[p2p-research] Fwd: [fcforum] Fw: iPad DRM is a dangerous step backward. Sign the petition!

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/5/10, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 05, 2010 12:29:59 PM -0600, Kevin Carson (free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com) wrote:
>
>  > > "Reproducing" as in "making a copy" for themselve or "reproducing" as
>  > >  in copying the same content somewhere else online? There is quite a
>  > >  difference.
>  >
>  > Definitely a difference, but not insofar as it affects my principle.
>  > There should be no coercive legal prohibition against reproduction in
>  > either case.

> Too bad, because it's a very, very very practical difference. The
>  second kind of "reproduction" damages people who publish stuff freely
>  available online but partially or exclusively do it for profit
>  (banners, requests for donations...)

So we're back to where we were before, and you *do* in fact support a
state guarantee to enable you to recoup a return on your time by
restricting duplication.

This goes back to the Freemium model:  when reproduction of the
content itself is free, one capitalizes on other advantages that are
associated with the free content but not themselves free.  I've done
paid writing for group blogs myself, and the main source of value
added is the blog or site as a whole, as source for a range of content
that's of interest to a specific readership, and its convenience and
reliability as the main source of that content.

It's the same difference in convenience of getting guaranteed
complete, authentic, non-DRM songs from a single source at iTunes,
rather than searching around at a torrent site.

It strikes me that whatever possibilities there are of capitalizing
online writing as a source of revenue come from the advantages to the
site which originally hosts the content, and its reputational
advantages as the source for a range of related content that's of
interest to its readership, where they can depend on seeing it when it
first comes out.  The hosting site must sell something besides the
specific bits of content that are duplicated.  It must sell, to the
advertiser, the reader convenience that comes from the site as a
whole.

-- 
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