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How Copyright Infringement both Helped and Nearly Killed Metallica

As we probably all know by now, Metallica was one of the first bands to come out against file sharing. They nearly killed off their fan base by attacking fans and suing Napster.

What’s interesting about this is that Metallica’s entire career was built on copyright infringement. Yes, you heard me right. Metallica became a huge success because their fans infringed their copyrights.

Back in the early 80s radio and MTV did not play Metallica’s brand of metal. This was way before the internet. Nowadays if you have a band you can give it exposure to the world by setting up a facebook/myspace page. But back then alt metal careers were built on building up fan bases one person at a time.

Despite the lack of an internet, there was a huge subculture of metal fans throughout the world. Each city had its own “scene” with its own metal bands. Each scene had its own fanzines. These were photocopied fan-made magazines talking about metal (and punk) music.

You’d do shows. That’d earn you some money to record a demo. You’d start selling those cassettes at your shows. Someone from a local fanzine would write a story about your band. It’d include your address so you’d sell more demos.

You’d continue playing live shows expanding out to other cities. You’d sell more demos and get written up in more fanzines. Thus, you’d sell more demos.

Eventually some of the more commercial metal magazines might do a story about your scene and feature you. That’d allow you to sell more demos and get exposure to the independent labels.

But the demos you’d sell would only be a drop in the bucket compared to what would be going on with your fans. Your fans would be sharing cassette tapes like crazy. Every time someone found a new band they liked, they’d copy it for their friends. Their friends would copy it for their friends. And so on and so on. If you were hot, for every demo you sold, you could guarantee that at least 100 people had a copy. If you sold 1000 demos, you’d have 100,000 fans.

To show how this worked, Metallica’s first independent album, Kill ‘Em All, reached 120 on the US Billboard chart, without any radio, television, mainstream press, or any videos. Heck, it reached number 12 in Finland and 28 in Sweden.

Kill ‘Em All did so incredibly well because fans had been sharing Metallica’s demo tapes since 1981. Before even being signed to an independent label, Metallica were huge in the alt metal movement. All because their fans shared their music.

Which makes Metallica’s attack on Napster users so incredibly ironic.

Metallica used sharing to build themselves up. But once they got to the top, they suddenly became extremely greedy.

And the weird part is that Metallica makes almost all of their profit from touring. Money from album/CD sales are just chump change. But for that relatively nominal amount of money, they still decided to piss on their fans.

Update – April 25, 2012: I found a nice article about how metal bands used tape trading back in the 80s to build names for themselves.

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The Copyright Industry Does Not and Cannot Compete in a Free Market

I’ve been meaning to write up a post about how the copyright industry lacks the ability to compete in a free and open market. What finally got me off my butt and write this post is the most amazing real-world example I could ever imagine.

U2′s manager Paul McGuinness asked Apple boss Steve Jobs to create a business model for the music industry:

Steve is the guy who has always magically known what the consumer wants before the consumer even knows it. I wish he would put that great mind and that great corporation of his to work devising a model that finally allows artists and creators to get properly rewarded for their work. Maybe he’s working on it right now. I hope so.

Paul McGuinness has been in the music industry nearly his entire life. But he cannot figure out a way to make money from it? Heck, it’s even worse than that. According to McGuinness, no one in the music industry knows how to make money running a business. Does that make any sense at all?

Unfortunately, it makes perfect sense.

Most people think that copyright is a property right. It is not.

Copyright is a government granted monopoly. The government grants monopolies over music, movies, photographs, etc., and then middlemen make money off of them. That’s how Paul McGuinness makes his money. Acting as a middleman between U2 and its fans.

Every time the copyright industry is faced with competition, they sue. If they cannot sue, they have laws passed so they can sue. If they cannot have federal laws passed to suit their needs, they have state laws passed instead. If they can’t get a government to pass the laws they want, they have treaties enacted which force all governments to pass the laws they want.

What I described above has happened countless times in the history of copyright. For a great example we have to travel back into time to when the player piano was first introduced. Back then the monopoly granted by copyright did not cover performances, only published sheet music.

So anyone could play any song he or she wanted without paying a dime. The music industry made money selling sheet music to musicians.

The player piano eliminated both paying for published sheet music and eliminated the musician who would have bought the sheet music.

So, as I said, the music industry of the 1800s sued. They lost because, as I said, copyright did not cover performances.

So the music industry went to Congress and had copyright laws changed to cover performances. So when the music industry sued again, they won. Of course they won. They always win.

