Re: NetRelease: Collecting Royalties in Cyberspace

>Stephen Malinowski writes about "Net Release" and whether it
>wouldn't work because no one would come up with the money
>initially:
>
>> In general, that is true. There are exceptions, though. For example,
>> people will subscribe to public radio/television even though they know
>> the service will continue without their money.
>
>I think the economic analysis of this situation would be that
>production of works would be sub-optimal. It's a situation of
>external benefits (others who do not pay get the benefit of
>those who do pay), and such situations are characterized by
>less than the optimal (efficient) amount of production, not by
>no production. With public Tv and radio, people do give in spite
>of the external benefits, but fewer than "ought" to (fewer than
>would be willing to pay something for the service if they had to
>pay to get it). That's what one would expect with net- release
>also.
>
>
>
> --Trotter Hardy

Are dollars the only reward that creative types work for? The NetReward scheme may enable free riders and may return fewer dollars to the creator, but is it necessarily a less than optimal return to the creator? If she is allowed to set the dollar value at which she will release the work, paying for the cost of development, and groceries and such, and insures that her work is seen or used by the greatest number of people or is released on all continents, or will be translated into many languages, who can say that this does not amount to the greatest possible return for that creator. Those of us in Academe who publish for free in scholarly journals, or teach for less than us could make practicing law, or write freeware to be used on the Net, should always be suspicious of theoretic economic arguments that trace only the flow of dollars.

It would be interesting to see what the results would be for a system like NetReward with a method of insuring a minimum dollar income to the creator and maximizing the intangible rewards of wide distribution and the satisfaction of seeing one's creation used.

Buford Terrell
<terrell[_at_]sugar.neosoft.com> Received on Sat Apr 30 1994 - 05:22:09 GMT