Young Pirates Evicted From Festival For Giving Out Free Waffles
torrentfreak.com
torrentfreak.com
This is a ridiculous argument. It is identical to "If banks can't compete with counterfeiters and Robin Hood who give out cash for free, they can't compete, period." Never mind that counterfeiters and Robin Hood are not actually creating any value or the products which they then "give away".
In the waffle case it's different since they were personally making the waffles and spending the money to give them away. This should not have been interfered with. But, like western food dumping aid to Africa, it's not a sustainable "business model", and has the side effect of destroying actual sustainable businesses that actually create the products. Even so though, it should be allowed if both parties permit it. In the case of food aid where it is paid for with tax funds and is primarily a system of price supports to large corporations like ADM, it is problematic because natural economic forces don't come into play. A government with tax authority can dump wheat surpluses into Africa on a random schedule, creating chaos and starvation indefinitely by destroying local agricultural markets. This is bad. A private organization like the Pirate Party or Knights of Columbus or Greenpeace or whatever won't be give out free waffles indefinitely as long as it is funded by themselves, and so any negative effects eventually work themselves out and should not be interfered with legally.
In an open market, yes. But this was at a municipal festival. It's quite likely that the festival itself was in part funded by fees paid by licensed vendors. You might argue that the festival should be paid for some other way, and maybe that was the point. If so, the protest probably should have included some demonstration of an alternative.
If the purpose was to draw a parallel with file-sharing, it missed the mark. The real problem with the modern music industry isn't that people are charging for music, it's that distributors are taking the lion's share of the money when they are no longer needed. They maintain their position artificially through marketing, essentially manipulating demand at the expense of the consumer and the vast majority of artists. Without them, more money would go directly to more artists and there would be fewer mega-acts.
It sort of reminds me of when my friend thought I was breaking the law by torrent`ing Ubuntu.
No body is stopping people from using their own money to acquire recording equipment, write/record/produce a track and make it available for free. Of course that would not be illegal... and neither is giving away your own waffles.
As amusing as this waffle story is, I fail to see how it can be compared to illegal file sharing.
The waffle sellers could have just consumed all the free supply. :)
Pricing things helps prevent abuse