3 ms·

You have this product which has high fixed costs to produce but zero marginal costs to produce an extra one. If everyone chose to pay zero then the product woul

You have this product which has high fixed costs to produce but zero marginal costs to produce an extra one. If everyone chose to pay zero then the product would not be made and everyone would be worse off. By choosing to pay zero you are free-riding on other people who choose to pay non-zero. It is possible that piracy could bring about: a) higher prices to other consumers who have to pay a larger share of the fixed costs because other people are choosing to pay zero. this is not really a cost more a fairness problem. b) some products not being produced because not enough people are willing to pay the higher price to pay off the fixed costs. even though there might be a price point X that is lower than what it is worth to some of the zero payers which would result in the fixed costs being paid. this is a real economic cost

vy8vWJlco 14y ago
I see it as a cart-before-the-horse problem. Before the printing press things were more horse-before-cart (no copyright). After the press and the statute of Anne, to today, we have been very cart-first. We paid for physical CDs without knowing if we would like most of what they had on them (we may have heard one song on the radio for free, as advertisement - ie, the pirate bay is a modern radio business - but the rest were a mystery, and distributors exploited our eagerness by adding on a dozen unknowns). We still felt like we were buying something tangible (the medium was tangible), so it was relatively easy to accept trading money in advance for something we couldn't see into first. I think following that approach further requires an untenable "enforcement" culture on private and social thinking and collaborative efforts. I'd rather put the cart back behind the horse (fund the work itself, to create the first copy, rather than pay mandatory royalties for all future copies - and endure the social unrest of preventing what boil down to thought-crimes, IMHO). In the past artists (and scientists) had patrons but today we have kickstarter. It is possible to fund the creation of large projects (movies, TV shows, games, hardware, research, etc) without as much risk to the people carrying it out.

vy8vWJlco 14y ago

I see it as a cart-before-the-horse problem. Before the printing press things were more horse-before-cart (no copyright). After the press and the statute of Anne, to today, we have been very cart-first. We paid for physical CDs without knowing if we would like most of what they had on them (we may have heard one song on the radio for free, as advertisement - ie, the pirate bay is a modern radio business - but the rest were a mystery, and distributors exploited our eagerness by adding on a dozen unknowns). We still felt like we were buying something tangible (the medium was tangible), so it was relatively easy to accept trading money in advance for something we couldn't see into first. I think following that approach further requires an untenable "enforcement" culture on private and social thinking and collaborative efforts. I'd rather put the cart back behind the horse (fund the work itself, to create the first copy, rather than pay mandatory royalties for all future copies - and endure the social unrest of preventing what boil down to thought-crimes, IMHO). In the past artists (and scientists) had patrons but today we have kickstarter. It is possible to fund the creation of large projects (movies, TV shows, games, hardware, research, etc) without as much risk to the people carrying it out.