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If a friend had just bought a new car and asked if you'd like them to burn you a copy, what would you say?
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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"Yes please, and can you make an extra in case this one doesn't work?"
or
"Okay, hand over the technology and nobody gets hurt. I'm serious people! This things loaded and I'm not afraid to use it!"
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Theoretically, replication of a car might actually more expensive than actually purchasing the car.
Unless the manipulation of atoms is possible to create the required "ingredients" from a base material/compound, you'd have to purchase all the necessary materials in the required amounts, which would be expensive in raw form.
Even if this machine does manufacture from a cheap base substance commonly available, your replication machine would have to be a factory-level car-specific one anyway, which would be very expensive to own. It would be like owning anything that is supposed to be used in an industrial environment. Expensive and difficult to acquire singly.
You'd then have to get your hands on the schematics of the car in question and program them into the machine, which even with significant computerized help would probably require extensive checking to make sure everything was in order.
The replication process, and the manipulation of atoms and matter would require a lot of energy/electricity, which would either require your own personal generator (expensive) or a lot of stolen electricity- the usage of which would no doubt alert the police the same way present day marijuana growing operations do.
Either way, we're talking about a massive operation- expensive and troublesome. By the time all this is done, and you have a car that's a copy of the one you've just bought, you might as well have bought one legitimately.
Unless, of course, the car is hideously overpriced for some reason- it is a limited edition car or something. In which case you can bet that serious anti-piracy measures would need to be circumvented- and probably not with an indelible marker.
Burning CDs and DVDs is cheaper and faster than actually purchasing the real thing from a store, even from an online store.
Once replication machines are invented (When, not if! ), it will change the world of manufacturing massively. Need a couple of new mugs? Buy a pattern off the internet and replicate them right now, in your kitchen. Hungry? download a recipe, or load an old favourite, and ta-daa!
Factories would become specialised to things too large or complicated for a domestic replicator to handle.
Patenting patterns and restricting certain patterns would become something everyone was very focused on. It wouldn't do to be able to press a 'bomb' or 'gun' button and have your very own weapons of mass distruction readily available in large quantities. Specialised machines would have to have a monolopoly on such things as weapons, money (assuming paper/metal money was still around) and ID and credit/debit cards.
Restrictions based on age would also be necessarily.
It would turn everyone into a designer. Forget paint-your-own pottery stores... now you can design your own completely, or from whichever level you prefer on upwards. If you're good at it, perhaps you can become a famous pattern designer.
Of course, as pointed out, it's the ultimate piracy device. So your fortune might not last that long.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I'd imagine that if technology had progressed to the point that we could copy cars, scarcity would have pretty much ceased to exist.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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So the laws of supply and demand don't apply to the music industry?
Or rather, the supply is narrowed down simply to the creation and recording of the music, making producers utterly irrelevant?
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I thought we were talking about a magic car burning device? Something obtained from the devil in trade for a soul? Is this not the case?
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
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quote:I'd imagine that if technology had progressed to the point that we could copy cars, scarcity would have pretty much ceased to exist.
Well, maybe. But not necessarily. It could be a way of thwarting scarcity; everything is recyclable and no materials are wasted in production.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I think the analogy here is, magical anything replicator vs. digital music and movie replication.
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I'll never comprehend how copying something can be stealing. As long as I don't claim to have created it myself (plagiarism), or sell it.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: I'll never comprehend how copying something can be stealing. As long as I don't claim to have created it myself (plagiarism), or sell it.
It isn't stealing. When you steal something, you also deprive someone else of its use. That doesn't make copying morally ok or legal, but it is distinct from stealing something.
Posts: 2437 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Why is it ok to copy Back to the Future with my VCR when it comes on tv (as long as I don't distribute it), but its not ok to copy it from my Netflix rentals (again not distributing it)?
Why is it ok to make a a few dollars selling a book to a used bookstore, but its not ok to download an ebook through piratebay.org?
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Why is it ok to copy Back to the Future with my VCR when it comes on tv (as long as I don't distribute it), but its not ok to copy it from my Netflix rentals (again not distributing it)?
In the first case you're making a low quality copy from a low quality source. In the second, you're making a perfect copy from a high quality source.
quote:Originally posted by Stephan: Why is it ok to make a a few dollars selling a book to a used bookstore, but its not ok to download an ebook through piratebay.org? [/QB]
In the first case, you already own the book, and lose use of it when you sell it. In the second, you don't already own the book.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Stephan: I'll never comprehend how copying something can be stealing. As long as I don't claim to have created it myself (plagiarism), or sell it.
It isn't stealing. When you steal something, you also deprive someone else of its use. That doesn't make copying morally ok or legal, but it is distinct from stealing something.
Those anti-piracy commercials irritate me to no end when they compare it to stealing. Copyright infringiment is different then stealing. I'm not saying it's morally ok, but it is a distinct act.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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Are you kidding? Those commercials show cool kids ripping movies down in seconds, all to a catchy baseline beat! I was never a pirate before, but after I saw those commercials I was torrenting like mad!
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Thing is, it's very difficult to get the message across when you're being accurate.
"Copyright infringement is bad!"
"OK. I'm just copying this for my friend..."
