Napster execs needing culling

Adam Shostack adam at homeport.org
Tue Oct 30 08:33:15 PST 2001


On Tue, Oct 30, 2001 at 06:31:49AM -0800, Khoder bin Hakkin wrote:
| Napster Wants License to License
|             By Michael Stroud
| LOS ANGELES -- Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers says the
| government should consider
| compulsory standards requiring music labels to license music
| at a fair price if they
| don't close deals with Napster and other independent
| distributors.
[...]
| Compulsory licensing = theft, buddy.

Perhaps you should expand your analysis to non-excludable goods (those 
things which, like air, don't get used up).

The government grants people who've created stories, songs, and other
works certain rights in those works.  The set of rights that they've
been granted has changed dramatically over time, usually driven by new 
technology, such as the printing press, the radio, or the internet.

Compulsory licensing of something that the government gave you is very 
different from compulsory licensing of something you created.
Further, compulsory licensing of a non-excludable good (such as TV
broadcasts) is very different from compulsory licensing of an
excludable good, such as your computer.



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume





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