Re: copyright under stress

On Wed, Jun 14, 2000, Rod McCarvel <rod[_at_]seanet.com> wrote:
>
> [...]
> Copyright restricts access to information, in the sense that it
> creates scarcity. This is in fact the purpose of copyright. If
> the copyright owner is unable to control the distribution of
> copies, the price of the work will inevitably collapse.
>
> The basic idea is that, while the initial investment in the first
> copy may be quite high, each subsequent copy can be produced quite
> cheaply. Particularly in the case of digitized information, for
> which the marginal cost of producing an additional copy is near
> zero, traditional notions of optimal pricing do not work. The
> normal concept of supply and demand presumes that supply is by
> definition finite. If supply can be readily increased with little
> or no additional cost, for all practical purposes without limit,
> classical economics tells us that the price per unit will be zero
> or very nearly so. Obviously, Metallica would not soon get rich
> this way. To put it less flippantly, authors may not be able to
> recoup the original cost of production unless the supply can be
> artificially limited and the price kept well above the marginal
> per-unit cost of the copies.
>
> Thus, the Constitution (presuming the U.S. copyright model --
> residents of other jurisdictions are on their own) grants Congress
> the authority to provide authors with a monopoly for a limited
> period of time. An artificial scarcity is created, propping up a
> non-zero price for each copy. In a very fundamental way, access
> to the underlying information is restricted by assuring a price
> substantially greater than the per-unit marginal cost. If I want
> to hear a particular song, read a particular book, or see a
> particular movie I will have to purchase or otherwise gain access
> to one of a pool of artificially scarce copies. This is in fact
> the whole point. Without restricted access, supply inflates and
> prices collapse. Authorship is not incentivised, and the public
> suffers (that's the theory, anyway).
>
> Of course, the trade-off here is that copyright is granted only
> for a limited time. Thus, the artificially created scarcity, and
> resulting limited access, is temporary. The public (for whose
> benefit, you will recall, the copyright is granted) ultimately
> obtains virtually unlimited access to the information embodied
> within the protected expression -- assuming that the public
> still cares.
 

I certainly agree with this (although some -- not me -- might wish to replace the word "monopoly" with "oligopoly" -- see another post).

However, can we stop here? Isn't the next question for the economists this one: given that the Internet (and "post-capitalist" consumer economy) has produced a state of technically no scarcity, is it still warranted (economically and legally) to associate copyright with this scarcity? Does it provide the right incentive -- for "the progress of science and the useful arts" rather than for private enrichment through imposed scarcity?

It doesn't take much to make one wonder. In my town we still have a dump and we have to take waste there ourselves. Most every time I leave off my bundled newspapers I find a box or more of books being thrown away. The library doesn't want them -- the local used bookstore doesn't want them -- in fact these two throw away as many books as anyone. But no matter what they do to try to promote book scarcity the books keep being thrown away. It so happens that locally there is a glut of waste paper on the market, so my town actually has to pay to dispose of the books. But if I wanted to take the books without rewarding the author, I would be interfering with the system of incentives through scarcity and copyright based on it? (Don't tell anyone, but I do take them home and actually read them for free.)

-- 
"Eric"  Eric Eldred  Eldritch Press
mailto:Eldred[_at_]EldritchPress.org
http://www.eldritchpress.org/EricEldred.vcf