[PvK]

Originally posted by Loser:
I'm not sure I have a nice rational argument with which to confront your ideas, PvK, but they sound far to socialist to me. Establishing this central agency... well... sometimes such things are necessary, but it's to be avoided as much as possible.

Well the issue of how well an idea or system is carried out is extremely important. Socialism in the Soviet Union was largely a new flavor of abuse. Socialism in Sweden seems to work pretty well. I still don't think I'd label myself a "socialist" (particularly in company that seems to stigmatize the term). Megacorporate capitalism however is getting worse and worse at its own system, taking over governmental and legal powers, dominating media with crud, and soon, dominating computers with "secure" hardware and software which will get everyone to pay them constantly for the right to continue to use corporate intellectual property.

The idea I've proposed could be implemented as a private corporate business model too, but it's a bit less efficient, because you can't completely avoid the copy problem and the media base is less widespread.

For example, MegaMedia Corp can announce a subscription for full access to all the media it "owns", for a yearly fee of only say, $20. If they can control access and make it cheap and convenient to distribute to Subscribers, then probably practically everyone interested will Subscribe.

That's better than the current system, because people get much more content for less, and they don't have to worry about purchasing each title. Copying may be controlled simply by the low price - if it's so cheap and easy to get everything legitimately, then would-be "thieves" won't bother, or will be controlled by peer pressure. "You stole it? You didn't just Subscribe? It's only $20 and I did it - what a lamer!"

The thing is, corporations by their current nature, want to maximize profit, and don't care about society's benefit unless it helps their bottom line, and so they'll probably figure they should shoot for a higher cost, pushing the line where people will want to copy it.

Within the capitalist model, it gets back to the point others have made, that piracy is essentially competition for corporations. Essentially, corporations want to squeeze as much as they can out of their products, even if it means violating the nature of the media, and buying the legal and political influence to impose their will. They may be paranoid and naive to some degree here - they might actually make more money if they just lowered their prices and made simple network distribution.

However, I still prefer the promise of a non-corporate system (executed by conscientious Swedes, of course ) with a charter not to maximize its own profits, but to support the creation of the best media and make it available to everyone.

For one thing, even if the corporate model changes so that they offer all their media for a cheap flat price, they're still going to only give as little as they can to the people who actually make the media.

PvK