Subj : Re: GNU Public Licences Revisited (again)
To   : comp.programming
From : David Golden
Date : Fri Sep 23 2005 07:36 pm

Chris Sonnack wrote:

> I was just 
> reading about how Hollywood figures it loses billions of $$ in lost
> sales to pirates).

Ha. Figures often figured by simply multiplying some asking price of
money per copy by an estimated number of pirated copies acquired by
people. Rather invalid, as those people  who have acquired pirated
copies might not have been even remotely willing to exchange the
hollywood asking price amount of money for a copy, but have a much
lower bid price they would be willing to bid for a copy, particularly
for a copy they wouldn't in turn be allowed copy and share as they saw
fit.

You can't use inflated "loss" figures like that to justify the existence
of a  monopoly right to prevent the "loss", as it presupposes Hollywood
has the monopoly right to be the sole supplier of copies simultaneously
with assuming everyone who wants a copy would be willing to pay a
supplier of copies the hollywood asking price.

Even if you DO grant the validity of the monopoly, the amount hollywood
has "lost" by other suppliers of copies violating it's "right" to be
sole supplier of copies is at most the sum of the bid prices of people
who instead acquired copies at or below their bid prices from
the other "pirate" suppliers.

The existence of SOME people who value a copy of the information highly
enough to have bid prices >= the asking price of Hollywood to get it is
no reason to believe ALL people are willing to pay the asking price, or
that a copy of the information is "worth" the asking price - this is
one of the major fallacies of people who go around talking about "the"
value of something.

.