"That's copyright infringement! Bad!"
"But I'm not publishing it."
As opposed to "Stealing is bad!" which is much easier to explain and use in a sound bite. And, to the recording industry, the effect is the same as if someone stole their product, i.e. someone is enjoying their wares but no new money has come in.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Are you kidding? Those commercials show cool kids ripping movies down in seconds, all to a catchy baseline beat! I was never a pirate before, but after I saw those commercials I was torrenting like mad!
There is also nothing like watching that commercial on a copied dvd.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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"to the recording industry, the effect is the same as if someone stole their product"
Which might be an effective argument if the recording industry wasn't in the business of stealing intellectual properties from the artists who created them. "I stole it fair and square" ain't a moral high ground.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: Are you kidding? Those commercials show cool kids ripping movies down in seconds, all to a catchy baseline beat! I was never a pirate before, but after I saw those commercials I was torrenting like mad!
There is also nothing like watching that commercial on a copied dvd.
Really? How about the FBI warning at the beginning of a ripped movie?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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The FBI warning is concerning felony criminal copyright infringement. If I understand it correctly, copying a relatively small number of DVDs for personal use would be civil copyright violation and the FBI warning of 5 years in prison/$250,000 fine would not apply.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Chris Bridges: And, to the recording industry, the effect is the same as if someone stole their product, i.e. someone is enjoying their wares but no new money has come in.
So? If someone gives me a ride in their car, or lets me borrow it, I'm deriving benefit from the car without the car company getting anything from it.
Or to use a movie analogy, if I go to a friend's house and watch a DVD, there's really no difference between that and my friend making me a copy. Just convenience. But convenience wasn't part of the deal when the DVD was sold. And no matter how much the recording industry wants to try, it never will be.
Once they sell it, they've sold it. It's not theirs any more. So long as I don't commit fraud by trying to pass it off as my creation, what I do with it is really none of their business. They can use their influence on the government to pass laws declaring not-theft to be theft, but it's bad law.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:So? If someone gives me a ride in their car, or lets me borrow it, I'm deriving benefit from the car without the car company getting anything from it.
Actually, you aren't; you are putting wear and tear on the car, eventually leading to a new one being required. It's a small effect, certainly, but in fact you are using up some tiny portion of the car's effective lifetime, which the owner originally paid for. That's not true when you watch a copied DVD.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Once they sell it, they've sold it. It's not theirs any more. So long as I don't commit fraud by trying to pass it off as my creation, what I do with it is really none of their business. They can use their influence on the government to pass laws declaring not-theft to be theft, but it's bad law.
I'm not defending the RIAA, their heavyhanded approach to this has made the matter worse. But the laws on what can be done with the music and movies you buy have been pretty clear for some time. It's just that the recent ease of making unlimited amounts of perfect copies that's brought on the problem. When you had to copy music to a cassette, one at a time, it wasn't worth coming after you and the friend that borrowed it very well might have been inspired to go buy a better copy. Good, free PR. Now, when he gets your CD, he has little need to buy anything. Why should he? If he likes the music, he can just go torrent the rest of the artist's work.
It is currently possible to download free copies of just about everything OSC ever wrote. It is illegal to do so, because that would be infringing on his copyright and the rights of his publisher. It can be (and has been) argued that widespread dissemination of his work will lead to more readers, the way library books and borrowed copies do, but one would be foolish to claim that he has not lost sales because of people who just download his works instead of buying them. And as more people read e-books on different devices, those sales may drop even more.
I do not like the current system. I do not think it can last. But a system needs to be established that provides recompense to the artist or it will not last. Just bitching about the RIAA isn't enough.
Posts: 7790 | Registered: Aug 2000
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quote:So? If someone gives me a ride in their car, or lets me borrow it, I'm deriving benefit from the car without the car company getting anything from it.
Actually, you aren't; you are putting wear and tear on the car, eventually leading to a new one being required. It's a small effect, certainly, but in fact you are using up some tiny portion of the car's effective lifetime, which the owner originally paid for. That's not true when you watch a copied DVD.
It doesn't work. If I buy a car and then give my daughter a ride, no one suggests that's a problem. If I buy a car and then give your daughter a ride, it is?
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Lisa, are you talking about selling the original recorded product or making a copy? I can't tell from your post.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: It doesn't work. If I buy a car and then give my daughter a ride, no one suggests that's a problem. If I buy a car and then give your daughter a ride, it is?
No, it's not. You are still using up the car faster, and therefore giving extra money to the manufacturer. That's not true if you copy a DVD. Possibly you did not read my post very carefully; I do not see how you this distinction between family members and others is relevant to the point I made in it.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Oooooh.... I want a copy of your friend's car! Can you copy the extended warranty while you're at it? Does it come with a driver also?
Posts: 65 | Registered: Oct 2006
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Tangent. The book “Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Will See in the New Yorker” offers a panel with two little league coaches facing their players; one wears a PIRATES jersey and the other wears a CARJACKERS jersey.
Posts: 61 | Registered: Aug 2003
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), it will change the world of manufacturing massively. Need a couple of new mugs? Buy a pattern off the internet and replicate them right now, in your kitchen. Hungry? download a recipe, or load an old favourite, and ta-daa!
