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

[Michel Bauwens]

I think it is important to distinguish concepts that describe some objective
feature of reality, like artificial scarcity and rent, as used by me and
Kevin respectively, these are just things that exist, and our opinion of
them.

Copyright is an artificial scarcity creating a rent, period. The issue of
whether is acceptable or not is a separate issue, but I don't think it is
intellectually fruitful to want to brush away reality, in order to
ideologically justify a reality.

Second whatever we may think of the  difficulties of private and corporate
individuals to make money for their creations, to insist that this is the
only possible incentive to create is just factually wrong, both historically
(was there no creation before copyright enforcement), and today (is there no
creation because things are digitally copyable).

There are many different types of incentives to create, but, in specific
circumstances, creations which require particular intensive efforts at the
starting phase, may suffer from indiscriminate copying.

However, please note that copyright reformers adhering to the open and free
value system and who are opposing artificial scarcity rents, do take this
into account, while total abolitionists are confident that some other means
would be found, though it is not clear to me what that is. *Philippe
Aigrain, and perhaps Herve de Crosnier*, have specific proposals for
different types of creativity.

But even in the latter case. Think about the medieval cathedrals, built in
non-market societies, just to see that it is possible to create grand
creations under these conditions.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 6:38 AM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 15:19:05 PM -0600, Kevin Carson
> (free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com) wrote:
>
> > 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 know. I have been reading these business models for years, thanks.
> Of course I would adopt them if I went doing private teaching
> etc... full time. My point is simply that in the second case I would
> publish online much, much, much less.
>
> The maximum amount of stuff an individual can produce is limited. If
> you allow unhautorized distribution in cases like the one I've already
> described 6/7 times, all you get is to remove an incentive to make all
> or almost all of that stuff available for everybody.
>
> > > 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.
>
> and frankly now I see even less of a connection with the specific
> cases I've mentioned all the week, than when I wrote "please do not
> use rent". Why don't we restart from the street musician analogy I
> proposed in another message? Thanks.
>
> Marco
>
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