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

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/10/10, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

>  > But what about the kinds of business models Chris Anderson and Mike
>  > Masnick point to, making money off of scarce goods associated with
>  > content, rather than off of the content itself?

>  2) The error, no, the risk in those models is to give for granted than
>    everybody always has the time to do both, in all fields. I have no
>    problem with "making money off of scarce goods associated with
>    content": I can move full time to private lessons, write theses,
>    and many other things all based on "selling" my limited time to
>    SELECTED individuals and if I did it full time I'd make more money
>    than now. Leave me that as the only source of income and when I'm
>    done I'll take a walk, enjoy my family etc... instead of publishing
>    online for free. It's as simple as that.

The idea is not to do those things instead of publishing online for
free, but to use free online content as advertising to promote the
scarce paid content (i.e., using free ebooks to increase sales of hard
copies, using free music files to promote concert tickets, etc.).

> > But at the same time, if we remove all forms of state-enforced
>  > artificial property and artificial scarcity, the portion of the
>  > prices of all the things that we consume that comes from embedded
>  > rents on proprietary content

> Please do not use "rent" even when it has nothing to do with the
>  matter at hand. I feel it as another proof that most thinking about
>  copyright is limited, if not actually harmed, by considering only
>  music and movies.

It has everything to do with the matter at hand.  I'm using it in the
sense of an economic rent or quasirent, a scarcity rent deriving from
artificial property rights.  To the extent that the right to sell a
good is artificially restricted, the privileged seller is enabled to
charge a price above the marginal cost of production.  That's a rent.
And specifically, the price of a manufactured good that results from
proprietary industrial design rather than materials and labor is a
rent.

-- 
Kevin Carson
Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
http://mutualist.blogspot.com
The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html