That's called licensing. Just Cause 2 and the GTA series use cars without the permission and just name them elseway. For example, the VW Beetle is named Bug in GTA 2

Well, in Soviet Union it was like you saying. There was no copyrights and all innovations was common good. Then Alexey Pajitnov invented Tetris, one of the most popular game of all time. And as his innovation was a common good, some companies took his idea and started selling game earning nice amount of money. But they didn't have to pay anything to Alexey, so they didn't. Not to much time later there was moment in his life that he was so poor that he didn't have enough money to buy food. Then he said "screw this", and came to US, where there was no such things like common good, and guess what? Now he gets money for his ideas and innovations, so he can live and he won't die out of starvation.

If we will remove copyrights then I bet history will repeat itself.

If one thinks that copyright is no longer useful (and actually harmful), and thus shouldn't be respected for its own sake, then there's much less reason for such an individual to buy into the idea that they shouldn't acquire content by infringing copyright. I personally think this is actually a big contributing factor to why there's so much piracy these days. With many other laws (against theft, murder, etc) people can readily understand why such laws are in place and the overall benefit to the vast majority of the population buying into them. The benefit the public was supposed to get from copyright was a greatly expanded public domain, but copyright has been extended to such ridiculous lengths that no one actually sees works falling into the public domain anymore. Instead, you have people basically just being told that they should respect copyright so that people who are not them can make money. Not being able to see any clear benefit from respecting copyright, is it any surprise that some people have no issue with just completely ignoring it?

Which ones? Do you talk about hard printed localized copies including shipping and production costs. Then 100% more is easily understandable.

Couldn't you at least send the money to the publishers somehow?

"Good evening, I just pirated your products because they are not available here or are much to expensive but not complete. However I am willing to pay the japanese price to a bank account of your choice. Please send me your account data and a reference text if neccessary. If not I will assume you are not interested in any form of compensation."

Some of you are falling back into attacking/defending piracy. This is simple economics. The public has spoken, and they will from now on jave immediate access to all media, and will decide who gets paid.

That is the paradigm, and judging/condemning people for acting naturally does *nothing*.

I'm sorry, I would have answered sooner but I was out for the day .... having intercourse with your mother.

If I get you right you are basically saying that we should completely forget whether or not the act of piracy is good or bad, right or wrong ... you stipulate that that is irrelevant, instead concentrate on the techniques and lessons of piracy, how they can be used as part of a better model.

Use the effectively instantaneous dissemination of material, ideas and opinions so that the product has far greater reach than it would have using traditional restricted distribution methods and advertising techniques. Use direct lines of communication between producer and consumer to cut out the middle men, and the costs associated with them - or at least change their nature to enablers as opposed to throughput bottlenecks. Use direct micro-transaction finance with that far greater audience to replace complex costly production, licensing, packaging and distribution chains.

Forget that immediate "free" access to products will be exploited by some, even a large number, of allegedly potential paying consumers - because the sheer numbers involved in the greater product market penetration made possible by all of this will more than compensate for any such "loss".

Nah, I'm not sure I understand where you are coming from at all ;)

The beauty of your argument is that I am free to consider piracy as wrong - and for my arguments to be 100% valid. It simply doesn't matter from your perspective, or the perspective of any producer (or consumers) who embraces this viewpoint.

Yes, that's it exactly. The whole point of this discussion (and the letter which started it) is that the right or wrong of piracy is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that it exists, and flat-out cannot be stopped.

Most publishers deal with piracy by trying to prevent it, but you cannot put the genie back in the bottle. Once opened, you cannot close Pandora's box. It is completely futile, costs a lot of time and money, hurts the people who are doing precisely what the publishers are trying to encourage, and does absolutely nothing about the problem they're trying to address.

You might as well debate the benefits and drawbacks of thunderstorms. Sure, you can have an interesting discussion, but the thunderstorms won't care, nor be affected by it, even if you attempt to introduce anti-thunderstorm legislation.

Piracy of movies, music and etc. cannot be stopped. But I bet that piracy of games in future will be stopped. Technology that can stop it already exist but it waits for broadband Internet connections to be more popular.

I don't have a problem with file-sharing. The bigger picture that I am more concerned with about copyright is the effect it has on things like remixes or other helpful derivative works. I have a copy of Voltaire's book Candide, which is in the public domain. The story is 120 pages long and after that there are 34 more pages of notes that explain in great detail some of the things that Voltaire briefly mentions but can have significant impact on how the book is interpreted. A lot of it is historical context that a person not living in that time might not understand. It is highly unlikely to be able to add notes like this with a copyrighted book.

I still prefer to buy physical products myself, but the business model of selling 1 million copies of a product as the only way to make money is outdated. If people want to make money, they have to adjust their business model.

I could ramble on about using new business models for a while, but I'll start repeating what other users (like DarrkPhoenix) have said already and probably better than I can anyway. One model that I am a fan of is CwF+Rtb. Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy. The successful Kickstarter projects will follow this model. Copyright has absolutely nothing to do with why people pledge for projects on Kickstarter. There have been people doing this for several years already outside of Kickstarter by making websites and connecting with fans with blogs.

Nina Paley is another example of this model working. With this type of business model, having 1,000 dedicated fans willing to donate or purchase whatever you make could be more important than 50,000 who might buy your book, movie, cd and not care one bit about it. The 1,000 fan method has much less risk and can still grow into something big while the route of trying to publish a book, etc that needs to sell at least 50,000 copies to make any money is much more risky, especially if you are fighting obscurity.

Because they want to call it a "Ferrari" and that is under trademark.
That's funny, let me introduce you to the father of FM radio in the US, that held a patent on said technology and died penniless and depressed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

Copyright and patent law does not protect the little guy.
Sure, you print, machine, and assemble the parts. That's "you" building it as much as someone using a Heath Kit built their radio.
You don't need to secure it. Merely make sure their income is not based on it that every citizen has ample free time. As Bertrand Russel pointed out decades ago (1932, iirc) in his essay, In Praise of Idleness, we could support every living person in any given first world country in a very adequate lifestyle with about 4 hours of work per week from each person.
If that was true I'm not sure how pirate servers for every MMO keep popping up. How are they getting the server side code? That's how they'll get the server side game code from your next-gen Onlive service.

Ummm... So? What does that have to do with protecting ideas? That has nothing to do with income, if I put a lot of work into designing something, I do not want it open for copying, even if it were distributed for free. It's my idea. Not open for everyone to freely make money with if the original design is not known widely enough.

You might be confused about how 99% of all ideas actually work in the real world. Since we've spent decades telling content creators that they are somehow special in this regard, I guess that's understandable. I think Thomas Jefferson put it best, you can look it up, but in essence it goes, "Someone using my idea in no way reduces it's value to me."

If you really don't want anyone else to "use" your idea then you'd best keep it a secret.

Some content creators like a musician prefer to go to a secluded place to work. Trying to avoid distractions or whatnot. However, they are not sitting in a vacuum where they suddenly create something out of nothing. They are constantly referencing other work and adapting their own work. Ideas are derivative and collaborative. I agree with orcish that this misconception of artists creating something out of nothing comes from telling them that they're more special than everyone else.

Not a big thing, but Russel said 4 hours a day, not a week.
"I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life,..."
http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

Unless my source is wrong or I missed something.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."