At 10:34 AM 2/5/98 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
If there were no copyright nobody would have any reason to market software or much else for that matter. I would predict that much of the technology and infrastructure we have now wouldn't exist. It would also stiffle [sic] creativity and new methodologies because there would be no profit in it to recoup development costs.
If there were no copyright, markets for information and entertainment would definitely have evolved differently than they have in the US and Europe, and would use much different mechanisms for getting money to the producers of information, such as standard sale contracts.* On the other hand, if there were no colonialism, markets for sheep in New Zealand would have evolved much differently than they did, a problem they're now gradually working their way out of. The music business, for example, handles paying authors when their works are performed by performers through mechanisms other than just charging big bucks for sheet music. The Free Software Foundation found that with a bit of academic and military socialism to jump start it, there are a lot of reasons for people to create value and beauty, and you can even talk corporations into paying money for support. Van Gogh found good reasons to paint, in spite of being broke. Michaelangelo found good reasons to paint, and Gutenberg found good reasons to print, in spite of not having copyright protection. Newspapers eveolved in an environment where copyright wasn't a big deal; if your competitors ripped off your stories, they were a day late, and you could rag them about it in your own paper. Mainframe software evolved in an environment where contracts covered use of the software, and copyright was seldom relevant; that has gradually changed with mass-market computers, but it took a while for courts to accept the idea of copyrighting software, and the industry didn't refrain from writing the stuff. Copyright is certainly a major market convenience, because it means that individual authors, middlemen, and readers don't have to negotiate contracts each time they trade information for money, or having to read the annoying shrink-wrap licenses on books the way they did for a while on packaged software. It also makes it more difficult for alternative mechanisms to evolve, because it's got an 800-pound well-armed gorilla subsidizing it.
Those who would survive in such a market would be the 800-lb gorillas because only they would have the resources to squash the smaller companies. If I read Mark's note correctly, the gorilla he was talking about wasn't MicroSloth, it was the government. We may joke about Gates being the Evil Empire, but it's clearly a joke; we've seen the real thing.
Free markets monopolize. and in a following note, Jim says that that's true mainly for the long run, not necessarily for the short run. It's not only incorrect, especially as expanded upon, it's irrelevant to the moral question. If your alternatives are free markets, where you and I can offer to buy or sell products without anybody beating us up for it, versus non-free markets, where some gang can beat us up for not going along with the program (whether the gang is the Mafia, the Pinkertons, the KGB, or "your neighbors in a democracy"), there's no question which is morally acceptable - even if the violence-based market is often more convenient for some goods.
But morality aside, monopoly, in the sense of a single player or small group of players domination the sales of a commodity, is something that can certainly happen in the short run but is unstable in the long run unless the competition can be prevented by threats of violence (whether by the monopoly or the government.) If people are free to offer competing products, maintaining market share is difficult, and the market leader not only has to contend with the other big dogs, but with being nipped to death by Chihuahuas, and with being made obsolete by better technologies. Who monopolizes tabletop radios these days? (Who cares?) Who monopolizes Video Cassette Recorders? They're both relatively free markets, in spite of the FCC's attempts to enforce standards, and Sony's attempts to monopolize the BetaMax market. On the other hand, radio and TV broadcasting are near-monopolies, because the Feds have been "helping" protect our public airwaves. ------------ * Some Libertarians and some Libertarian-bashers will argue that using government courts to enforce contracts is still hiring the 800-pound well-armed gorilla to carry out your private business activities.... Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639