I have to stress, the player piano was perfectly legal. The music industry could have competed with it just like restaurants compete with each other all the time. They could have advertised the fact that music played by real musicians constitutes a better product. That full bands are better than a mere piano. Etc.

However, at no point does the copyright industry ever simply roll up its sleeves to compete in a free market. Their “solution” to legal competition was and is to make the competition illegal. That’s why the music and movie industries have no problem suing their customers. The copyright industry doesn’t really have customers. They have tolls which we, by law, are required to pay under certain circumstances. When competition is created via new technology, they have new tolls added to the new technology. That’s a completely different mindset from someone running a business such as a restaurant.

So when I hear about someone who lived off the teet of copyright for his entire life, but who’s unable to come up with a business model that works in a free market, I’m not surprised at all. People like Paul McGuinness are not businessmen. They’re middlemen who live off what the government grants them. They never create. They never innovate. They merely take their cut. When their cut gets too small, they blame everyone but themselves. They even go as far as to sue their own customers or demand to have them kicked off the internet. As if that would magically make them start paying the old tolls again. People like McGuinness think this way because they don’t understand how businesses or markets work. And because they know of no other way.

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The lack of logic for paywalls…

Marion Maneker over at the Big Money website wrote a piece entitled "The Weird Logic of Paywall Challengers."  He attempts to show that the arguments used by those against paywalls are illogical.  He also attempts to show that paywalls are not only a good idea but a necessity for news websites.

First, a little background.  Some internet news sites are making people pay to view content.  That's called a paywall.  You can't view the content without paying.  So far the attempts to impliment paywalls have been complete failures.  For example, when Newsday set up a paywall, only 35 people paid.  After the Times instituted a paywall, its readership dropped by 2/3rds.  And because those articles are not being indexed by Google (or Bing or Yahoo) they're essentially invisible to people on the web.

So what's Maneker arguments in favor of paywalls?  What errors in logic have those against paywalls made?  Let's go through his points.

His first point is that even if ad revenues are back, news outlets should diversify by charging anyway.  He doesn't seem to get this, but as I explained above, paywalls kill off advertising by driving viewers and readers away.  So Maneker's argument that news outlets should diversify by relying on both advertising and paywalls fails as it is self contradictory. 

His second point is that news outlets charging "for content has always been part of its long-term strategy."  He's absolutely right that newspapers have tended to charge for content.  However, that was never done for profit. Profits always came from advertising, classifieds, and obituaries. 

There were two reasons newspapers did charge.  The first was to cover the costs of publishing.  However, those costs no longer exist in the digital realm. 

The second reason newspapers charged was to show advertisers how many actual readers they had.  If a newspaper publisher simply gave away its papers it could claim that millions of people are reading when in fact no one is reading.  People paying for newspapers is a pretty good indication to advertisers that people are in fact reading.  But in the digital realm news outlets do not need paying customers to tell advertisers how many unique people are reading.  All that information can be tracked automatically in real time.  Heck, in the digital realm news outlets can give specific information about page views and what ads are working and what ads are not.

His third point is that "central to any media strategy should be the idea of charging for some content."  Has he never listened to broadcast radio?  Has he never watched broadcast TV?  Has he never used Google, Facebook, or Twitter?  And despite being contradicted by legitimate business models, his third argument is circular.  He's essentially arguing that news outlets should charge for content because they should charge for content.  It only concludes it's premise without telling us why.

Along with his third point he pulls the following assertion out of his ass, "Digital distribution should make content much cheaper—but it shouldn't make it free."  Why shouldn't it be free?  He never explains.

Hundreds of years ago the most efficient means to distribute news was to print it on paper and deliver it locally.  Times changed.  Radio came along and made delivering news in real time more efficient.  But it still lacked the newspaper's depth.  TV news had the same problem.  But the internet does not.  It has the efficiency, the immediacy, and the depth.  Because the distribution costs are essentially zero, economically speaking, there is no reason why the cost of the content should not also be free.

If Maneker's piece is any indication, the pro-paywallers' dream of making us pay for news is a lost cause.

Update – Jul 29th 2010: This has been cross posted over at TechDirt.com. If you like this post, check out Tech Dirt for similar rants.

Update – Sept. 7, 2010:

It appears the Sunday Times’ experiment with paywalls is an abysmal failure. Everything that I said would go wrong went wrong.

First, there was a 90% drop in readership. Second, the stories were not indexed by search engines, so they’re invisible on the net. Third, because no one is reading them, advertisers are not advertising on the site.

