-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 12:41 PM +0300 on 7/3/02, Sampo Syreeni wrote:
No. It is the case with the digitized version, but not the work.
What is a CD but a copy of a work, Sampo? Record companies sell *records*, right? A copy on my hard drive is *my* copy. I can, in fact, sell you a copy of my copy (I love recursion....), but then the space, occupied by your copy, is *your* copy. It's rival.
Did this thread really start with something taken from LMD? The list really *has* stooped to an all-time low...
:-). I'm not the yokel who started this fight quoting LMD, I'm just the guy who's finishing it... The non-rival, non-excludable thing is standard academic econ-talk, though. I was jerking his chain a bit about quoting a eurosocialist rag, like you seem to be doing. The part about it not being applicable is close to being right, thought. Or at least that even if one applies the non-rival, non-excludable double negative nonsense one still gets the right answer with private transactions involving all digital goods and services.
The point in copyright wars is about incentives to authors vs. the right to copy privately, not about the ease of copying. Sure, microtransactions are a possibility. But when the yield does not go to the one who created the master copy, why should anyone create anything, anymore? (Or, more realistically, why should people create at an efficient level?)
For me, this is all about Coase's theorem, transaction cost, Coase's observation that you can't have a market without property, and the fact that, of course, if transaction costs were low enough, if we had a working bearer cash economy on the net, for instance, the definition of property would not be a legal one involving "intellectual property", but a physical one, about encrypted bits, protected not with laws, but with strong financial cryptography protocols. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSL1u8PxH8jf3ohaEQK0JQCgvEOEsTIGXNOzEWgcvsO4eUmzjkAAoPAC 1tHGCoKRd/zJM4vj+6ihuKoL =4uQY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'