4 ms·
There is no "should" here. Content creators are selling a non-fungible product because we've chosen to define it that way, for example in the DMCA, which signed
by astazangasta 10y ago
There is no "should" here. Content creators are selling a non-fungible product because we've chosen to define it that way, for example in the DMCA, which signed onto a number of copyright treaties defining specific forms of copyright.
There is no god-given reason for any of these choices. Notably, there is widespread room for disagreement on what constitutes "fair use" of these items that circumscribes the space of what makes them a product. These are legal constructs, and they exist to the extent that they are enforceable by law.
Now, for example, we are seeing attempts to cast copyright ownership across particular tunes or styles of music; if this succeeds, this is a new paradigm in ownership, it is not some pre-ordained law.
Property of all forms is a legal construct, a man-made thing. Where we set the bounds determines, to a large extent, who ends up owning it and reaping the profits. For example, the DMCA provisions required certain proprietary anti-circumvention measures to be included in all audio-recording devices; it is difficult to argue that this is how the market "should work".
- morgante 10y agoYou're confusing a good being fungible with it being non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Without legal protection, you're absolutely correct that a film cannot be excluded from consumption by non-payers and infinite reproducibility makes it non-rivalrous. That doesn't make films fungible though. They are very far from being even imperfect substitutes. If I am somehow able to keep the latest Avengers film excludable then very few will be willing to accept the "substitute" of a knock-off rom com with C-list actors. In markets, profits flow to whoever owns a monopoly.
- astazangasta 10y agoThere are plenty of non-fungible goods of this sort that are purely the result of legal constructions. The simplest example is the same movie available from two different vendors with separate digital rights systems. If I have purchased rights from one, it does not give me the right to consume the media from the other, even though it is arguably the same work. This means I can multiply the number of non-fungible versions of the same product by making it available on N different competing DRM systems.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago> They are very far from being even imperfect substitutes. If I am somehow able to keep the latest Avengers film excludable then very few will be willing to accept the "substitute" of a knock-off rom com with C-list actors. This goes too far. There are clearly better movies and worse movies, but if you have the choice between two movies of the same quality, they are basically fungible. If one of them is on the streaming service I subscribe to and the other one isn't, I know which one I'm going to watch and which one I'm not going to get around to.
- rayiner 10y agoContent is intrinsically non-fungible. People don't want a movie about fish; they want Finding Nemo. That's what gives content companies so much power even in this day and age when making and distributing content is so easy. But copyright law doesn't give them that power--its intrinsic to the nature of their product.