So no one is paying, no one is reading, and no one is advertising. Yep, that’s a failure.

I won’t be holding my breath for Marion Maneker to admit he was wrong.

Update – Dec. 7, 2010:

It appears that Newsday’s infamous paywall is coming down, for a month. Why a month? Mmmm….

Newsday’s ad revenues were way down after the paywall went up. But do they really think they’re going to get a ton of traffic in only a month? It seems unlikely.

Maybe this is just a way to save face. They’re saying they’re doing it for a month, but really they’re simply getting rid of it.

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Out with the old…

I’ve written previously about the impending death of the independent book store.  It appears that publishers themselves are facing a crises.  Writers are bypassing traditional publishers and are making ebook deals directly with Amazon.  They’re able to do this because their original agreements with the publishers did not specify ebook distribution rights.  So under the law, such rights remain with the authors.  

I never understood why major music artists aren’t doing this.  Why do they let the labels take huge cuts from their work when they can sell their music directly through Amazon and iTunes and keep the profits for themselves?  

I wrote about John Mellencamp in the past.  He’d be a perfect candidate to break free from the labels, which he’s bitched about his entire life, and sell directly to his fans.  But yet he’s complaining that the label model is dying.  Artists like him are so locked into the label mindset that they don’t realise they’re trapped.  It’s like a rockstar version of the Stockholm Syndrome.

The only old artist who seems to get it is Mick Jagger.  He recently pointed out that the whole model of selling music to fans via plastic discs only lasted about 25 years.  He recognizes that it was a blip, a mere anomaly, and that artists should probably give up on trying to get it back and earn their money the old fashion way.  Performing.

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War of the Pocahontases

People have been talking about how James Cameron’s movie Avatar ripped off films such as Pocahontas and Ferngully. Such people have a complete misunderstanding of how the creative process works. There are no completely original works in mainstream media. Think of one completely original and successful film, song, or TV show. You can’t. It doesn’t exist.

You can even make the argument a priori. If any music was completely original, it could not use any music theory either melodically or rhythmically. E.g., if it used a chord structure, it would use notes and chords which have already been done before. Thus, it wouldn’t be completely original.

A completely original piece of music would be both atonal and arrhythmic. In other words, it would not actually be music at all.

A similar complaint of “theft” was alleged against the film Star Wars. People have claimed that it was merely a ripoff of ancient myths, of Flash Gordon, of the Japanese story The Hidden Fortress, and a retread of a western set in space.

How many claims have to be made that George Lucas ripped off diverse and utterly unrelated sources before it becomes clear that it’s the underlying idea of the stories which is common and very popular.

In the US copyright is not supposed to protect mere ideas, but a particular expression of an idea. This can be seen in the television shows The Fugitive, Renegade, Kung Fu, The Hulk, and The Pretender. They’re all based on the exact same idea. An innocent but persecuted man who goes from town to town helping people while he attempts to clear his name. (Actually, I think Caine did murder someone, but it was justified somehow. Anyway…) So the expression of the The Fugitive was protected by copyright, but the underlying idea was free to be expressed differently by others.

In the same vein, Cameron did a war movie where one of the bad guys switches sides to help the good guys. That’s not an original idea. It’s been done before. However, to claim it was “ripped off” is simply asinine.

Lucas did a war movie where the hero had to rescue the princess and stop the bad guy. That’s not an original idea. It’s been done before. Once again, to claim it was “ripped off” is simply asinine.

In thinking about this I noticed how the movies Independence Day and Avatar follow a similar theme. They both involve invasions from other planets. They both attempt a peaceful solution to the invasion. We and the Na’vi both learn that the invaders are amoral consumers of resources who have destroyed every other planet they’ve/we’ve come into contact with. We and the Na’vi contact other countries/tribes to get them on board for the coming battles. Right before the final battles President Whitmore and Jake Sully give over-the-top impassioned speeches about how the invaders must be defeated to save their planets from eradication. And despite overwhelming odds, we and the Na’vi defeat the invaders using a combination of the invader’s technology with our/their own.

So if James Cameron ripped off the movies Independence Day and Pocahontas, does that also mean the creators of Independence Day ripped off Pocahontas? Heck, considering the claim that Independence Day was merely a ripoff of the movie/book The War of the Worlds, why didn’t anyone ever claim that H. G. Wells ripped off the story of Pocahontas’ life to write it?

