I'm not so sure I agree with that statement. Intellectual property (as it applies to digital goods) is rarely about inducing scarcity. The purpose of IP-prote

I'm not so sure I agree with that statement. Intellectual property (as it applies to digital goods) is rarely about inducing scarcity. The purpose of IP-protection tools (DRM) isn't typically to limit the availability of a product-- it's to limit possession of a product such that the quantity possessed is equal to the quantity purchased (the attempt to minimize piracy). There have been cases where companies have tried to artificially induce scarcity--I recall that during the release of a certain Battlefield game, EA's storefront had temporarily "sold out" of digital copies--and in that case, the same DRM-based distribution tech that was designed for IP protection was being used to induce scarcity. In other words, if ten people are trying to purchase your product, IP enforcement means you want exactly ten copies to exist. Inducing artificial scarcity means you want fewer than ten copies to exist. It's hard to find examples of artificial scarcity in the digital world, which is what makes this somewhat interesting to me. However, in the brick and mortar world, the diamond industry is a good example. edit: it's worth noting that the handcrafted case is a legitimately unique item, so in that sense, the scarcity of the complete package is real, not artificial.