none of those places sound nice to live in.
I’m guessing 50+ million in cash would allow you to live pretty well in a lot of those place. By “pretty well” I mean your own villa, with large men with fully automatic weapons guarding the gates and your own airstrip so you could come and go without ever seeing your fellow countrymen.
Taiwan is the only semi acceptable one for me. helps also my wife works for a company based out of there… but i agree nothing as nice as the us on that list
Mehhhh, idk. Ill spare they “intellectual property” isnt really property rant, but in a nutshell, music, movies and TV all have other resources of bringing in huggeeeee bucks. I have no problems with the file sharing of DVD released movies, released albums, and aired TV shows. Its not like the “theft” of these things are going to hurt the economy and keep people away from perusing careers in those industries. Song writers will keep writing and production companies will keep producing.
Laugh if you will but Serbia and Bosnia wouldnt be the worst places to set up shop. Both have their fare share of fairly westernized cities with decently modern technical infrastructure.
He probably has money hiding in an offshore account somewhere so that when he gets free he will live the life again. If he was this smart to get as far as he has, I am sure he has set himself up knowing he was going to get busted at some point.
The one place on that list that goes overlooked is Maldives.
What do you do for work?
Public accounting…
And im not talking about ALL Intellectual Property… Patents and things like that have a place (although I believe those should be less rigid as well). Im talking about arts.
so when does the money come out? I guess we have to wait for the real life story to end first.
I know you’re not stupid, so I’m flabbergasted as to why you think this is ok…
Just because something is an “art” makes it OK to steal it?
Some might say that, i don’t know… fucking filling out some business’ tax return is an art. Let’s say you have a huge queue of jobs to do and that they are all more or less the same. You get paid per job. You find some little known loophole and fucking nail it; the first business gets a huge tax return. Before you’re done with the second, the first business has given away your totally awesome method of completing this form, and now none of the other businesses require your service… rendering an easy income of tens of thousands of dollars gone. This is totally OK, right? It’s an art, right?
Don’t worry, there are plenty of other businesses that will pay you to work out their totally different tax returns, so it shouldn’t matter that all that hard work you invested went to waste…
I’m not even going to get into the “less patent enforcement part”
Keep in mind, I fully recognize this as my own opinion, however I know I share it with many people.
Re Patents:
I just think the terms should be shorter mainly. In my most simplest explanation, shortening patents isnt going to sway any industry enough to cause people to stop engineering/designing things or move to other countries just because they get their exclusive cut for a shorter period of time. When other companies are allowed to re-engineer or even outright copy a product or process, it provokes competition. Competition gives consumers cheaper and better products. Competition is what fuels capitalism and capitalism is badass therefore copying = good. Maybe its my immature mind set but I still tend to think of consumer moboost before producer moboost.
So to reference your analogue, (and maybe this is because ive never been involved in any sort of patent producing business) I could never feel entitled to to stamp an exclusive right on a process. I think this is what it comes down to. You work in a field where creativity thrives and see the world as such. I chose a field with rigid rules and structure without much allowance for variance. If I was in the business of developing a revolutionary accounting software, maybe I could see your point, but right now all I see is how much my company has to shell out yearly for software licences due to the fact there is an Oligopoly on many of the tools we use thanks to what else…PATENTS.
Were in a sellers market right now when it comes to jobs. If you wont create, the guy down the street will, and if he wont, Purdeet from India would sure LOVE for his chance to. I dont give a shit who does it as long as I get a better and cheaper product. I have my own structured way of getting rich. If being creative is your idea of getting rich, then you should always have to be on your toes ready to perfect that good idea and differentiate it once everyone else gets their hands on it.
Arts:
Bands still have merchandise, concerts, sponsors… Movies have a good few months exclusively in theaters, merchandise, etc. These are billion dollar glamourus industries with or without the pirating. I have no sympathy for anyone who chooses a path in the arts. If youre lucky enough to make money doing something you love (acting, music, directing, etc) be grateful, you get paid to do something you love. Again, its supply and demand. Kids are not going to stop forming bands just because theres no money in the industry and little sluts arent gonna stop sucking dicks and doing commercials for their shot at fame. Why are they entitled to a premium when the supply is so abundant.
