http://madisonian.net/2006/08/19/egalitarian-copyright-part-1-a-new-controlaccess-tradeoff/ a blog about law, tech, culture, and related things Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:58:52 -0800 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://madisonian.net/2006/08/19/egalitarian-copyright-part-1-a-new-controlaccess-tradeoff/comment-page-1/#comment-70533 madisonian.net » Multiple Egalitarianisms: Roadblock or Detour? Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:45:46 +0000 http://madisonian.net/?p=746#comment-70533 [...] Larry Solum has brought up the always-interesting egalitarian literature in response to my first post on egalitarian copyright. Solum mentions that [T]here is an important theoretical debate among egalitarians about the question whether egalitarian principles of distributive justice are properly applied to anything other than the basic structure. Correspondingly, there is a question whether the solution to inequality should be targeted at particular contexts, copyright, contract, etc., or whether the solution is a fair distribution of wealth and income. [...] [...] Larry Solum has brought up the always-interesting egalitarian literature in response to my first post on egalitarian copyright. Solum mentions that [T]here is an important theoretical debate among egalitarians about the question whether egalitarian principles of distributive justice are properly applied to anything other than the basic structure. Correspondingly, there is a question whether the solution to inequality should be targeted at particular contexts, copyright, contract, etc., or whether the solution is a fair distribution of wealth and income. [...]

]]> http://madisonian.net/2006/08/19/egalitarian-copyright-part-1-a-new-controlaccess-tradeoff/comment-page-1/#comment-70529 Bruce Boyden Mon, 21 Aug 2006 19:34:16 +0000 http://madisonian.net/?p=746#comment-70529 Frank, interesting idea. Some reactions: 1) Are lower-income people really hurting for entertainment options, as an empirical matter? I wouldn't have guessed that, but I don't have strong intuitions here. 2) Even if they are, isn't it just a difference in scale from what consumers at any income level experience? E.g., I'd love to buy the boxed sets of Homicide -- but I see they're selling for well over a hundred dollars for each season. That's out of my entertainment budget, and I'm doing OK financially. So would I qualify for relief? Would everyone? (And thanks to all you Homicide nuts for driving the price up.) 3) Obviously there's implementation problems on the DRM front -- it's just not that granular yet. But even if that is all solved, who is going to decide who qualifies under whatever means test is set up? And how will the system ensure that the free give-aways don't cannibalize the demand for other pay media? It's the fact that you haven't seen a movie in a while that (sometimes) drives you to spend $20 or more at the theater. Measuring that effect, of course, is notoriously difficult in the extreme. But it seems to me that unless you can be confident that a given consumer will make no content purchases at all (or perhaps none of a given type), giving away even tightly controlled free media will lead to substitutions, not pure gains. Frank, interesting idea. Some reactions: 1) Are lower-income people really hurting for entertainment options, as an empirical matter? I wouldn’t have guessed that, but I don’t have strong intuitions here. 2) Even if they are, isn’t it just a difference in scale from what consumers at any income level experience? E.g., I’d love to buy the boxed sets of Homicide — but I see they’re selling for well over a hundred dollars for each season. That’s out of my entertainment budget, and I’m doing OK financially. So would I qualify for relief? Would everyone? (And thanks to all you Homicide nuts for driving the price up.) 3) Obviously there’s implementation problems on the DRM front — it’s just not that granular yet. But even if that is all solved, who is going to decide who qualifies under whatever means test is set up? And how will the system ensure that the free give-aways don’t cannibalize the demand for other pay media? It’s the fact that you haven’t seen a movie in a while that (sometimes) drives you to spend $20 or more at the theater. Measuring that effect, of course, is notoriously difficult in the extreme. But it seems to me that unless you can be confident that a given consumer will make no content purchases at all (or perhaps none of a given type), giving away even tightly controlled free media will lead to substitutions, not pure gains.

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