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The Copyright Industry and the Three Stooges

Right now the copyright industry, music, books, movies, etc., are cruising along in sinking ships. Some ships are sinking faster than others. The movie industry has record ticket sales this year while the music industry is shadow of its former self.

The “problem” of the internet as a means to cheaply distribute copyrighted material has been around since the early 90s. It’s been about two decades later and still very little action has been taken.

In watching the inaction take place I can’t help but think of the Three Stooges. Remember the Three Stooges bit where they are in a sinking row boat? They get the idea to drill another hole to let the water drain out. It was pretty funny. But it’s not that funny when it’s taken seriously and is used as a part of a business plan.

Music Industry’s Sinking Ship:

The music industry finally allowed Apple to open its iTunes music service in April 28, 2003. Windows users were not allowed in the store until October of 2003. iTunes has been very successful. But it was too late to stop piracy. Much too late.

People were sharing music online since the mid 90s. Back then they used IRC and Usenet. Those services were hard to use and were avoided by most people because of the difficulty.

The original Napster solved the difficulty problem when it was released in 1999. Suddenly, it was easy for everyone to share music.

In the four years between Napster and iTunes, people were used to downloading DRM free music for no money. If iTunes had been released in 1998, before the floodgates of Napster had opened, the music industry would be in a much different situation right now. (But let’s not forget that iTunes really only works with iPods. Those millions of people who use non-Apple MP3 players could not take advantage of iTunes and were forced to use P2P services because there were no legitimate services available to meet their needs.)

But I don’t blame Napster. I blame the music industry’s refusal to take action in providing a service people were willing to use.

Book Publisher’s Sinking Ship:

A similar thing is happening with eBooks. There are publishers and authors who are refusing to release eBooks out of fear of piracy. Think about that for a second. They refuse to give customers a legitimate eBook option because they’re afraid someone else might choose to download it from a widely available and free illegitimate source.

People were sharing music for a decade prior to iTunes opening. The delay in releasing legitimate music did not delay or impede pirated music. It caused and facilitated pirated music. When consumers were faced with no legitimate option, they used Napster.

When a Kindle owner looks for his favorite book in eBook form and is unable to find it on Amazon, where is he or she going to look? The Pirate Bay? Most likely, or somewhere else.

How does not providing a legitimate eBook for customers stop piracy? How could anyone think something so completely ludicrous. I actually think this refusal to sell legitimate eBooks is more asinine than drilling a second hole in a sinking boat.

Movie Industry’s Sinking Ship:

A similar problem is happening with the movie industry. DVD sales are sinking and blu-ray sales are not taking off. It’s partially the fault of the economy, but it’s also a simple fact that the vast majority of people have no need to own a copy of a movie.

Sure you might be a huge fan of the Godfather and maybe you watch it every month. But who really needs to see Paul Blart: Mall Cop more than once? The vast majority of movies are at best, one time events. The vast majority of people who enjoy movies do not obsess over them to the point of watching and re-watching them. The entire business model of people buying hard copies of movies was nothing more than an anomaly.

You might remember an advertisement from several years ago, I think it was for a company called Quest, about a little motel offering every movie ever made. That service is technically possible. Who would not love a service where they could instantly rent any movie or any TV show ever made for a couple of bucks. A few bucks for high def.

But the movie industry is paralyzed. There’s the old DVD/Blu-ray division that is trying to prop up that dead model. There are theater owners worried about their business being marginalized. There’s actors, producers, music people, and the studios all fighting for their cut. And everyone is demanding too much of a cut.

While the movie industry spins its wheels, you can currently get nearly any TV show or movie via bittorrent in about an hour or two. Heck, you can get the entire series of any TV show you want in about 6 hours.

By the time the movie industry finally gets its act together and provides the service I described above at a fair price, will it be too late? The longer they wait, the lower the “fair” price will be. If this service had been introduced back in the early 00s when downloading a movie was unheard of, they probably could have charged a 10 buck rental rate for the privilege of getting it instantly without leaving your house. But now that people are used to getting movies they want without any DRM restrictions, they’d only be willing to pay less. My guess is that $5-6 for a HD rental and $3 for a SD rental.

But of course someone within the industry would complain that the price would cut into its DVD sales and would interfere with its broadcast licensing deals. And they’d be afraid of piracy if they put their movies online. And they’d be afraid of marginalizing some other profit area. So even if this system is ever opened, I highly doubt the prices charged will be considered reasonable.

