Killing off the little guy (this time it's internet radio)

[pvn]

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The idea is that people can protect their own valuable time and efforts. I don't feel like helping protect Britney Spears' time and efforts.

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To the extent that the market value of creative innovation is unprotected, and thus effectively redistributed through collectivization, the incentives for such activity disappear.

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So what? My incentive to mow lawns disappears when I don't have a government imposing a rule that any time I mow a lawn everyone must pay me $200,000.

[BCPVP]

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Again, you are confusing the dictionary definition of scarcity and the economic definition of scarcity. This is often the first thing you learn in an economics class.


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I am not IMO I believe that you are using an artificially narrow definition of scarcity that suits your argument.

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That IS the economic definition of scarcity, though. I didn't make it up.

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The "goodness" or "badness" of an idea has nothing to do with its economic scarcity. Your having the idea (good or bad) does not prevent me from having the same idea.


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I cannot have the same idea as you unless you are talking about vague simple ideas like "I like ice cream" You or I will not ever have the same scarce idea as Van Gogh, Jimmy Hendrix, or David Sklansky. We may have similar ideas but not the same idea.

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You are wrong. We can both have the same idea of how to build a car or paint a particular painting. I can have the idea to have the exact same notes in the exact same order with the exact same lyrics for Purple Haze as Jimi had. Therefore, the song Purple Haze cannot be scarce.

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Personally, I'd rather leave contracts out of the discussion as I'm already in agreement with you on that and it just muddies the waters on the issue of whether ideas can be scarce.

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I am saying that this contractual ownership of ideas is inherent in the idea itself. We may add additional contracts to to transaction of ideas but ownership of unique ideas is part and parcel of the idea and part of what makes it scarce.

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An idea would have to be scarce before it could be owned. You haven't shown how an idea can be scarce and if you can, consider applying for the Nobel because that would be quite a revolutionary economic concept.

Again, a unique idea does not mean it is economically scarce. Remember the definition of economic scarcity: a condition of limited resources, where society does not have sufficient resources to produce enough to fulfill subjective wants. An unlimited number of people can have any given idea and so an idea cannot be scarce.

[pvn]

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I cannot have the same idea as you unless you are talking about vague simple ideas like "I like ice cream" You or I will not ever have the same scarce idea as Van Gogh, Jimmy Hendrix, or David Sklansky. We may have similar ideas but not the same idea.

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Of course I can! David Sklansky had this idea about poker, about mistakes people make, and what decisions you might make if you knew all the cards, and he thought about it a lot and came up with the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Then he told me his idea. Now I have the idea AND he still has it.

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I am saying that this contractual ownership of ideas is inherent in the idea itself.

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How can I be bound to a contract just because some other person thought of something? Go back to my "I'm patenting Four" post.

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We may add additional contracts to to transaction of ideas but ownership of unique ideas is part and parcel of the idea and part of what makes it scarce.

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Cart before the horse. The (artificially imposed) scarcity of ideas is necessary for ownership of them.

[pvn]

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You know that I ment 2+2 the company. This is hard enough to keep on track without the red herrings

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Right, 2+2 is a company and not an idea. Companies are scarce, ideas aren't. Next.

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Wrong 2+2 is a company that markets the unique scarce ideas of DS MM and all the rest.

The idea to create the company now known as 2+2 is even a scarce idea. Lots of companys exist and lots of people have thought of starting a company. But 2+2 and the ideas involved in it are scarce and unique.

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This thread is over if all you are going to do is assert assert assert. Show us how these ideas are scarce. The fact that we all know exactly what you're talking about is evidence that contradicts your claim.

[NeBlis]

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I can have the idea to have the exact same notes in the exact same order with the exact same lyrics for Purple Haze as Jimi had. Therefore, the song Purple Haze cannot be scarce.


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I theory maybe. In theory 1000 monkeys & typewrighters could make TOP. But in reality this will never ever happen not even once. No matter what Vanilla Ice says about his song being different.

Alexander Graham Bell & Elisha Gray both had similar unique ideas but not the same idea. (lets not get into patents we agree on this point)

[NeBlis]

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Of course I can! David Sklansky had this idea about poker, about mistakes people make, and what decisions you might make if you knew all the cards, and he thought about it a lot and came up with the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Then he told me his idea. Now I have the idea AND he still has it.


