+O'Reilly & +Tim O'Reilly — thanks!
"The people who are pirating are most likely the people who would never give you a nickel to begin with."
YES.
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Tim O'Reilly: Why I'm fighting SOPA
The proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has drawn the ire of many tech industry leaders for its potential to squash innovation. GigaOM talked to O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly about why SOPA i…
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Great Read! I have talked to my a
Officials and they say they are against SOPA . I think I need to call them again.
It would be a stronger argument against SOPA, if folks recognized that copyright material is getting ripped off in a big way and try to solve that problem. Just because Tim O'Reilly is okay with people ripping off his books doesn't mean he is right, I think there are a lot of writers that would disagree with him.
I've seen people physically photocopy books. Just because he is savvy enough to admit it happens doesn't mean he is okay with it.
I read the article and he seemed to be saying he is okay with people ripping off his stuff because they wouldn't pay anyway, so all the power to him. Maybe I missed something, I will go read it again. But my bigger point was that lots of creators are getting ripped off, and SOPA is meant to do something about it, and when I hear people argue against it they don't have any solutions to the problem.
Thanks for the link, that was a great read!
I think this quote (From Tim Riley) is key:
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But the vast majority of customers are willing to pay if the product is widely available and the price is fair. If you have a relationship with your customers, and they know you’re doing the right thing, they will support you.
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Online content services like Netflix (Movies/TV), iTunes (music), Steam (video games), Amazon's Prime Service (Movies/TV/Books) have shown that offering content conveniently, at a fair price, is already a great way to profit while slowing online piracy.
I don't think that +Tim O'Reilly is saying "I am cool with being pirated" I think he is saying that piracy is not a major impact on him. Much like I would say that accidentally dropping spare change down sewer grates is not a major impact on me. But were I to react in the same way SOPA does, it would be like covering all of the sewer grates so that my coins could never fall down them without caring that they would also no longer serve their purpose as drainage.
Excellent analogy +Steve N Bradford .
SOPA is not the answer. But the media companies have yet to completely wake up to make pricing and availability match consumer demand. Yes, there will always be a segment that never gives you a dime. But I think there is a segment in the middle who wants to give you a dime, but can't because you're asking for a dollar.
Take comic books for example. Marvel ad DC charge almost exactly what you would pay for a comic book on the newsstand, to get it digitally through their app. Marvel's comics are not available digitally on day of release – DC's are. But $3.99 is still too much for a digital version of a comic book – because the person who wants to buy it digitally wants to READ IT and probably file it away and will most likely not go back to it. The person who buys the physical copy does so in the hope that it will be worth something in the future. If digital comics were 99 cents or $1.29 like songs on iTunes – I truly believe that a LOT more people would buy them because price comes down to perceived value. At $3.99 each, I might be willing to buy 2 or 3 comics a month. At 99 cents I'll happily buy 10-15. I'm waiting for that to happen (not bloody likely).
SO let me add – I see a significant portion of people in that middle who would rather pirate comic books because price hasn't met their expectations yet. I think this is true for every segment of the media consuming public.
I like your comic book example +Rob Usdin . Even for hard copy, $2.99/issue for an average of 20 pages of content (down from 22 just a year or two ago) is outrageous. Charging that same price for a digital copy is grotesque and rather shortsighted.
I
thinkknow when you are a small publisher or indie author etc. pirating hurts more. But again, people who steal the stuff weren't going to pay for it anyway, but the are getting the 'benefit' (entertainment, education, etc.) from the product. I am absolutely sure that SOPA is the wrong way to go about this though.+Lynette Young I agree there are some alarming issues with SOPA but I think some kind of bill is going to get passed. Maybe if they took out the part about shutting down websites, there should be some process of notification, then dispute and finally a chance to take the material down in a timely manner. Once again, leave politicians to try to make intelligent solutions, to complex problems, and that usually isn't what you get.