05-18-2012, 06:34 PM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Aug 2003
Posts: 7,082
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economist says Copyright is a relic of the Middle Ages that has no place in the digital age
Quote:
As every graduate of an introductory economics class knows, the market works best when items sell at their marginal cost. That means we maximize efficiency when recorded music, movies, video games and software are available to users at zero cost. The fees that the government allows copyright holders to impose create economic distortions in the same way that tariffs on imported cars or clothes lead to economic distortions.
The major difference is that the distortions from copyright protection are much larger. While tariffs on cars or clothes would rarely exceed 20-30 per cent, the additional cost imposed by copyright protection is the price of the product. Movies that would be free in a world without copyright protection can cost $20-$30. The same is true of video games, and the price of copyrighted software can run into the thousands of dollars.
In total, hundreds of billions of dollars a year flow from the rest of us to those with government-granted copyright monopolies, such as Disney, Time-Warner and Microsoft. This government-directed flow of money dwarfs the size of the items that gets tends to get Washington politicians hot under the collar, such as the Bush-era tax cuts to the wealthy.
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opi...029381972.html
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