My good ma’am/sirs,
Recently I read Anti-trust the case for repeal and got to thinking:
Is it possible to have a completely monopoly power over a good in a truly free market? If so, would that monopoly be devastating to the consumer? Prices would have to be kept low in order to block out other entrepreneurs.
-david
How devastating to the consumer that prices are low!
In fact, if one adheres to the theory of supply and demand, then the only way for a monopoly to exist is for some agent to prevent the supply of goods from increasing. If a “monopoly” achieves that position by massively increasing the supply of goods, then it is not a monopoly but the most productive scale of enterprise in that market, against which no other firm can profitably increase the supply of goods due to their higher marginal costs and lower productivity.
If you have a copyright, sure. Of course, a few of us would argue that copyrights are not a product of the market.
I have a “monopoly” on an encyclopedic knowledge about free games.
However, it seem that it can only support one guy so I have the niche all to myself.
A copyright does not limit your ability to increase the supply of information.
I never claimed it did. I wrote that a copyright gave monopoly power over a good. Actually, copyright is worse, because it stops people from competing with derivative works, so it actually gives people a monopoly over many potential goods.
By that definition any property right is a monopoly over a good. You are not allowed to build a farm on top of my farm, for example, or build a derivative work of it. I don’t see what this has to do with true monopoly.
Of course it is. The good you possess. Copyright however prevents others from creating derivative works. Thus, it prevents other people from creating with goods they possess. It is a monopoly over creation.
Right, it doesn’t work for real property, but arbitrary titles like copyright manufacture such a distinction.
There is no greater monopoly in an industrial society than IP. Some folks believe that IP is possible in a free market. If that is so, then monopoly must also be possible in a free market.
It is really only trivially possible in the sense that we each have the monopoly over ourselves. Again: that’s trivial.
Its up to the consumer preference to decide what is and isn’t a “monopoly”. Only Stephen King can write Stephen King books, but obviously consumers think that there are many substitutes for his product, like other authors and forms of entertainment.
But if Stephen King’s books were really the only kind consumers wanted, then he could charge the monopoly price for his work. I suppose this is a way in which monopolies arise on the free market.
You may still create a derivative work if the copyright holder agrees to it, just like you could create a derivative of my farm if I agreed to it. I don’t see how that is outrageous, or even qualitatively different.
You just said that property is a monopoly, so I don’t see in what sense this is an argument for anything whatsoever.
Stranger;
Based on your statements on other threads, here is what I understand about your position on Intellectual Monopoly and related issues
1)you believe that short texts are not IP, but longer texts that people with advanced memories would struggle to recall in perfection are IP.
2)you believe that one need not have played a part in an act of trespass in order to be an accomplice to a trespass
In a truly free market you have complete monopoly power over your own goods.
..seems like a pretty damn magnificent thing if you ask me.
No, short texts are IP. However due to presumption of innocence it is possible that they are not enforceable, and regardless, they are worthless and practically super-abundant and so do not enter the debate over IP.
The intellectual communists are not going to like that, but then again so did the land communists.
nirgrahamUK:
like if i see you reading a page, and then i start to copy down the contents of the page. i have not interfered with your physical page property. my eyes did not send out beams that scarred your paper.
oh rly?
Do you want to explain why light reflected off your paper and into my eyes which received the patterns, then begins to prohibit me from making marks with my pen on my paper and selling them on. ?
If you would rather not defend that position. then imagine it is two pieces of paper… imagine i observe you turning the pages through the lense of my HighDef video camera and i can pause the frames and observe the light that bounced off from your book onto the digital recorder…
As in this case you are directly accessing the media in a forbidden manner, I see no point in going through this argument again.
having a passive receiver picking up signals coming onto ones own property is not the same as crossing borders on the a mission to touch other peoples property.
disagree?
im probably not thinking straight or in my right mind because i find your stance on ‘accomplices’ such a mindbender its rather thrown me for a loop.
hopefully i will yet recover and come to understand how your books reflecting its light onto my device is somehow my crime…
Irrelevant. There are no passive receivers when it comes to information. An entire music album doesn’t just accidentally fall into your ipod. You must deliberately act to put it there.
i deliberately set up my passive receiver to receive the reflected light from every page on the book you read.
what claim do you have against me?