GrafoDexia

This site is devoted to copyright and issues of 'intellectual property,' particularly the issue's analytical aspects. It also concerns itself with the gap between public perception and the true facts, and with the significant lag time between the coverage on more technical sites and the mainstream press. For site feed, see: http://grafodexia.blogspot.com/atom.xml To see the list of sites monitored to create this site, see: http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?html=1&id=CopyrightJournal

Monday, June 14, 2004

Liebowitz publishes another paper on file-sharing. His page 4 assumption that TV is less likely to be subject to file-sharing is interesting. While movies are certainly more durable goods, in that they are designed for repeat consumption, TV shows have less sense that trading them would be illegal, since they are already free, and downloading a missed episode could be considered a TiVo-like timeshifting. His argument against sampling could be used equally-well against file-sharing or against record labels increasing the size of their catalog--or against iTMS and the like. A recurring theme when reading his paper is that the same analysis applied to almost any practice of the music industry would prove their moves counter-productive. Why offer choice when the sampling effect proves it simply reduces the price per unit of satisfaction and thus decreases profits when elasticity <=1 ? Why buy your gross, or break the law to increase the number of listeners of your music, if there are no network effects?

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