From: Peter C. McCluskey (pcm@rahul.net)
Date: Wed Sep 09 1998 - 15:12:41 MDT
mark@unicorn.com (mark@unicorn.com) writes:
>Peter C. McCluskey [pcm@rahul.net] wrote:
>>A system in which copyright owners funded the enforcement would almost
>>certainly have produced the same kind of results.
>
>But their costs would be significantly higher, so would they have more competition thanks to higher software prices, and/or they wouldn't make
Significantly higher compared to what? My guess is 1 or 2 percent of
Microsoft's sales would be enough.
>as much profit and wouldn't have been able to expand anywhere near as fast.
Microsoft's profits are high enough compared to its needs that a decrease
of a few percent wouldn't have had any effect on its growth.
>Not to mention that enforcement outside the US would be much harder than it
>is today with compliant foreign governments.
This clearly doesn't follow from a change in enforcement funding, so I
suspect you are mixing in unspecified additional assumptions.
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