[ EEPI-Discuss ] Re: Speaking of Celebrity, Social Contracts and Naivity.

[Dan Krimm <djkrimbo@earthlink.net>]

>Date: Fri, 20 May 2005 18:54:18 +0100
>From: David Tomlinson <d.tomlinson@tiscali.co.uk>
>Subject: [ EEPI-Discuss ] Re: Speaking of Celebrity,	Social Contracts
>	and Naivity.


>Dan Krimm wrote:
> >
> > I mean, the maximalist bent is certainly dangerous to civil
>liberties, but
> > opposing maximalism does not necessarily entail embracing strict
>minimalism either.
> >
> >
>No, I am not a "market fundementalist" (See PS of Dan's Post).
>But even in a social market the default assumption is competition.
>You have noticed in live in the UK, and therefore I pay a poll tax for
>the BBC (you might have heard of them :). I support the BBC but this
>does not mean that I approve of a tax for popular music.

Competition comes in a variety of forms.  In the case of a blanket license,
it means competing for usage, and thus competing for a share of the royalty
pool.

The creation of a royalty pool (from a bundled fee for using Internet
service) is essentially a counterpart to the idea of granting property
rights in copying or performance of music, it's just being done in a
different way (payment-for-usage rights as opposed to
copy-transaction-enforcement rights).  Our taxes go to pay for the
enforcement of property rights either way -- copyright is not "free" to
society.

The reflex against a "tax" for music might be taken to the extreme by
opposing property rights for music altogether (i.e., not allowing taxes to
be used to enforce copyrights), which is what you are doing in connection
with the China case.  I'm just going to the other way:  I support the idea
of some sort of property rights (in order to create a market) for music,
and thus I see no reason not to apply a service model to this market in
terms of usage rather than duplication/distribution control per se.



 ... If you want volutery or
>compulsory licencing, you need a economic model that proves it necessary
>and justifies it.

What makes it necessary is that effective DRM is Draconian online and
without it the duplication/distribution paradigm is technologically
unenforceable.   Thus, we need to move to a performance/usage-based
paradigm instead.  Since we already have precedents for that model, it
seems natural to appeal to them as a possible solution.



> >>Unlike Larry Lessig, I don't think that Property is a suitable model for
> >>Interlectual Property, and I don't like compulsory licencing, but the
> >>main issue is the thought police.
...
>While there are still some differences between my position and Prof
>Lessig, I have much in common with Larry Lessig and you, Dan.

However, if you expect there to be any sort of *market* for music per se,
then there have to be some sort of property rights associated with music,
or else there simply *is no market*.  If music as a creative product is to
be valued in the economy for itself, and not for some adjunct value such as
celebrity (a semiotic value as opposed to an esthetic value), then there
must be an enforceable value applied directly to the music itself and I see
no way that can be accomplished without some sort of property rights.

This goes back to Coase:  The point of assigning property rights to public
goods or economic externalities is specifically to create a market where
value can be expressed for those goods and/or effects.  IP is a classic
example of naturally unenforceable goods that have artificial property
rights assigned in order to create a market.  In order to create that
market, you have to assign the property rights.



> > But, it can be done without destroying the potential for creators to get
> > compensated directly for the value of their creations, and not for
>adjunct
> > values such as celebrity, investment resources, or patronage.
> >
> > This is where the balance comes in, and why I think of Lessig (and
>myself)
> > as centrists -- "copyright optimalists" as it were.
> >
> >
>And I start from the presumption of a free market in music, not a tax to
>support it.

You can't have a market without enforceable property rights, unless it is a
market for something other than the actual good you are precluding from the
property paradigm.  I'd maintain that failing to assign property rights to
music itself would systematically distort the balance of music we actually
get from any secondarily-associated-with-music market.



> > What I suggest is that, now that we have technology that can really
>do it,
> > we simply hold them to their rhetoric after all.  They have no
> > justification for refusing, given how they've relied on this rhetoric
> > through the decades.  Merely point out that we can come so much closer to
> > that ideal today, and therefore we are morally bound to do so, by
>their own rhetoric.
> >
>My point exactly, but with a free market approach not a non-existant
>social contract.

Ditto on the need for enforceable property rights to define any market.



>Here is a more recent article by Prof Lessig. The people own culture.
>Where he argues that a free culture should be the default and gives the
>history of the expantion of copyright.

Yeah, I basically agree on the default position, however I think it is
fairly clear that we need *some* sorts of property rights associated with
recorded music (and other forms of content that are not tied to physical
origins like live performances or canvas paintings) to create a market for
these creative works.

A free market for recorded music without property rights on the recordings
would value recorded music at zero, which is not ultimately beneficial to
society, because it would disincentivize the creation of many recorded
works which would not be substituted with anything to replace them.

Any time you talk about any market, free or otherwise, you must presume an
axiom of property (in the broad sense including services -- "goods") to be
exchanged.  To talk about a "market with no property rights" is simply a
contradiction in terms.  You might as well be talking about "money with no
currency" or "travel with no transportation".

Dan
_______________________________________________
EEPI-Discuss mailing list information:
http://lists.eepi.org/mailman/listinfo/eepi-discuss