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According to his logic, an audio cd should cost less than a dollar. While I don't agree with the original post, this is not an argument against it. Unfortunat

According to his logic, an audio cd should cost less than a dollar. While I don't agree with the original post, this is not an argument against it. Unfortunately in digital age, a consumer can get the product by illegal means even if they can't afford it and producer doesn't really have a way to stop this illegal behavior. I agree, except I would say "fortunately". Monopolists should not have a legal right to their market, even if the market (for Metallica songs, for example) didn't exist before they began selling in it.

cellis 17y ago
"Should" and "should not" are normative statements, and have no place in economic discussion.
- dantheman 17y ago
  Copyright is not a real right, it was created to encourage innovation and production. Hence, whenever dealing with copyright should and should not have a place.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - cellis 17y ago
    Insofar as a country says "copyright" is a law, it is a real right. But that isn't what i'm saying. I'm saying that making statements based on moral judgement based on economics is wrong.
    - dkersten 17y ago
      Sure - but - copyright was created (for the same reasons as patents) to drive innovation. To motivate people to put time and effort into creating something. When it fails to do this, then it should not be a real thing anymore. Now, I'm not saying that copyright doesn't do what its meant to (patents are another story however...) and I'm not arguing that copyright should be eliminated.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  When I say "should" in this context, I'm expressing my preference about laws, not making any kind of statement about an objective morality.
albertsun 17y ago
Why should Metallica not have the legal right to monopolize the market for Metallica songs?
- cellis 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement There is no way to prove this right or wrong. It is just a bad statement to make in the context of economics.
  - albertsun 17y ago
    On the contrary, there are several different ways to interpret "should" and much of economic literature is focused on making those interpretations. For example, is a given policy economically efficient? social welfare maximizing? from a firm's perspective, profit maximizing? or more generally, does it lead to a society that you would want to live in?
solutionyogi 17y ago
I am not sure why the audio cd analogy doesn't hold. Quoting the original post: "Software ISN'T a t-shirt. A t-shirt needs cotton. That cotton must be dyed, woven, sewn, printed, packaged, shipped. Software ISN'T a meal. A meal has ingredients, and the more you spend on them, the better, and that goes double for your chef's salary. People understand where their money is going. People are just fine with paying through the nose when they get their money's worth. But no one likes to feel like they have been taken to the cleaners." Looking up on Google, I can get 500 audio cds for around 185$ (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=audio+cd+manufacturing+cost&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=audio...), per CD cost is 37 cents. Do you think that I should be able to buy the latest album of Backstreet Boys for 37 cents? Where do you account for thousands of dollars spent on recording the album? What about paying the artists? ....you know the 'fixed costs'. We still happily pay 9$ for an audio cd because it gives us pleasure which is worth more than 9$. As he says, 'getting money's worth'. Tell me again, how is software any different? You buy the software ONLY IF you think software gives you more value than it costs you to acquire it.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  I didn't say the analogy didn't hold, but that if it held, it didn't mean the argument was wrong. Separately, I do think the argument is wrong, because it's based on the labor theory of value, which has been shown wrong.
- doronba 17y ago
  What about long dead artists? what about recordings done many years ago, where the covering of recording prices has long been achieved Software, like most intellectual property is a Non-rivalrous good. Nothing in software design prevents simultaneous consumption, indeed, we would not have any website if that was the case. A T-shirt or a Meal is a Rivalrous good, my consumption of the meal prevents your ability to eat it. The law affords protection to non rival goods be enacting author rights, exclusivity for a period of time, copyright etc... historically the limits ware set to release non rival good to the public for its general use. Software companies, entertainment companies etc.. seek to milk those rights to no end, it will be an interesting case to see what an early mandatory release to public domain will have on piracy as a whole
netcan 17y ago
I'm not sure why people come out with these moral axioms whenever piracy comes up. "Monopolists should not have a legal right to their market" Such a big statement with no real way of supporting it any further (the converse is also true). None of the rules around copyright or property ever came about because of any kind of "Natural Law" or moral reasoning. John Locke, be damned. Property rules were created based on existing conventions, or in some cases, created to correspond to defensible borders. You can hum a song or talk about it or play it on your guitar when you get home. You can't sell copies of it? Why? Because printing, pressing & such are (were) possible to regulate with laws. Humming is not.
- randallsquared 17y ago
  I'm not sure why people come out with these moral axioms whenever piracy comes up. It's not a moral axiom; it's an expression of preference. More seriously, any argument for or against it relies on so much shared understanding that it's not clear that there's much use arguing about it at a length of two or three sentences. One sentence is enough to express the conclusion, but a rigorous argument that covered all the major approaches would require a fairly hefty book. Because printing, pressing & such are (were) possible to regulate with laws. Humming is not. That's one approach, but how will you defend your right to hum whatever you want when all of your actions are recorded all the time? Our current technological progress appears to be headed that way, making automatic enforcement of any arbitrary rules possible. In that situation, the question of what the rules should be is more than a question of what sort of rules can be enforced.