I don’t think the tax return analogy holds up because so many of these things are non-essential luxuries with very price-sensitive demand. Every business needs to file a tax return. Either they’re paying you to do it or they’re paying someone else. If they pick someone else, you are directly losing that income to them.
If I steal a movie that I was never going to buy anyway online, no income is lost. None of the artists’ time is lost because it’s already made and out there. If it’s really good, it may even make a customer out of me, but I definitely won’t be one otherwise. The bigger enemy of artists being compensated for their work is organizations that claim to be in their interest, like the RIAA, MPAA, even ASCAP these days, yet just basically take their cut off the top to clog the court system, raise ineffective cases, and waste it on lobbyists.
It’s the entitlement generation mentality again. I’m not willing to pay for it, but I’m entitled to it so I should be able to get it for free. That’s what 99% of the internet crying about megaupload.com being shut down is really about. They’re “rich” (or richer than me) so I should get free stuff from them. What’s it hurt? They can afford it.
And Joe, you know damn well if every single illegal download disappeared tomorrow you’d still watch movies. You’d either sub to Netflix, buy them on demand through cable or pick them up at a Redbox kiosk style dispenser. And all of those pay the artists. I’d probably go the Redbox/Netflix route and just rip the disks to files so my current XBMC setup would function just the as it does now.
I like free stuff.
I do not like giraffes.
I already pay for the good FIOS package with all the movie channels and on-demands, I’d get by with them.
I’m in the minority but out of principle I’d probably eliminate the remaining 10% of the time that I actually go to the theater and focus on finding another way to get them without the people who killed the downloading system getting a cent, even if it means paying for something offshore or whatever. (Already pay for newsgroups) You fuck with what I do, you’re not getting a cent out of me if I can help it. If I had to and there was no other resort, I’d do a Netflix/Redbox solution and absolutely copy the hell out of everything, whereas now I’m a relatively rare downloader.
Realistically though, we both know every single illegal download is never going to disappear. Something else always pops up to replace what gets shut down…worst case it’s more tech-savvy.
^ This. I’m actually worried that usenet is getting too easy and it’s going to end up being a target.
When i ask people how rich they are from now on, ill say “Yeah but are you Giraffe rich?”
I feel like maybe this is just an old man rant…
Im so intrigued as to how anyone who can take the defense of an industry that cares so little about about the consumer. These are the same companies that have turned a night out to the movies for a family of 4 into a $80 ordeal after food and drinks. Companies who bank millions on tours that boast $100 concert tickets and $50 t-shirts. Companies who think charging you $140/mo for a cable/internet package that is comprised of 80% channels that youll never watch.
This isnt a justification for piracy because frankly, even if a cd only cost $1, people would still share it online. But to have compassion for companies who care so little about consumers just baffles me. Oh and please spare the “the file sharing are making them raise prices” argument. I always knew there was something wrong with paying $18 for a shiny piece of plastic back in 1998.
The issue with patents right now is that the US patent office essentially rubber stamped everything for YEARS instead of fully investigating it, and limiting what was patentable and what isn’t. I’ve run into so much crap that I can’t believe someone got a patent on because it was so generic it wasn’t even laughable. Patents should be allowable, and the 15 year period is fully valid IMO; the investment companies and people make take time to re-coup the cost; and if it’s that innovative to where a patent is granted, then by all means they should have the solo rights to it or to license it. The issue lately is, the patents being granted are not “detailed” enough and are to vague in their claims. Instead of claiming here’s a specific design and method to do a specific thing; they get a patent granted on ANY way to do a specific thing. That is what stifles competition and what’s causing the issues between Apple and Google.
** Please disregard grammar and spelling above, I’m on enough cold meds to tranquilize a horse right now and feel like dogshit.
I don’t even know what to say to this except that I agree with this:
It’s the entitlement generation mentality again. I’m not willing to pay for it, but I’m entitled to it so I should be able to get it for free. That’s what 99% of the internet crying about megaupload.com being shut down is really about. They’re “rich” (or richer than me) so I should get free stuff from them. What’s it hurt? They can afford it.
I am literally overwhelmed by the thought process of joe and moboost4u.