[p2p-research] Request: Peer to Peer and Human Evolution

[Kevin Carson]

On 2/23/10, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 07:09:54PM -0600, Kevin Carson wrote:

>  > which patents and copyrights are ignored, and with its own

> Bits yes, atoms no. Since readily inspectable, and difficult
>  to hide.

OTOH, the comparatively low transaction cost of enforcing patents in
the mass production era was a business model based on producing a
handful of competing versions of the same kind of product, in
production runs of millions, and distributing them in a handful of
large centralized retailers.  If patents are violated by
mass-customized designs, by modular components for proprietary
designs, etc., produced in short runs by tens of thousands of garage
manufacturers and sold in tens of thousands of small independent
retailers, the transaction costs of enforcement would be much higher.

-- 
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