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No now you have an idea that you got from DS in the same way that you can have a loaf of bread that you got from the store. Simplicity of copying doesn't make the origional item less or more unique. If we all had replicators like Star Trek bread would still have value.

[zyqwert]

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Wouldn't it make sense to protect the value of the time and resources spent on creative works?

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How far are you willing to go?

It was easy to offer that protection when copying was expensive. A would-be copyright infringer had to build a record pressing plant, buy raw materials, copy the record (imperfectly since his source is analog), ship the records, and distribute the records to consumers in stores.

When the copyright owner catches this guy, he is easy to punish with the copyright law. You can take lots of real goods from the guilty. The infringer has significant fixed costs at risks, and non-trivial marginal costs. There is a market price and enforcement level where it is worth it to create a black market, but records in the US were never priced there.

Now, in a digital age, what are the fixed and marginal costs of reproduction? Close to zero in both cases. So, absent the protection of the law, the market price would become close to zero. The actual market price is $0.99/song.

With no barriers to entry and very low probability of getting caught you need huge enforcement to prevent the existence of a black market. For distributors, anonymous secret (secure) sharing is existing technology that can be used to counter the obvious enforcement mechanisms, so I doubt any enforcement strategy can make the probabilty of getting caught very high.

The law enforces a market price of $0.99/song for a product that anybody can distribute for about $0.02/song. The disparity begs for competitors. The black market will be very strong, regardless of what the government does.

The RIAA appreciates the economics, but assumes copyright enforcement as a given. So, to attempt to balance the equations, they work towards infinite enforcement:

1. Blank media taxes far more than the cost of the media.
2. Shotgun lawsuits that often target innocent people.
3. Pushing the enforcement problem onto others so a significant % of your new computer's resources will be wasted protecting RIAA IP.

Actually, DRM isn't really about preventing copyright infringement. The real purpose is to end fair use which allows you to move your purchases between media. The RIAA wants you to purchase your music collection again every time a new format becomes popular.

The RIAA wants to go quite far to protect their copyrights. They'd like to spy on the packets going through your ISP. They like taxing people on the assumption that they will infringe, without any evidence. They want every technology to get design approval from them. They are fighting a battle against a law of economics and they are willing to sacrifice your money, freedom, and privacy to fight it.

There is a limit to how much I'm willing to spend to protect copyrights, and the RIAA is way past it.

[pvn]

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Of course I can! David Sklansky had this idea about poker, about mistakes people make, and what decisions you might make if you knew all the cards, and he thought about it a lot and came up with the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Then he told me his idea. Now I have the idea AND he still has it.


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No now you have an idea that you got from DS in the same way that you can have a loaf of bread that you got from the store.

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Nope. When I get a loaf of bread from the store, the store no longer has the loaf of bread. DS still has the ideas he gave me.

[Skidoo]

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The idea is that people can protect their own valuable time and efforts. I don't feel like helping protect Britney Spears' time and efforts.

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To the extent that the market value of creative innovation is unprotected, and thus effectively redistributed through collectivization, the incentives for such activity disappear.

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So what? My incentive to mow lawns disappears when I don't have a government imposing a rule that any time I mow a lawn everyone must pay me $200,000.

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No, your incentive to invent and market the first lawnmower disappears when anyone else can just copy the idea and set up shop as your competition.

[pvn]

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Of course I can! David Sklansky had this idea about poker, about mistakes people make, and what decisions you might make if you knew all the cards, and he thought about it a lot and came up with the Fundamental Theorem of Poker. Then he told me his idea. Now I have the idea AND he still has it.


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No now you have an idea that you got from DS in the same way that you can have a loaf of bread that you got from the store.

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Nope. When I get a loaf of bread from the store, the store no longer has the loaf of bread. DS still has the ideas he gave me.

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BTW, what difference does it make if I got the idea from DS or not? Does the fact that Honda made my car diminish my ownership of that car?

Note: you're conflating the creation of an idea with the having of an idea. The fact that only Jimi (so far) has independently developed the idea known as "Purple Haze" doesn't mean I can't have that idea.

This opens up a big hole in your "inherent contract" theory. What if someone *does* independently come up with Purple Haze? That person has no contract with Jimi, does he? If there is actually an inherent contract that is put into effect merely by creating something, you're talking about pre-emptive restriction on others' efforts without consent on their part. This is much, much closer to patent law than copyright.