Comments on: iTunes tunes: finally, a decent price http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18772 p2pnet.net - reader powered Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:11:09 -0300 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Jakykong http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18772/comment-page-1#comment-969540 Jakykong Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:41:15 +0000 http://www.p2pnet.net/story/18772#comment-969540 Well, at least iTunes has a chance to see what people actually think their songs are worth. But isn't most of iTunes' stuff American? I guess I shouldn't say much; I've never used the service. If that is the case, however, then I would imagine the chinese perceive our music as much less valuable than their own. What if these same people were to open up shop here in the US? Would the price stay at $2.60/gift card? This particular case, however, doesn't shine a very good light. It's not straddling the legal line: it's clearly illegal to forge iTunes gift certificates, for the same reason it's illegal to forge a cheque. Both are documents representing value. If I ran a music store, and I sold gift certificates, and someone came along and created gift certificates that I didn't authorize, I would be very upset. It's theft, in the material sense of the word, even if it's committed electronically. Compare this hypothetical scenario: McDonald's starts selling gift certificates. These certificates are calculated using a proprietary algorithm, and sell for $50 each at the restaurant. Someone discovers the algorithm to create the codes on the gift certificates, and makes $50,000 worth of certificates for the cost of a CPU and a few hours of processing time. He sells these codes for $5. For every single certificate forged, McDonald's directly lost $50 (or at least they lost the wholesale cost of $50 worth of food and the labor used to create it). In both cases, the certificates are created digitally. In both cases, they are probably used digitally (at McDonald's, the clerk probably punches in the certificate number when accepting the certificate, but the net effect is the same: a digitally verified certificate.). In fact, the only difference between the hypothetical scenario and the real one (other than numbers) is that in one case, the product being sold is digital copies of songs, and in the other, the product being sold is food. Well, at least iTunes has a chance to see what people actually think their songs are worth. But isn’t most of iTunes’ stuff American? I guess I shouldn’t say much; I’ve never used the service. If that is the case, however, then I would imagine the chinese perceive our music as much less valuable than their own. What if these same people were to open up shop here in the US? Would the price stay at $2.60/gift card?

This particular case, however, doesn’t shine a very good light. It’s not straddling the legal line: it’s clearly illegal to forge iTunes gift certificates, for the same reason it’s illegal to forge a cheque. Both are documents representing value. If I ran a music store, and I sold gift certificates, and someone came along and created gift certificates that I didn’t authorize, I would be very upset. It’s theft, in the material sense of the word, even if it’s committed electronically.

Compare this hypothetical scenario: McDonald’s starts selling gift certificates. These certificates are calculated using a proprietary algorithm, and sell for $50 each at the restaurant. Someone discovers the algorithm to create the codes on the gift certificates, and makes $50,000 worth of certificates for the cost of a CPU and a few hours of processing time. He sells these codes for $5. For every single certificate forged, McDonald’s directly lost $50 (or at least they lost the wholesale cost of $50 worth of food and the labor used to create it).

In both cases, the certificates are created digitally. In both cases, they are probably used digitally (at McDonald’s, the clerk probably punches in the certificate number when accepting the certificate, but the net effect is the same: a digitally verified certificate.). In fact, the only difference between the hypothetical scenario and the real one (other than numbers) is that in one case, the product being sold is digital copies of songs, and in the other, the product being sold is food.

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