[p2p-research] Product Designs on Pirate Bay?

[Kevin Carson]

On 10/10/09, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:

> any time to look at the comments and report on the debate?

I'll check it out.  As I recall, the comments were diverted almost
entirely into flaming on the copyright issue in general, with little
in the way of constructive comments either way on the possibility of a
micromanufacturing business model that can capture value without IP.
But I may have missed something.

My own take on it is that the primary way to monetize design is by
micromanufacturers doing it in-house and competing primarily through
technical skill and customer service.  Independent designers not
directly engaged in production might make their money with a business
model based on first sale, and by using past designs in the public
domain as free advertising to get themselves new first sale deals with
producers.  Leaving aside the morality of it and whether the designers
think it's "fair," the simple fact of the matter is that (as Doctorow
put it) computers are machines for copying bits, and a business model
that depends on stopping this from happening is doomed.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
Studies in Mutualist Political Economy
http://www.mutualist.org/id47.html
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html