DLOska on 26 Jul 2000 13:55:55 -0000 |
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<nettime> Re: <.nettime> Terror in Tune Town |
In a message dated 7/25/00 5:34:51 PM Eastern Daylight Time, eric@OAKTREE.com writes: > I'm sorry, but the bottom line is IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, IT ISN'T YOURS. > Artists invest their lives, and record companies invest money in their > product. You can't justify or rationalize away the fact that widespread > _multipoint_ distribution of content without a quid pro quo is by > definition, distribution of stolen property. I wanted to suggest a non-philosohical way of discussing the values of intellectual property, the labors of the artist, the labors of the distribution system etc. At just the rudimentary level of microeconomics (and this would be the extent of my economics background) it would seem that Napster has created a fundamental shift in supply and demand. They have created a market with an infinite supply. A supply/demand graph will show that as the supply of a product increases, the price decreases. It would be reasonable to infer that if supply is infinitely increased, the price would approach (and practically speaking, come to) zero. This would be true of any product. If the supply of bread increased (and the demand stayed the same), the price of bread would decrease. If there was an infinite supply of bread, bread would cost nothing. And no matter how much labor was exerted to make the bread, the market could not bear a higher price, and as a result people in the bread production line would be forced to accept no remuneration for their labor. Air, for example. Their is not a cash market for air, because, for practical purposes, the supply of air is infinite and no market could bear a monetary cost for the product. How would Napster be different? At the level of the album, cassette, compact disc, etc. there were limits on supply in any given market which allowed the market to set price based. This does not hold within the Napster community. While an mp3 may materially exist as a file somewhere on someone's computer, for all intents and purposes, the file exists in an infinite capacity as it can endlessly be replicated. I'll be honest. I'm not sure where to go from here with this argument. Will the producers stop making their products? Probably not. The bread maker in the infinite bread market would likely sustain their income by producing a different product. What alternative products can a musician make? A live show is an example of a musical product with a limited supply. Musicians can make their living touring, perhaps. (As Shakespeare made his living with stage productions of his plays, not by writing them or selling their text). Just a different way of approaching this debate. If they're around this list, I'd like to hear an economist's view on this. Pat Douglas Leader www.douglasleader.com # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net