[p2p-research] NSFW: Hey, America! Our draconian copyright law could kick your draconian co...

[Kevin Carson]

On 3/7/10, Ryan <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:

> NSFW: Hey, America! Our draconian copyright law could kick your draconian  copyright law’s ass
> via TechCrunch by Paul Carr on 3/7/10

> For all of our fears of “chilling effects” the fact is that the Internet is shitting all over the intellectual property rights of the UK creative industries (industries which account for 7.9% of the nation’s GDP).
>

> The UK’s creative industries generate £112.5 billion in revenue for the British economy.

Aside from the whole issue of IP's legitimacy, arguments like these
make me want to pull my hair out.  By definition, anything that anyone
can charge for adds to the GDP by the amount people pay for it.  So
the more stuff is enclosed with charges for admission, the higher the
GDP will be.

In Theories of Value and Distribution, Marxist Maurice Dobb put forth
the example of the state granting to a class of people the right to
erect toll gates across highways and pockiet the proceeds (not to fund
highway maintenance, mind you--just to take the money for themselves).

Under marginalist economics, any production input with a price has
"marginal productivity" equal to what it adds to the final price of
the good.  So under that orthodox paradigm, the toll-gate owners would
have "marginal productivity" equal to whatever cost the toll added to
total production costs and prices, and economists would be stroking
their beards and intoning learnedly about the "service" the toll
collectors perform in not impeding traffic on the roads.  And of
course, GDP would increase by the amount of the tolls.

-- 
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