5 ms·
Economists call this the "Free Rider" problem: people are able to derive value from a common good without paying for it, so there is less incentive to produce t
by kbutler 9y ago
Economists call this the "Free Rider" problem: people are able to derive value from a common good without paying for it, so there is less incentive to produce the type of good than would be optimal.
Roads. Infrastructure for sewers. Defense. Fire suppression.
These are all cases where a purely free market fails to provide optimal levels of the good or service.
People are evidently willing to pay for novels, so we know they have value. The question is whether the current copyright system gives copyright owners too much power to extract rents at the cost of the public domain.
- conanbatt 9y agoIsn't the author a free rider on the states legal infrastructure? Writing books, making movies and composing music are some of the things that should we should never have an interest in creating externalities for.
- kbutler 9y agoNo, assuming the author pays taxes, the author is not a free rider on the law enforcement infrastructure. The act of publishing the book has positive externalities (people derive benefit from reading it). Copyright is an attempt to allow creators to capture some of those positive externalities to promote more production of books. Your position that the creator should not have a mechanism to capture any of those benefits is rather extreme, as is the position of the copyright maximalists that assert they should capture all of the benefits.