On Thu, Mar 06, 2003 at 06:04:01PM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> This is directly analogous, I
> think, to the reason the GNU GPL doesn't have a clause forbidding
> selling a work so licensed for $1 million. It's not necessary --
> either no one will buy it, and the software might as well not exist,
> or anyone willing to pay the price can immediately undercut you (and
> someone can undercut him, and so forth), causing a rapid price
> decline down to something approximating a nominal fee.
This is, in fact, the basis for an economic model for funding the
development of intellectual property, without copyright. The basic idea
being that even if something's widely available and freely copiable,
people aren't going to make massive numbers of copies available at cost,
they're going to want to make a profit themselves. And if you're a
reputable enough vendor to be confident of your margins, you can afford
to pay a one-off cost for some free software and recoup that because
you'll be first-to-market.
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/pci23.htm
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch1.pdf
http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/papers/ip.ch2.pdf
and http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/ in general.
There's maths and everything. I haven't verified the maths, but the
hand-waving seemed plausible. (These were linked on slashdot a while
ago)
http://www.aei.brookings.org/publications/abstract.php?pid=302
Also looks interesting. You've got to love an article that's willing to
argue in all seriousness that copyright law -in toto- is unconstitutional
in the US.
Sorry, that's probably all hopeless off-topic, but it's just so cool.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
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