cellis 17y ago

"Should" and "should not" are normative statements, and have no place in economic discussion.

dantheman 17y ago
Copyright is not a real right, it was created to encourage innovation and production. Hence, whenever dealing with copyright should and should not have a place.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- cellis 17y ago
  Insofar as a country says "copyright" is a law, it is a real right. But that isn't what i'm saying. I'm saying that making statements based on moral judgement based on economics is wrong.
  - dkersten 17y ago
    Sure - but - copyright was created (for the same reasons as patents) to drive innovation. To motivate people to put time and effort into creating something. When it fails to do this, then it should not be a real thing anymore. Now, I'm not saying that copyright doesn't do what its meant to (patents are another story however...) and I'm not arguing that copyright should be eliminated.
randallsquared 17y ago
When I say "should" in this context, I'm expressing my preference about laws, not making any kind of statement about an objective morality.

albertsun 17y ago

Why should Metallica not have the legal right to monopolize the market for Metallica songs?

cellis 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_statement There is no way to prove this right or wrong. It is just a bad statement to make in the context of economics.
- albertsun 17y ago
  On the contrary, there are several different ways to interpret "should" and much of economic literature is focused on making those interpretations. For example, is a given policy economically efficient? social welfare maximizing? from a firm's perspective, profit maximizing? or more generally, does it lead to a society that you would want to live in?

solutionyogi 17y ago

I am not sure why the audio cd analogy doesn't hold. Quoting the original post: "Software ISN'T a t-shirt. A t-shirt needs cotton. That cotton must be dyed, woven, sewn, printed, packaged, shipped. Software ISN'T a meal. A meal has ingredients, and the more you spend on them, the better, and that goes double for your chef's salary. People understand where their money is going. People are just fine with paying through the nose when they get their money's worth. But no one likes to feel like they have been taken to the cleaners." Looking up on Google, I can get 500 audio cds for around 185$ (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=audio+cd+manufacturing+cost&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq= http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=audio...), per CD cost is 37 cents. Do you think that I should be able to buy the latest album of Backstreet Boys for 37 cents? Where do you account for thousands of dollars spent on recording the album? What about paying the artists? ....you know the 'fixed costs'. We still happily pay 9$ for an audio cd because it gives us pleasure which is worth more than 9$. As he says, 'getting money's worth'. Tell me again, how is software any different? You buy the software ONLY IF you think software gives you more value than it costs you to acquire it.

randallsquared 17y ago
I didn't say the analogy didn't hold, but that if it held, it didn't mean the argument was wrong. Separately, I do think the argument is wrong, because it's based on the labor theory of value, which has been shown wrong.
doronba 17y ago
What about long dead artists? what about recordings done many years ago, where the covering of recording prices has long been achieved Software, like most intellectual property is a Non-rivalrous good. Nothing in software design prevents simultaneous consumption, indeed, we would not have any website if that was the case. A T-shirt or a Meal is a Rivalrous good, my consumption of the meal prevents your ability to eat it. The law affords protection to non rival goods be enacting author rights, exclusivity for a period of time, copyright etc... historically the limits ware set to release non rival good to the public for its general use. Software companies, entertainment companies etc.. seek to milk those rights to no end, it will be an interesting case to see what an early mandatory release to public domain will have on piracy as a whole

netcan 17y ago

I'm not sure why people come out with these moral axioms whenever piracy comes up. "Monopolists should not have a legal right to their market" Such a big statement with no real way of supporting it any further (the converse is also true). None of the rules around copyright or property ever came about because of any kind of "Natural Law" or moral reasoning. John Locke, be damned. Property rules were created based on existing conventions, or in some cases, created to correspond to defensible borders. You can hum a song or talk about it or play it on your guitar when you get home. You can't sell copies of it? Why? Because printing, pressing & such are (were) possible to regulate with laws. Humming is not.

randallsquared 17y ago
I'm not sure why people come out with these moral axioms whenever piracy comes up. It's not a moral axiom; it's an expression of preference. More seriously, any argument for or against it relies on so much shared understanding that it's not clear that there's much use arguing about it at a length of two or three sentences. One sentence is enough to express the conclusion, but a rigorous argument that covered all the major approaches would require a fairly hefty book. Because printing, pressing & such are (were) possible to regulate with laws. Humming is not. That's one approach, but how will you defend your right to hum whatever you want when all of your actions are recorded all the time? Our current technological progress appears to be headed that way, making automatic enforcement of any arbitrary rules possible. In that situation, the question of what the rules should be is more than a question of what sort of rules can be enforced.