4 ms·
People really need to shake themselves out of the clutches of this IP myth -- for that is what it essentially is. It is not even well-founded for an old, materi
by hxa7241 15y ago
People really need to shake themselves out of the clutches of this IP myth -- for that is what it essentially is. It is not even well-founded for an old, material-oriented industry, let alone for informational.
And you cannot invent something like the internet and not expect the economics of information-goods production to be eventually utterly transformed. It changes not only the kind of info produced, but how it is, and the ways consumers and producers can interact. So why keep looking backwards? We should be prompting, encouraging, or forcing companies to develop new ways to do things now.
Are we doing things the same way as before the industrial revolution? Is anyone really going to propose that by ditching old practices and adapting to the full capabilities of the greatest info tech in history we will see a drop in production? Does that really not sound ridiculous?
- davidw 15y agoLet's talk concretely rather than hand waving about 'inventing new ways of doing things' - the technology certainly has changed a lot of things, but how will people make money to pay rent, eat food, and things like that if the fruit of their labor is not remunerated? That seems like the sort of basic economics that doesn't change. Look at the 'public good' article: those are the known ways of funding goods that are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. Distilled, it looks something like this: if what you produce is not scarce, it has no exchange value. In order to have something to exchange, you have to possess some scarce good. For instance, bands could potentially get by with concerts, which have a limited availability in terms of seating. What are authors supposed to do? Movie makers? Bands that really work best in the studio?