of the bread that bakers make, thereby eroding the bakers' ability to make a living.

I don't find that argument particularly compelling. I totally understand that people don't want the industry they work in to be disrupted, but that's a fact of life. The public benefit of people being able to make bread themselves (at least potentially reducing scarcity of supply) far outweighs the potential negative of some bakers needing to find another way to make a living.

3d printers that can produce a wide range of goods on demand will be a huge benefit to society, just as the widespread distribution of digital goods is. Yes, they will also have some negative impact on some people who currently make their living doing something that is going through a period of economic disequilibrium. That's a shame, but it should not be allowed to hold back the massive societal good that the technology offers.

Last edited by TheGreg (2012-08-22 00:08:40)

I'm not sure why you would assume that capitalism can't function in an environment not premised on scarcity - there are plenty of economic models that allow it to work. Take bottled water in the US as an example - a business that adds enough value to the customer that they are able to sell a product that people can get for free. The producer simply has to add value for the customer, and figure out a way to get paid.

During any technologically led market disruption there are always powerful economic interests whose way of making a living is going away (whale oil sellers, buggy whip manufacturers, musicians etc) who make the argument that the rest of society owes them a living because technology is taking their traditional business model away and it is hard to adapt.

Someone will figure out how to make a living in the new environment, and build a new economic model on it.

Last edited by TheGreg (2012-08-22 02:02:54)