Cause and Effect:

Of course the copyright industries will bitch about piracy. They’ll blame the immoral pirates and downloaders. They’ll claim we need new draconian laws to prop up their business models. They’ll eventually turn copyright laws in to our next drug war. Already people are being ordered to pay millions of dollars merely because they have 24 dollars worth of music on their computers. (For those not familiar with the Jammie Thomas case, there was no evidence presented at trial that she shared any music with anyone unauthorized to have it.)

But the problem was not caused by piracy. Piracy was caused by the copyright industries’ refusal to provide what customers wanted. In the 90s, music fans wanted to buy MP3s. The music industry did not let them. In the 2000s movie fans wants wanted portable movies, or to stream movies from their PCs to their TVs, or to watch movies on their laptops without discs, etc. But the movie industry refused to offer such services. As we speak book authors and publishers are forcing eBook fans to go to the Pirate Bay because the authors and publishers refuse to provide any legitimate option.

I’ll say it again, pirates did not cause piracy. The internet did not cause piracy. Piracy was and is caused by the lack of any legitimate, reasonably priced, and easy to use alternatives. It’s their fault, not ours. But we’ll probably end up paying for it. I only wish this comedy was a joke.

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Will the music labels bite the dust in 2013?

Way back in 1999 the music labels attempted to sneak in legislation which would have made all music mere works for hire. People who create copyrighted content for hire usually come from the literary realm. Think of those cheap and plentiful pulp fiction books or those romantic novels for lonely housewives. Publishers of those books hire out the writing under a general plot. To put it another way, the plot is already written, so all the writer has to do is fill in the blanks.

Most of the background music you hear on TV and in advertisements is work for hire. The producer orders a song with a funky uptempo bass line and the song writer regurgitates it.

But I find it hard to believe that Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music was somehow created at the direction of some drone at the label.

Anyway, the legislation did not pass because the musicians raised a huge stink about it and the labels backed down. People who create copyrighted content for hire do not enjoy all of the rights associated with copyright. But I still did not fully understand why the labels attempted what they did.

Now it’s all clear. Wired has a great write up about it. In a nutshell, the Copyright Act of 1976 gives song writers and musicians the chance to get their copyrights back. And the sand is running out. This will start happening in 2013.

Suddenly the labels won’t have their massive back catalog of music, which earns a lot of money not only in direct sales to consumers, but in licensing for movies and TV. So new music is not selling. They won’t have any successful old music to sell. The labels will be mere shells of their former selves.

And I just love how the labels are scheming to get around this law. Remember last week when a company called BlueBeat.com claimed copyrights to all of the Beatles music and started selling it online? BlueBeat.com claimed that had the copyrights to the music because it rerecorded the songs which gave them new copyrights. They were even allowed to register those new copyrights with the feds.

Of course everyone laughed at the idea that someone could obtain copyrights over the entire Beatles catalog merely by rerecording them.

However, the joke might be on the musicians, because that’s the label’s plan. The labels are claiming that the new digital remixes deserve new copyrights. So even if the Eagles gets the copyrights back on their original analog recordings, the labels will still hold the copyright to the new digital recording. The courts will be sorting this crap out for decades.

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Garth Brooks: Lock up 300 Million People so I can buy a new Mansion!

Garth Brooks is back. I never knew he went away. But apparently he’s out of retirement and back in the news.

He’s complaining that the government is not doing anything to crack down on file sharing, which is allegedly killing the music industry, even though it’s not. (See also here, and here, and here.)

To the government he complains,

You’ve ignored us, because there’s 50,000 of us and 300 million voters. You’ve ignored us.

Think about that. Brooks is admitting that the use of file sharing is widespread. He acknowledges that everyone is doing it. But yet he wants the government to crack down on every single person in the US so that he can earn a few million more a year.

That’s some fricken balls! I almost feel like I should give him some credit for being so completely self-centered. It’s one thing to complain, “My family is starving so I need government help to feed my kids.” It’s another thing to complain, “Why won’t the government help me so I can buy my fourth fricken mansion?!”

I should point out that it’s already against the law to use P2P to infringe copyrights. The punishment for such use goes way beyond any physical crime. If I go to Walmart, stick a gun in someone’s face, and steal a CD, the most I’ll have to pay monetarily is for the price of that one CD, about 20 bucks. However, if I download a CD worth of music, I’d have to pay millions of dollars.

But yet that draconian law is not enough for Garthy. He wants more! Does he want incarceration? For all 300 million of us? Apparently so. Apparently, his “lost” money, which has nothing to do with P2P, is worth more than the liberty of every citizen in the US.

