Sony is begging you: please forget about concord

  • KoboldCoterie@pawb.social
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    1 day ago

    I firmly believe that anything “written off” in that manner - this includes movies, too, in particular - should have to be released into the public domain as part of that process.

    Any business that’s paying less taxes is harming the public good; we should at least benefit in some small way from that.

    • mechoman444@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Imagine you create a product that is mechanically functional but fundamentally terrible. Only a tiny group is willing to pay for it, and even that isn’t enough to break even. You have no choice but to pull it from the market and discard it. Then the government steps in and starts distributing that product for free. This is your personal intellectual property, you no longer control it or own it.

      Your comment is deeply frustrating. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of copyright and intellectual property, which is frankly astounding.

      • ThrowawayInTheYear23@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        This is your personal intellectual property

        In the US our Constitution only grants you a monopoly on your creation for a limited time before it ends up in the public domain.

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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          59 minutes ago

          The constitution grants Congress the right to create public domain laws, and that’s it. With current law it’s decades away from applying to this game.

    • billwashere@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Well if it’s “written off” of their taxes that means it’s taxes they don’t pay which is essentially paid by the rest of us in taxes we do pay. So yeah it should be public domain since we “bought” it.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        That’s not accurate. A tax write-off isn’t “taxes you don’t pay”. It’s “lost income that isn’t taxed”.

        The US corporate income tax is nominally 21%. If a company writes off 100 of loss (or charitible donations, or expenses, or anything else), their earnings are reduced by 100 dollars, saving them 21 bucks. There’s no way to “profit” off of failure through write-offs.

        • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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          2 hours ago

          Exactly, can’t pay corporation tax on a loss because corporation tax is only paid on profit. Worked in a small company before and heard moaning from high up about having to pay corporation tax when Amazon don’t. We could have paid no corporation tax simply by giving everyone a pay raise.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      It’s more likely they have contractual obligations with marketing companies, retailers, data centers, etc. If a product is discontinued they can get out of those obligations. Sure they will write off a loss and reduce the taxes they pay, but it’s not as if a bigger loss nets them more money somehow.

      Really what needs to be regulated is all of the excessive exclusive B2B contracts which mean a company can’t just sell a product for a small amount of money to someone to maintain it when they’re done with that product.