Re: Re: intellectual property

[Nathan Newman <nathan.newman@xxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Michael Perelman wrote:

> I confess that I never heard this story before.  Hal Varian has been at the
> forefront of those who want to devise some sort of pricing model to sell
> things on the Internet.
> On its face the story doesn't make any sense.  For example, on the Internet
> today, pornography is among the most profitably businesses going.  Why would
> copyrights make pornography less profitable?
> Most of the studies I have seen indicate that the free distribution of music
> has had virtually no effect on the sales of music -- except to the extent that
> it has encouraged people to purchase more music.

I had not heard this exact story, but the free market ethos of much of the
time had great hostility to copyrights, patents, and any other government
franchise.  A number of European states did experiment with abolishing
patents in the 19th century and England in the 18th century went through a
bout of severely restricting them after massive abuses by the crown.

I have to say that I think the music industry is right that they are toast
with the free distribution of music.  Not in the short term, since the
sporadic availability of songs online is more likely to whet the appetite
for the music of artists that is not available, but as whole catalogs of
musicians' works are online and portable music players can all play mp3s,
there really is no reason why people will go out and buy music in the
traditional way.

As folks say, why convert bits into metal only to convert them back to
bits, when you can download and plays the bits directly?

How artists should get paid in this new economy of total piracy will be a
different question.  One solution would be to just accept the piracy,
establish free download sites and have the government award grants based
on total downloads - not too different from ASCAP compensation for radio
play or, more on point, how the British library system compensates authors
by sending a check for each time someone borrows their book from a
library.

Now, if artists were getting paid per download, they might very well cut
deals with promoters to pump interest in the songs and albums, but this
would be a much smaller role than the present RIAA control of production,
distribution and long-term music development.

The RIAA is not being irrational in this fight against Napster.  They are
fighting for their life.  And will lose unless the government joins them
in a war-on-drugs style assault on individual pirates.

-- Nathan Newman