But this isn’t the first time Brooks put his bank account above the rights of citizens. He also claims that selling used CDs is stealing. I’m not making this up. According to Brooks, the simple act of selling a used CD is a criminal act. Of course he’s wrong. But your right to sell your stuff is nothing compared to Brooks’ right to buy a mansion.

Of course the main reason he’s having trouble selling CDs is that his time in the spotlight is over. When rock and roll killed off the careers of the vocalists from the 50s, Sinatra, Mathis, Cole, to name a few, those guys didn’t ask the government to stop the switch to rock music. They graciously accepted their time was over and moved on. It’s time for washed up has-beens like Brooks to do the same.

Artists of today realize that the net is not a hindrance to making great music, but is actually a great tool for connecting with fans.

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The New Game Industry is not being harmed by the Used Game Market

Slashdot has a posting about a new study showing how the used game market is harming the new game industry. I don’t need a study to know with absolute certainty that the gaming industry is not being harmed by used game sales. Through the magic of a priori reasoning, I know that you cannot be harmed merely because you’re not getting what you are not entitled.

Let me explain. Wouldn’t it be awesome if your coworkers gave you a cut of their salary, for no reason whatsoever? Wouldn’t it be great if you walked into a bank one day and the teller decided to give you a portion of the bank’s holdings, for no reason whatsoever?

Yep, that would be awesome, no doubt about it. But are you being harmed because your coworkers and bank are not giving you money you don’t deserve? Nope.

That’s what’s going on with the new game and used game markets. The new game industry somehow feels entitled to profits from the used game market. Despite having absolutely no legal basis for such entitlement. In the United States we have the right of first sale. What that means is that we can sell what we bought, even if what we bought was copyrighted material. So we have a right to sell our DVDs, CD, and used games.

Of course someone will say that my coworker/bank analogies fail because they don’t take into consideration that the game industry created the games that the used game market is selling. If you think that, you’re completely missing the point.

The fact that the game industry originally created the game is completely irrelevant to whether it is entitled to any profits from secondary or tertiary sales. It does not have such a right to profits. None whatsoever. No more than General Motors has a right to profit from the sale of the used Chevy truck you just sold. GM created the truck, does it deserve a cut from every sale? What about your house, should the contractor get a cut when you sell it, when it’s sold 100 years from now? (I live in a house originally built in 1856, exactly who am I supposed to pay when I resell and move out?)

My point is, much like how you have no rights to your coworkers pay, and much like how you have no rights to your bank’s holdings, the new game industry has no right to profits from the used game market. None whatsoever.

Of course the new game industry outright lies and claims that the used game market “Is profiting from the sale of our games.” It’s a lie because once the new game industry sells a particular copy of the game; it is no longer their game. They have absolutely no ownership right in that particular copy. So to accuse the used game market of taking or stealing their property is an outright lie.

I have no doubt that someone will argue that the new game industry is being harmed because of lost sales. I.e., consumers are buying from the used game market rather than from the new game industry which is causing the new game industry to lose money.

Let’s get one thing straight: Losing sales to a competitor is not harm. It’s competition.

The new game industry’s claim that it’s being harmed from the used game market is as asinine as McDonalds claiming it is being harmed by Burger King.

Now certainly if Burger King was unfairly or illegally competing, for example, if Burger King ignored health and safety laws to keep their prices lower, in that circumstance one could argue that McDonalds would be harmed by the unfair and illegal competition.

But in this instance there is no illegality or unfairness in the used game market. It’s not illegal for consumers to resell their games. It’s not unfair to price those used games lower because the products are necessarily inferior to the new ones.

If your industry is somehow being harmed by perfectly legal and fair competition, then it’s about time change careers because you have a complete misunderstanding about how capitalism is supposed to work. You are not entitled to someone else’s profits, merely because you want them. Get over it.

Unfortunately, this is exactly why the new game industry is having laws passed to make it more difficult to sell used games. Despite what corporations say, they don’t really want to compete in a free market, they want the government to bend over and protect them from legal competition.

Update – 9/10/09:

My post used a priori arguments. Christian Ward over at Escapist Magazine wrote an a posteriori editorial on how the used game market is not harming the new game market. I love this quote the best:

In these belt-tightening times, attempts to squash the used games industry could actually have a negative affect on the sales of new games. If we cannot find a way to make what the consumer wants at a price they are willing to pay, then we deserve to fail. That’s capitalism for you. And the market clearly shows – if you are not smart enough to do it, someone else is.

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